Is it fun?

[Semirhage]

I too am a relic of the past, having played EQ from a few months after its release in '99 until 2010. I have a great appreciation for what developers did to make "crowd control" classes like chanter feel needed without worrying too much about their place in the overall picture of DPS. It seems FFXIV players are very one-track-minded when it comes to DPS -- regardless of role, people have a great need for DPS above all else, because that is the only metric by which they are judged by their peers. I long for the day when Squeenix bucks the trend, and creates the need for support classes without fear that a lower damage output would make them undesirable.

This is a natural consequence of Squeenix's job design philosophy. If all party comps are supposed to be viable, then nobody's exclusive capabilities are mandatory. If you make specific mitigation, debuffs, or what-have-you points of distinction between jobs, then those things will never be required/make clearing an encounter significantly easier due to point number one. The only thing that everyone can do is DPS. It's the only metric that ends the encounter faster, and the only metric that (with the occasional exception of weird boss behavior when you phase early) doesn't have a cap on its usefulness. You're basically always rewarded for doing more damage in FFXIV. That's why the community values DPS. It's the only metric that makes a difference after you've covered your bases.

Edit:
To be fair, this is also a common design problem in other single player Final Fantasy games. There comes a point where...why would you Silence or Slow an enemy? Just kill them. You can one or two shot them anyway. Don't waste MP on crowd control, etc etc.