I mean I can see why that's position people would come to but I don't really agree with the conclusion just cause what this essentially boils down to ultimately is where the designers think the friction should be in a game. In the end it's a matter of taste and who do you think you should serve.
In the end for a game to be interesting there is always gonna be points where the friction has to exist and just deciding where that point is will always exclude or include certain groups of people. That's just inherently the reality of it.
Like when you're saying they should do that I can understand that you think this type of friction shouldn't exist but I hope it also makes sense from the opposite point that for other people certain types of friction are inherent to the engagement of a thing.
As for the argument "it's just an option" I've long maintained this is something that maybe be true in an idealized reality where we all experience things in a vacuum but as far as I can tell for most things this is not the case. So there are cases where adding an option can and will inherently change the experience for players that aren't even opting to use that option. Now I'm not arguing if that is right or wrong but it is definitely a real observation I've made.
To me the math is simple: The more players the game includes, the better it is for the overall health of the game. Hardcore raiders (of which I used to be on the top end of) hem and haw and will always do so, as that's the very nature of wanting to be "the best" (or thinking you are among the best) but the "silent majority" that is more midcore to casual will always be where the vast majority of the money for the game comes from.
You develop for different player levels through content, which is something the XIV team has been adding more and different types of over the years. However, the jobs (in general) and the actual mechanics for most of the jobs have become bloated indecipherable messes of system ontop of system ontop of system until a job creaks under its own weight and has to be stripped down to the bone or completely reworked.
They've taken steps to fix part of this with upgradeable skills and transforming buttons, and I've been advocating since ARR that the 1-2-3 button combo is mostly empty busywork that is being used as a crutch that everyone is afraid to let go of when it could be filled with things far more interesting.
Like, Gunbreaker is RIGHT there as an example of a job that takes its boring 1-2-3 button and makes it interesting with continuation and that job would be just as interesting if it was 1-2-1-2-1-2 or if it was 1-C-2-C-3-C and both of those options are infinitely better than the older system of 1-4-2-5-3-6.
To me, its been infinitely frustrating seeing the XIV dev team take years to put things into place that players have either noted to them multiple times or have asked for multiple times. It's their biggest weakness as a team and has been for about a decade now. It took them over 5 years to fix Living Dead, it took them a bajillion years to fix Wild Fire, fix their broken DOT system, move stuff to stackable buffs instead of stupid burst windows and now we see in Dawntrail, yet again, they are implementing changes people have been asking about for years.
They move so frustratingly slow and it's their biggest Achilles heel. Even in the combat live letter yesterday, for their brand new expansion, they are already kicking rocks down the road for 8.0 and basically telling players to "please look forward to it".
