I understand your point. The thing is, I really love playing FF14. it's just that, I hope there are more options for Solo/casual players.
These days it's pretty much just dailies. I always complete story and side quests where possible, but as that's usually finished within the first month after an update, most of my online time means running daily quests to get tomes for gear. Somehow throughout all this I managed to get an Animus weapon, but I'm having a hard time trying to justify moving onto the next stage given the abhorrent costs involved.
So for the time being i'm caught between levelling my rogue using dailies, getting gear for my 'main' and occasionally spiritbonding for crafting materia so I can upgrade myself to 4-star across all of them.
I play 7-10 hrs a week and I'm kind of positively surprised what can be achieved in that time.
I got a static with which I raid 2x 2 hrs a week Coil and Ex primals and the rest of the time i mostly try to get poetic tomes doing Roulette.
Only focusing on 1 job tho and I didnt even start this Relic Atma timesink.
Not sure what your definition of solo is, in the last years before ARR i have been soloing here and there because i got tired of raiding, for me, soloing is clearing group content alone, it's usually harder and takes much more time, but you can't do that here, the game right now is not solo friendly at all, if you want to avoid group content all you can do is, dailies, crafting and treasure maps.
Most MMOs are not designed for solo players, we just find our way to do it, but here we can't even try.
I like the idea behind this thread. I am a bit of a more casual player too and I oscillate between doing the brand new content (at Shiva EX atm) and leveling crafts and other jobs.
At times i feel really defeated at the pacing of the content in this game; It's way too fast! (i.e new stuff comes out way too fast and in essence hurries everyone along)
And other times i feel like i have wayy too much that I can do in a given session: Treasure map, craft and try to make some gil, try to cap tomes, try to work on relic, try to work on beast tribes, try to glamour my gear sets, etc...
I enjoy the game, but there are times i dont play because its overwhelming to feel like the game is a to-do list in addition to the fact that i do it solo.
I'm a full time parent, with a 22 month old and preschooler -- as such I can only ever play at night for about two hours. I think the main thing for someone who wants to experience the game, even if 'solo', is to get in a good FC full of fun people. Once there, you can make connections with people and make either a 4 man 'static' group who agrees to run things like experts each night (1 hour max time -- usually -30 mins to complete with a full FC party) or even group of 8 FC members who can make a full FC group to run ST (again, probably takes an hour at most). Being in a FC and making friends would mean you won't have to use DF, or wait, to do your expert roulette, and you'll get tomes for gear quickly while socializing and maybe progressing to casually doing Coil if your FC does that. I know you're on Tonberry, but there are tons of English speakers there, so I think there are quite a few friendly FCs. Good luck!!
*I was going to put the relic questline in as solo content, but it really isn't... TONS of dungeons to do and such -- and if you dislike DF = ick*
**If you ever feel like jumping over to Faerie, the FC I'm in, Orange Pekoe, is just such a FC** --shameless plug--