Combat system is beyond saving.

[Kaurhz]

It's not that they want people to quit, but they absolutely do not want expression of skill, and nor do they want players to feel like underperforming or failing are options. Which is a shame, because regardless of what they do people are always going to fail and underperform, whether this be on a skill-level, or just a level of outright lazy, and I will admit they have slowly been trying to actually compensate for lazy as well.

There seems to be a struggle discerning between actual difficulty behind something, and streaming versus just outright being lazy or uncaring for playing at even a fundamental level.

It's unfortunate because even on a casual level some of these things were fun to engage with and interact with, be it stance swapping or making aggro-management being a party-wide responsibility rather than individual responsibility. It made things fun everywhere.

[xivYuiM]

It's not that they want people to quit, but they absolutely do not want expression of skill, and nor do they want players to feel like underperforming or failing are options. Which is a shame, because regardless of what they do people are always going to fail and underperform, whether this be on a skill-level, or just a level of outright lazy, and I will admit they have slowly been trying to actually compensate for lazy as well.

There seems to be a struggle discerning between actual difficulty behind something, and streaming versus just outright being lazy or uncaring for playing at even a fundamental level.

It's unfortunate because even on a casual level some of these things were fun to engage with and interact with, be it stance swapping or making aggro-management being a party-wide responsibility rather than individual responsibility. It made things fun everywhere.

This is probably a less incendiary way to convey my confusion with the changes over the years. Other than occasional issues with top end content this game has NEVER been hard. Ever. The content that 99% of the playerbase consumes has always been easy and the old mechanics that you list are what made it fun. Ever since 4.0 it has felt like the goal has always been to pander to the people who were never going to engage with battle content in the first place. They are pandering to the type of person who will queue as BLM and ONLY cast thunder 3 over and over for the whole dungeon because they "don't feel like using anything else" and if you complain to them you get banned for harassment. Why the hell would they spend YEARS adjusting the game just to pander to that audience? They don't care. No matter how hard SE panders to that audience they will never do any combat content beyond roulettes and log out/afk in limsa.