And the slow death of the RPG based battlesystem

[Kazamaiya]

Cont 2.

Why did Bard have an MP drain ability and three versions of Troubador in Stormblood? why were Dots a big part of Ninja and Paladin gameplay? Why was Summoner so much more complicated in the job design previously? Because people enjoyed it and found it fun. People want to express themselves through the way they play and the jobs they chose. Having all these options of how to do so is a lot more enticing to people than following a strict 2 minute rotation every encounter.

Despite everything i keep coming back to Blue Mage of all things because it's FUN and allows me to express myself more and better than any of the other jobs get to do nowadays because of how much the other jobs have lost unique and fun abilities in favour of function over form or design. Is it good game design when everyone under the sun is asking you to change something they hated and then get no response? I would say no. especially in an MMO.

The jobs don't feel like they matter anymore outside of the functions they bring. Each job has a buff or buffs on a 60s or 120 second cooldown, and charges and such in their rotation to wherein they save as much of that as possible to throw into the 2-minute burst. Regardless of the difference in mechanics to jobs, it ends up making all of them feel samey because you're doing the exact same thing, sure the visuals are different, and the gameplay is different. But when you've mastered a job rotation, what then? It doesn't leave much room for expression and in turn longevity.
People dread any and all reworks nowadays because the track record of job Redesigns since (Shadowbringers) has been infuriating to people who played in the past before those points and it has stifled if not killed the engagement with the game as a whole and any hype people may have for Dawntrail because they're more worried the gameplay and job design of a job they love and adore will get messed up more than they are about anything else. This wasn't the case in Heavensward, Stormblood or even Shadowbringers for that matter. Job Design, job identity and job fantasy matters to people and is important. It is ignorant to think otherwise. If job design is stifled for everything else and people aren't having fun, they will either not engage with the content or they will leave. I know numerous people who haven't bothered doing the MSQ since 6.1 because of the changes to Job Design, Job Identity and Job Fantasy.

And to clarify further: The Job Design and complexity never affected encounter design at all in the past. Eden, Omega, Bahamut, Alexander. I could go on and on. There's a reason there are continual reuse of mechanics from ARR, HW or StB. Things like Limit Cut and Exaflare are mechanics introduced in those previous expansions from the encounter design that has continued to be reused in one way or another.