Dancer Flourish is badly designed and not actually enjoyable to use

[Allooutrick]

Perhaps try to consider what counter arguments others will make. As others have pointed out, Dancer isn't intended to be a beginner class. Thaumaturge, arcanist, rogue, those are beginner classes. What's more, since this is near the start of your post, it makes for a bad first impression and makes it hard to take anything that follows as well thought out.

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Perhaps try to consider what counter arguments others will make. As others have pointed out, Dancer isn't intended to be a beginner class. Thaumaturge, arcanist, rogue, those are beginner classes. What's more, since this is near the start of your post, it makes for a bad first impression and makes it hard to take anything that follows as well thought out.

Nice. As always, it’s about appealing to the preestablished prejudice and focusing your argument on where other people agrees instead of having discussion on the arguable parts where other people disagree. Though I’m not saying my writing and organizing ability is blameless here.

But Ninja as a starter-friendly class? I really can’t agree with that.
The way I see dancer as an obvious class designed to make newcomers fit into the game, is because of its
- Easy rotation due to a lack of complex OGCDs,
-A “cheap thrills” type rotation revolving around and I quote myself, the “?? Disco phase”,
-Boosting someone else’s dps in a form of psychological feel-good instead of having everyone focus on their own dps,
- Tools for mobility to help newcomers
- Even a handy tiny aoe heal for the feel-good and stuff (I’m useful) compared to more complex and indirect buffs like bard Minne,
- All the flashy stuff, including improvisation during downtime (look I’m flashy)
- ETC.

A lot of semi-newcomers aka. HW/SB quitters would want something easy to return to, without having to start from square one. The “cash whale” type dream players would also have no problem of reaching higher level quickly, either directly or through exp boosts from gear and whatnot. Or want a quick secondary class to ease their boredom.

99 players would have 99 impressions of a class, and if designed by themselves, probably many different “true” images of a class. But what would not do, is to have a cheapened image of the class due to accessibility reasons (cough AST cards, Bard songs) infringing upon the uniqueness and spirit of the class itself. A line has to be drawn.

And my bottom line is, at least for me, I am not very satisfied with the ... innate feeling, whole representation of this dancer combat design philosophy. Sure it matches up with the “support others in spirit” and all, but it just feels ... off, weak, neutered. It’s a bit extreme, but try to see what I’m trying to express here.

Including how some people mentioned dancer was dull without flourish, so dancer with flourish suddenly becomes un-dull? It sticks out like a sore thumb in how it’s “supposed” to add so much for the class.

[HyoMinPark]

99 players would have 99 impressions of a class, and if designed by themselves, probably many different “true” images of a class. But what would not do, is to have a cheapened image of the class due to accessibility reasons (cough AST cards, Bard songs) infringing upon the uniqueness and spirit of the class itself. A line has to be drawn.

How has DNC been “cheapened” in any way? Comparing it to BRD and AST is a flawed argument, because those jobs have existed in FFXIV for 6 years (BRD; not counting 1.0 since that game is its own thing) and 4 years (AST); and both had very well-established identities that were stripped away with the release of ShB (in terms of BRD, party support; in terms of AST, versatile card system and Time Mage aspects to the job). The neutering of BRD’s support, overhaul of AST’s card system, and the removal of AST’s Time Mage aspects did infringe upon the already existing design of the respective jobs. But DNC has never existed in FFXIV before—how is it being infringed upon? Please explain how you think the spirit of the job is being infringed upon?

And my bottom line is, at least for me, I am not very satisfied with the ... innate feeling, whole representation of this dancer combat design philosophy. Sure it matches up with the “support others in spirit” and all, but it just feels ... off, weak, neutered. It’s a bit extreme, but try to see what I’m trying to express here.

Your main point of contention here is Flourish optimization—which, again, is not hard to do. If you’re arguing that DNC’s gameplay as a whole is now flawed (“off, weak, neutered”), you’ve shifted the goalposts of your original argument.

Really, the only thing that may be considered weak about DNC is its personal damage and potencies (but this is the case with all three physical ranged right now). It’s sitting very comfortably at the bottom even in terms of rDPS (and its aDPS is quite abysmal). Not sure what the potential potency adjustments coming in 5.1 will do for it. At most, you could argue about feather/proc RNG. Personally, I have very little problems with feather/proc RNG at level cap, but it does feel particularly bad sub-72. (Which, Flourish helps mitigate proc RNG by force proccing all of your Flourished skills every 60 seconds, and it can semi-help mitigate feather RNG, since feathers only proc off of Flourished skills. Personally, I also really like the Flourish gives us a free reason to use Bloodshower and Rising Windmill even against a single-target; I thought that was neat.)

