"I don't want to think while I play, so no one should be allowed to."

[Payotz]

I've gotta say, this has been one of the most pleasant conversations I've had in the forums lol.
Maybe when datacenter visit comes around we can probably do a lil bit of content together.
Maybe just chat about the state of the game in game and what not. You seem pretty chill.

Some of the initial points I don't really agree on, like I think it's fine if someone wants to live the life of trusts.. I honestly don't care (unless it is going to cause massive issues for the DF, but squadrons didn't so I assume it will be fine so far lol). But I understand your ask, and I have taken part in it before- like I've written big chunky posts on world boss events, what you might be able to do with wards for events that drive people together, Hamlet (Dark Cloud / Island Sanctuary) content for FC that includes assaults and defenses (like FFXI's Aht Urghan), etc.

I think my one fear is that the most efficient way to do things IS Trusts, which eventually would devolve the content in FF14 into "just Trust it LOL" leaving people who want to play with others, nobody to play with.
That's the one thing I would never want for an MMO.
But I would love events like that honestly. One of the main problems of FF14 right now is that it has a lot of half-baked social foundations that has never been expanded upon.
FCs are pretty much just linkshells with buffs. Honestly I'm pretty happy about the Venue/RP scene as a whole because at least SOMEONE made use of it to make content of their own.

More works needs to be put into the game in the social side. There's a lot of very good ideas from other video games and from their very own IP that it's a little bit frustrating on why they don't bother to experiment.

I wanted to be clear that "I like" many of the casual functions of FFXIV, but I also wanted to note that I can see where somethings feel like they go a bit too far. Or alternatively maybe it should have been done in a different space, but still exist. Like it's unfortunate to change a job famous for being hard to a job that's easy. It could still be fun in their own right for both examples... BUT.... people who flocked to that job for it's gameplay feel might feel like the carpet was ripped out from underneath them. That's a bit unfortunate. Like to me WHM is the healer for when you just want it to be straight forward. So if I was making changes to healers, I might make light changes to WHM but it wouldn't change far from that sphere. Meanwhile SCH was a bit more weird before.. so I might have tried to keep that (with offensive spells / and DoTs in particular).

I think that's the main problem about the job design right now. They're all pretty homogenized, and they all do the same exact same baseline thing with not much room for creativity and skill expression.
We can't CC the adds in E8, there's no more palisade. They've effectively removed a large part of a job's identity, feel and gameplay... without replacing any of it or even justifying it correctly.
It's literally just "boop, oh your DoTs are gone! but you have more healing tools in a game where healing checks only exist in very limited parts of the game! Have fun!"

I think the fact that a large part of WAR's identity was restored by the addition of the new Raw Intuition and Bloodwheeting proves that job feel and identity can be restored with as simple as a few button additions.
Whether or not skill ceiling can actually be restored with so little buttons however, is another story.

In summary though- I don't think we're entirely at odds at each other, in a general sense, but perhaps on certain points we'll have diverging interests (I mean obviously I'm happily self proclaimed casual lol).

Yeah I don't think we are. There's nothing wrong with being a casual, or being skilled at the game. I care about the ideas of people rather than what people are.
Majority of what you're saying seems to be a net positive to the game, and yeah I agree with most of them.

I suspect its to stop premades , and PVP rank boosting accounts to sell wins
It being totally random stifles both.

Because you'll absolutely murder the other team lol. Though losing in PvP isn't too terrible since you still get a decent reward.

Yeah but come on. Not even premades in casual? Not even a little bit of priority premade vs premade matchmaking action?
I think that's the one thing that kinda stops me from going into PvP, the fact that it's so jank to get a group of friends together for a casual game.