Should they swap the effects of bole and arrow

[Rilifane]

It's still the devs that caved in which in turn encouraged this kind of behaviour whenever they did so again.
So a good part of this obsession with prioritizing damage above all, wanting everything to be handed neatly aligned on a silver platter, anything that doesn't work well for damage is considered clunk and needs to go as if it's a weakness instead of a class feature is on the devs. I wouldn't say all of it, there will always be people squawking for everything being nerfed or automatically aligned or without dps loss and spread misinformation to more players but still a large part.
Not to mention it's still the devs that put the insane restrictions on combat and comp that not make balance far more important; they designed themselves into a corner.
Fixed size of 8man for raids.
Practically fixed comps with 2/2/4 even in premades thanks to the dumb "needs 2 of this to soak it or you'll randomly die" mechanics.
Tight dps checks to prevent players from zombie'ing their way through to balance out unlimited combat resses.
Extreme predictability of all encounters.

[IceBlueNinja]

It's still the devs that caved in which in turn encouraged this kind of behaviour whenever they did so again.
So a good part of this obsession with prioritizing damage above all, wanting everything to be handed neatly aligned on a silver platter, anything that doesn't work well for damage is considered clunk and needs to go as if it's a weakness instead of a class feature is on the devs. I wouldn't say all of it, there will always be people squawking for everything being nerfed or automatically aligned or without dps loss and spread misinformation to more players but still a large part.
Not to mention it's still the devs that put the insane restrictions on combat and comp that not make balance far more important; they designed themselves into a corner.
Fixed size of 8man for raids.
Practically fixed comps with 2/2/4 even in premades thanks to the dumb "needs 2 of this to soak it or you'll randomly die" mechanics.
Tight dps checks to prevent players from zombie'ing their way through to balance out unlimited combat resses.
Extreme predictability of all encounters.

Agreed there is always this party a b c and w.e situation where people want things change or keep the same. No one can just be satisfied. So yes the devs may not always do things well but its all cause of players majorily. Party a can love something and c does not. B may be 50 50 on not wanting change but does want it. Typically issue with this or any game oh dont get me started in asymmetrical games like dead by daylight survivor vs killer topics looool.

[IceBlueNinja]

Man I remember throwing the Spire on DPS who just rezzed to get their TP back, keeping an Ewer on hold for myself or the other healer, throwing an Arrow around at some random player to speed them up if I felt like causing CHAOS (usually the tanks though, it was nice sometimes on tanks), etc. The cards felt more like proper planning for situations instead of just being Oprah with damage buffs. "YOU GET A DAMAGE BUFF, AND YOU GET A DAMAGE BUFF! YOU ALL GET DAMAGE BUFFS!"

It felt so awarding blms love me to arrow them so they dont have to position or worry on wasting their ley lines hehehe. Bole on tank for trash pulls. Ewer i kept for me i died as i pop luci oh no but its ok i got ewer for mp restore. spear? oh god crit chance increase sams would dote you. Only spire became useless when tp was out but boy ninjas love ya for it

[Renathras]

Gonna be honest, it's mostly the players fault. The original Pharos Sirius? Nerfed because people refused to run it because it was "too hard". Steps of Faith? Nerfed because people refused to use the mechanics. People even tried to get Nidhogg and Shinryu nerfed. They cried whenever anything wasn't useful for damage or was annoying because they'd spam something for damage (like Fluid Aura) that wasn't originally meant for it. So yeah, it IS the players fault.

Pretty much this.

Gap closers are used in Burst windows for extra DPS, not as movement tools, their pretty clearly designed intent. Players would go out of their way to avoid AST Cards that weren't Balance. Any Tank or Healer that is sufficiently different than the rest and does less damage is sidelined. The only non-damage utility that ISN'T actively sidelined by the playerbase is Verraise, and then only until they have the encounter down decently, at which point they'd rather the player swap to BLM or SMN because they...do more damage.

And the thing is: MAX DAMAGE ISN'T EVEN NEEDED.

Outside of EXTREMELY specific situations (week 1 clears, SOME, not even ALL, Ultimates), you can do considerably lower damage and clear stuff. "A gray clear is still a clear" is met with "Nuh-uh! You're just bad, lazy, and being carried! You don't even deserve to be allowed to do that content and are actively griefing other players!", even though most Savages can even be cleared with gray parsers or an overall average of low green in most cases.

It's absolutely the players, not the Devs.

EDIT:

Agreed there is always this party a b c and w.e situation where people want things change or keep the same. No one can just be satisfied. So yes the devs may not always do things well but its all cause of players majorily. Party a can love something and c does not. B may be 50 50 on not wanting change but does want it. Typically issue with this or any game oh dont get me started in asymmetrical games like dead by daylight survivor vs killer topics looool.

It's why game developers have four real choices:

1) Satisfy only one type of player. Make a niche game where you've cornered the market for those player types but no one else plays your game and it eventually folds.

2) Do the most watered down thing to try and please everyone. Please no one. Game will probably be marginally successful but...

3) Have the game with lots of types of class/Job and playstyle that appeal to a broad amount of people, but unlike (2), not where they are just "meh" on it, but actually like the ones geared towards them while avoiding the ones that don't suit them. The only way to please everyone that actually WORKS, but tends to be time and developer intensive and so most game studios don't want to do it. It's also harder to balance. The only people who don't like this are the ones that want (1) for just them, and want to turn games that aren't (1)s into (1)s at their benefit and everyone else's cost.

4) (2) but worse, try AND FAIL to please everyone.

[Semirhage]

This is oddly reminding me of whatsherface forum poster from ~5 years ago, who had a vehemently-argued, bizarre yet internally consistent take on healers: using heals in any way other than what the developers intended was "cheating". HoTs are for countering DoTs; their greater MP and GCD efficiency were things dirty powergamers invented to cheat their way into excess damage GCDs. oGCDs were for emergencies only, as God Intended(TM). Using them for their predictability and efficiency to free up damage GCDs was, again, cheating. This, she argued, was why FF14 dungeons were "properly" difficult; healing was stressful and spamming Cure was how you were "supposed" to play, and therefore if she argued that healing was hard, and a veteran raider said it was easy, she was correct because she wasn't "cheating".

She may have been a fantastically-executed troll, but the point remains. Developer intent doesn't survive contact with common sense. Blaming sensible decision-making for the gravitational pull of effective tactical choices is as useless as blaming the tides for rolling in. You design around it, or you throw up your hands at the gap closer YOU created with bonus damage attached and wonder aloud at the greasy nerds who DARED take your intended skill and utilized it for something they found effective and pretend as if the inexorable march toward efficient gameplay is someone's "fault".

I -cannot- believe you guys don't understand why people optimize things. Pattern matching and improving things is part and parcel of your genetic heritage. You just aren't personally invested in optimizing THIS thing.

[Renathras]

Developer intent doesn't survive contact with common sense.

The thing is, it very often ISN'T common sense.

In an average party, MCH produces better results than DNC or BRD, supposedly. That is, if you're in a green party with a blue MCH, your party DPS will be higher than a green party with a blue DNC. Yet people were legitimately not taking MCH to encounters and PF locking them out, even for stuff like P5S or Ex4, things you could clearly clear with a MCH.

It IS true that sometimes the Devs fumble and the playerbase is right. But the playerbase also often makes a massive deal about 0.5% damage output differences in content where crit variance can be 3-6% of their damage and they can clear the boss with 10% of the fight time left before Enrage. That's not common sense.

When it's common sense, that's fine. But it honestly isn't always, and I think we all know that.