I'm confused; perhaps someone can help me understand. What is the complaint against removing the lockout exactly? If people want the raids for glam, let them glam. If they want the stat gear, let them stat. If people want the challenge, let them pursue the challenge. If they want to gear all classes, let them enjoy that.

I don't think I understand the (I hesitantly call it this) justification for a lock-out. We do pay a sub to play a game, and paid a cost on an expansion: why must we pay these fees only to enjoy the game at a pace decided for us?

'Players will burnout if they get to raid too much.'
There's pocket content everywhere to burn out on. This isn't really a valid argument without also applying lock-outs to other material. No one would support a lock-out on PoTD but people burn-out on it often.

'People could sell runs.'
People can still sell ultimate runs. Lock-outing the raids makes no sense by comparison. Even if it did, who cares? People still sell housing plots, mount runs, etc. If you aren't going to treat the actual cancer, don't risk killing the patient with the radiation. Hell people sell ERP, I don't test a text entry lock-out to block that RMT.

I just don't think I understand how FF14 benefits from this, outside of stretching out sub time in exchange for aggravating some of the player base. I think that's exactly what SE loses sight of these says: how can a change benefit FF14, not just the yen of it. They don't get more from me either way, as I'll be blue maging, or PoTD'ing, or Bozja, or what-have you.

How does a feature that seems to annoy people and doesn't have any obvious indication of causing damage if removed, have justification to remain? I'm not trying to take stabs, genuinely I'm curious if I'm missing something there. The drip-feed nature of this feels a bit uh... frankly, infantilizing. People would be pissed if they had a netflix subscription that only let them watch X amount of drama shows a day. Let them go watch their K-drama or whatever, they paid.

I may come off as entitled and perhaps I am, but I do expect to pay for a service and recieve it, not pay for a service and be permitted to access some of it once a week. Equally I don't think SE would accept it if I were to say 'I'm only paying you 50% of my sub this year, as I only got to enjoy 50% of your service.'

This isn't unrealistic, is it? This is a simple business exchange. Please, feel free to correct me, I'm genuinely curious what logic makes this so steel-clad.