Tbh this mentality by itself is not a bad thing. I always played online games that demands a huge amount of time, i've been playing for 20 years.

Warframe is a free to play game that encourages the same thing, despite having multiple farming loops, you have time gates everywhere and sometimes you need to level up reputations to progress in the story. As you go on, you increase your reputation cap and the game slowly allow more playtime (i feel like it's similar to Genshin Impact). Don't be fooled, this game can be epic just as FFXIV. Music for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1MwAvuiyVA

FFXIV is not so different, however, as you go on, the game makes your life easier and not hard like Warframe. This philosophy is everywhere - specially in Grand Company (Squad), Eureka and Island Sanctuary.

If we could draw a plot, we would se a "X" where warframe increases as FFXIV decline in terms of time occupation.

However, i remember old games like Lineage, Perfect World and TERA...you could play as long as you want but you would find yourself doing the same stuff all over again, while modern design want to keep you busy with different stuff as long as you enjoy it. In World of Warcraft is not rare for a veteran to have 10-20-30 alts, imagine someone from FFXIV dealing with such reality.

This strategy also depends of what genre of game you enjoy. ARPG like PoE separate by season, once you get what you want, you don't need to play intensely anymore. If you don't like racing/rush, you can always play casually and still have fun.

old games concept (online):
- Immersive community-driven experience
- Tries to occupy most of your time
- Hard progression
- Few systems-oriented interactions (e.g: Grand Company, Tribes, Island)


modern games concept (online):
- Immersive world and systems
- Allows more freedom, wallet friendly (doens't have pay to win systems)
- Moderate progression with optional hard content
- Open end game (not a closed meta like: get the highest iLVL)


Online casual friendly games: FFXIV, The Division, Warframe, Trove, GTAV, Black Desert, GW2, Albion

Not online but worth it: Mass Effect trilogy, Bioshock trilogy, Remember Me, Trine, Bayonetta, Devil may cry, Stellaris...
based on my steam lol



tldr: 'Play another game' is healthy and cool as long it doens't make 'our' devs lazy.