Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Idolize
Why do you do this?

I'm quoting him because overall his point is more like your own, but I found his argument compelling. If I quote something from Socrates that I found compelling, would you accuse me of idolizing him?

Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Why limit the rewards of having optimized a situation to "minimal variations"? And why should any job necessarily be constrained to that small gap between skill floor and ceiling?
Because it's a videogame and that's what people find fun. No one finds being blacklisted fun, so that's a no-go and limits how much damage variation can exist. If the playerbase was still consistently taking people that did 30% less damage, sure, we could have massive variances. But the community doesn't, so it doesn't work.

As to why have some Jobs - not all, some - with a narrower gap between floor and ceiling: Because some players don't want a large gap between floor and ceiling.

Quote Originally Posted by Connor View Post
Surely it makes sense to just design the jobs to be fun, engaging and with distinct identities, then allow the community / players to make the decision of ‘hard or easy’ themselves?
Agreed. The Jobs can fit their various class fantasies and have different playstyles, then players will gravitate to the ones they like best. If some like an "easy" or "hard" playstyle, they pick that one. If they like the mechanics of one or another, they pick that. Make things and let plaeyrs decide which they like best. This requires, though, that they're actually...different from one another and not various forms of copy. If one healer plays like WHM another like current RDM (but with heals) and another like current BLM (but also with heals), then that's not bad.