Worst Summer Event EVER

[Astrus]

They always do this at the Moonfire that comes out shortly after the expansion. It ends up being every other year we have a "big" event for the summer. I think it's pretty silly to do it that way, but SE loves to never change.

I think part of the reason for that pattern is the volatile nature of seasonal content in FFXIV. I imagine the same team that handles all the other side quests for the big x.0 release also has to do the first half year of events during that crunch so them half-assing a couple of quests that are headed straight to the woodchipper after their three weeks of relevance is kind of understandable.
They might put more care into these if they came back each year for the folks who haven't already done them, though that would cut into the online store profits so we can't have that.