What does Heavensward actually bring to the table as an expansion?

[Kaurie]

If I was an SE dev reading all these threads constantly griping about how boring the game is that I've slaved over for possibly years, I'd be driven into a deep
depression...I mean seriously.

If I was that dev, I would suffer from massive reading comprehension problems.

Most complaints are coming from people who praise the game as very fun, and they have certain issues with how somethings are happening and providing feedback. They go on to add that they've become bored as they've run out of things to do. That doesn't mean everything that they have done was not fun, or was boring.

Ultimately, the biggest issue is that FFXIV released content in a way that encouraged you to speed by 90% of the content as fast as possible. Alex NM in 2 weeks, so you better be in full law so you don't miss out on one week's worth of lockouts, otherwise you'll be behind when savage launches 2 weeks later and esoterics. That's 2 weekly lockouts. So you better be up there if you want to not get left behind per se. I felt behind all of ARR, because I didn't start out right away, and I spent the entire 2.x catching up. I didn't want to feel that way in 3.x so I made sure to watch the timeline for launches to make sure I was ready.

The thing is, it doesn't have to work this way. Suggestions I've put forth, in this and other threads, which could alleviate this problem are:
1. replayable stories (I'd like to go back and experience some of the story arcs, similar to how I sometimes watch older episodes of TV shows on Netflix/dvd etc).
2. Caps on spending tomes rather than earning them. This game encourages you to have alternate jobs up until it comes to gearing, then it's one job or else. This really sucks if you need to swap jobs for savage (PLD to DRK for example or even cross roles, which is not uncommon as people try to optimize their teams). If I want to farm esoterics so I can gear my SCH in addition to my SMN, I don't see why I am prevented. However, I understand not wanting us to have full esoteric'd SMN on week 1, thus cap spending per job at 450 per week.
3. Add earning esoterics to things in the open world like fates, mix it up in what we're doing
4. Add more variety fun-stats to add horizontal progression and alternate ways to obtain different gear sets

I think I've said others, but you get the point. It's not that content is boring, it's that fun content has been made obsolete to fast leaving small amounts of fun content which is not fun to repeatedly do.