Quote Originally Posted by Tlamila View Post
That's pretty much how MMOs are, though. Overall this doesn't even change much, there are some which basically become completely different games through expansions.
Fact is, devs look at numbers and see what most people want in that moment, in theory (I say in theory because some decisions are just weird and seem to be dislike by almost everybody). Which will never be what everybody wants. With changes, there will always be something people like and people dislike. The same thing can be considered an improvement by someone and ruining the game by someone else.
Fact about veterans of a class I imagine is the same way as they regard veterans of the game, aka they have the same interest in retaining veterans as in attracting new people, both to the game and to the specific job. They can't just keep one of the two sides in mind, espcially from a business point of view.

As for BLM, I don't know, I feel instead that it changed a lot over the expansions. It went from a mindless turret to a very complex and more mobile class. Sure, the second part fits more with the current game design needing more mobility, but the first seems more a class design change to me. And I remember a thread here that asked people which class they like better at lower level, and most people answered BLM, and current low level BLM is more similar to the old one so it means a lot of people liked the class much better before.
Interesting points, I would disagree with a few points:
1-Stating that "this is how most MMOs work" - this is how some MMOs work. Unfortunately, this can really turn off their customers because they can result in FOTM jobs and/or extremely poor class/job balance during an expansion, with ensuing poor QOL for some players.
2- Stating that devs look at what players want "in that moment" - OK, maybe a junior dev not a game designer - they don't just listen to whomever screams the loudest, or look at short-term returns. They need to look at the impact of design decisions, and the longer-term impacts, plus many other impacts such as the impact to the community, which you did touch on - such as veteran and new players.

Now, I am not against change, but I am not for change just for change's sake. If the dev team gets good feedback from the community, and the job continues to fit the game design - why change it?

However, if it gets bad feedback, or if the game paradigm changes, those could be good reasons to make changes. Not because as Seraphor is saying - someone sees "new expansion- must change the job". Not unless it has issues. Otherwise I get my money's worth by new story content or other expansion features.

So I do not want every job to be overhauled at each expansion. Jobs may end up with some changes second or third expansion and that's fine by me. In the interim, in minor patches the dev team may however need to put in minor tweaks to a specific job to adjust it.