I won't squarely place the blame on Dawntrail for having played less. It's two reasons for me mainly.

1. Prolonged content drought

There is literally nothing to do, patches come out after 5 months, and these patches have so little content sometimes you can complete everything at a very casual pace in less than a week. (Especially in Endwalker...) Meanwhile I can boot up a free to play game, and I constantly have goals to work towards, new content coming out every month, and better value for my $15/mo if I were to spend it on them. This is a paid subscription MMORPG, one that's keeping Square Enix afloat. Neglecting it, and pushing your audience away can only end badly. There is nothing for me to do, so I play other games, and have no reason to come back to FFXIV.

2. The community leaves much to be desired

This community prides itself on being "The Best gaming community", while also displaying some of the most entitled, selfish attitudes I have ever seen. This game harbors a dark underworld of stalking, and harassment (Which even persists after changes to Blacklisting). The more normal people quit the game, the more exposed you get to the two extremes you'll see on this game. One side, will bend over backwards for sprouts, and make unreasonable demands of people to accomodate the sprout, and will go out of their way to crucify anyone who makes a percieved transgression towards a new player. Lets stop pretending duty support hasn't been in the game for years... Then you have the Hardcore raiders who are incapable of putting up with even the most trivial of setbacks, and who are incapable of teaching people strategies, and just expect people to know everything, and execute every mechanic flawlessly without failure. The extreme gatekeeping and toxicity in PF's being a prime example of the worst our community has to offer.

When my friends quit playing this game, I'll quit with them - and I probably will not return until 8.0 (Assuming major steps are taken to address current issues that have persisted for several expansions at this point.)