The main reasons behind the dissatisfaction of job gameplay

[Aravell]

I guess my issue personally is less with simplification (because I think any complexity we've ever had has been wholly artificial just for complexity's sake, maybe with the exception of BLM) and more with the fact that, complex or simple, job identity is basically gone, there's no player input or customization at all, and each job is so confined to its specific trinity role and fights are so meticulously scripted that there's just no...surprise in combat. Even if a fight is very difficult, it's still just automatically stale by the fact that it'll be exactly or basically exactly (accommodating small different permutations of mechanics) the same every single time. You never get the thrill of reacting to something unexpected.

For example, in GW2, Elementalists have a skill called "Rebound!" that negates the next lethal blow within five seconds for you and your allies and heals them instead. You don't have to be playing a healer build to use this skill; you can be full DPS and take it to help cheese a mechanic, or just save weaker players, etc. It allows for a lot of skill expression, and it's just one skill on one class. With the exception of maybe Rescue, FFXIV just doesn't have stuff like that, and it would be really cool if it did.

Complexity in Heavensward wasn't what I'd call artificial. Game knowledge carried you very far back then, skill expression was available and jobs had identity and nuance.

What we have now is completely artificial difficulty, I wouldn't even call it complexity. There's just 'do damage', 'increase damage', 'take less damage' and 'heal for X' abilities now, no nuance, no complexity, no skill expression, no gameplay. The whole game is basically on rails.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

Complexity in Heavensward wasn't what I'd call artificial. Game knowledge carried you very far back then, skill expression was available and jobs had identity and nuance.

What we have now is completely artificial difficulty, I wouldn't even call it complexity. There's just 'do damage', 'increase damage', 'take less damage' and 'heal for X' abilities now, no nuance, no complexity, no skill expression, no gameplay. The whole game is basically on rails.

That's fair. I'll defer to you, then, because I honestly don't remember too much about Heavensward because it was so long ago. I mostly remember the Machinist's ammo system, since I mostly played Machinist, but I can't remember if it was meaningfully more complex, or just different.

[Aravell]

That's fair. I'll defer to you, then, because I honestly don't remember too much about Heavensward because it was so long ago. I mostly remember the Machinist's ammo system, since I mostly played Machinist, but I can't remember if it was meaningfully more complex, or just different.

Complexity is difficult to define as what one finds complex may be simple for another, so let's speak of nuance and identity instead. Let's use MCH since you're familiar with it.

MCH in HW had multiple abilities that interacted with the kit and had their own nuance on when to use them. Gauss Barrel increased your damage BUT also gave you cast times, Rapid Fire made every action instant for the duration, ammo affected your shot combo and Wildfire compiled damage instead of total number of hits. Already we can see that HW MCH had a kit that interacted with itself and had a strong identity as a gunslinger with a turret.

Now we see MCH in DT. All the tools are disjointed from your main filler, you don't even use your main filler during Wildfire anymore, there's no more ammo so you cannot manipulate your kit, Hypercharge is just artificially forcing you to single weave, and Flamethrower is just completely worthless. No nuance, weak identity, job on rails.

[Raikai]

It's 7.2 iirc, so next savage release. I'm kind of reserving my final judgement till then as well, DT definitely stepped things up in the normal mode encounters, but I think people are giving the first savage tier a little too much credit, when its more innovative mechanics are underused. We'll see what the next tier brings, but I'm also in agreement with the people saying that good encounter desing + boring job design is still a formula for failure.

7.2? That's like at least 5+ months from now. That sucks... if 7.1 ends up being pretty similar to 7.0, I'll just let my sub run out late November and go find something else to play, really.

Also if I could choose, I'd invert things over and put the "job expansion" first, and then the "encounter expansion".

[ovIm]

7.2? That's like at least 5+ months from now. That sucks... if 7.1 ends up being pretty similar to 7.0, I'll just let my sub run out late November and go find something else to play, really.

Also if I could choose, I'd invert things over and put the "job expansion" first, and then the "encounter expansion".

My expectations are that 7.1 will be pretty much "7.0 part 2" in every way. The only thing that keeps me interested in FF14 currently is the PVP reword scheduled there, cause that may have me interested in playing until 7.2.

As for the other thing... their explanation is that they can't remold jobs without having an idea how content should look like. If that works or not, only time will tell, really.

[Azurarok]

Also if I could choose, I'd invert things over and put the "job expansion" first, and then the "encounter expansion".

This really. What they're doing right now is adjusting jobs to fit the encounter(ultimates) when it really should be more the reverse. The sheer number of jobs must be making it exponentially harder to do that, but I still don't see how it's worth gutting jobs for optional content that's reached by playing through the rest of the game, in ways that only really make sense from the context of said content

[Valence]

That's fair. I'll defer to you, then, because I honestly don't remember too much about Heavensward because it was so long ago. I mostly remember the Machinist's ammo system, since I mostly played Machinist, but I can't remember if it was meaningfully more complex, or just different.

HW MCH was considered the hardest DPS job for a reason. There was probably a lot of artificial difficulty in that it had literally 3 or 4 buffs with different recasts, and a crapload of damage ogcd that were doing different crowd control effects but ultimately were mostly used as ogcd damage spamm.
But then there was also just how wildfire bursts worked, and rng pattern recognition and management with ammo management, and this alone was a lot of decision making and agency, and was kept and improved on for SB MCH, while the excessive amount of obnoxious buttons was culled and the proc rate made a lot more bearable and less miserable. However it lost a LOT on the party resource support and turret management, but that's also on SB that already simplified the battle system on that front as well. But besides the loss in party resource support and interaction, which was big don't get me wrong, SB MCH as a rotational kit interacted with itself even more than it did during HW especially due to its unique gauge system.

[Daralii]

This really. What they're doing right now is adjusting jobs to fit the encounter(ultimates) when it really should be more the reverse. The sheer number of jobs must be making it exponentially harder to do that, but I still don't see how it's worth gutting jobs for optional content that's reached by playing through the rest of the game, in ways that only really make sense from the context of said content

They're still kind of failing at it, too. Jobs that build a gauge to enter a burst phase, like reaper, had a hard time in DSR if the group didn't pace their damage in specific ways. They'd either overcap resources or miss the finisher because of downtime during phase transitions.