State of the Game prior to Liveletter

[Deceptus]

• Samurai players are angry that Kaiten, an ability core to their class fantasy and gameplay loop was removed with no suitable replacement.
  
• Dragoon players are terrified that something similar will befall their job.
  
• Astrologian players are aware that some buttons need consolidating but are afraid that the wrong ones will be taken away and the job reduced further to the state of the other healers that they were driven away from.
  
• Disdain and disregard for healer gameplay, with previous healer testers apparently having been removed from the role due to becoming too good at it – coupled with the statement that upset healers should consider playing Ultimate.
  
• A three-way civil war between Summoner players that is unlikely to ever be resolved until the remaining pantheon and associated abilities are added along with a Necromancer/Time Mage job that encapsulates whatever could be salvaged of the previous iteration.
  
• The perpetual crisis revolving around Dark Knight.

How in the world did we end up like this?

18 Battle Jobs (and the entire battle system) managed by:

1 Supervisor
2 Dedicated developers
1 Intern (who is probably a junior developer by this point)

And it's been that way for 2+ expansions

There. That is why Job design is in the crapper. SE and the FFXIV have refused to expand and give the jobs the time and dedication they NEED to make the game better.

I'm not going to say they are inept because that would be a personal attack but they're so stretched thin they missed basic addition.

Since the 6.0 Revamp, Medica II (an aoe spell) does more single target total potency than Cure II for the exact same MP.

In 6.1 when they "Buffed" the WHM DoT spells they made Dia (obtained at lvl 72) WORSE total potency than Aero II (obtained at lvl 42).

These are just simple blatant examples that should have been easily seen and rectified but it shows how poorly the battle design is managed and tested, if it's tested at all. It's like stuff is just getting rubber stamped.

[MoofiaBossVal]

18 Battle Jobs (and the entire battle system) managed by:

1 Supervisor
2 Dedicated developers
1 Intern (who is probably a junior developer by this point)

And it's been that way for 2+ expansions

There. That is why Job design is in the crapper. SE and the FFXIV have refused to expand and give the jobs the time and dedication they NEED to make the game better.

MMO devs refusing to hire enough class designers seems to be a recurring trend. Just earlier this week, we found out that the Guild Wars 2 class designer who broke Ranger more than it already is didn't even look at the Ranger subforum. He doesn't even play Ranger. He glanced at the fanmade wiki to see what a Ranger ability did, and nerfed the class based off of that. WoW class design was also at its apex during MoP when every class had its own dedicated designer and they actually interacted with people on the forums... and then declined when a handful of people were responsible for maintaining several classes and didn't talk to the community anymore.