Quote Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams View Post
Exploratory zones, particularly Anemos due to dyeable relic gear and Bozja/Zadnor.

Grinding Ivalice raids for gear, along with the NieR raids before the stat squish made the latter impossible to complete in under 40 minutes.

The previous deep dungeons given that they actually rewarded things like the Kinna weapons / Jeudi mount and other things I was interested in + releasing early enough before I had a chance to level my classes to 90 thanks to extended patch cycles.

Extremes back when their weapons weren't as gaudy as they are this expansion and the mounts weren't cats with small heads.

Restoration content - grinding out and selling rewards for gil.

Occasionally dungeon farming but with both 6.3 and now 6.4 set to have recycled sets there's no point in me running patch MSQ dungeons more than once.

8-man raid set grinding except for when they released the atrocious Genta Eboshi sets.

Roulette and tome farming which is basically all there is to do this expansion has always been dead last in the list of things I've wanted to do. Even if I don't rush new content when it releases this expansion it's all been short-lived and each major patch doesn't provide more than a few hours worth of things to do. 6.4 is likely to be the last major patch I stick around for until 7.0 - which is still roughly a year away. Even then 7.0 is no longer a definite yes for me because I'm not willing to endure another expansion's worth of Endwalker's constant mistakes.
Nearly everything on your list exists this expansion. You can't complain about a lack of battle content when the content is still there. You're just choosing not to do it because the reward doesn't fit your aesthetic. Fine not to do it if you don't like the reward, but don't try to claim there isn't content when the content is still there.

And for as much as people complain about the rewards for Criterion, it was hard 4-man content that the playerbase was asking to get for years.

Exploratory zones are a mixed bag. While many people say they enjoyed doing them, I'd hazard a guess from how low population they've become even on an active DC like Aether that those people aren't going into them to keep them alive. They did them when they were current. They got what they wanted and left and care nothing about anyone who tries to do them after that point. But SE does care about things like that and I'm sure they have the numbers on the longevity of that content and whether it's worth the development time to create it or not. So maybe we'll see it again. Maybe we won't.