Quote Originally Posted by Doopliss View Post
This is going to sound sarcastic but you're like, legitimately the smartest person on the forums right now, lol. A lot of people really don't get this. I know there's many in current day FFXIV that haven't ever experienced HW (the expansion, not the story) due to timing, so it's not something they can really know, but even with the goofy jank present at the time, FFXIV was by far and wide the most easily understandable MMO my dumbass 17-year-old brain had ever seen back around 2014.

For all the "you're just nostalgic!" and "you're wearing rose-tinted glasses!" remarks, I feel like nearly the opposite phenomenon is happening to those who seemingly can't stand the idea of HW-esque job designs. They're imagining it being way worse than it actually was...or had perhaps some unfortunate run-ins in party finder, I guess.

Now, I don't actually think they'll ever bring the game back to that level of job "complexity," but I honestly feel like it's just a hard truth that they've steered way too far into the opposite direction. They need to be less scared about raising the skill ceiling. Compared to now, it was rare to hear somebody in full earnestness claim the endgame was too boring throughout A Realm Reborn to Stormblood...which I think is telling.
People aren't hating on HW job designs for being too complex. HW's game balance was disastrous. 5 of your raid slots were basically set. Warrior, ninja, scholar, dragoon, and 1 of the ranged phys. Could you deviate? Sure, but at no other point in the entire games history would you putting your raid at such a massive disadvantage for disregarding the meta. Ninja and the ranged phys specifically had just such game changing utility.

Even setting aside raid meta concerns, ast and dark were panned. Ast eventually recovered after 3.3 but it came at the expense of shunting whm into the suffering zone. People hated cast time bard so much.