Oh you know, there's something I didn't add on to the opening post because I forgot but the job leveling in SB is absolutely atrocious. With the release of SB came alot of job editing and attack pruning. Devs, you've absolutely GUTTED the jobs for Level 1-60. It's mind-numbingly boring to level jobs because all of the tools and attacks we used to have available that would mix up gameplay are now gone.

Dragoon and MCH suffer hard from this as they don't get anything meaningful to gameplay at all way until Lv61 and up. It's just spamming the 1-2-3 combo buttons mainly with MCH being a little different but similar in the end anyway. No oGCD attacks or anything, especially for MCH. Just extremely boring play.

Even worse, the classes feel totally off or incomplete before level 70 in a way where it can sometimes feel like it's made incorrectly. MCH is yet again, another example of this. I feel the gauge system is the cause of the issue as gauges are a new system and almost every class revolves around it. There are some exceptions like AST, MNK, and BRD. These are more well-designed jobs that are not restricted by gauges and leveling instead, adds on to the existing attacks and abilities. Jobs like DRG, DRK, and MCH, have gauges added in later that don't sync well with the leveling. Nothing beats MCH however.

The pure frustration of how odd MCH felt when leveling 30-64 made me want to quit early on. Devs, please take early leveling into account when changing core job mechanics that are learned in the future. It would make the leveling experience way more fun.

On one last side topic, the new player retention is - from what I know - extremely low. Not many players make it to level 70 because they quit early on. FFXIV gets constant complaints on the early game. The bland, and boring early leveling experience and inflated main story quest with fillers is likely the cause of the complaints. SE, I sincerely hope you do something to fix this issue.