How to make the game better for new players?

[HyoMinPark]

I disagree. It is gear that makes old content imbalanced. Look at the Crystal Tower raids. Or Void Ark. Or even old dungeons synced down, with players still having an edge just because of their gear. That being said, they should have tweaked the boss HP levels or something to reflect that growth, but they did not. If anything, our characters are way too strong in some instances and could use some nerfing in the form of a lower synced item level. The Ivalice and Nier raids are much more balanced in this regard, though that doesn't completely stop players from steamrolling through Rabanastre. I'm guessing all of this is at least a small factor in their reasoning to perform their future stat squish.

I think it’s both gear and rotations that lead to older content being trivialized (outside of general nerfs). Just look at some jobs in synced content versus others. A good example is level 70 NIN versus level 70 SAM. So much of SAM’s core rotation is now post-70 that it is actually one of the weakest jobs in UCoB. NIN, on the other hand, is laughably overpowered in there. You can also throw DNC or RDM in level 50 content and they are stupidly overpowered compared to other level 50 jobs. Especially those that had a lot pruned throughout the years.

So there is the gear aspect, but there’s also the design of each job at each capstone.

I think it's intentional. They want the older raids to become easier so that people do them in roulettes. Even orbonne is MUCH, MUCH EASIER today than it was when it first came out due to gear. If it wasn't they could just lower the syncing cap to keep people closer to gear levels from when they were relevant, but they don't.

The nier raids too will succumb to this in 6.0 when people are level 90 and ilvl 600 or w/e.

It’s more that Orbonne is the only 24-man they put automatic Echo in (lol) and they also nerfed Thundergod Cid. So it’s less so gear and more that, in my opinion. Orbonne was never hard. It just required more than autopilot from a player.

That's been the problem with the system from the start. They actually have a button bloat issue at end-game that really pushes the limit on what people can rote memorize with some jobs, so it turns into how do you get enough to make the job interesting without breaking it. Melee DPS is absolutely the worst due to also having to manage positionals and it really shows in savage with all the deaths they keep accumulating to boss mechanics.

Being in discord it feels like back seat driving with the melee to make sure they get call outs and don't die to things.

If you are a melee DPS and have to rely on mechanical callouts to not die, that is entirely a you problem and not at all an issue with a particular job or its buttons. Plenty of melee DPS hit positionals just fine and do mechanics without dying. If you can’t do both, then you need to practice more.

As for the button bloat, there’s arguably only a couple jobs that suffer from “button bloat”. Most jobs can fit all their skills comfortably on two cross hotbars (if you’re a controller user). Other jobs like the physical ranged have empty space due to the sheer lack of skills they have. Just look at DNC.