I stated in my post about 14 that pacing was a problem pretty consistently throughout the game. This is more because the game is an MMO and they need to drag shit out in order to make people subscribe for longer, that's the nature of the beast tbh.
There is, however, a marked difference between filler content and poor story pacing, and rarely can players tell the difference or see the forest for the trees. One of the most-maligned portions of the game in the 2.0 MSQ was the Company of Heroes quest chain in the lead-up to Titan; players facerolled through it, didn't pay attention, and immediately wiped to Titan wondering what the hell just happened. Few noticed that silly "filler content" chain was showcasing Titan's mechanics individually for players to recognize and counter in a controlled, solo environment, while Brayflox's Longstop happened near its end for players to have the chance to gear up before Titan.
It was one of the
better examples of game design in 2.0 and a fantastic example of ludonarrative harmony; unfortunately, players just weren't paying attention and listening (or simply weren't smart enough to listen) to what the game had to say.
The issue with the game's MSQ prior to 5.x, was the dev team's reluctance to simply award enough experience per MSQ quest directly related to the game's story, to keep pace with level requirements. Which meant a ton of fetch and ferry quests. By Shadowbringers, the dev team figured out players were saving side quests until after the MSQ for a reason and weren't going to stop, and finally decided to just lean into it.
If you didn't like the gameplay, how did you sit through all those expansions?
Used to. Back when jobs had higher degrees of hybridization, roles were (slightly) less strict, and job mechanics weren't borderline-compulsive rotation-fests meaning players had to be overall wittier to do well.
Dragoon armor and self-sustain got put to use because they were good off-tanks for picks and adds, in an environment with lots of ranged mobs and spread-apart packs that were harder for a tank to corral and control. It was actually preferable to let black mage or summoner pick up certain caster mobs, because their magic defense and defensive cooldowns were superior to warrior's/paladin's under those circumstances. Paladins could off- and emergency-heal with Clemency, warriors were one of the best single-target DPS in the game, and dark knights had an
insane bag of tricks. Healers could stance dance and deal pretty significant damage; scholar was bar none the best AE DPS in the game when played correctly (and their healing mechanics
played into this DPS sub-role). Astrologians were utility in
every sense of the word, and
no one cared they had marginally lower healing throughput because card buffs were
good.
In short, it actually
felt like a genuine, multiplayer, Final Fantasy game. Even in the course of a single dungeon, players could expect to fluctuate between multiple roles depending which instance they were in and what they were playing, had to stay on their toes to adapt to circumstances (and other players' strengths/weaknesses), and never
really felt pigeonholed or locked into the holy trinity unless doing static/progression content.
Then Stormblood came out, and the dev team started leaning
hard into the holy trinity for expedience. Job mechanics started getting standardized, and the game became less about staying on your toes and adaptive to encounters, and increasingly about getting your rotations right and timing DPS windows. Fun little quirks like scholar DPS being dominant on hall trash or dragoons being ranged mob "gankers" went away, sustain (for most classes) got nerfed, and all DPS got (more or less) standardized AE rotations. One of the only vestiges of freer-form play was red mage, where it was better for
red mage to heal on hall trash while the healer DPS'ed; healers simply had better and higher-damage AE toolkits than red mages, and Vercure's efficiency compared to Cure II, Benefic II, and Adlo was
off the charts.
Nowadays, the game play is just that of a generic, holy trinity-bound, fantasy MMO. Compared to what it used to be, it's actually pretty sad.
