If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

[Deveryn]

Yoshi P said in a video that FFXIV wouldn't exist were it not for WoW. The game was a major inspirational source for this game. My question really is: Is the dev team willing to learn from the mistakes Blizzard made?

Blizzard literally went on a raging simplification spree. Notably pruning and removing tons of abilities from each class and specializations in the name of "accessibility". Shortly after the game went downhill big time. Skill expression is today completely gone in WoW. Every class plays braindead 1-2-3 button smashing that literally dulls your brain as you play.

I truly do not understand why the developers want to do the same thing to FFXIV. Heck, Blizzard even recently stated that pruning was a mistake. They're now trying to "undo" the damage, but that's likely going to take multiple expansions of work. Why on earth would you want to repeat this same mistake in FFXIV?

Having easy jobs is perfectly fine, but there needs to be jobs that offer also medium difficulty and high difficulty. Pruning and dumbing down existing jobs is not in any way acceptable, and is an insult to players who main those jobs. If you want to make something simple, then you need to create new jobs that are simple from the beginning - period. People are invested in their jobs and you're actively disrespecting their affection by making changes none of them asked for.

By all means, continue to remove abilities and make the game play itself. You will not gain more subs; but you will lose half your player base from your arrogance.

Numbers have actually gone up as they've tried to improve quality of life. Anyone that's been around long enough speaks of when things were more punishing. That's clearly not a good direction if you want a game to have longevity and attract / keep more people around.They're not dumbing things down, but making them more consistent. It's been needed for the longest time, especially cleaning up the markers in older zones, so we remember when to stack and when not to. I'm most looking forward to that boss in Sohm Ai being corrected to stop using that red marker for a stack mech.

I get that change is difficult to accept, but it's generally been for the better. It's an MMO things are bound to change. Learn to stop taking things so personally and try to enjoy what's given to you.