SAM players are quitting

[Foraet]

It actually wouldn't surprise me at all if each of the job kits were owned by a single designer - it wouldn't even surprise me if that single designer owned more than 1 job's kit design.

It also wouldn't surprise me if it didn't get "kicked back multiple times by QA" - I've never heard of a QA team that had the power to veto design decisions they don't like.

It's completely conceivable that a single person thought this was a good idea and Yoshida, reluctantly or not, went along with it despite playtesting [hopefully] including negative feedback.

I work in software development and I've had QA kick back plenty of issues that had to go all the way back to design. A good QA team is not afraid to push back on user experience issues. I've also worked in very small to very huge development teams. Huge development shops are loaded with bureaucracy. I have spent so many hours in meetings with designers and project managers and department leads discussing every little detail for every little thing. To think job design decisions by a company as large as SE with a game as popular as FF14 is done by one person and never challenged by anyone else is mind-boggling.