If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

[Striker44]

I feel like the OP is taking one largely irrelevant piece completely out of context and ignoring the much bigger issues that caused WoW to plummet in popularity. Namely - taking away flying and gating it behind Pathfinder (which isn't completely until about a year after the xpac has launched), borrowed power systems layered on top of borrowed power systems, and an all-in push to the toxic cesspool that is competitive e-sports (e.g. Mythic+ dungeons).

FFXIV has actually stayed away from precisely those things that brought WoW down, and maintained the very things that drove its popularity (tokens for deterministic gear, flying available early on, focus on RPG and story over e-sports, etc.). FFXIV has exploded in popularity as WoW has gone downhill, and the path they're heading down is most likely to keep it that way.

[Y2K21]

WoW died when they started making it hard in CATA and then insulted the casuals with the joke race expansion. Now the staff there makes content as hard as possible and no one plays anymore except you people.

Which is funny now since many look back at Pandaria being a good expansion because of the story and class design. The problem is when we do a lot of hindsight -- there tends to be a lot of mixed reactions that change perspective than originally intended.

[Gunn-e]

I'm curious about the OP's statement, as a relatively new player (started in Oct 2021). My experience with the whole thing, as I started on a Summoner, was that when I reached just around Shadowbringers or just a little bit before that, I started to really dislike Summoner. I started levelling other jobs because I found it overcomplicated. I don't have enough time to dedicate to the game to learn the somewhat complex mechanics of dungeons and raids AND a skills bar that's like the glossary of an encyclopedia. And then Endwalker dropped (I was still in Shadowbringers) and I hopped back on my Summoner and suddenly it's a love story. We got engaged and married before Endwalker and we're planning on our first kid. Anyways, jokes aside, while I can understand simplification is annoying for hardcore veterans an hardcore challenge-seekers, wouldn't it be ideal if the game offered a mix of complex jobs for the latter, and more simple ones for those who'd rather be a little more casual?

[Caurcas]

It's not about being "hardcore", so stop using that as a catch all for people bored with current job design. It's about not being so braindead in a variety of content as to not put you to sleep.

[HyoMinPark]

I love that the Hardcore Minority think they are half the user base lol if that was the case FFXIV 1.0 would of made it since that game was made for you people.

Except now more and more “casual majority” players (since you want to make this into an Us Versus Them argument) are getting fed up with jobs being changed and dumbed down. Even casual “non-hardcore minority” healers are complaining about how boring pressing one button is for 90 levels.

1.0 had nothing to do with being “hardcore” and everything to do with poor and unintuitive design.

Please use a new argument—this “casual majority” versus “hardcore minority” argument is tiresome and usually nothing more than a strawman.

[MagicalChase]

Here's something I want people who don't care about the game getting easier cuz "you can just do savage and ultimate 4head"
What about the midcore players who did most content outside of savage? Who primarily farmed alliance roulette and extremes and dungeons who's having to deal with two of those three becoming content you do once then discard? Or who's favorite jobs got dumbed down to appeal to players who dont really play the job like all healers or summoner? What do you do if savage and ultimate are just too draining and normal is too easy to be engaging and hardmode has been missing since HW?

wouldn't it be ideal if the game offered a mix of complex jobs for the latter, and more simple ones for those who'd rather be a little more casual?

the problem is there is no complex option anymore. Summoner was the go to busy job for people who liked that and red mage was the less complicated one. now they just made summoner an easier bard essentially. Same with scholar turning into whm with a fairy in shadowbringers.

[Y2K21]

Here's something I want people who don't care about the game getting easier cuz "you can just do savage and ultimate 4head"
What about the midcore players who did most content outside of savage? Who primarily farmed alliance roulette and extremes and dungeons who's having to deal with two of those three becoming content you do once then discard? Or who's favorite jobs got dumbed down to appeal to players who dont really play the job like all healers or summoner? What do you do if savage and ultimate are just too draining and normal is too easy to be engaging and hardmode has been missing since HW?

The problem has always been that there isnt any midcore bridge content from Normal to Savage. Some people will say Extremes, but thats really debateable.

[HyoMinPark]

The problem has always been that there isnt any midcore bridge content from Normal to Savage. Some people will say Extremes, but thats really debateable.

It used to be Extremes to an extent. Some were tuned to be between the second and third Savage floor in terms of difficulty (usually the odd-number patch primals, so things like Shinryu EX and Tsukuyomi EX); others were harder than a lot of current Savage fights (Thordan EX and Sephirot EX); and others still were easier than the first current Savage floor (Byakko EX and Suzaku EX). But generally, yes, they were considered to be the bridge. Now? They’re definitely not harder than current Savage—the two we have now are jokes (though, so is P1S, to be quite fair—the only thing it has going for it is Intemperance being a gotcha mechanic for those who don’t know how to do it).

I’ll be curious to see where Endsinger sits, and to see if it does fall between P2S and P3S.

[Vahlnir]

Blizz stopped reporting subs during WoD when the game lost 50% of its playerbase due to bad game management decisions.

And this was before the flying debacle. They lost way more than 50% before they stopped reporting. Rough estimates around that time were around 2 million players and still dropping fast. Down from 10 million at the start of that expansion.

[MagicalChase]

The problem has always been that there isnt any midcore bridge content from Normal to Savage. Some people will say Extremes, but thats really debateable.

I whole heartedly agree! I feel like in ARR that's what hard modes were for. but also back then we even had hardmode dungeons which I personally was a fan of.