Thank you very much for this thread!

I have the feeling there is also this lack of the sentiment of saying "this content is not for me". Now, does it suck when there is not a lot long term content for your taste? Of course! We had a full year since release where hardcore raiders dined well while the rest didn't really have anything with long time engagement. (I very much enjoy the normal raids and the alliance raid, but I wouldn't consider weekly farming for an hour max "long time engagement", nor doing ten minutes society quests for a few weeks. And I dislike progging hardcore stuff as a concept, it's just not fun for me.)
However, does this mean the content itself is bad? No. That's like saying milkshakes are a horrible invention and have many core design flaws because you're lactoseintolerant and cannot digest them. The solution for this isn't changing milkshakes but offering some without animal milk. And that's the same with this game's content, ask for content that suits your taste, not say the once we got is bad just because it's not your thing. Many people clearly enjoy it or enough parts of it, otherwise all worlds would still be stuck at phase 1 or 2 because not enough people are there for the upgrade missions. (Even the ones on less populated worlds who are playing a much harder version right now while the others breeze through it.)

Having said that, I am a person who is never getting tired of pointing out how "easy" and "hard" in itself are very subjective and just because one thing is easy for one, it doesn't mean it's hard for others. But we're talking about going into content with FATEs where you just stand in front of a crystal or a squishy pink bubble and aim a drill or flamethrower in its general direction. You don't even have to target anything, you don't have to be an omnicrafter with pentamelded lvl 100 gear for more currency. You just have to be in this instance during a mech op and point your character in the general direction and press one button. And at some point you have to walk three steps to the containers where you hand them in, which works by just standing in the circle centered on these tanks.
You even get a currency reward boost for the following missions by being part of the ground support team. It is not getting any easier than that.

(One could argue you still have to be level 10 at a DoH/DoL, but you can just unlock fisher, do the first quest by buying the required fish at the fishmonger in Limsa, then unlock Ocean Fishing by targeting a guy and do one or two ocean fishing trips while having a food buff, for reaching level 10. Where you again just point your character in the general direction of the water with a versatile lure and press "1" and "2" frequently. If you want to play half decent, you can get the three ocean fishing baits and ask in chat if anyone could pls mention them, if nobody is doing it already, but Ocean Fishing is so damn broken, it is really low effort.)

Now, are there missions who require you to put in more work, knowing what the buttons on your hotbar actually do instead of pressing a macro? Yeah sure, but that's on the highest tier of missions and if you compare rewards, it's not like they are massively better than Class B missions. I often mix them up because I want points for my DoH/DoL relics and sometimes the B ones I can see offer more of these than the A ones. And the C and B ones are not really any different than crafting on the higher regular game recipe levels, which you have to be on anyway to do Class B+ missions, and I'm sure there are macros for this out there, for the people who really don't care for crafting and gathering above the level of "having anything to do while watching Netflix" or "printing gil with stuff I sell on the marketboard".

Yes, some missions are going to be hard, but that's a good thing, considering what a faceroll average crafting usually is. Even the regular expert recipes for resplendent tools or dragonsong/splendorous tools if you wait long enough you can just outgear any difficulty (which I may have done in the past... ) I am crafting and gathering because I enjoy it most of the time. I don't even really care for the lottery, Kupo o' Fortune in Ishgard taught me well to expect nothing and rather be happy when you actually get something nice. I started skipping mech ops when I'm on the other side of the map for stellar gathering missions because I find them more enjoyable. If this all sounds wild and absurd to you.. that's perfectly fine. It's not your cup of tea. Same as raiding is not my cup of tea. Not everybody needs to like everything. But please just accept it's not a cup of tea instead of asking devs to dumb this down to the faceroll level it usually is. Just do Class B missions who tend to give similar rewards, and Mech Ops with or without mech, and enjoy your loot from the vendor and the lottery. Let us crafters and gatherers who are in there for the fun "gather" some sense of pride and accomplishment for tackeling an expert craft or gathering just fast enough for reach gold tier in a Class A mission, please.