Quote Originally Posted by Kaurhz View Post
But any given piece of content can only be as fun as the core systems supporting it (e.g., the ability suite of crafters, gatherers, and combat), when you reduce that so much, you only inhibit the fun factor of any given feature you decide to introduce.
100%.

A huge part of why even dungeons felt interesting in ARR and HW was because back then jobs had a very high skill ceiling. There was always something to do and something to think about even in dungeons.

With that high skill ceiling and depth, jobs become content in and of themselves. Learning to master a single job became fun. And it helps make content like FATEs and alliance raids interesting because even when you've seen the same mechanics a hundred times you may not have really thought through how to optimize on each job mapped to the fight.

At least for decent players this does not exist anymore. Every job just feels like carbon copies of each other, especially the healers and tanks. I swapped to Red Mage and Gunbreaker in EW and just casually got 99s and 95s in Savage and Ultimate after mainly playing healers even though I've literally never played them before. This shouldn't be possible. It's because jobs are so braindead and so similar to each other now then once you have mastered the core ideas of keeping uptime there is nothing else to master on each job, except BLM before all the gutting. Now I actually struggled on that job in EW and it took effort to get good and learn nonstandard. But alas that is the only job where it takes any effort to become good at on top of the skill you've acquired from raiding in general.

This 100% wasn't possible in Heavensward and to a lesser extent Stormblood. I toyed with Summoner in HW and just reading Hai Hai's guide and learning the triple weave opener took weeks to get to an acceptable level of performance. Now you want me to swap to MCH and pick up the job in a day or so before we do a week 1 kill of Savage and meet the DPS check? Fat chance back then! You'd be completely griefing your static. In EW and DT? I literally don't even need to practice on a dummy before going in.