For how much the team prides itself on being in tune with their players and listening to their feedback, this in particular was almost heartbreaking to hear. I realize it would most likely cause a huge uproar if they actually told us who they listen to when making changes so they'll never tell us, but it's the whole bait and switch of "go to the forums and tell us what you think, we are monitoring feedback" followed by "oh, we didn't actually care what the feedback said" that really gets me.

Regarding the confidence in their design... I'm really conflicted. It seems like the desire to make everything as braindead and streamlined as possible stems from them wanting to please everybody. This is something they've doubled and tripled down on time and again. It was some two expansions ago I think that Yoshi-P straight up told us that he is happy with how healers are and that he wants healers to heal even though... the game they make is literally nothing like this vision they seem to have. So they seem to be confident about something at least. Unfortunately that "something" is that every class should play the same and anything that is even remotely different gets immediately smashed back into the mold. They first did it with tanks, when DRK got everything fun or interesting about it ripped off and even given to other classes. They then did it with healers, albeit in a roundabout way with the "pure" and "shield" healer paradigm along with the single damage button change that they've kept to this day. Lately I feel they've been doing it with melee. They reworked monk into the bastard child of NIN and SAM. Then they made both MNK and DRG religiously alternate between their two combos. Then they made the two-for-one style of combo switching that we have for both NIN and MNK now, plus the new VPR that also religiously alternates their "two" "combos". The only unique mechanic left among the melee is NIN's mudras I guess. RPR is still nominally different from the bunch but it's still a fairly skeletal iteration of a DPS job that plays more like a tank. With this in mind, it feels to me like they're trying to pummel all the melee into the same mold, like they did with tanks.

So with all that being said, they are apparently confident about wanting to make everything as cookie cutter as possible. Same job, different visuals basically. So I guess what I'm trying to say is... I don't think they lack confidence in design, I think they lack confidence in communication. They probably realized a long time ago that if they keep doing it bit by bit instead of all at once, there'll be less pushback and they get to keep their brownie points with the gaming community at large as a team that listens to what their players want.

On the other hand, I kind of get it. It's clear by summoner's rework being extremely successful that this is what the majority of their playerbase wants. The ones who pay the bills. I just wish they'd leave SOME JOBS for the rest of us.