Originally Posted by
Rwolf
I agree, it's not a community issue. It's a game balance issue. The community is not perfect and never will be. There will always be someone who will want more than is required. However, when they design content with devastating area of effect abilities and a broken enmity system. Players are naturally going to gravitate to the strategies used as of late.
Even if Paladin could hold hate against close range melee jobs with no assistance, melee jobs get plastered with area of effect damage. Which is why Relic weapon Rangers are so attractive right now. They get around the broken enmity system, they have high survivability and most of all high damage. It's the same reasons Monk is so popular, high survivability and damage output. A lot of "damage dealers" don't have the accuracy, defense, or buffs (especially for pet jobs) to justify their slot, you'll easily time out with a lot of jobs unless they were perfectly geared. Which defeats the purpose because most of it comes from the fights, some jobs are trying to get invited to.
Matsui needs to relinquish this vision that it's community responsibility to assist damage dealer jobs that are both not as durable or powerful, and support jobs that can't get close to White Mage or Bard. Why should any job be a help case? Shouldn't they all be equally helpful even if it's a different combination of jobs? It's one thing to help a friend, linkshell member or even a stranger get something that helps them be a better player. But it's entirely another to say the community is to blame that certain jobs are excluded from content. When the simple fact is certain jobs are just designed to best new content.
I honestly think they can't figure out how to make balanced challenging content without making it grossly overpowered. I don't claim to have all the answers but a few things would help:
Enfeebling effects need to matter more. (Example: Things like Blind should lower accuracy by a percentage. Attack Down should be more prevalent like defense down)
Look into expanding instanced areas and increasing/removing timers. (Timers are obviously put on content to throttle congestion. However if everything is a time race, there is no room for defensive groups. Just pure offense)
Give some alternative types of goals to high level content. (With expanding instances being unlikely: High level content with unconventional goals would expand job desirability. Meeble Burrows, Moblin Maze Mongers, and Assault are great examples of alternative goals)
Unpopular jobs need a boost. (Figure out what direction you really want Red Mage to accel at and finally do it, make pets more attractive to compete in high level content, Dancer needs a better way to spam status removal to be any semblance of a healer)
Magic Accuracy - There are so many awesome abilities and spells that could compete with other jobs if their magic accuracy didn't suck (Blue Mage, Dancer, etc)
It's not a compendium of the issues in the game, but just some suggestions on opening the currently severely limited way content difficulty is produced.