The entirety of FFXIV is formulaic. From the release of new content, to what sort of content it is, to the number of dungeons we get, to what level dungeons those dungeons are, etc etc. Many aspects of the game are formulaic. Every job is pigeon-holed into one of three roles. No one is surprised when we get a new healer in 6.0 since we hadn't seen one since 3.0. We get a DPS class every expansion. Level caps go up by 10.

The fact that dungeons go trash, boss, trash, boss, trash, final boss should not surprise anyone. If anything, the dungeons were LESS formulaic in ARR. A few dungeons had no "walls" between bosses. You could pull as far as you wanted and could handle.