Wow, a mostly reasonable post by OP for once.

I agree there has been experimental content this expansion, although there have been other expansions with a lot of experimental content (you could argue Diadem, Palace of the Dead, Aquapolos and squadrons were in Heavensward, or Eureka and Ultimate in Stormblood, or Ishgard Restoration, Ocean Fishing, Role Quests, Critical Engagements, Duels and Delubrum Reginae Savage were in Shadowbringers). Even ARR had it with hunts, maps, sightseeing logs, alliance raids, extremes, savage coils and relics which obviously stuck.

I don't spend much time engaging with Island Sanctuary, I agree, but I think it's not aimed at players like us on these forums. It's to provide an alternative for some people who want a home, but it won't satisfy everyone. Just to make sure someone actually does it though, mounts were thrown into for collectors. I found it useful to burn 200,000 cowries on crafter pentamelds as well because I never have a lot of gil.

As for Criterion dungeons, my item level is high enough to wreck the bosses in there but my thought process has been to possibly try farming it in 6.4 instead when we can sync ever so slightly higher than we can now and get capped crit substats to make it even easier. I'm probably not the only one with a plan like this considering the unsync culture in this game. I also don't feel rushed to do it because of the fact it syncs to the tier unlike other content where you are completely deprived of any fun after item levels increase.

The lack of an exploratory zone has been felt especially painfully, even moreso with these relics having no specific content geared towards them. The illusion of choice provided with them does little but to funnel players into Roulettes or Hunt Trains. This however is not satisfactory gameplay for those of us who would much rather spend time in the social and gameplay environment created by zones like Anemos and Bozja.
I agree.

All of these content issues are further exacerbated by the increased patch length cycle
This is the part I stop agreeing because it's going to take them however long it takes. Humans make these things and humans need rest and breaks and take time. But maybe they will all start using ChatGPT and become more productive because I think Yoshi-P mentioned they had been playing with it.

Endwalker did not do all that came before it justice given its abrupt termination of far too many storylines that different sectors of the playerbase were intrigued by.
Although I agree, other expansions and sidequests also did this and concluded most of the lore we had to left to speculate on.
  • What happened to Louisoix? Resolved.
  • Ala Mhigo? Resolved.
  • State of Isle of Val? Resolved.
  • What happened to Minfilia after meeting her again? Resolved.
  • What is the backstory of the Warriors of Darkness? Resolved.
  • Who is Elidibus? Resolved.
  • Who are the Ascians/paragons? Resolved.
  • What are Hydalyn and Zodiark? Resolved.
  • Who were the Allagans and how did they start? Resolved.
  • What are the Garleans and how did they come about? Resolved.
  • When will we battle the garleans and free the Garlean terrirotries in Ilsabard? Resolved (never, we got transported to The First instead and then learned Emet created the Garlean Empire killing the entire plot point).
  • Who are the Twelve? If you're reading the hints SE has dropped, it's resolved.
  • What are the voidsent really? Resolved in the current patches.
  • When will we jump in a black hole to the 13th and save that too? We got that covered these patches.
We have not had a lot of new things to speculate on for the next 10 years and what we have are remaining plot points from the start of the game, the New World and Meracydia. Once those are resolved there is a plot point starting with the crystal tower raids and built upon in Heavensward and Shadowbringers, where we have 13 shards and a source world and we could visit the other 11 shards.

But lore videos speculating on 11 mysterious shards are not quite as interesting as all the things in my list that were resolved.

The key things that I feel would rejuvenate FFXIV’s storytelling is fresh characters and a fresh location for 7.0 to take place in, something that invokes the same feeling as Ishgard in the distance that makes players go “wow! I want to go there!”
I agree, and Shadowbringers did this really well at first because you would see the Crystal tower and think "wow! I want to go there!" but then you went there immediately...