Difficulty of normal content.

[jdtuggey]

....

Void ark is actually pretty annoying lol, I personally avoid alliance roulette, and I haven't done void ark in years. Like, the Ivalice raids are also fairly demanding compared to the rest of the content at that level.
Like, your perspective doesn't extend far back ? Here's a bit more:
ARR, HW and StB were definitely a time where you were expected to put more effort into the game, they've tamed that a lot with power creep, but there's still relics of that left in some areas.
In ShB, they cut down half of character mechanics, and they hum... Standardized fights a lot to simplify the whole game. In exchange, they gave us more dynamic and spectacular fights!
There was a huge population boom during ShB, because WoW was ailing, and you know, the whole world was too (pandemic).
With that population boom came a vocal population saying they found some aspects of the game a little too demanding, and the dev team obliged.
So they cut down on the dynamism of these fights in EW ? Maybe except Tower of Zot. :P
Now, during endwalker, Yoshi P was saying he was getting sleepy in casual content, and to a player like me that has been there forever, I found less incentive to maintain my sub, cause the content I like to do didn't feel as attractive.
What came back with Dawntrail is dynamism in the fights. It's not really harder, but it demands your attention, it wants you to learn.
I can guarantee you you will have a much better experience when you hit Dawntrail than Void Ark. Give yourself the time to get there, and to stumble along the way.
It's fine, people will be super glad to help you if you maintain a positive "I can do it" attitude. ♥
Maybe this perspective can help you understand why people are so vocal in defending Dawntrail's changes to pacing too: It's a step towards a return to form. It isn't "harder" per se, but it asks you to pay attention, that's all. c:
Lots of people that say Dawntrail is harder have gotten too complacent in the game with Endwalker's difficulty in particular (not the rest of the game), and are struggling to hum, re-adapt to more dynamic content.