Quote Originally Posted by Tsukino View Post
XIV's system kind of screws over players in the "middle" of time commitment and progression. People at the top are always ready for the next thing, while the most casual players benefit from the easing of previous content, but there's this place in the middle where you finally complete a set just in time for it to be replaced with another and for what you just got to be made much easier to do. And a lot of people fall into that middle category.
I agree with this completely and i think it's XIV's largest issue outside of the ladder of gear progression.

Right now this game doesn't really consider the "middle" ground or rather most midcore players, the players that have the ability to down the current raids but for a number of reasons are unable to do so on first release.

Due to the initial lockout, many of these players may simply be unable to put together / maintain a static party for the long periods of time it usually takes to not only learn the encounters but also to deal with the RNG of drops when it comes time to farm them. If the system was more flexible and allowed for either variable party sizes or an ease up on the amount of time for the initial lockout (they're supposedly doing this in 2.45) more players would be able to experience this content first hand.

These are often the players you may hear complaining about adding Echo / nerfing content so soon because they enjoyed / just learned the normal difficulty once it was unlocked and added to duty finder, but are now robbed of the experience because content in this game jumps straight from hardcore lockouts to free for all casual duty finder without anything in between.

This is something else easily fixable by adding a variety of gear paths, you have the option of making Hardcore, Midcore, and Casual type raids that can be released in sooner increments than 6 months, allowing everyone to progress in some fashion and leaving none really behind.