Regular weekly maintenance is a part of almost every MMO I've ever played. And Square does tell you what, if anything besides routine stuff, they did during maintenance on the Lodestone. At least they don't usually do maintenance during peak times during the evening/weekend.

I dunno about what everyone's quip is about Party Finder. Party Finder is a server-only Duty Finder with a typically higher item level requirement. It doesn't auto-detect people who are of lesser skill and keeps them out. There are gonna be people that sneak in that say they are experienced. There's no way around that. The best thing you can do is actually run it, see if that person actually knows, and give em the boot if it's clear that they don't. Or better yet, figure out why that person is failing and try to give some constructive feedback to make him better.

To be quite honest, the leveling being fast as a cause for struggling players seems far fetched. Everyone learns at a different speed but ultimately it's up to the player to take the time to learn their class if they feel that they are struggling. Whether that be taking on Guildhests for practice on tanking or add management, or maybe even practicing Titan and Garuda Hard Mode through Duty Finder to get some practice to learn when to do what. Some people don't catch on as fast as others and dulling the leveling won't help that a bit.