What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[TheDecay]

Unfortunately that describes a growing number of the newer posters from what I've seen. They're also entirely oblivious - either willingly or otherwise - to how different the game used to be back in the 'good old days'.

In my opinion the golden era was ARR/HW/StB when there was more of an attempt to take a jack of all trades approach and cater to different groups of players. It's slim pickings for anyone who has a deeper interest than the Scions or content along the lines of Eureka/Bozja and Ishgard Reconstruction as opposed to new gpose features and furniture designed with 'venues' in mind.

It is what it is, though. It remains to be seen what 7.0 brings with it but much like Kaoru other games offer more of what appeals to me at present. The most one can do at this point is either leave entirely or drop some feedback now and then in the hope that maybe, just maybe, it'll be seen and passed along to the development team.

You are completely right that many gameplay features seem to have been abandoned in EW, such as exploratory content. The lack of depth is very clear to see. And as I've explained in another topic, I believe this can have long-term consequences for FF14 if there's an emergent new MMO that really pulls off PvE combat well (the fabled Riot MMO perhaps):

The reason I think low complexity is damaging to FF14 in the long run is because it will leave the gameplay-focused players extremely unsatisfied while keeping the "casual" or glam/RP/modding-focused players mildly more satisfied (I say "mildly" because I don't believe going from Stormblood gameplay to ShB gameplay really made many casual players much more satisfied with the game than going from HW to SB did because of the removal of a lot of HW jank). While many of the gameplay-focused players continue sticking with FF14 because, let's be real, the MMO landscape is pathetic, it creates real opportunity for a new entrant to capture its unsatisfied players very easily, and I think this is the real long-term danger for FF14.