Yeah I was annoyed when I found out I had to do the raids, but once I got started with them I had fun. Now that I’ve gotten past the parts where they’re slightly crucial for the story I see why they make you do it too.
Yeah it took me ages to just stop with the mmo grind mindset. Do a bit of story when you feel like and just exist in a weird world. I’m at something like 1000 hours if I remember right and still haven’t gotten to the latest stuff
Oh yeah it’s a slog, the great divider that everyone has to overcome. They need to do another pass on reducing the amount of stuff and one of the problems is that buried in the trivial ARR stuff is some important information for later. It’s sadly in a state of “just wait, it gets good after the first season”.
I’ve been idly considering jumping back in, I was more or less up to date in late 2020 but there’s been what, 2 expacs since I last played, getting the gryphon mount was fun.
This, when I was last doing the story in FFXIV I had a few dungeons that were like that, nobody seems to understand that I enjoy working out the mechanics through pain and doubt a lot, perpetual 170 ping from playing on na servers helps with the suffering too.