You can do all the side content released at the end of the previous expansion. You can do pvp, the gold saucer, hunts, maps, fates, relics, roulettes, crafting, gathering, the firmament.
There could be more, but I can see the design decision. In the open world, you can get too many players or too few because it doesn't pull people in from other servers. By putting everything into a dungeon, it has a fixed amount of players that is always just right.I want more OPEN world content...
I find them a chore, personally, and they are done by the most casual players that only have 5 minutes to play. You can see this by checking random people's mounts or minions. They are a success because of how quick and easy they are to do. Although they are quick, they still succeed at injecting a little bit of holiday spirit into you, so they succeed at their purpose.3. Holiday Events are so subpar, Put some effort into these events than just 5 mins quest line
There have been some good ones though, such as the valentine's event that makes you do a dungeon with 1 other person, jump puzzles and a haunted house with lots of puzzles that you have to solve together without too many mistakes and some parties would actually fail it.
They have localization teams that translate from Japanese into several other languages, including Chinese, Korean, French, Dutch and English. They change the quest text regularly and because of the time it takes to get the voice actors in all of these languages to record their lines, they need to be certain that the quest text that is voiced won't change. They did voice act a lot more of it in each expansion, but the actors from ARR were changed so it might be difficult for them to get the same voice actors again.4. MORE VOICE ACTING! It takes me out of the MSQ when I hear my own voice.. There shouldn't be any reason why every CS doesnt have Voice acting.. I dont get it.
They could voice act sidequests, but considering the amount of typos they have when they release, it might force them to delay an expansion even longer just to check for typos and they would have to cast for a lot of random, temporary characters that you will never meet again.