As a more casual hardcore player (Essentially someone who isnt bad and gives up at the first sign of pushback) I found FF14 to be fantastic initially. I havent gotten back into it as each expansion means I need to dedicate literally months (at my casual pace) to get to end game which just isnt my cup of tea.
I like the story based component for questing in moderation (Like starting the game new), but as expansions are added it becomes hundreds of hours of solo story based content and its just too much when I have other amazing single player RPGs I would rather play. (Still have yet to play FF7 remake or Dragon Quest 11)
Also, the games homogenized many Classes and stats and essentially removed threat and the need to CC since I last played so coming back was a massive bummer as lots of the uniqueness had been removed in place of “everythings the same now” and “AoE everything down” as primary concepts.
Still not a bad game, I loved it on release (especially that Heroic Dungeons had special sets and were entirely new takes on the Normal Dungeons, not just scaling up the old dungeon and pretending its new content like WoW), but now its kind of lost its appeal to me.