It's the natural progression of SE's changes in design over time. We have gone mostly through 3 main phases in terms of difficulty and engagement:

- ARR/HW/SB: piss easy encounters at the story level that rarely went beyond the occasional orange AoE to dodge, but the actual complexity was found in 1) different threat mechanics tied to the battle system and 2) harder jobs with more failure points and skill expression, where said skill expression was a non mandatory metric to get by, but kept more skilled players happy.
- ShB/EW: slightly increased encounter mechanics and the progressive removal of battle and job mechanics, leading to the bottom of the barrel EW experience that many complained about including the producer
- DT: encounter mechanics cranked up even higher to bring in some manner of difficulty again, and trying to pass different visual cues and obfuscated mechanics for "new encounter design"