Quote Originally Posted by Raoabolic View Post
There is something to be said about being critically objective.
If you are a professional game critic, sure. If you are recommending a game for someone else to play, yes. If you are continually disappointed that the choices you would have made for game design are not the choices made by the actual development team, not so much. Feel free to be critical. Just don't whine about it when someone else's ideas of what deserve criticism are different from your own, because, frankly, the only one who can be critically objective is that professional game critic, who does not play the game after assessing it.

Do the mechanics in this game work? Obviously.

Was the 2-minute burst window a development team design, or was it a meta that became so popular the developers decided to incorporate it into the game officially? Chicken, meet egg. The majority of players will look at you and ask, 'what burst window'?

Was the choice to create everything instanced a good one back in 2014? Absolutely. It allowed members of different worlds to play a dungeon together.

Is that choice still a good one in 2022? It provides a means to increase the number of players leveling in a particular zone, as an example. Would you rather have a queue for each zone in the Open World during an expansion launch?

Are classes losing their uniqueness? It depends on what you mean by 'unique'. The playstyle for a Black Mage is indeed different from a Red Mage. The difference between Dancer and Bard is high enough that one is chosen for raids more often than the other. Your definition of 'unique' will be different from mine.