zoning out/center extreme focus

[Valence]

To be honest, I cared, because I felt really bad for all the players that did not even understand 25% of their job, and were not on course to understand it much better by max level. It felt like it helped turn away players due to them finding the game too hard. And no doubt SE thought the same thing.
It's one thing to not be perfect on a microscopic level that can only be seen through those methods, and another for it to be so massively noticeable that you just have to look at what buffs they have in the party list, visibly look at how fast enemies are dying or visibly look at their casts or summons to see a major problem.

I feel like you're extrapolating a little. I wasn't really following social medias or forums back then so ultimately I have no idea how much casuals had a problem with it, but I suspect they didn't. To my eyes they were just enjoying the content and pressing their buttons in whatever way felt good to them. Which is still the case today, the main difference being that the game makes sure the lower skill level doesn't stand out too much, if at all.

I actually don't remember casual players complaining about it ingame, but I do remember some jobs having some stigma, like BLM had until very recently, about how difficult it is to play. MCH and DRK were two of those in HW, and it stuck enough to MCH for it to last until the end of SB (just check one of the old Larrysaur vids joking that you need an engineering phd to play MCH). I feel that it's unfortunately something that you'll never really shake of if you have huge differences in skill requirement between jobs in the roster like it used to be the case, even if people still played mch like garbage in casual content and went by just fine anyway. DRK actually, is the best example to my eyes because the job could be played with only half its kit without the hard parts which were tied to the Darkside stance: a lot of casual tanks just didn't use it, so they lost the 20% damage buff and access to some of the skills unlocked by it, but in exchange didn't have to deal with the hardcore MP management it brought.

I'm actually on your side however when it comes to job discrepancies. Every job should be accessible, but every job should also have an actual ceiling, all of them with unique gameplay and challenges. I don't like uptime, so I don't want to deal with the ceiling of such a BLM job, but I'm sure a lot of BLM vets would love this. A lot of people don't like hard rng triage and prios, but I love this and would like my ammo back. A lot of people miss managing resources and MP and want old DRK back as well.

I can understand that, to a degree--I just think that if playing FFXIV does this to you, it's not something that SE can really address. There are limits to accessibility, and SE is not going to change the entire makeup of combat from a GCD and tab-targetted based combat because of this. You have to take care of yourself. Even if SE does revamp combat, they are not going to be doing it on any timeframe where you should subject yourself to something that clearly causes you actual suffering.

Find and play games that don't hypnotize you to that degree, and do it now, for your own health.

Counterpoint: I've been in many a static where the problematic player was the SMN. Do you know why? They kept messing up because they zoned out. They were the kind of players that didn't want to engage with more challenging jobs to focus on encounter design (and they tended to be lazy af as well). But the job put them to sleep further. Anecdotal? Perhaps, I don't know, but it's been my EW experience with SMN players.

The problem as always with this suggestion is; Which jobs get to be complex or simple? You mentioned wanting to keep Warrior simple because it was your favorite, but there's just as likely someone else out there that wants Warrior to be more complex because it's also their favorite and they're tired of it being "unga bunga". To whom does Square-Enix make WAR ideal for then?

Same thing happens when discussing healers, some people want WHM to be the brain dead one while the others become more dynamic, cue WHM mains balking at the idea and saying SCH/AST/SGE should be the derp stick healer instead. And DPS are a whole other beast, even down to arguing among their sub-roles of whether melee, ranged, or caster should be the concert pianist or paste-eater set of jobs.

There's nothing wrong with wanting variable challenge between jobs of course, but I don't think we'll ever get the playerbase to decide where each specific job falls on the difficulty spectrum because everyone wants different things out of "their" job and they WILL argue over it.

Accessibility all across the board, skill ceiling as well. Problem solved except for that layer of players that cannot accept that they don't have the skills to master something 110%.

[Astronis]

Counterpoint: I've been in many a static where the problematic player was the SMN. Do you know why? They kept messing up because they zoned out. They were the kind of players that didn't want to engage with more challenging jobs to focus on encounter design (and they tended to be lazy af as well). But the job put them to sleep further. Anecdotal? Perhaps, I don't know, but it's been my EW experience with SMN players.

This is not a counterpoint to my suggesting to this one specific player who has stated they have literally woken up having peed themselves that they should avoid playing a game that puts them into that kind of a trance.

I have absolutely nothing against SE making jobs more engaging across the board. I couldn't imagine playing SMN long term, though I do play DNC for the occasions I play DPS...at least it's a bit random and I can think about proper mit and when to time uses of my healing so it'll come off CD for next time for that job. There almost certainly is something SE can do in the case of jobs that are so repetitive that they are more likely to entrance people, though what they do isn't going to alter the fundamental formula. But this specific player needs to play something else, FFXIV is poison to them.

[AllenThyl]

That requires that the game allows for less than 110% for success though, and there's a wide amount of content that will not let you pass with anything less than scripted perfection.

Question, why are you back again? The policy from SE with regards to taking legal actions against people harassing their employees online, or as you called it, "tyranny", is still in effect. Second question, why do you, who by own admission has serious problems even with normal difficulty content, doesn't do any difficult content that isn't trivialized by unsyncing, insert yourself so much into every discussion where it concerns high level job and encounter design, while bloviating about pf culture that you don't partake in?

[BigCheez]

That requires that the game allows for less than 110% for success though, and there's a wide amount of content that will not let you pass with anything less than scripted perfection.

There is literally zero content in the game with a DPS check tight enough that there is no room for mistakes. Not even ultimate on patch.

Almost everything can be cleared with deaths (resulting in long damage downs), never mind small rotational errors.