I feel like ‘simplification’ maybe isn’t the right way of phrasing this issue. It’s more like the jobs have been like, hollowed out? They’ve cut out so many of the things that made jobs fun and unique for the sake of balance, so now they’re just shells with nothing beneath the layers.

I think ‘simplification’ isn’t inherently a bad thing. Rather, it’s the ‘hollowing things out for the sake for simplification’ that’s the issue. And I think a lot of that is related to their overwhelming desperation for absolute job balance (which, mathematically, is nigh impossible unless all jobs are reduced to a single button with the same fixed attack potency, as far as I understand it).

I think it’s possible for the jobs to be both ‘simple and engaging’, or ‘simple and fun’. Complexity itself doesn’t inherently make something fun, just like simplicity doesn’t.

Also frankly, I feel like they’ve always had fairly unfair view of what players need to consider a job ‘simplistic’. I don’t think we’re so uneducated that we can’t understand the difference between abilities, or that we’re not capable of managing things like DoTs, buffs or debuffs. Part of the reason I think ffxiv’s ‘simplification’ has gone down so poorly is that they’re not listening and simplifying all the wrong things