Quote Originally Posted by Ivtrix View Post
If you want a side by side example:
Ivtrix, your basic point is perfectly-valid from a "game design" / "balance" standpoint, but I think you aren't understanding how the wider playerbase instinctively reacts to a comparison like that.

You're trying to demonstrate, from your perspective: "Wow, seems like Summoner is too easy, we should make Summoner harder".

But most players, shown that comparison, will instead conclude: "Wow, seems like Red Mage is too hard, we should make Red Mage easier".

In order to understand why Jobs like Summoner are so popular now, it's important to realize that only a very narrow segment of players actually enjoy the challenge of optimizing a Job in the way that you've described in your TOP example.

I think that, for most players, they simply do not view FFXIV that seriously, nor as justifying that kind of effort or investment out of the hours of their wider life. As a result, they react positively to Jobs like EW Summoner that can be played "intuitively" in a wide variety of situations, and where understanding how to adjust and "optimize" it (so to speak) feels straightforward enough to figure out on their own, without consulting spreadsheets and "help channels".

I really need to stress that "Oh, it's okay, you can suck and still clear content!" is actually not a satisfying "compromise" to a lot of players.

People often pull out the "haha ice mages" type exaggerated extremes, but I think that most players don't actually fall into those edge cases — in my experience, at least (anecdotal though it all is), most players do at least try to understand what their Job "wants" them to do, and they become frustrated and discouraged if they feel like they can't pull it off consistently.

As strange as it may seem from the perspective of someone who's seriously-dedicated to the game, a lot of players also just do not seek external resources — they will try to figure things out, but if they can't figure it out "on their own", they either stop worrying about it, or become frustrated and pick a different Job.

I want to stress that I'm not arguing "right" or "wrong" here, and I'm not saying you're "wrong" for enjoying a game that rewards you for thinking about things in a depthy, complicated, or extensive way. I'm just trying to clarify that a vast amount of the playerbase neither enjoys that, nor sees it as a valuable design pursuit, and that causes the friction you're seeing here.

It's really not about just "able to clear normal content" vs. "not able to clear normal content"; that's oversimplifying the issue. People want to feel like they're playing "correctly", not "scraping by because it doesn't matter anyway".