Including how some people mentioned dancer was dull without flourish, so dancer with flourish suddenly becomes un-dull? It sticks out like a sore thumb in how it’s “supposed” to add so much for the class.

It does become “un-dull” with Flourish. The skill gives you more buttons to press; pressing 1-2 and just waiting for a proc is very dull, so it’s nice for Flourish to actually give them to you automatically. And moving into melee range to land your two AOE Flourished skills is also something I personally find engaging, as it requires me to move my character instead of just turret-ing at range. I encourage you to spend weeks playing DNC in a Savage, or other optimized, level-cap setting; and then venture into UCoB or UwU and sync down to level 70. You will notice a very obvious “dullness” to the way it plays immediately—the opener is particularly painful, because you do your standard SF on pull > Technical set-up > and then no Flourish so you gotta do the good ol’ 1-2. Not even a Saber Dance to break up that great fun...

I still don’t know why you’re complaining about it “sticking out like a sore thumb”—it’s a basic skill that you use on cooldown every 60 seconds to guarantee 5 procs. Before utilization, you manage any existing procs you may have so as to not overwrite them—this is just a simple “pay attention to your procs” mechanic, much like you have to do with BRD in Minuet and Mage’s Ballad (especially the latter with Empyreal Arrow and Bloodletter), or even with RDM (since you don’t want to overwrite any Verstone or Verfire procs). If you have to delay Flourish by 1 GCD, it’s not the end of the world, and it will still continue to line up with future buff windows. The only time it will not is if you have screwed up your own buff windows, either by delaying Flourish or Technical Finish too long. Practice helps reduce the change of that occurring.

Flourish sticks out like a sore thumb TO YOU. Be sure to clarify that, because you’re making it sound as if that’s the case for a lot of other players, and I don’t see any evidence of that being the case. Your entire argument about how the job is beginner friendly/should be beginner friendly is bordering on synonymous with “please dumb this job down even more”—DNC is not hard to play; and if you’re having difficulties with it, practice your rotation is really all I can suggest to you.

I’m sorry, but I cannot agree with such a sentiment. I’d rather not another job lose an added layer of something simply because you seem to be having issues with a particular skill.

An extra layer, depth in the form of multilayer gauge could be one possible way to add depth and identity to the class.

It seems odd to me that you’re asking for Flourish to have more depth when your opening post was complaining about how hard it was to utilize/optimize.

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Please explain how you think the spirit of the job is being infringed upon?

Dancer was designed after SE settled on their class design philosophy for this expansion and the foreseeable future, aka. vastly "streamlining" classes.
But before, they tried very hard in various ways to give jobs more spirit and silhouette. Dancer was infringed upon before we even first saw it.
It was only possible to ever see light in a variously "neutered" position.

...Your main point of contention here is Flourish optimization...
If you’re arguing that DNC’s gameplay as a whole is now flawed (“off, weak, neutered”), you’ve shifted the goalposts of your original argument.

No, my main point is that 'Flourish' is of bad design, and iconical of why the job feels badly designed, for me. Optimization aka. the experience of actually playing it was but one factor.
So I did not shift the goalpost of my argument. Perhaps I changed the scope of it. But my posted arguments are rarely about individual concerns (e.g. specific mechanics) alone to begin with, if they are, you'd usually be able to clearly and quickly read to the point.
The feather normalization is a point but I'll not focus on for now:
My main point is that as a "true" image of the class, this version would probably rank rather low on all possible versions in many variables, including but not limited to, how much a player can identify with, be inspired by, see this class as an aesthetic in logic, to be beautiful, instead of purely instrumental and balanced aka. neutered. To put it in another way, bard this expansion would rank among one of its lower points because of the lack of iconic support functions in its songs. I'm saying the same for dancer, but at even deeper levels. Instead of weak and unrepresentative songs, it's whole "song system" is weak.

It does become “un-dull” with Flourish. The skill gives you more buttons to press; pressing 1-2 and just waiting for a proc is very dull, so it’s nice for Flourish to actually give them to you automatically. And moving into melee range to land your two AOE Flourished skills is also something I personally find engaging, as it requires me to move my character instead of just turret-ing at range. I encourage you to spend weeks playing DNC in a Savage, or other optimized, level-cap setting; and then venture into UCoB or UwU and sync down to level 70. You will notice a very obvious “dullness” to the way it plays immediately—the opener is particularly painful, because you do your standard SF on pull > Technical set-up > and then no Flourish so you gotta do the good ol’ 1-2. Not even a Saber Dance to break up that great fun...

