All of your casual content is gated towards later patches. That's what the problem is. There's no reason why things like cosmic exploration and field exploration zones should be kept towards the halfway to end part of an expansion. The only real casual thing players get until then is MSQ and some sidequests. Once you do all that, there's nothing more for the casual player to continue subbing for until the rest of the casual content comes out. Casual players aren't going to get gear or even try to do Exs or savage content. They will log in, do their dailies and log right out, having no interest in harder content for this game. Having no field exploration in Endwalker really showed this game's lack of endgame casual content. They rely heavily on the story and nothing else. That's what the problem is.

Release casual content sooner and complaints of "No content" will die down.