Thank you everyone for replying and taking interest in this topic. I respect and value every single one of your replies. There are a few things I'd like to clarify.

1. Casual Players.

I'm not against casual players, and I think the definition I have in mind and the definition some of you understood are not the same. By casual I mean those people who play an hour a day (not because they're forced to), sometimes 2-3 hours only on the weekends, because they're bored. Or those people who plan to play the game for 2 weeks (or a month) then say goodbye to their accounts. Those people, they want to have everything, and want to get to finish everything in that limited time they chose.

It's those people whom you avoid to have in your linkshell because they won't benefit the linkshell or the members, because they don't share the same plans you have for the group. To them you and your LS are their vacation buddies, then *delete*.. And they might come back a few months later for another short vacation, join the poll, and ask for easier stuff, complain about every single thing that needs some time and patience, then leave again...

2. Serious Gamers.

Being a serious gamer doesn't really require 10+ hours of gameplay every day, if you can allocate time to play 4-5 hours a day, you can be as good as any hardcore player. And I don't think it's impossible - in most cases - to fix your schedule in order to have 5 hours for something you love and want to keep doing every day. That's why I kept saying "Serious Gamer" rather than "Hardcore gamer," even if you got so busy and couldn't login for more than 2 hours a day, you're still a serious gamer and you care about the game enough to make sure everything is running perfectly in it and it's at a challenging level.

Even if you can only play 2 hours a day sometimes, I'm sure you still don't want the game to be easier and less challenging, it will just take you a bit longer than others, but you'll keep up in time, and eventually you might have more time than you thought.

Many of my friends have full-time jobs, married, children, and they still were able to work their schedules out to play 4-6 hours a day, even more hours in some days. (ex. 6 hours of sleep, 7 hours at work, 2 hours with family, 2 hours chores, 5 hours ffxiv with friends, 2 hours whatever)


3. I'm not saying HC/Serious gamers only.

I didn't ask for the game to be completely hard in every single way.. What SE did to bring more casual players isn't wrong, it's their choice and they want to insure a successful launch. I welcome casual contents; they can be fun, easy and quick stuff to do when you're bored. But this content shouldn't be the only thing available; it shouldn't be the main dish - or at least not the only main dish. We want a higher class to aspire to. A chance to go beyond the limit average gamers stop at.

For example, what if SE put this long, hard, and very challenging quest that ends with a fight or a series of fights, something like ( Solo 1000 goblins without dying ) and the reward is: "a +1 to one of your stats points." Most players won't really care about it "It's too hard, and takes too long.. and it's only one point!" they would say. But a quest like this opens new windows to character development, it gives us a chance to make our characters rise from the average character if we work harder than others, a player might plan to finish it once a week. Later in a few months when you see that player, you can tell that even though you’re both warriors, he's much stronger, because he worked hard on his character, it might have been painfully hard, but he could be as strong as 2 people in a few months. or as strong as a full party in 2 years.

A quest like this isn't mandatory, it won't make a huge difference when you do it once or twice, and you're not forced to do it, keep playing the way you like, and the quest will still be there for people who are looking for a challenge and a chance to be stronger.

If you say hardcore gamers are dead, I say they're here and there's so many of them, they're just not given the chance to show themselves.