I still don’t know why you’re complaining about it “sticking out like a sore thumb”—it’s a basic skill that you use on cooldown every 60 seconds to guarantee 5 procs. Before utilization, you manage any existing procs you may have so as to not overwrite them—this is just a simple “pay attention to your procs” mechanic, much like you have to do with BRD in Minuet and Mage’s Ballad (especially the latter with Empyreal Arrow and Bloodletter), or even with RDM (since you don’t want to overwrite any Verstone or Verfire procs). If you have to delay Flourish by 1 GCD, it’s not the end of the world, and it will still continue to line up with future buff windows. The only time it will not is if you have screwed up your own buff windows, either by delaying Flourish or Technical Finish too long. Practice helps reduce the change of that occurring.

Flourish sticks out like a sore thumb TO YOU. Be sure to clarify that, because you’re making it sound as if that’s the case for a lot of other players, and I don’t see any evidence of that being the case. Your entire argument about how the job is beginner friendly/should be beginner friendly is bordering on synonymous with “please dumb this job down even more”—DNC is not hard to play; and if you’re having difficulties with it, practice your rotation is really all I can suggest to you.

I’m sorry, but I cannot agree with such a sentiment. I’d rather not another job lose an added layer of something simply because you seem to be having issues with a particular skill.

I could make Ninja more un-dull by introducing more chaos to its mudras. Give it a mudra-version of flourish too why not which oh wait, it already does! Two in fact, TCJ and Kassatsu. See how uninspired this kind of design is. It's a neutered down version for individual procs instead of procced combos. Much easier for newcomers to input.
But does Ninja feel extremely dull at level 70? No. Unlike dancer. This should be saying something to the core design quality of dancer's rotation, which it is overwhelmingly represented by under level 70 before it gets the end-game skills. Oh wait, what core rotation? Dancer never raided at level 70! It was only designed this expansion and to be ensured, to perform well in dungeons where it could utilize its pure AOE combo, and make newcomers feel they are playing a powerful class!
Flourish may be the sparkly, fun mechanic that it, mechanically wise, is. For a lot of players. But design-wise, I will shamelessly view it as some desperate design measure to make dancer have some guise of a powerful skillset at level 80, when in reality it's just a "here's a free proc train for your burst phase so you look like you are bursting a lot" smokescreen mechanic. It fixes nothing. It adds little qualitative-wise. I am sick and tired of these little number games SE plays as a form of class design, 150% mudra increase here, 5% dps increase there, use this within your burst window here, etc. It adds little to the actual spirit, flow, iconic playstyle of the class besides giving you more buttons to mash and quash bigger numbers on virtually same things.

Flourish sticks out like a sore thumb TO YOU. Be sure to clarify that, because you’re making it sound as if that’s the case for a lot of other players, and I don’t see any evidence of that being the case. Your entire argument about how the job is beginner friendly/should be beginner friendly is bordering on synonymous with “please dumb this job down even more”—DNC is not hard to play; and if you’re having difficulties with it, practice your rotation is really all I can suggest to you.

I’m sorry, but I cannot agree with such a sentiment. I’d rather not another job lose an added layer of something simply because you seem to be having issues with a particular skill.

It seems odd to me that you’re asking for Flourish to have more depth when your opening post was complaining about how hard it was to utilize/optimize.

So everything here is a reply based on you not understanding my main sentiment. Which I doubt I was able to completely express even here. My entire argument is not, dumb this mechanic down because it's complex/ I don't like it. It's "this mechanic is representative as a tip of the iceberg on a design philosophy which leads to compromises in the quality of final class designs". I have not explicitly express any specific ways or even theoretical ways to improve it as of yet, while you are putting words in my mouth in how I want to dumb it down then 'contradict myself', which makes no sense, because I have not and would not say such a thing. Of course it seems odd.

Ideally I would not pile on random layers of "something" either. There needs to be, has to exist, better ways to express a class than the examples of design I gave here just now. I don't know how much of a change of the combat system will it involve. It's complicated. This makes my position vulnerable when talking about topics of such complexity, and I appreciate players to not take advantage of that simply for the sake of winning an argument.

And finally, I know how this sounds, but normal players really would not see the difference or see things from this perspective at all. Most people are perfectly happy and content with nice stuff and it's not a bad thing. Many people can be pleased by a lot less. I don't want to say depressing things about what makes good money is good but if you are striving for artistic perfection and whatnot, you will really judge many things differently.

