Lack of End Game Content

[Xieldras]

Very fair and completely agree. In the end it's about effort vs revenue.

I do believe engaging endgame raiding to be important because it feels like horizontal progression on the main piece of content. I'm personally from the mindset that quality > quantity, especially in the replayability value department.
I also see XI mentioned a lot, but I'm afraid I do not have any experience with it to know how it properly compares.

[linay]

I do believe engaging endgame raiding to be important because it feels like progression on the main piece of content.

To be fair, "progression on the main piece of content" in this game will always be the MSQ, even at level cap. Unlike in some other games, like WoW, where the main quest can take you to the raid if you follow it through (though it's still optional), raiding is indeed treated more as a side piece of content in this game, along with its own side quest. There's even a thread right now asking why Eden is not part of the MSQ. Even in terms of gears, tomestone gears can have the same item level as Savage (aside from weapon), and some pieces may even be BiS.

[Saidosha]

I also see XI mentioned a lot, but I'm afraid I do not have any experience with it to know how it properly compares.

The odds of you getting a non-polarized interpretation of XI is pretty small. I played it for a decade, but would have no hesitation in calling out flaws that reflect a creation of castes within the player base, a distinct lack of more modern features to at least make (older) content possible, a push for no-lifing/multi-boxing for certain feats, gross imbalances of enemy AoEs (including status effect spam/buff removal/incredibly high damage), and a hyper-fixation upon the "right way" to do things that tend to parrot the first publicly shared first clear strategy or the like that usually translated outright to job discrimination.

Now, in playing as long as I did, there were obviously things I liked that won me over more compared to WoW. Art style, for example, was a factor, taking on a more realistic western medieval style than the cartoony WoW fantasy take. I don't care for PvP or the common shortcomings it invites ranging from balance to (unreasonable) player expectation. It felt like XI took storytelling more seriously, both in content and presentation (frequent cutscenes compared to text window dumps). I'm still a fan of all jobs/classes on a single character over needing an alt army. Yet, I could also say I wasn't too keen on the complete absence of quest-based leveling in XI or a more solo-friendly process to leveling up in the majority of the game's early years. Meme jokes about DRGs sitting in Jeuno LFG for 8 hours didn't just spin out of the ether. RDMs being favored as a healer over WHM was very real regardless of how well a good WHM could pull their weight just fine. I wouldn't be surprised that if, upon RDM's implementation here, there were people pissed it wasn't a main healer or buff monkey, either. XI basically had a way of instilling... feelings... for better or worse, that sometimes run absent to the evolution of gaming and not just MMOs since its prime. And frankly, you'll still have people who will argue 75 cap is the superior version of the game despite it being just as prone to content exhaustion as XIV is, though with added complications specific to its own identity.

If there is a simple phrase I'd attribute to both XI and XIV, it'd be there's wasted potential. XIV only has the benefit of being the more recent game, and thus the most likely to get any form of significant content update just like Shadowbringers brought. We can point to (artificially) limited resources. We could say there might be a lack of talent to produce in such a timely manner. We can have people that refuse to accept a minority status or assert they're super secretly a majority and the naysayers are just idiots who don't get it. There is a valid concern of focus on Y means less of X. Some can't even decide what the hell a casual player or endgame activity is.

At this point, I'm just going to default to something no MMO has really yet to embrace in earnest: User Generated Content.

Give the players the intuitive tools they need to configure existing game assets into a customized venue and we could actually get the super, extra, difficult hard content some crave when official content is in a lull phase. Players who like jump puzzles could make their own. Those more interested in weaving independent plots can do so. What could amount to housing on crack by making a custom hangout hub is also something people could do. Some folks could configure scavenger hunts. Some could make an arena that's about overcoming specific challenges. Basically, the limit would be a mix of player imagination and the tools they're given, with acknowledgement you'd get no gear or EXP from it. You'd be doing it for the fun, either as a participant or a creator. Though, if it turns out those talking about difficulty won't do it precisely because it lacks reward, I can't say it paints a pretty picture about their true intent.