I find myself reminded of Campaign in FFXI where EXP/Note rewards corresponded to categories of actions you acted in, culminating in individual caps that added together over an ideal tag refresh rate of every 15 minutes for longer battles. With how the job/subjob system work, min/maxing this system also encouraged people to play jobs outside of their common style and wound up creating a group of players mad the Campaigners could level and "not know their job" because they dared work around the Campaign meta. To see this sort of toxicity manifest in XIV with some kind of individual performance system, especially with factors outside of the player's control, is something I don't find particularly far-fetched.

Pragmatically, I'm not a believer that just making things harder and/or forcing more people to be savage-tier raiders is not the actual solution to prolonging interest. MMO statistics don't lie here in the assertion that hardcore content is the rarest cleared and often overlooked by the majority. And it's not so much because some people don't want to see or try, but that the expectations snowball into something they either can't routinely participate in (for example, if you can't form a static due to a fluctuating schedule) or force unfun farming for preparation (consumables or other expensive goods). If the solution was as simple as a ballbusting MMO bringing in the big bucks because players were in this nebulous definition of engaged, it would've happened by now.

I'm more inclined to say XIV has a lot of content outside of the instanced sphere that does not go far enough. Something like the Ishgard Restoration served as a temporary exception to this for crafters, but if we're being honest about the game's economy, a significant amount of it is a diseased, festering corpse that could be rejuvenated if players had reason to make things outside of leves that could actually positively impact their server (and not be undercut by RMT/bot influence). Yet, I'd argue this same "close, but not far enough..." extends to FATEs, a general lack of weekly/daily quests, a better randomized dungeon system, expand housing to the creation of (collaborative) villages over this hamfisted inadequate system, or even greater gear/wardrobe customization. None of these may appeal to the raider sorts that feel compelled to flaunt their greatness over others while seeking further affirmation through yet more coded systems, but they're all still things a greater majority enjoys and craves. Of course, there's also the untapped potential of player-generated content where people could make the back-breaking encounters they crave. But the reality is they'd have to be solely for bragging rights and not unique rewards, which makes the idea DOA for some challenge-seekers. Which is another way of saying some players have unreasonable expectations and are impossible to please.