[HyoMinPark]

Dancer was designed after SE settled on their class design philosophy for this expansion and the foreseeable future, aka. vastly "streamlining" classes.
But before, they tried very hard in various ways to give jobs more spirit and silhouette. Dancer was infringed upon before we even first saw it.
It was only possible to ever see light in a variously "neutered" position.

Considering the job was likely only a twinkle in Yoshida’s eye in previous expansions, I don’t really think you can use the “imagine how it could have been” argument to back up your position of “this job was infringed upon”. You don’t know how they could have designed it in an expansion with more complex job mechanics. It could have been done exactly as it is now, with perhaps things like Flourish and Saber Dance at lower levels should they have kept the skill set as it exists now.

You also can’t use the infringed upon argument when you’re comparing DNC to jobs like BRD and AST that lost already established identities, which was around where you placed your comment about the spirit of jobs being infringed upon in the post I replied to.

No, my main point is that 'Flourish' is of bad design, and iconical of why the job feels badly designed, for me. Optimization aka. the experience of actually playing it was but one factor.
So I did not shift the goalpost of my argument. Perhaps I changed the scope of it. But my posted arguments are rarely about individual concerns (e.g. specific mechanics) alone to begin with, if they are, you'd usually be able to clearly and quickly read to the point.

If your post are rarely about individual concerns, why don’t you structure them to encompass the entire scope of your argument rather than what you’ve done in this thread, where you merely pointed out a single job mechanic you had issues with (Flourish), complained about said issues, and then tried to say that what you’re actually complaining about is DNC’s design as a whole a page later. People would likely understand you better.

My main point is that as a "true" image of the class, this version would probably rank rather low on all possible versions in many variables, including but not limited to, how much a player can identify with, be inspired by, see this class as an aesthetic in logic, to be beautiful, instead of purely instrumental and balanced aka. neutered. To put it in another way, bard this expansion would rank among one of its lower points because of the lack of iconic support functions in its songs. I'm saying the same for dancer, but at even deeper levels. Instead of weak and unrepresentative songs, it's whole "song system" is weak.

You’re still making a poor comparison here. BRD has existed in FFXIV since 1.0—it’s been a support job since then, and has always been the main support class since 2.0 and beyond. It being entirely stripped of that support identity (which went beyond just passive buffs on songs, but also included party resource management [Refresh/OG Tactician] and an offensive boss debuff to be managed using the BRD’s own resources [mana]) is not the same as the introduction of a job that literally didn’t have a presence in this game as we know it.

You’re hinging your argument far too much on a “what if” scenario.

I could make Ninja more un-dull by introducing more chaos to its mudras. Give it a mudra-version of flourish too why not which oh wait, it already does! Two in fact, TCJ and Kassatsu. See how uninspired this kind of design is. It's a neutered down version for individual procs instead of procced combos. Much easier for newcomers to input.

We aren’t talking about NIN—we’re talking about DNC. This is a strawman.

But does Ninja feel extremely dull at level 70? No. Unlike dancer. This should be saying something to the core design quality of dancer's rotation, which it is overwhelmingly represented by under level 70 before it gets the end-game skills.

I do think pre-72 DNC is dull. I’ve already stated this prior.

What would I do to rectify it and make things less dull at level 70? I’d actually introduce Flourish earlier. I’d rather we get it pre-60, personally; so that when one picks up the job, they immediately have a more engaging experience and learn proc management + Flourish management sooner rather than later. One could give the job the skill in lieu of Curing Waltz (level 56), and have Curing Waltz be earlier or later—it’s inconsequential to the overall utility of the job in its current form anyways, due to its weak healing potency and reliance on the DNC and their partner being stacked for the full effect.

I’d also advocate for Saber Dance to be brought down to an earlier level—at least pre-70—so that Espirt management is something DNCs have to consider earlier as well, much like NINs and SAMs have to think about Ninki and Kenki, respectfully. This would leave 71~80 DNC to perhaps get other skills in place of Flourish and Saber Dance—perhaps something more support oriented, since that’s its function in this game. Something that wouldn’t impact level 70 play too much, or that would build upon the existing toolkit without rendering it dull and/or incomplete in the skill(s) absence (you know, the way a lot of jobs feel at level 50 and level 60).

Oh wait, what core rotation? Dancer never raided at level 70! It was only designed this expansion and to be ensured, to perform well in dungeons where it could utilize its pure AOE combo, and make newcomers feel they are playing a powerful class!

