Combat system is beyond saving.

[Calysto]

I don't think it appeals to any kind of player ; its most likely an excuse so SE can spend the least time/money on it (yes, I know that's how capitalism works, but they are milking it too much).

We have to wait 3 years for an expansion that give us new copy/pasted jobs and add little beside new animations and a whole new "press every 2 mn" action.
It seems we can't ask for more because 'now that game has too many <jobs>'(can replace with <equipment> with the last races problems), yet they won't get resources even when the game is making bank.
While Sure, the "core" of the game would certainly require a lot training for new people, graphical assets can easily be hired or outsourced ; and fresh gameplay inputs could probably come from other teams or even the community via polls.

Even the MSQ which is supposed to be the main draw of the game is getting stale , if not story-wise, because most CS have no dynamism ; half of them are 3 people talking with another 3 in the background.
If the WoL has to speak, it's always the same emote with a fade-up to black.
If it's asking for WoL advice, it change at most one sentence directly after, then back to whatever with no impact beyond that.
A villain, better let them monologue while they destroy/use whatever plot device or ally is not needed anymore
A fight ? well, better unsheathe your weapons and use your plot crystal while it's the villain turn to watch.

TL;DR : The board of directors probably created account so their player feedback is "less money out, more money in" ; the devs are busy whit FF16 and probably other projects.

[Jeeqbit]

I don't think it appeals to any kind of player

Summoner popularity and Lucky Bancho stats say otherwise...
"The number of active characters is approximately 1.18 million, an increase of 70,000 from the previous version (1.11 million)"
Not to mention all the people I talked to in and out of the game who are perfectly fine with the battle system now and prefer it, and who seem excited for Dawntrail.

its most likely an excuse so SE can spend the least time/money on it

It's not that. They have been perfectly open with us the whole time. They said in the latest live letters they are trying to make the rotations "comfortable" for their players. Going back to Stormblood they added the gauges because they felt tracking status effects was too complicated and the truth is that made many jobs amount to "gauge spending".

To be honest, what a lot of people viewed as job difficulty in the past was really just janky design, such as one ability being able to overwrite another if used too soon, which is increasingly being protected against. So I can see where SE is coming from when saying this.

We have to wait 3 years for an expansion that give us new copy/pasted jobs and add little beside new animations and a whole new "press every 2 mn" action.

But if the job is functionally different in any way, people will say "well it has X ability, why can't I have it?" For example, look at people celebrating White Mage getting a gap closer. Why are they celebrating that they have been homogenized? Look at people celebrating when Paladin got a gap closer, also homogenization. Look at people celebrating Divine Veil proccing automatically, Warrior not needing to spend gauge on a gap closer, Paladin's rotation being changed to be like GNB being celebrated. One job has less DPS than another, so it gets balanced in a patch. Homogenization gets celebrated when it specifically happens, but then in general it gets attacked. So what is SE supposed to do with that?

Homogenize, obviously.

It seems we can't ask for more because 'now that game has too many <jobs>'

Well that is probably also a factor. It's hard to really balance jobs when there are so many without simply making a lot of them the same as eachother.

While Sure, the "core" of the game would certainly require a lot training for new people, graphical assets can easily be hired or outsourced ; and fresh gameplay inputs could probably come from other teams or even the community via polls.

If you look at their recruitment, they are always recruiting in Japan. If you look at the credits, they grow every expansion. They have made blog posts about how they are training people. I even remember Soken making one about the people he was training - I think at the time we didn't know how important that was, because he was fighting something.

Even the MSQ which is supposed to be the main draw of the game is getting stale , if not story-wise, because most CS have no dynamism ; half of them are 3 people talking with another 3 in the background.

Well that is common in patches. We should see about the expansion.

the devs are busy whit FF16 and probably other projects.

I remember them saying the FF16 team was disbanded except for a very small team that remained to handle DLC, but most of the team wasn't needed anymore because all the major engine and gameplay and UI work was done years ago, it was just adding some more quests/battles for DLC.

Used to be the same with mentors, whenever you saw the icon you just knew the person was going to be toxic and not know what they were talking about.

Mentors are just veteran players. Veteran players in any MMORPG I've played are usually toxic, not deliberately, but because they know the most efficient way to do things and struggle to go back to doing it the "slow, clueless" way that new players do it. In any case, the mentors I meet in duties are usually good and I can rely on them to know things usually. Except trade mentors, because you never know when they are just sprouts.