Quote Originally Posted by DoctorMog View Post
A few things;

Difficult content is content anyone can do. Casual to hardcore. Don't assume casuals are stupid and cant complete difficult encounters.
I didn't make any such assumption, but you've made the distinction repeatedly in both this thread and others that this "tough" content is not meant for "casuals". If it were, why disclaim and differentiate between the two in your OP?
So, thanks for reading. I must make a final note, and that is that I do not wish to take away from content for casual players. I hope this content can co-exist and not pull from what a casual player could accomplish. Maybe the same stats as another item, just looks different or something.
With the number of likes my OP has, it is pretty clear that my "7 friends" is a much larger part of the population than you think looking for a challenge.
There's 20 servers, looks like par for the course. All kidding aside we could get a thread going about this game needs ANY content and I'm sure it would get a lot more likes than this thread's call for "tough" content meant only for the few.

Oh wait, no need, we already know an overwhelming 37% of the playerbase identified Lack of Content as the #1 problem with this game back in January: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...98e4034b898102

And finally, if they don't do SOMETHING that proposes a challenge, the playerbase looking for a challenge will eventually just move on to another game.
I think its pretty clear they've already looked beyond us in their plans for salvaging this game. Whoever stays, that's great, but all of the changes to-date and their future roadmaps and time tables are clearly geared toward making the PS3 release a success rather than any attempt to save what's left of the PC Open Beta population of ~40K players.

Losing the "hardcore" group is just as bad as losing the "casual" group. Without both, your game dies. Or you should have just made Hello Kitty online clones, because thats about what it becomes if there is 0 challenge.
No, losing the casual group is clearly the worst scenario, as that's what pays the bills and the bulk of your development costs. While the hardcore group certainly gives the casual players something to aim for and keeps the high-end content relevant, you can't sustain a game that caters to such a small subset of the population. See: any successful MMO.