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

[Gunn-e]

I'm curious about the OP's statement, as a relatively new player (started in Oct 2021). My experience with the whole thing, as I started on a Summoner, was that when I reached just around Shadowbringers or just a little bit before that, I started to really dislike Summoner. I started levelling other jobs because I found it overcomplicated. I don't have enough time to dedicate to the game to learn the somewhat complex mechanics of dungeons and raids AND a skills bar that's like the glossary of an encyclopedia. And then Endwalker dropped (I was still in Shadowbringers) and I hopped back on my Summoner and suddenly it's a love story. We got engaged and married before Endwalker and we're planning on our first kid. Anyways, jokes aside, while I can understand simplification is annoying for hardcore veterans an hardcore challenge-seekers, wouldn't it be ideal if the game offered a mix of complex jobs for the latter, and more simple ones for those who'd rather be a little more casual?

[HyoMinPark]

I'm curious about the OP's statement, as a relatively new player (started in Oct 2021). My experience with the whole thing, as I started on a Summoner, was that when I reached just around Shadowbringers or just a little bit before that, I started to really dislike Summoner. I started levelling other jobs because I found it overcomplicated. I don't have enough time to dedicate to the game to learn the somewhat complex mechanics of dungeons and raids AND a skills bar that's like the glossary of an encyclopedia. And then Endwalker dropped (I was still in Shadowbringers) and I hopped back on my Summoner and suddenly it's a love story. We got engaged and married before Endwalker and we're planning on our first kid. Anyways, jokes aside, while I can understand simplification is annoying for hardcore veterans an hardcore challenge-seekers, wouldn't it be ideal if the game offered a mix of complex jobs for the latter, and more simple ones for those who'd rather be a little more casual?

Honestly, I preferred when there was more of a gap between the skill floor and the skill ceiling. Nothing in this game that the more “casual” players will enjoy doing would require optimized performance. However, I liked having small things to optimize in my jobs that weren’t necessary to clear content, but still fun to do to push that little bit extra out of them. ShB brought about a lot of changes that were made to decrease the gap between those at the skill floor and those who pushed towards the skill ceiling. I remember BRD changes from SB to ShB specifically citing that they were made to close the gap because players that didn’t do “as much damage” as BRDs that were optimizing or min-maxing “might feel bad” for not doing as well. The reality of this is, is that those same players are very likely to be blissfully unaware of their performance, so what was there to “feel bad” about?

Having a gap between the floor and the ceiling isn’t a bad thing—but jobs seem to be changed consistently to cater to those at the floor while ignoring that those who reached for the ceiling found enjoyment in doing so. When the floor is on the ceiling, there’s little for the latter to reach for—and that’s when the complaints start.

[Sqwall]

I'm curious about the OP's statement, as a relatively new player (started in Oct 2021). My experience with the whole thing, as I started on a Summoner, was that when I reached just around Shadowbringers or just a little bit before that, I started to really dislike Summoner. I started levelling other jobs because I found it overcomplicated. I don't have enough time to dedicate to the game to learn the somewhat complex mechanics of dungeons and raids AND a skills bar that's like the glossary of an encyclopedia. And then Endwalker dropped (I was still in Shadowbringers) and I hopped back on my Summoner and suddenly it's a love story. We got engaged and married before Endwalker and we're planning on our first kid. Anyways, jokes aside, while I can understand simplification is annoying for hardcore veterans an hardcore challenge-seekers, wouldn't it be ideal if the game offered a mix of complex jobs for the latter, and more simple ones for those who'd rather be a little more casual?

Summoner was a mish mash from get go. In ARR it was a clone of scholar and scholar a clone if it. Summoner failed to meet expectations for quite some time due the "shared class" mentality. ShB summoner was very hard to master, but once you did it was really fun...you just needed to really focus and stick with it. Do I miss the old summoner....HELL NO. Old summoner was about as jank as you could get with the DOT uptime, the 4 minute rotation and not to mention it was NOT phase transition happy at all....I liked it...until I got to ex/savage content....then it was just infuriating to miss your phoenix phase due to a cutscene. So then you start delaying your summons......this is were people say it was "fun to optimize". No it wasn't. The reason it had such insanely high DPS in ShB was DUE to the jank of the job....it preformed great in more controlled scenario's.....but when you really needed it to preform....you were left thinking when you needed to cast more Ruins before the phase transition.