Now that I've had time to sleep on it I think I realize what my issue was.

In most games with stealth mechanics, there's a level of awareness that NPCs/enemies have that the ones in FFXIV do not. In breath of the wild this is indicated by a question mark (?) that slowly fills up. In the elder scrolls games you have the eye that slowly opens. In Dark Souls you'll have enemies that can hear you and will turn your direction/look where they heard you. In Persona 5 you get the ability to quickly dash behind the closest cover if it's available. In addition all of these games have ways to mitigate detection by couching/ducking or to stop moving.

FFXIV meanwhile it's just... Have you entered the enemy's agro range, y/n. There's no "slight" pulling, no way to move slowly instead. It's simply "find the random piece of rubble that is the correct one to hide behind amongst the 500 other pieces of identically coloured rubble".

It wasn't a stealth minigame.

It was getting your friend to power level you in a 2004 F2P Korean MMO. You were the level 1 player following your friend as they murder everything to help you level up while you did your best to avoid pulling anything that'd 1-hit KO you.