The easy fix to that is having the hints be more descriptive/less cryptic and making the vista larger. Even if it were super easy it'd still be more engaging than what we have now.
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I don't miss the weather/time combinations. Some of those were rare and difficult to get if you couldn't be online at the exact 3 minute window that only occurred once or twice a month.
I do miss the vista descriptions that gave us the chance to puzzle out where the vista was and what emote to use on our own if we wanted. I had figured out quite a few of the ARR spots before I finally had to break down and start using online resources to find the rest.
Those that don't want to figure them out can go straight to the online resources.
And Blue Mage turned it back into casual content. I've taken friends (and the occasional stranger) up Kugane Tower several times now, not to mention all the rezzing straight to the lamppost.
I won't say it renders getting the other points pointless. It's only pointless if your only goal was to unlock the paintings, in which case it was pointless to start in the first place. You can always get a friend who has completed the sightseeing logs to buy any paintings you want for you.
Whether someone finds them challenging or not, figuring out vistas on your own can be fun depending on what you personally think is fun. Not everyone wants the answers fed to them via an online website or YouTube video.
I'm aware of the Blue Mage Self-Destruct trick, I even logged out on the lampost after I got up there the first time and the next day made a PF offering to help people get up there. Of course, being Dynamis, only three people actually showed up over the course of 4 hours...
Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that I don't keep these screenshots around to brag about completing the jumps on my own (I even made the leap of faith FIRST TRY unless you think I re-climbed the whole tower in 9 minutes), I keep them to point out that even though I accomplished the BS task, I still think its BS, and to quiet anyone who tries to pull the "how can you say you hate the content until you do it!?" card. (Incidentally, it also shows I've done one of the long and inane gather achievements for ARR fishing.)
https://i.imgur.com/TAmPkSL.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/ohxnSQJ.jpeg
I have earned Crimson Explorer on my own, and I STILL hate how needlessly hard Sightseeing Logs become once you reach Stormblood and don't blame anyone for giving up on the logs part way through or not even bothering to unlock them at all. I also had no qualms TRIVIALIZING the very same difficult thing I completed with offering to revive people up there, because I don't obsess over ego and flexing like a lot of other players do.
If anything I feel stupid, not proud, for wasting my time on it and dragged my heels on doing the Shadowbringer logs despite them being far easier because I just hated doing Sightseeing Logs at that point, and I wholly blame Stormblood for that.
Those are not the one I miss too, but the point of my post here is just that I find them too easy now and in fact I don't even understand their purpose now, it adds no value to the game vs the ones from ARR.
This is one of the big sad part of the majority of the community of that game. Even when the content is freshly new, 1-2 days new, we have people on PF that are like "WATCH HECTOR STRAT" and when you tell you want to go blind to have the fun of figuring out the fight, many just drop of the party because "they don't have time to waste, they need their clear ASAP". So they'll just reproduce what another player did, without even trying it by themself first.
I don't know why many are so affraid when things takes time to be done, and when we need to think a little...