Elitism is not only affecting the community, it is starting to affect the devs

[CazzT]

As a result, the FF14 community has become an echo chamber for hardcore viewpoints.

That's not the impression I've gotten.

Take the MSQ experience for example. Hardcore, dedicated players insist that the story is so good that everyone should watch all the cutscenes. Do people realize how long that takes? It would take a casual player playing 5~8 hours a week 3 months to half a year just to complete the MSQ if they watched all the cutscenes.

So there's two things being claimed here.
1 - Anyone saying someone should watch all the cutscenes is automatically a "hardcore player". That is false on so many levels. I can only speak for how I deal with this personally, but your claim is outright wrong.
I absolutely encourage people to watch the cutscenes and read the story of the MSQ as it plays out. But if someone just really does not like the story, or is just really not a story person, that's fine, too. I just ask that they don't criticize the story if they aren't going to read it.
2 - That it would take a "casual" several months to complete the MSQ. I have two answers to this. One, SO WHAT?! Two, if that's a big of a deal to someone, they will either play more, rush through parts of the MSQ, or do something else that speeds it up. This is not a race. You don't win a prize for finishing the MSQ in a shorter time.

Skipping the cutscenes can cut that down by nearly a third. For many years, the MSQ bloat was not addressed in any way because of the forums, Reddit, and media events, which are overrepresented by hardcore players, tell the devs that there are no issues. Thankfully, the devs must have finally looked at data showing how many casual players probably can't get through ARR without quitting and decided to take a first step towards addressing the MSQ bloat.

You're attributing the lack of MSQ changes to people who had no impact on that. Sounds like you're just mad at this strawman you've created and named "Hardcore".

Another example is making Ultimate raids at all in the first place. Less than 1% of the community can enjoy this content. Yet they are constantly making new Ultimate raids while cutting more and more casual content. Do people notice the trend here? During ARR, there was only one level of hardcore raid - Coil, and there was also only one level of hardcore trial - Extreme. Then halfway through ARR they added Savage. In Heavensward they continued Savage and added PotD for hardcore 4-man content. In Stormblood they added Ultimate. Now they are adding Unreal. How many tiers of hardcore content do we have now? How many tiers of casual content do we have, on the other hand? And do you notice that casual content is the only content that gets cut, while they have only added hardcore content?

It all boils down to the hardcore mentality and elitism that gets broadcasted everywhere from every corner of the FF14 community.

Translation: "Everyone who doesn't play as casually as I do is elitist hardcore!!" That's not how it works.