Question for those who didn't pick up AST til 5.0 or after.

[ForteNightshade]

I'm sorry but i believe no player has a larger say in "what's fun" than another.
We're just gonna have to agree to disagree.
If you really wanna have that discussion, I'd argue that having a history with the job, if anything, might blind you somewhat to what it's really like now, as your baggage can prevent you from seeing it AS IS as opposed to someone who sees this version of the job without the past coloring their perspective. They've still had a whole expac of time with the job and if that's not enough then nothing can be.

That argument posits that veteran players of any job cannot be objective in their criticism and only hate change for change's sake. While there are certainly people like that, you can typically parse their arguments pretty easily. Either way, yes, we shall have to agree to disagree because I think priority on job appeasement should go towards the core audience job first before trying to attract a hopeful new crop of players. That isn't to say you can't do both, but the focus shouldn't be on "how can we get more players to try Astro?" but rather "How can we improve Astro for those who enjoy it while also attracting new players to the job?" If, for whatever reason, you aren't able to do both. Priority should be on retaining core players because you risk driving them away—which is exactly what happened this expansion.

Additionally you might just be shouting into the wind as far as SQEX is concerned. They don't care who is a vet of what job either, they're a business. If they design B will ultimately please more customers han design A... they're going with design B.
Not that this is right... but to expect different is to court disappointment.

While, yes. That was more or less my point. The irony is the devs didn't follow that philosophy. Take Bard, for example. Not only was it arguably the most popular DPS in the entire game, it was near universally praised as the best iteration of the job. So... why change it at all? There's literally zero incentive to gut the job except some odd belief only one Physical Range can be support focused. What makes their decision worse is they already tried overhauling Bard once before: the dreaded Bowman. Which was loathed to the point they had to completely overhaul the job again come Stormblood. It should have been obvious taking away Bard's support and utility aspects wouldn't "please more customers" yet they did it anyway. And have since spent most of Shadowbringers either giving it back in small amounts or buffing Bard's overall potency due to the once immensely popular job being the second least desired DPS outside Monk.