The people that think the Mages were not "good" are basically the people that do not know too much about music or that have been constantly fed with today's western media of mainstream music.

Keyboardists like Kenichiro Fukui and guitarists like Tsuyoshi Sekito and Michio Okamiya are the kind of talented musicians with musical knowledge and skill that far surpass any number of mainstream musicians, that simply fly above the average listener's head; because this average user has only extremely vague ideas on what constitutes "good" music: he may think of "good" music as either a simple melody or, at worst, a catchy tune. Whenever something more complex than a pop song, a hip-hop song or any kind of mellow song hits his senses, he immediately cows and cries foul.

A person that cannot appreciate a greater form of complexity is simply ignorant.

There's a difference between not liking something and not believing something is good. People that believe, and acknowledge, that they find no distinction between those two ideas (ie, people that think that the only thing that determines whether something is "good" or not is their liking it or not) have nothing to say to others and should really abstain from making judgements. It is inherently contradictory to emit an opinion that is admitedly biased and expect to be taken into account as someone whose opinion should matter on principle.

It is unfair to believe that we have not lost anything of value just because Uematsu will not refrain from making music even after the disbanding of the Mages. People that believe this forget, or fail, to mention that most of the arrangements produced by the Mages were actually not the work of Uematsu but the work of Fukui and Sekito, the founding members of the Black Mages. Whoever stupidly points out that without Uematsu there would not be a band called the Black Mages is completely missing my point.