the normal content is too easy

[Ronduwil]

"Regularly?"

You mean once.

At least twice last year: Once in July and once in December. I'm guessing we're due again when the patch hits, but we'll see.

Am completely unwilling to spend same amount of time I have on past stuffs explaining why it is impossible to appeal to everyone.

Agreed. You appeal to as many people as you can, and that's what they're doing.

Soooo how do we deduce how well FF14 is doing?

The forums? Everyone states that we are small percentage but data sets are commonly small percentage of greater whole yet still valuable.

So you know enough about statistics to understand the value of samples, but not enough to distinguish between a random sample and one that skews heavily towards hardcore game enthusiasts. The forum is a great measure of how FFXIV enthusiasts feel about the game. It's not a credible representaton of the player population as a whole, however. The vast majority of casual players never even log into the forums.

Twitch?

How much money does SE make from Twitch? Zero. At best, it's cheap advertising, and at this point, they've achieved market saturation with all the hype they generated last year. They'll be just fine for a while with literally zero Twitch views. When the next content drop happens and the hype around New World and Lost Ark dies down, they'll establish a Twitch presence once more.

A vocal portion of the FFXIV community seems to consist of those who would unironically join a running club and beg the leader to force everybody to walk at a snail's pace only to call anyone asking to for a modicum of challenge an 'elitist'. All whilst swearing up and down that maybe a running club isn't for them.

It's more like we're all in a walking club, and a bunch of elitists on these forums are complaining that it's not a running club. After all, this thread started with the OP demanding that the normal raids be made harder to suit their preference for Savage and Extreme content. I don't consider players who prefer Savage and Extreme content to be elitists. However, I definitely consider the players who are demanding that Normal difficulty be increased to be elitists. If you want to be in the running group, be in the running group. Just don't demand that the rest of us who are happily walking already start running just to make you happy.

Honestly, I've seen these complaints regarding "dumbing down" for over a decade. I lost count of the number of times that WoW players in MoP recounted the glory days of Vanilla WoW with its massive difficulty. Then Classic WoW dropped and the goggles came off: Single button rotations, tank and spank raid bosses, and mechanics whose complexity often boiled down to splitting into stacked groups and standing in place while a handful of players managed debuffs. Suddenly no one complains that WoW is too easy anymore.