I disagree. I think the content is good for what the game is right now. The problem is really that there is no progression that makes you feel like anything is worth doing. XIV's approach to difficulty ends up being more like a grind if you're doing hard content than an enjoyable difficult boss fight like in a Team Ninja game where you do die in one or two hits but the active process of learning hit boxes, animations and the dynamic combat systems actually help you grow as a player. I guess there is an argument for discovery, but how many pieces of relevant content even have discovery? Four boss fights every other patch? Maybe an ultimate? Criterion?

You can't exactly outplay a boss in this game by being good at piloting your class. You just 'stand and let thing resolve' while doing your simplified rotation over and over and if everyone stood at the correct place and your healers topped off chances are the fight will go smooth until the end.

I want to commend the encounter designers because when you have a game as barebones and with combat as simple as XIV, making new combat content must be very difficult, and they do a good job.

All activities in this game are player and class agnostic, SE doesn't care what job you are, what gear you have or your skill level. And again, given the philosophy on the rest of the game's design, I wonder if they care too much or not at all. For a game that wants me to experience everything, I don't know why there are so many grinds and time wasting features that make it all a chore. Why does gear still exist? I'd much rather crafting and gathering take skill instead of a stat check.

Do you ever wonder why mounts have a cast bar? Because Blizzard made it that way? In WoW you can actually mount in dungeons and raids, so it makes sense. But in XIV you can't even mount in most places of relevancy.

Also, someone asked why I'm here, and it's because of the PC Gamer article, I'm not sure how to quote their post. I'm a dissatisfied player who wanted this game to grow instead of shrink. I think the article does a poor job at framing why XIV suddenly feels so bad. XIV has always been a mediocre RPG, but in other expansions pre-Shadowbringers, you had nuanced jobs where half of the fun was learning to properly play your class, so the lack of proper itemization and progression wasn't felt as much because there was actual skill involved on top of letting things resolve. There was an incentive for you to become invested in your job, and with different cooldown timers the mastery of learning when to use cooldowns was also part of the fun. Content was interesting that way too because it made your big buttons fluid rather than static.

But, again. Let's not ask Square Enix to be better, let's ask players to leave.