Quote Originally Posted by R041 View Post
SE can't force the meta 100%, and I think they need to realize that, how they haven't in the past decade is beyond me. They were probably thinking the same thing as you are here, every expac "If we just removed ####, it'll help us adjust #### to ####!" then kept chopping, and chopping, and chopping.
I think that SE do force the meta, whether on purpose or not, by buffing certain jobs higher, then other jobs higher than that a patch later so people can't rely on their job staying meta for long and that helps to make people not bother with metas as often.

I think you are simplying SE's intentions too much with this though. It wasn't all done to control metas. Removing damage types such as piercing and slashing was but a lot of the abilities that were removed were to make them easier to get into and easier to play for a casual player.

Like AST, I used to say.. "Okay, what do we need from me this fight - I can focus on certain cards and go Nocturnal" - But now I'd go, "Should I bring AST or SGE?", which also means I don't even get the luxury of changing strategy mid-fight or between pulls. Your choices are typically just "Who do I use this on now?"
We have to consider how useless certain cards were or would be now though.

TP was removed and we no longer control eachother's MP (plus I always saw these as useless and put them into Royal Road anyway). Spear and Arrow messed up rotations, some players wouldn't be able to adjust their rotation to the new timings and it would probably do that even worse now with how strictly everything needs to line up for 2min bursts. Bole's mitigation was liked and used by a lot of Astrologians, but so is Cure and just like there are people who spam their attack button instead of Cure, there were people who just kept fishing for the balance or spear/arrow as second prize instead of bole.