I think that some level-70 balancing needs to be considered if the developers did not already consider it, simply because Stormblood’s Ultimates will continue to sync players down to level 70 until further notice. The same will happen when 6.0 releases and we’re all level 90 with the ShB Ultimates. However, I’d wager this balance was likely not considered simply because of the small amount of players that are invested in Ultimate-tier content; but I still think it would be nice to have all jobs—not just DNC—have toolkits that don’t feel dull or incomplete at certain level intervals.

I think that DNC is particularly undertuned at level 70 now in content that isn’t dungeons compared to the other two physical ranged—but my proposal above would likely go to rectifying that. I don’t think you’ve actually done anything or suggested anything to rectify what you are ranting about here. Coming up with potential solutions would be nice to see.

Flourish may be the sparkly, fun mechanic that it, mechanically wise, is. For a lot of players. But design-wise, I will shamelessly view it as some desperate design measure to make dancer have some guise of a powerful skillset at level 80, when in reality it's just a "here's a free proc train for your burst phase so you look like you are bursting a lot" smokescreen mechanic. It fixes nothing. It adds little qualitative-wise. I am sick and tired of these little number games SE plays as a form of class design, 150% mudra increase here, 5% dps increase there, use this within your burst window here, etc. It adds little to the actual spirit, flow, iconic playstyle of the class besides giving you more buttons to mash and quash bigger numbers on virtually same things.

I would prefer jobs to be more complex and I dislike the reduction in complexity and decision-making that a lot of jobs have seen in with the release of both SB and ShB. I don’t think simple potency fixes are the solution for some jobs—I think some need to be reconsidered in their design and flavor. This is speaking in a general sense; I am not talking specifically about DNC here. And I’d say that’s what you’re asking for too...but I’m not even sure if we’re on the what page you’re on anymore, because I can’t keep up with your arguments with the way you structure your replies. The last couple paragraphs that I’ve responded to are nothing more than ranting, seemingly for the sake of ranting.

You opened arguing about how Flourish was too complex to utilize/optimize, how it wasn’t friendly to new players, and how that’s bad because DNC is a job for new players. Now you’re arguing that it’s merely an illusion of complexity, and that it actually doesn’t add anything to the job other than to make new players “feel good about themselves”. So, which is it? Too complex, or an illusion?

So everything here is a reply based on you not understanding my main sentiment. Which I doubt I was able to completely express even here. My entire argument is not, dumb this mechanic down because it's complex/ I don't like it. It's "this mechanic is representative as a tip of the iceberg on a design philosophy which leads to compromises in the quality of final class designs". I have not explicitly express any specific ways or even theoretical ways to improve it as of yet, while you are putting words in my mouth in how I want to dumb it down then 'contradict myself', which makes no sense, because I have not and would not say such a thing. Of course it seems odd.

All I’ve really gathered from this is a rant with no discernible solutions to your proposed problems on your part. You’re fairly good at writing walls of texts complaining about things, but you rarely seem to come up with solutions on how to rectify them.

As for my misunderstanding of your point or my “putting words in your mouth”, you were the one who labeled the skill as “complex” in your opening post—it was literally your second sentence, after bringing up how this job is supposedly geared towards new players. I interpreted that as a “this needs to be dumbed down because it’s too complex for newbies”. How else am I supposed to interpret your complaint? Especially since your opening post didn’t give much to go on.

This is to say nothing of what I mentioned above, and how I can barely follow your train of thought now that you’ve brought up another argument of how Flourish is just an illusion of complexity. The structure of your arguments could use a lot of work if you would like to get points across without people misunderstanding them—and perhaps include the entire scope of what you want to argue, instead of pointing out a single mechanic when you actually want to argue more than just that.

Ideally I would not pile on random layers of "something" either. There needs to be, has to exist, better ways to express a class than the examples of design I gave here just now. I don't know how much of a change of the combat system will it involve. It's complicated. This makes my position vulnerable when talking about topics of such complexity, and I appreciate players to not take advantage of that simply for the sake of winning an argument.

If you don’t want players to point out the weak points in your arguments, don’t have weak points. Any argument you present should be well-thought out and structured. You can’t tell people to ignore the “vulnerable” parts of your argument simply so you can be immune to criticism of them. If you feel like you’re going to have a weak argument as a whole, it would probably be best not to not post it at all if you don’t want people pointing out the weaknesses.

