Why does this game hide essential character info?

[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.

[Gurney]

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.

Also in 11 we did not have to worry about gear being outdated every few months, ex: Rajas ring was a lvl 30 ring but was the best TP ring to use even at lvl 75 and up. Yes each job had several type of gear sets to use depending on what they were doing. I had 80 inventory slots and when I played my PLD I only had 9 slots open to hold things due to all my gear sets I would use. Theory crafting in 11 was really part of the game if you did a lot of end game things, and you could go to BG and FFXIAH to find info on the best gear setups to use.

[EaMett]

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.

This is also what I remember. Also it's not like you have plenty of gear options. You're mostly picking between two sets at cap level, while leveling higher ilvl is pretty much the way to go, always, since stat impacts aren't meaningful in rainbow gear.

Min/maxing is also something that should take a bit of effort and distribute players across skill tiers. Obfuscating stat weights in a really simple gearing environment (2 to 4 sets at most, often times only one viable build, on rare occasion two viable builds) is a way of creating this distribution.
I really don't mind. It just means you have an opportunity to create a bit of a gap in optimizing between you and others by taking 30mn to read up on third party theorycrafting.

[Machi_Machiavelli]

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.

They also do it because they want to limit game-breaking things being discovered. FFXI for example, the great TP nerf dealing with asuran fists with relic knuckles. Due to how h2h damage was calculated, this was a 34 damage weapon that gave 20 tp per fist, with 2 attacks per round. After getting tp (2-3 attack rounds, or an icarus wing), they would need to land 5/8 hits (62.5% accuracy) to get 100% tp. Since it was a 34 damage weapon, mnks could still do ~800 dmg with asuran fists, and then have tp to do it again, and again, and again, without ever stopping.

Now imagine if people had stats to crunch together. It could result in some unintended OPness. People mentioned that WoW shows such stats and I remember a fuss over Hunters stacking shaman gear/stats (?) and having a ridiculous arcane arrow.

[Genz]

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.

No.
It would be meaningless in FFXI because, like a lot of other RPG, calculations involve enemy stats and enemies have a lot of special characteristics and traits.
Estimation is possible, but the variety of enemies makes it limited (for example the game can tell the player character has around 90% hit rate on most enemies with his current equipment, but it no longer work against an evasive enemy)
Giving accurate number like the OP is suggesting is only possible in shallow games like "modern" MMO.

[NessaWyvern]

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.

FFXIV Devs: "Figure it out as a community" "Don't use parsers/talk about using parsers"

Community: "BAN ALL PARSERS" "RAIDERS ARE TOXIC" "STOP LOOKING AT MY GEAR AND MELDS"

... They really need to put additional info on secondary stats.