Quote Originally Posted by Caurcas View Post
As the title ask, does 14 create and promote a culture of mediocrity within it? I say it has been sliding that way since ShB. The healing and tanking roles have been reduced to dull, hollow shells of what they were in HW and SB. The skill celling and floor no longer exist for these roles. DPS roles are heading in this direction as well with all the flavor and mechanical complexity being slowly striped away. See the removal of synergy and reduction of positionals, and reduction of punishment for rotational screw ups. These issues, however, are nothing compared to how the community and general attitude have shifted toward shielding the bad from valid criticism, and a general apathy towards self improvement. Even the devs have admitted to designing content in this manner. It's all quite disheartening, given 14 was at in time one of the most mechanically engaging MMOs.
The game is meant to largely appeal to casual audiences, which is where most of the games financial success originates. Many of the old HW / SB era systems that were streamlined were pointlessly punishing to casual players, but had very little real impact on high-level gameplay. They've made a few missteps, but seemed to have fairly solid reasoning behind most of their decisions. Rather than stripping away 'complexity', it's more replacing convoluted design with overly simple design. 'Complexity' just gives a little too much credit to some of the bad systems in SB/HW.

This game has a lot of bad players and weird white-knighting no doubt, but I feel like a lot of people just defend "bad" players because they find it more satisfying and entertaining to get under the skin of people who whine about performance in casual content.