"I don't want to think while I play, so no one should be allowed to."

[Payotz]

There have been a lot of things done that feel maybe 'that took away from people who liked that. . . ;/"

But that's exactly what's happening. Instead of just lowering the skill floor and making the jobs accessible, they gut the skill ceiling in half, remove core mechanics, homogenized everything, alienated the core players who loved and mastered the job and even in some cases, the role, effectively removing room for skill expression and removing content from the people who loved that, when you can still just press 1 2 3 and not hit positionals as monk to even complete casual content?

Why would you remove Aero 3, Misama 3, Bane, Shadowflare, Eye for an Eye, Palisade, Kaiten, Monk's Raptor Form positionals, and Bard song and DoT synergy?
What's the point of it when people who don't wanna engage in the system... can just choose not to when they are still in the game?
Why did they remove that aspect of the gameplay when it never even mattered for people who are perfectly content at the very low skill floor?
How did removing all of that affect John "1 2 3 no positionals lmao " Monk's playstyle? Was it worth removing a fundamental part of how a sizable population enjoy the job?

NO

Why can't the fact that the jobs are accessible AND have room for skill expression coexist?

This is not gonna happen anytime soon (or at least I hope so), but this is like them removing the options to remove echo and go into content minimum Ilvl and synced.

And even then, right now there are no options to experience pre-nerf Orbonne. There are no options to experience the old job design in old hard content.
Hell, even MINE doesn't even accurately scale properly. You're still powercrept to shit because of potency changes, so Coils and Midas are still easier than when they were back then, even post-nerf.

Even UCOB and UWU have laughable dps checks because of potency powercreep.

So why is maintaining an aspect(the skill ceiling) of the window where you experience the game's content(the jobs), that a sizable population loved (us) when it won't affect Sylphie "Cure 1 spam" if there was extra dps buttons or not?

I reiterate:

The design philosophy of making the gap between the skill floor and the skill ceiling barely visible so people won't feel bad when they're not good is not good.

What they're actively doing with this job design, with every role, is to effectively make it so that a new player can pick up a job, and feel like they're making optimal use of the job after barely any time investment.
("OH LITTLE TIMMY YES YOU NOW ARE A MASTER AT THIS JOB WITHIN TEN MINUTES OF HITTING THE STRIKING DUMMY!")

THAT IS A BORING WAY TO DESIGN JOBS. FUN SHOULD BE MORE OF A FACTOR IN THE DESIGN PROCESS RATHER THAN GUTTING DOWN JOBS TO GIVE PEOPLE A FAKE FEELING OF ACCOMPLISHMENT THAT THEY DONT EVEN CARE FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Adding more complexity on top of the base jobs, the base rotations, is not gonna matter for people who don't care about them. Just like how people still spam Cure 1, when Lily GCDs and Cure 2 exist.

It's not gonna lower the skill floor, cause you can still function in content designed for casuals. More dps buttons ain't gonna mean there needs to be dps checks in Casual Content. Casual content will be as clearable with a healer who 1111111 2 1111111 or actually utilizes all their dps buttons. It doesn't matter if the skill ceiling gap is wide, because the skill floor is still low. The jobs are still accessible.

Where it does matter is in Savage and Ultimate, and frankly those are the people who WANT to be better, who wants to feel like they're improving.
Who wants to feel like they're progressively inching towards a high skill ceiling.
Who WANTS a skill ceiling.
And frankly, that's what's missing from the job design ever since 5.0 .

Bring back the skill ceiling. Make being better at X job FEEL BETTER . Stop trying to forcibly remove the skill ceiling to cater to people who are perfectly content to stay at the skill floor.
People aren't asking to raise the skill floor. People are asking to raise the skill ceiling instead.

But at the same time I really don't like nor want a game that is like "you want it, you got to WORK FOR IT" particularly if it's going to involve relying on others lol.

I mean it's an MMO. Respectfully, I don't think the sole focus of an MMO is supposed to be solo content. I don't think an MMO should be forced to become single player.
Sure there should be some solo content, but the major draw of an MMO is to come in, make some friends, do dungeons, explore, do high end stuff, and generally just have fun, and honestly, that should be the main goal.

Solo'ing stuff is fun, but personally if I want to solo bosses, I'd play Monster Hunter. Demanding that solo content be the sole focus of an MMO is like demanding that League's focus should be the You + 4 AI vs 5 AI experience.

It's a lil nonsensical.

If anything, what's missing from the game is 4 man content that won't need people to read guides, and actually play on the fly. Something like Deep Dungeons, but more variety and you can put the gear that you bought with tomes or whatever into it.

Something like Mythic +.

And I reiterate, you don't need to engage with the content if you don't. That's fine. What's rough is that what little content that's actually being catered to the people who like that, is slowly being reduced.