Nerfing Archer and removing ranged attacks from certain mobs are two different things. There's absolutely no reason for every single mob in the game to have a ranged attack.
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I did play in 2003, and I don't mind archers one bit, even though I was a DRG at the time. They made a big sacrifice to their pocketbooks to play as they did back then. Arrows were expensive, and the mats to create them weren't much cheaper. That means they had to devote a lot of their time to farming and generating money, just like NIN did in order to blink tank. An acceptable trade off in my opinion.
Now, the economy in XIV isn't as prohibitive as it was in XI, but that's a separate issue all together. And Archers in XIV aren't as overpowered vs. melee inXIV either.
Possibly Either kiting (Having the brave gladiator run around while the mob is picked off, with mere taunts keeping it running in circles.)
or binding.(-GA spamming camps, Archer firing squad.)
Druids in EQ used to only know soloing, taking high level monsters and dragging them around, getting tons of exp in one drop.
You could have mobs that drag the player back to them, give the mob provoke/hate reset skills, or raise resistance to bind each time it is applied. I'm sure there are other solutions.
I used to love kiting mobs in FFXI as BST or RDM, never tried RNG but anyone that says it was "easy mode" either needed to find harder targets or never tried it. Soloing anything worthwhile actually took management of abilities, cooldowns and actually paying attention to the battle. Hell in FFXIV I can barely look at the screen, mash the same key on the controller and look; OMG I WIN!!! As lackluster as the current system is the ability to actually use tactics and strategy would be a godsend.