How in the hell can anyone say... make two parties of 4, when for example, you want to farm Odyssey to the best of your ability, but doing it with 4 in two different parties drags everyone down. You’re better off leaving two out and bring them in for the next, but somebody is always losing out not being able to go for two runs, or any at all. This applies for high tier battlefields, too. Say, for example, you’re only just managing wins with 6 (not everyone has god tier skills/gear to low man these), you can’t merely split that into two groups of 4 and expect to win.
Again, you’re having to rotate, and sometimes that means losing a key player who is helping you win no matter who you bring in. You spend the next few pops trying to get a win, and those two you leave out have to sit there and think, man... we’d have won if we were in the party. The point people are making, that some are obviously glossing over because they don’t care, is that 6-person content is extremely restrictive for most groups. It’s different if you’re multi-boxing, or you have a friend who also multi-boxes, and you essentially duo the content. That’s fine for you! It’s all good. But when you have a group of 7 to 11 people, some people who don’t have the jobs or whatever else holding them back will be left out and feel that pain of not being able to play with their friends.
This is a MMORPG. Massively multiplayer. That doesn’t mean you restrict content to 6 players, because there’s nothing massively multiplayer about it. At least give groups the option of doing it with more than six, even if that comes with some form of penalty. They’d still gladly play the content with that penalty because they won’t leave their friends out.
If, and it’s a huge if, a 12-person group can split in two and have 1) leaders who can sufficiently direct both in real time, 2) the jobs, and 3) the ability to win, then it’s an easy decision. But don’t expect all linkshells to have that, it’s not feasible. And people definitely aren’t gearing a bard, a healer, or whatever you need for that one piece of content in a day. Saying that is unrealistic for 95% of players. They don’t have the time or resources to pimp out a job that quickly with the sole purpose of joining the content, and then knowing how to play that job decently as well.
Yeah, some jobs you can simply jump on and smash TP/WS macros, but don’t tell me that somebody jumping on BRD will know exactly how, when, and what songs they need for every situation, on top of DDing efficiently. Same goes for tanking and healing. On anything challenging, I wouldn’t trust somebody who geared WHM in a day and said “HEY MAN I’LL CURE YOU TONIGHT!”. No way... I’d tell them to come back in a month after they’ve got some experience. I’m not trusting them to keep me alive on something with fine margins.
As was stated before, it’s about flexibility. Nobody is expecting content where you NEED 18 players, but at least allow us to have more than 6 without it being a major penalty. We just want to play with friends without having to tell them “sorry bro, you can’t play with us tonight because you refuse to play a job you hate like BRD or WHM”. I know if anyone ever told me it was a necessity that I play WHM for the group, I’d tell them fine, I’ll just leave and join another linkshell who won’t tell me to play a job I clearly don’t want to play. I agree players need to be flexible and willing to play several types of jobs, but you can’t force people on to jobs they have no interest in. This is a game and people want to have fun.