Great post OP, unfortunately i have already lost my faith in the development team of ffixiv ARR, i always though this system was here just because of the little time they had to balance the game (the hardest duty), but every update have been disappointing and changed nothing, so looks like they will keep the battle this way.

This post missed a point, lack of hard/group and useful open world content, i can understand party limits (not restrictions) on instanced content, so a good way to make not limited party content would be useful open world endgame content, and those fight would also be free of unforgiving gimmicks.