I guess it's time

[Velhart]

You probably know as much as I do as that some of their new content, for the lack of a better word, sucks. I'm not going to fault them for trying out something new, but a lot of the faults that come from Diadem and Feast boils down to being overly ambitious with what they wanted it to be, combined with a lack of foresight and planning to make it work in the first place. Like, they made no changes to how queuing works in a party, did they genuinely believe that a ranked ladder would function without changing it (let alone solo queue matching you with new players on your team to "balance" it) Likewise with job performance (such as WM/GB giving a 20% damage boost at the cost of autos...when autos made up for roughly 17~23% of your dps in the first place). In that sense, I really feel like they're "trying" in all the wrong places and missing the major aspect of what needed to be done.

The release of the expansion felt like it failed in the proverbial planting of seeds for new content (such as the execution of crafting/gathering scrips, and FC airship and crafting), and the result is that the content, while seemingly new, falls onto the same repetition of killing mobs that have no interesting gimmicks to it (even aquapolis falls to this once you get past the rewards and RNG)

Usually because the rewards are unbalanced, not interesting, or worth nothing to take on. Understandable it is hard to balance. At the same time, you decide to dramatically change how the game works or content that comes out, people complain just as much. It is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. Difference with new content is at least attempting and not simply giving in to "what works".

Hopefully SE can pin down a better balance of casual, midcore, and hardcore. I won't hold my breath though, SE seems quick to take midcore/hardcore out of the picture if it means they can get more casuals into the content. They care way more about getting higher numbers into content instead of making quality content where numbers will work themselves out.

It is pretty simple:
Casual - whatever you want
Midcore - Trials/Relic(yes make it midcore)/Raid(Final Coil difficulty)
Hardcore - Raid(2nd Coil Savage difficulty)

This alone will step it in the right direction. Unfortunately SE and many people disagree with me.