Quote Originally Posted by R041 View Post
All you did was repeat what I said, but praised it. lol
You say praise, I say flaw.

This is game design 101. Characters need to have faults to introduce challenges. Encounters need to allow multiple methods of dealing with them. Even moreso in an MMORPG, or it's just a singleplayer beat-em-up. I cannot rely on you, if there's no reason to rely on you. There is nothing in the design outside of healing players that is emergent or reactive. It's all passive and learned. This is especially true for the Job rotations/mechanics.
If the fault is too severe, noone will take the job. If an encounter has multiple ways of doing it, the easiest and safest way will always win out, which could mean a guaranteed slot for one specific job and not adapting to the fight dependant on the party. If you cannot rely on me, why should I rely on you? Nothing wrong with reactive boss mechanics, but that isn't the point in the OP.

I am 100% saying we need to stop being damn carebears about everything, and understand that not every job should be able to do everything, with perfect precision, in the same timing, for all content. This isn't the gotcha you think it is, it's not a good thing. It's the reason we're in this situation to begin with. Even Melee no longer have the fault they were designed for.
If I only want to level Black Mage, but this fight is ass for Black Mage, why should I spend the effort to level Red Mage when I don't want to? Why is it a good thing that you effectively force people to level what they do not want to level?

As for hitboxes, make them smaller, and give melees their positionals back. This has nothing to do with the OPs post however.

It's difficult to come up with a solution to this, because they've made it almost impossible over the years with how efficient they've made every encounter. You are thinking within the box that they've so thoughtfully put you into.
If raid is so important to force every class to be viable at, they don't need to introduce these class faults into them that teeter on full failure, but they do need to introduce class faults overall.
The box OP has drawn is so vague and broad, anything you potentially design will fit into the list in one way or another. Most of the list is just building and spending gauge, with some oGCDs, and ten the AoE equivalent. 10-11 out of the 14 are just the bare minimum you expect, or do you not want jobs to have oGCDs?

Godamn Super Mario Bros 2 has more complex environment and class design than FFXIV.
Single player games cannot be compared to MMOs. The main reason? You don't have a community that expects a fight to be done a certain way to keep consistency between fights and different parties. You can play the single player game however you want, whether it happens to be an RPG or not, however, there will always be that minimum expectation imposed upon everyone in an MMO setting.