I mean what’s wrong with the MSFS ATC? It’s game breaking! This has to be fixed ASAP!
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They do that, but then they realised they made a mistake and quickly tell you do descend and maintain the altitude you’re already at.
This rarely happen if you have navigraph navdata with a full STAR and altitude constraints in your flight plan. The ATC actually follows the altitude constraints of the next waypoints.
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I have navigraph but I find my self often in similar situations as OP described having to perform a dive to reach the correct approach altitude in time, many times not having the opportunity to slow down enough.
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I guess they’re a bit inconsistent. I often fly with FBW A32NX experimental with the TOD indicator. My flight plans are created in SimBrief, then load the FS2020 .PLN file into the world map. I choose my starting gate/parking without changing any SIDs and STARs, and it usually inherits everything from SimBrief.
ATC usually tells me to descend around 10-20 nm away from my calculated TOD indicator, but when I do get the instructions, I just set my altitude to go straight to the intercept altitude for the final approach and let the VNAV managed descent take care of the descent rate.
Most times the ATC gives me the next descent instructions in time that I never need to level off at the first cleared descent altitude. Even if I do went ahead and reach the intercept point in time, ATC can sometimes tell me to expedite my climb. I just ignore them. And eventually they’ll give me the correct descend and approach altitude once I’m on final.
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Hypothetical short answer(s) (no priority intended)
1 It doesn’t make MicroSobo money, it’s strictly a cost?
2 They don’t have the desire to tackle the (bug) monster they created at release?
3 They don’t have the expertise to tackle the subject?
4 The 'You can always just fly on Vatsim (or similar) mindset of many simmers?
5 They know their track record on ‘fixing’ broken things and are scared to take on the task?
6 (Supposedly) there is not enough interest in the subject to warrant their attention at this time?
7 The Multiplayer ‘Community’ doesn’t use it anyway, why bother?
8 'People just want to ‘look’ at a flight sim, why does it matter?
9 (Similar to 8) ‘Why does a flight sim need AI traffic and ATC that works’ it’s about flying right?
10 They just don’t care, it’s been over 2 years and they’re still using our product (i.e. just don
t respond and they’ll eventually get over it)?
May sound a bit harsh but I submit at least some of the above are factors given MicroSobo’s COMPLETE inattention to the problem since literally the day of release.
Sorry, forgot # 11 - ‘Maverick don’t need no ATC dude’ 
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DOMUX approach on 5R in EDDL has the same - ATC gives you a descend to 14000, then 3000, after that 14000 and you approach the ILS at 14000 
No idea where the problem is, either in MSFS-ATC or in Navigraph (at least the charts are correct though).
But it happens from time to time and the internal ATC is extremely … lets say… not on a professional level and needs a revision, since third party tools are not able to correct internal problems.
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I have seen that when you don´t reach the target altitude in time for the given waypoint. ATC will not command the next altitude unless either you are in range for tower handover or you are already levered at the assigned altitude ATC instructed before. So if you have a wrong altimeter setting or you are following another approach data than the one available in game this may happen. In the best case ATC will instruct you to expedite descent but sometimes it just don´t do it if you are descending but not fast enough.
Indeed I found that sometimes the handover to tower happens extremely close to runway if the latest waypoint is also too close to runway, which does not allow to descent in time or to reduce speed. Or even that handover is not performed at all and you miss the approach.
To double check that the approach data used in game and the one in the charts are matching you can open the approach in Little Navmap and there you will find the altitudes for each waypoint and you can compare with the ones in your flight plan. The problem is that if ATC instructs you to follow a higher altitude than the one in the charts, if you reach the next waypoint at the correct altitude acconding to charts (which should be the safest way) then ATC does not trigger the supervision of the next waypoint and then it will most likely don´t trigger the handover to tower as well. This needs to be improved in game definitely and ATC should stop supervising the previous waypoint altitude once you reach the next one. On the other hand it should handover you to tower at a predefined safe distance, independently from the distance of last waypoint to runway.
What I do is to follow the charts when I see that any of those issues is likely to be reproduced (as soon as you detect altitude instructions inconsistencies), to resync altimeter even if ATC did not provide the new baro setting and to reduce speed to the min to give time to ATC to perform the handover to tower.
If I had no handover to tower then I decide if I want to go around or land like there´s no tomorrow if I´m too tired of the flight or the bugs 
Cheers
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Indeed I found that sometimes the handover to tower happens extremely close to runway if the latest waypoint is also too close to runway, which does not allow to descent in time or to reduce speed. Or even that handover is not performed at all and you miss the approach.
Same here, I keep using “fspm-panel-vfrmap” that allows teleport the plane (in his case lower the altitude) to simplify the approach.
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I think it’s a bug with arrivals with multiple entry transitions. The ATC often picks the wrong one and tells you incorrect height restrictions -
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And just as we are talking about it - Azure voices are down for me right now (since 10 minutes).
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And this is exactly why I stopped using in-sim ATC long ago. I’d be 50 miles from my destination at FL380 - 410 and still waiting for lower altitude to even start the arrival, and as soon as I start descending, the sim yells at you to climb and maintain your prior altitude. I resorted to regularly asking for lower in very inefficient step-descents.
The heck with that. VNAV in the PMDG 737 without being yelled at by brain-dead AI ATC is delightful.
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As soon as im at top of decent i do my own thing, For instance they say desend to 5000ft 1 min later tell me to climb to 15000ft 20 miles from touch down lol…The ATC right now is a joke to say the least!
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Even the ATC in FSX was not talking nonsense like this. Can’t believe that ATC and Traffic were better in FSX. What a progress…
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It’s an annoyance, but not even close to being “game breaking”. You know full well what to do to get around this problem.
Heck even in FS9 it was better. I skipped FSX. I sometimes go back to my old computer and fire up FS9. I have a lot of addons and use Active Sky and Radar Contact. Amazing how great those two programs were/are. Everything just works.
Yeah, it is strange how ATC and aircraft, mainly airliners are the worst items in a Flight Sim, and we have half a dozen continents to fly in, but a working ATC remains elusive!
When I see this I’m reminded of the old “If Microsoft Made Cars” points. Similar to this, they’ll never fix it if they beleive we’ll eventually shut up and just live with it. They’ll keep on putting out eye candy instead.
Does this actually work? I have updated MSFS with latest Navigraph data, imported flight plan directly from Navigraph Charts and Simbrief and ATC are not following alltitude clearance limits. For instance, from ENGM to ENVA ATC just assigned me at alltitude at 4700f at Xilda approch where the min limit is 6000 feet.
I’m not sure about Navigraph Charts. But, I download my SimBrief flight plan as FS2020 .PLN file. Then I load this same .PLN file to the world map before I start the flight. The ATC doesn’t follow the SID altitude constraints, but I find that it follows STAR altitude constraints often. I can’t say that it works 100% of the time. The default ATC is incosistent, but most of the time for me, the ATC follows the constraints.
Or maybe it only works where the altitude constraints are a max one, but not min. Or maybe it only works on absolute altitude constraints instead. I dunno. Might need more investigation.
But then again, maybe it doesn’t work for ENVA, I dunno… Like I said, it’s inconsistent. I can’t say that it’s 100% working, but it’s definitely not 100% not working.