Why is standard decided to be 4 people, while 8 is decided as 'hard mode'? Couldn't all content that's instanced be scaled to suit both sizes?

Mission fights should not be treated as second rate nonsense to get at the goodies. Mission fights in the past, while not dropping gear, were treated as big achievements. I don't see why the mission fight and the 'hard mode' fight can't be treated equally.

So I pose this question:

In the future, why can't missions and hardmode battles alike have scaled content geared towards both Lite-Parties (4 members) and Full-Parties (8 members)?
The Ifrit mission battle in the translation at least seems to be treated as a nuisance to be cleared before you can get at the actual content. Is this true, and can we expect all future missions to be treated as 'easy mode'?

I liked feeling a sense of accomplishment with missions but in XIV they fall super flat as though no effort to making them challenging was put forth. Not everyone who plays as a casual character wants things /that/ easy.

So I'm going to wait to comment later after the patch goes live, so it's not really a matter of how difficult it is ( as we don't know ) but more of a question along the lines of why the arbitrary numbers set to the party system for missions and is it not possible to have both?

This would greatly improve the game in the long run to both cater to large groups and new players who don't know many people (therefore being able to choose the option for 4 people, instead of maxing everything out at 8)

Same for the endgame hard mode. It is not always possible to find enough people for Darkhold, so can't the bosses within be scaled in future updates to suit both groups?


I'm not asking for a drop in difficulty or level of the monsters within, but for the content to be scaled to suit each group.