Quote Originally Posted by Tuchkin View Post
[...] a lot of my friends quit the game precisely because of the last add-on dungeons, specifically their crazy mechanics.
That's not the dungeons fault which was still easy for a dungeon at level cap.
And if your friends called those "crazy mechanics" and quit due to that then...
sorry to say, but then they lack the basic skill for playing FFXIVs base content.

The issue is also not the story (Excluding DT, man... screw DTs MSQ) but once you do all that and arrive at current content you can do that in a matter of weeks and then have to wait (and pay) for months till some recycled content comes along.