Endgame should be challenging - that's the point (from a casual player)

[Granyala]

To be honest, I don't even know why you've mentioned experts, don't really care if you have done them, really.

I mentioned Experts simply because they cannot be crafted reliably with a macro. Everything else can, once you figure out a rotation.
To call crafting "difficult" is just dishonest.
It's as easy and braindead as games can be. It just ate a shitload of time, especially due to overmelds being mandatory in early game and grabbing materia via spirit binding yourself was a major slog.

And I did craft in ARR and Heavensward, so I know what I am talking about, even if memory is a bit hazy after all this time.

Needing a lot of time for no reason != hard content. That is tedious content. Very different thing and I am glad that SE toned down on that when it comes to crafting.

I wish they would do something with the: "stand around for half an hour to be able to hit a gathering node for 10 seconds" as well. Such asinine design.

I'm really excited to see how they'll screw up Variant dungeons and Deep Dungeons. Like, how are they going to twist this into something for raiders while completely alienating the broader demographic that could've enjoyed it?

My guess is: the same as in EW, really.
Mostly obscure one-shot mechanics, added with: "F-you player you wipe you start from scratch" sprinkled with some "no rezzes!!" on top.

The main reason why my savage raiding folks didn't want to bother with the Criterion dungeons was that the overhead was too much. We don't have a problem with wiping on mean bosses but having a game not respect our time by forcing a restart every time? No forkin' thank you. Same reason we never bothered with this deep dungeon nonsense. No permanent progress is a major turn-off once you are no longer a kiddo with infinite time.

That and the gear apparently didn't look fabulous enough. *chuckles*