Blue Mage and Summoner responses worry me

[Fendred]

For Blue Mage, think about it: the abilities you learned in FFXI made it to where you could, in theory, play just about any role in a party... but you were still a Blue Mage.

Apply this to queuing up for duties, and I'm sure the dilemma is obvious. You would get a BLU in a party, but perhaps they don't have all the skills needed to fill a support slot. Or they only have mitigation/tanking abilities active. Or maybe they hate healing, etc. .

Yeah, we get that, but the objective should be to make the combat system work around the way Final Fantasy jobs traditionally worked, not shoehorn them into roles they were never meant to exclusively fill. The jobs are already suffering as a result of this. Paladin's can't heal effectively when that is part of what a paladin does, warriors can't do the kind of damage a fan would expect them to do in their intended gear, and black mages have lost a great deal of their original arsenal.

Does it break the game? No, but it does cheapen the whole experience. Most of the players that left fairly early often reported "not being able to play the way they wanted," which probably has a lot to do with the way he's doing the game's classes/jobs.

Perfectly balancing a game makes it sterile. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is not something Final Fantasy games were known for.