Shifting Sands skip removed from Cutter's Cry. Let's talk about that.

[Valence]

I agree with you. Square Enix's focus should be to make content ENJOYABLE first and foremost. But the reality they've given us in patch 7.3 is: Skip the packs or don't skip the packs. That is unfortunately all they could muster as changes for this dungeon. Among those two options, the skip is vastly more preferable, because remember, this is a very low level dungeon. There is only so much engaging gameplay you could get from it to begin with. There is no appeal to dispatching the mobs in those sections as you say, but there can be some appeal in sight-seeing in the dungeons. Simlarly to how you traverse the water park in Ridorana Lighthouse, you can create interesting pathways that don't require combat. Personally, I'd be happy with removing the sections (or some of the other packs I mentioned previously, as the pulls before the 1st boss is bloated beyond reason), as long as the clear time is similar to how it was before patch 7.3.

I'd also argue that skipping the packs also gives the player a small amount of satisfaction, as if you got a free pass to first in line. Again, it is weird, but I'd much prefer it over the damage sponges that are a few bats, some crabs and a cactus. I don't want it to be either of the two options, but Square Enix does not want to make it fun. It would require a lot of work to get right, which I do understand on their part, but that is not an excuse to make gameplay experience WORSE OFF than it was before for players.

If it was up to me i'd use this dungeon as a perfect excuse to introduce the sand blasts seen earlier before the Myrmidon Princess there as well, but they'd harm you or the mobs indistinctly. Some could even be quicksand that would engulf mobs caught in it and delete them out of the map. I think that would be fun, you'd just lead them to those traps as you run through. I'd like seeing some novel and fun unique environmental compromises like this.

It doesn't have a purpose. None of the non-boss pulls in 4 mans, 8 mans or 24 mans have any meaning outside of padding the dungeon so it doesn't look like what it actually is, which is basically just a boss rush.

What would help, instead of removing elements like shifting sands, would be for them to have the mobs give experience again and give them drops that are worthwhile. Maybe give them a chance to drop the crafting mats they usually put in chests like manor varnish or amdapori stone, or tokens that you can collect and trade in for dungeons gear, mounts, minions, TT cards and such. But what they did was just the simplest and lowest effort thing and strip trash mobs of any worth so they could cater to the ppl who don't actually want to play the game or, heavens forfend, actually talk to another human being in a freakin mmo. So why are we surprised ppl want to skip something whose only value is to waste our time.

One of the biggest crippling issue they introduced with ShB by completely demolishing the battle system, is essentially turning trash into that uninteresting mob bashing. Trash used to actually be more interesting, at least to me, because tanks had to properly gather them, manage aggro, and not have any in their backs (else beware of autocrits). Even healers had to manage resources and MP for healing, and DPS as a result would also help because killing faster would mean resource preservation (both MP and TP for everyone). And that was just one side of it.

I've always liked AoE-ing trash down. Comparatively, I find bosses totally purposeless in a lot of dungeons, although back in ARR they at least don't suffer from the dreaded DDR disease that has afflicted everything since then.

The reason they condensed all xp behind checkpoints and bosses in dungeons is to avoid player friction with some willing to clear the whole dungeon for xp while some would just want to rush through it (notably rouletters). But in my opinion it's just SE creating imaginary problems more than anything in their heads. I've played through HW, SB, and people were always perfectly fine when someone asked if we could clear side rooms and whatnot. I've never seen a sprout tank being harassed for taking the "wrong route" and pulling what was optional to pull.