I think the reason why the culture developed a bit differently over here is because of smaller raid sizes, ease with which you can swap jobs, and ease with which you can rerun the fights multiple times without having to clear trash packs. So you finish the tier, your WHM swaps to AST and takes turns padding everyone individually with Balance cards. I think it eventually reached a point where it was sufficiently prevalent that the numbers themselves lost their value and everyone started to find them a bit silly. The new parameters were necessary for them to stay relevant in this game.

Numbers are only useful if you know how to critically evaluate them, same as always.