Dear Community what even holds you in this game

[CidHeiral]

Those RPG elements were a decently big part of what I derived enjoyment from when I first started playing back in Stormblood. The fact that they're now gone is definitely a factor in why I feel combat isn't as fun as it used to be.

I remember Yoshi-P talking about debuffs that affect movement like heavy and bind sometime around EW launch, and how they were "unfun", especially when applied to the player (I could very well be misremembering such a conversation, it can be very hard to keep track of what he says sometimes).

If you're not already aware you may be pleased to learn that gameplay like that has returned in the most recent raid tier. For example, during the M6S add phase a mob spawns and starts running at a healer. The melee have to rotate their stuns to slow it down long enough to kill it before it reaches the healer and one shots them.

The "unfun" elements are there to make the fun elements more rewarding, stripping those away makes playing incorrectly only a minor inconvenience to playing correctly, and sometimes leads to better outcomes than playing correctly because the consequence is minimal and the gains may be more than worth it; why bother moving out of an AoE that'll only tickle you when you could get that Flare cast off instead? If that AoE was to silence the player however, now it's a threat, time to move.

AOEs in harder content usually either kill you outright or hit you with a damage down which will make you fail the enrage check, so I'm assuming you're referring to normal difficulty. I don't disagree that they could slap a little harder but it's a fine line the devs have to walk. I think for the most part normal difficulty stuff is in a decent spot between requiring you to be awake to win and not brick walling casual players. The FFXI alliance raid was pleasantly spicy compared to the EW series.