Even zone design and traversal is formulaic

[Hycinthus]

Consistency with pulls is mostly to do with an issue that actually still exists in some ARR dungeons where you can pull something like 10 mob packs. And although it is easier to deal with now, the further back in time you go, a lot of healers could not handle it with the kit they had or it depended a lot on all 4 players being good at playing, which isn't realistic when there's almost always 1 or more new/returning players.

You're right that you can predict how the story goes quite a lot by the level of FATEs in the area and knowing that you will get a dungeon at X1, X3, X5, X7, X9, X0 and trials at X3, X9 and X0. But if they didn't do that then it's not spaced out enough. ARR suffers from that where you suddenly do 3 dungeons in a row, then nothing for ages, and it's tedious enough that when I get to them it's time to sleep so I'm recharged to do them the next day.

You know what. I'd rather take the unpredictability of ARR, knowing that nothing is expected, and you don't know when the next set of Dungeons or Trials are coming.

Give me dungeons and trials and random intervals.

Give me variety of dungeon pulls, while you're at it, give me a dungeon with 2 bosses only, then with 6 bosses.

Give me a zone that is super small, then a super large one with 6 sections.

To be honest, I know this is trivial. And it probably would not have triggered me if this was the only case. But because this formulaic-style just permeates and continues in every aspect, even new tome stones patch number X, new Augmented gear in patch number Y, it becomes so aggravating knowing that I got immersion-broken even by seeing an Aether Current up on a cliff that I knew I couldn't reach yet, because the "second upper half of the zone is still locked away".