And finally, I know how this sounds, but normal players really would not see the difference or see things from this perspective at all. Most people are perfectly happy and content with nice stuff and it's not a bad thing. Many people can be pleased by a lot less. I don't want to say depressing things about what makes good money is good but if you are striving for artistic perfection and whatnot, you will really judge many things differently.

Alright, if normal players wouldn’t care about something like this, then why did you open this thread with a complaint about complexity, and with a premise that this job is intended for new players? I literally said in my first response to you that players not into optimization likely would not see any complaints you have about Flourish optimization because they don’t care about optimizing the job. They just want to play it and have fun.

As for the tidbit about artistic perfection, I don’t know if you’re directing that comment at me or yourself. I’m not the one arguing about flawed job designs. Again, your arguments are becoming more and more difficult to follow, and I don’t think that’s due to my comprehension skills lacking. There just seems to be no decent flow to whatever point you’re trying to get across here.

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Well I thank you for trying very hard to engage with my opinion on the problem, but you are misinterpreting the structure of my argument, thus picking up the wrong key points, and being forced to cherry-pick workable argument points, which may work with the debate structure you have in mind, but not what I have in mind when writing to discern a problem. If we want to both take a step back, I'd almost say we are both arguing with ourselves. Not because we are having a monologue without own points, but because we are arguing with only the points we know of or can focus on. We are missing both the whole argument of each other, and not diving deeper into any actual theoretical territory.

So I'll try to keep it brief. I never really liked the kind of debate taught in high-school anyways. Or what was given as an example in Amaurot. Think of it not as taking positions and clashing absolute points, but how much reasoning stems out from into individual perspectives. Everything has their own bit of sense.

But I digress. To attempt to gradually frame what I think more clearly, the key things are:
1. Flourish has a substantially higher amount of thinking involved, in timing, proc and gcd alignment etc. compared to other cycles of dancer, thus "sticks out like a sore thumb". It is not stretched out no (unless you drift which you will), but it is a compressed bit of chaos. I personally sway towards overall flow and longer rotation cycles. This is a kind of personal ... preference, in class design. Thus I am inherently less admiring of the kind of "?? disco" chaotic burst phases iconic of dancer, and as characteristic of many other classes.
2. Furthermore, I think the specific example of skills like TCJ and Kassatsu, representative of "power-level increased procs to align with burst windows", a same design philosophy which dancer Flourish represents, are rather dull and uninspired
3. On top of that, most things cut from the classes this expansion, were class-iconic silhouette-building mechanics, such as bard songs, Ast cards, Sam thingy etc. while "dull" mechanical rotations remained, and SE actually realized this
4. All the "make dnc good for newcomer" points, including simplified rotation, good for dungeon-levelling, mobility, carefully timed to boss cds etc. I think were clear enough by themselves
5. Something can be complex but logical, intuitive, while something can also be simple yet frustrating and dull. It's about the aesthetics of logic, of immersion into how the class plays and holds themselves, and if this matches up with a "true image" players would have in their minds, or based on their personal preference. And I'm thinking, this "true image" thing is truly difficult to fulfill, and much theoretical discussion will have to go into it.
6. Which leads us to, solutions (or rather the pursuit of it). Let me tell a little joke first, "if I knew the solutions, I would be working at SE already". SE doesn't know the solutions. There is still not cross-class interaction, or meaningful party composition this expansion which is otherwise a staple feature of RPG and FF games. They don't know how to proceed with raid design besides "big boss in little room with a floor puzzle". They can't even get out of the 4 combat attributes in gearing up, or burst-phased raid-buff syncing based combat. Game is too big and production too tight for experiments. And you are asking me, to write some philosophy essay which can describe in depth, how to sync class design which needs to be practical and stuff, to deep player psychology and sync it with the franchise theme and style. No I just can't do that. I'm sorry. I don't think anyone can just start talking about something as complex as that and make huge sense.

But forgive me for making a fool of myself while trying. And not being extremely interested or motivated to proceed to the more difficult stuff when (no thanks to my own writing skills and organization) getting through anything on forums is so stalling at all.
And lastly, the above few points were not summarized with extreme care. They may be or may not be key points and may or may not miss out on some other key points.

People can only understand each other vaguely anyways until we find with absolute certainty some single point that can be zero'd in upon, then should be attempted the kind of debate you are fond of.
So until that, try to take in their overall views, predispositions, interest in certain topics and points, and their perspective. Yes, perspective is important, it can generate momentum to bring immediate logic further than normally "reasonable". And sometimes what is missing is just that little bit of distance.