Challenging Jobs + Easier content > Easy Jobs + Harder Content.

[Absurdity]

SE has made it a conscious effort to peel away complexity in the game ever since ARR, LONG before rotation bots came into play.

That really only started with Stormblood. Heavensward did the opposite and went too far into the direction of making jobs complex. Stormblood was the first time they made jobs easier to pick up and perform on at least a basic level, but since then they've continually made not only the skill floor lower but collapsed the ceiling along with it, to the point where we now have the opposite problem of Heavensward.

[KenZentra]

That really only started with Stormblood. Heavensward did the opposite and went too far into the direction of making jobs complex. Stormblood was the first time they made jobs easier to pick up and perform on at least a basic level, but since then they've continually made not only the skill floor lower but collapsed the ceiling along with it, to the point where we now have the opposite problem of Heavensward.

I think both can be true, I guess my mind was drifting off towards the whole of the game. I do remember rotations getting more complex in HW, so you are 100% right with that.

[Colt47]

I think both can be true, I guess my mind was drifting off towards the whole of the game. I do remember rotations getting more complex in HW, so you are 100% right with that.

It's not strictly FFXIV that was doing this. A lot of the newer games that have seen massive success are using vastly simplified controls (Genshin Impact being one of them). FFXIV might also have a bit of a development team size issue on making a more complex solution viable. All jobs really just have at max four things that they do, and of the jobs the only one that really does all of them is probably the healer (Cut damage through mitigation, create a temporary HP pool, inflict damage, or heal). The only thing that still sort of exists from the old game in some form is movement speed boosting, but snaring, slowing, and stunning are all removed or rendered redundant in most content. They also boosted the speed of monsters to make them easier to group together, removed cone AOEs, and also kind of killed kiting monsters around as a viable strategy.

The impact of the simplified design can be felt in the life cycle of the game as well. Part of the reason I was even going on about the need for echo in savage sooner is that people are growing bored of playing because of stalling out, and due to the pandemic patch cycle this is the longest wait we will have for an expansion ever so people are going to be quitting FFXIV out of boredom from lack of content.