Why does this game hide essential character info?

[ValerianA]

So, when you open the character page in FFXIV, you will see ton of primary and secondary stats. Strength, tenacity, direct hit, etc.
You can see their numerical value, yet these numbers are meaningless without context, without feedback for my character.
What is my chance to crit? Exactly how much extra damage/healing/dmg reduction do my tanks get from their tenacity? How much damage reduction I gain from my defense values?

I have never seen this in any other MMORPG. I've been playing them for over a decade, I have high level characters in 5 MMOs and I dabbled in many others, and I can't remember not being able to see such basic, essential info like what is my crit chance.

I guess there are some fan-made online calculators where I put my stats and see the desired info, but that's kinda my point, I shouldn't have to rely on fan-made third party resources to see such basic stuff.

Why does it matter?
- its impossible to make any character/gear optimization, theorycrafting, without being completely reliant on player-made guides.
What is my best secondary stat? Is this piece of gear with slightly higher ilvl, but lesser amount of materia slots better? Who knows?
- it can lead to outright wrong choices when gearing up. For example, going by ingame description, Tenacity seems like such a wonderful, all-in-one stat for tanks, and new player might be tempted to stack it as much as possible. Yet when you read any tanking guide, every advanced player will tell you that tenacity is bad and you should stack CRIT and DH as tank.
- character and gear progression feels much less satisfying in this game compared to other MMOs. Yet "the loot hunt" is one of the main reasons to keep playing MMOs once you've completed the story and hit max level.
Sure, my lvl80 SAM with rankVIII materias has much more CRIT, DH, DET, than my lvl 68 DNC in Shire gear with V materias, but ultimately this tells me nothing.

The only stat whose progression you can easily see is Vitality, where you can see your HP increase with each item you equip. Everything else is hidden for some reason. Why? And why aren't more players concerned with this?

[RoyalBeef]

Yeah, that was one of my first thoughts when I started and I still feel like it. If you can't look at a piece of gear and instantly tell if it's better than what you currently have or not without consulting theory crafting sources first, the system failed.
In other games, getting new gloves, you felt a difference, no matter how minor it was. In FF14 your whole ilvl can go up 20 levels and the only difference you notice is you have more hp, everything else feels exctly like it did before and you'd have to use 3rd prarty tools to even see if your damage out put in increased or i there are more crits than before.

[Shurrikhan]

And why aren't more players concerned with this?

Plenty are. They just asked this question repeatedly back in ARR, and, having been repeatedly given no answers, eventually stopped asking.

[ValerianA]

Well maybe if we keep bombarding the devs (politely ofc) they might change it, or at least give us their reasoning?
Like players kept bombarding them with male bunny outfits, playable Viera, in-game parsers etc., and either we got what we wanted, or at least we got a reply why it cannot be done.
This is first day I am posting on forums, but I have been playing since HW, and I visit the forums almost daily (Lurky McLurker at your service) and I have never seen this being discussed.
Recently we had a big Q-A session with the devs, and again nobody brought it up.

[Rilifane]

It was really off putting for me aswell when I started this game. It still is, I just roll with it because after years of no change to this despite many people asking for it, it's likely never going to change.
But it does still irk me. I'm not against looking up things myself and I enjoy theorycrafting but seeing so many meaningless numbers ingame because the game itself provides absolutely no context aside from "This number is higher. It's probably better" still bothers me.

[Enkidoh]

The interface does give some explanation as to what each stat does in general terms if you hover the cursor over it in the character screen. However, they're deliberately not going to explain in detail what the mathematics do under the hood as that sort of information players would then use to exploit the game deliberately. And even keeping it secret has not stopped players already doing just that. Unfortunately, you're not going to get an in-depth explanation from the development team about this I'm afraid.

[KageTokage]

Being able to actually know the stat thresholds in games like WoW was really helpful as some stats like skill speed are genuinely useless until you hit the next breakpoint that actually lowers your GCD.

[Commander_Justitia]

players would then use to exploit the game deliberately. And even keeping it secret has not stopped players already doing just that.

"Exploit" has a rather negative attribute. I don't know what should be so malicious about knowing what your stats do. Isn't it a good thing to know what your gear does?

[MomomiMomi]

It's been like this since FFXI. That's about 17 years. Don't expect any change.

The reasoning they gave back then was that they wanted the players to figure it out as a community. They still do that with a lot of things in the game today ("communicate with your fellow players to learn how to progress"), so it's likely still the same reasoning.

[Hasrat]

Harder to trap players in the Skinner Box if they understand that the bigger number doesn't actually mean anything.