Yeah, the homogenization has gotten particularly egregious. I have reached a point where I login to play for story content and first-clears of new raids, but then I quickly move on. The game’s combat system was always middling at best and I found fun where I could, but now it’s reached a point where optimization is the name of the game and seems to be all that matters.
They literally have everything revolving around balancing for these ultimate fights, content that less than 0.1% of the community engages with (this is additionally hilarious when you consider the current drama over cheating in that content right now). This 2-minute rotation crap where every class has to align to that timing for fight design has made everything so… choreographed. Like, moreso than ever before. And that’s really my problem with the game, everything is designed around maximizing efficiency, and every fight runs on a predictable schedule. It feels so artificial, streamlined. No unpredictability allowed.
Efficiency is so important to the team that cool flavor abilities are constantly removed. Samurai losing Hissatsu: Kaiten was the final straw for me that proved that the combat design team has lost touch with, at least what I think, what made the game fun. Did its removal harm the class’s DPS? Nah. You can still do big damage with Midare Setsugekka and move on. They shifted the numbers. The class functionally speaking, remains unchanged. Yet a good chunk of flavor and style was removed. And an element of resource management, i.e. decision making on the part of the player, was stripped away. The class lost something important. Reminds me of how they ripped Dark Knight apart, which had a clear identity in Heavensward, but now is this half-assed wannabe warrior with a strong shield that pops. Yawn.
I will be back for 7.0, but I am looking elsewhere for my next big MMO to play. I’m watching Blue Protocol closely and hope its action combat is engaging, but we’ll see. I tried PSO2 NGS but that was a shallow experience. I know Riot is working on their MMO but we probably won’t see that until 2025.