FFXVI has now officially proven to have taken over Yoshi's time

[IkaraGreydancer]

Why did you feel the need to attack the signature? Is it because you feel uncomfortable?

As for the rest of your post: NO ONE has any data on how job changes affected the game's popularity. In fact, this is data not even SE can collect, because the job changes happen simultaneously along with multiple other confounders (such as better storyline) so that a robust statistical causal analysis is basically impossible to conduct. This is why this argument is bad-faith: because no one can actually use data to prove anything here. Not even Square Enix. They have no control group or any causal instrument to tease out the effect.

So as any reasonable and sane person would do next, I inferred the most likely scenario based on what we can actually observe and made educated deductions. First, new players are most likely to try out a game based on advertisements and word of mouth. Second, SE has not talked about the job changes at all in their ads. Third, most people's discussion of FF14 outside of FF14 communities center on factors other than job design when they talk about why they like the game, including: the story, the positive community, the impression that Yoshi P cares more about the players than other devs... From this it's rather straightforward to conclude that job changes are very unlikely to have changed a potential player's decision on whether or not to try this game out and purchase it. Those job changes are announced only within the community, through live letters and patch notes. New players largely do not decide to start playing a game because of a 3-hour live letter discussing things they know nothing about.

Then of course more bad faith arguments followed but I don't have the time to explain why for every point. It's a variant of gish galloping after all. Instead of clearly communicating one single idea or argument, gish gallopers make many, all of which takes time to correct.

Oh, and cute "gotcha" attempts like "why are you paying for the sub" are basically variants of point number 1 in my signature. Asking why someone is still subbing when they have criticisms is practically identical from telling someone to unsub. The only difference is that one is passive aggressive. It's highly confusing why you would agree that that is a bad faith argument then write a passive aggressive variant of it.

Writing things you don't agree with off as bad faith...is literally bad faith. Like come on you have to realize this...

I addressed the signature because it has holes. Also attacking? Pretty charged language. Hell I even agreed with the first point and even stated I'd agree with the last if there was another part to it so to assume it makes me uncomfortable is...weird.

Lastly it's not a "gotcha". I genuinely do wonder why any one would pay for a game they don't think does anything right as you've claimed. It makes no sense and is irrational. I don't ask that for folks with simple criticism. I ask that to folks who seemingly dislike every or most aspects of the game. It's not passive aggressive by any means. Would you say the same if I swap the topic being a game to say...a restaurant? Is it crazy to ask someone why they still go eat there despite saying all the food is crap? It's literally no different with this...Using "bad faith" as a shield to stave off anyone who doesn't agree or speak how you want them to gets us nowhere. When will yall learn this?