As the title says, if one is critical of one side of the game, Casual content, or hardcore, content, its safe to assume you will definitely see people from one of said sides come out swinging to defend their prefered content type. But why argue amongst yourselves?
Between multiple interviews, multiple announcements, its more then obvious that both casual and hardcore players would have so much more content, if SE didnt have them developing FF16.
So far from whats been said and the reactions within said interviews, the battle team, the team responsible for the majority of the content you see in this game, is currently 4 guys and their interns working on a lot of content.
Dungeons, Raids, and all there is in between is worked on by them. And with the recent showcase and Yoshi-P himself bowing in apology for the lack of an ultimate, and the lack of many forms of usual and promised content that has been cut. Even him going into detail why FF as a whole feels generally wonky and why the scaling isnt as consistent as it was in Heavenward and Stormsblood, which was a technical issue they couldn't fix due to this being the first time they've experienced it.
It seems to me that they aren't choosing a hill, they aren;t catering to causals over hardcores, and vice versa, it seems they're undermanned and doing their best to provide, Yoshi P wouldnt hand test so much of this game and talk about his love for raiding, while also in the same breath speak of how much he admires so many of the creative things the casual community does in and with the game.
To me it just makes more sense to Criticize Squre Enix directly for many of their choices and actions that lead Yoshi-p and his team to having to make either side of the community feel like they're not cared for. So While Covid is a thing, they culd fund them more, they could have thought longer before having them develop a whole single player game. There are so many ways they could have made things eaiser on Creative Unit 3 Since asking them to develop FF16 back in Heavensward
Tl;dr: The Dev team cares about every aspect of this game, but the company as a whole gimps them and we're just now finally feeling it this expansion since its been happening since heavenward.
Edit: I think a lot of people are missing the point. Just because it doesn't seem big to you doesn't mean something isn't worth Criticism. From Viera and Hrothgar to Ultimates and Cut dungeons, Paying customers have a right to want to see things change and improve, It doesn't mean an Elitist is trying to force their vision of the game on you.
If its SE's doing as the parent company they deserve to be told what people think is wrong, if its the Dev team directly we need to give them feed back we need to be vocal as paying consumers of the game. Look aside from "Casuals will leave" or "Its not worth playing if it caters to Casuals".
In fact, stop insulting them as players, you don't know if someone is a casual player who aspires to one day clear all of the hardest content in the game, or if a hardcore players loves spendning their evening doing relaxing content that doesn't make them think too much, something they can just have fun with. And stop making excuses for the game to not be made better, this is an MMO, its iterative, which means that is has to constantly change and adapt and do better each and every single time, that is iterative development by its definition. So why not accept that change, that change for the better.
The Entire point is that in the end Criticism and feed back is good, if we don;t know whats going on internally at SE or Creative Unit 3 How can we as consumers understand our game better, if you dont want to, or don't care to fine. But for those who do they have the right to. Even if its tiny over sights, or things that don;t matter to some in the end, its not wrong of them to still voice their opinions.