Ability unlocks are too gradual

I came back to this game and started a new character because I wanted to start fresh. I had forgotten how dull the game is on a low level character. I'm tired of this notion that new players are complete idiots and need to be spoonfed like a infant child. A lot of MMOs have incredibly dull classes at low levels, but FFXIV is one of the worst in that regard.

Take Lancer, for example. From level 8 until level 26, your optimum DPS is spamming Impulse Drive over and over and over and over and over and over.

Melee DPS seem to suffer the most from this. Heck, even at 26 Lancer doesn't get that much better. You're just spamming a different extremely boring combo over and over and over.

It's not until levels 40-50 that jobs even start to feel remotely interesting. This makes leveling an alternate class/job or getting level synced a chore.

I'd like to see class complexity accelerated a bit.

This is partially true. Yes, low levels are slow, below twenty is horrible but thankfully pretty quick. Up til thirty, some classes just suck. Getting the job crystal and a couple more abilities at 30, starts thing going better. But, yes, 40+ is usually the best in all classes/jobs.
One thing to consider though, is longevity. FFXIVARR is set up to succeed for years, it can't start out with all the iconic abilities because it would stagnate/explode with too many abilities later down the line.

XI had over 99 abilities for some jobs; yeah, it was possible to macro in them all; no one would because it wasn't efficient. Cure I would pretty much stop being used after you got Cure III, Cure III would rarely be used after getting Cure IV or was it V....? Macro combinations was insane, but searching through a spell list mid battle was cause for party danger.

Wow, I know the hated game, has actually been pruning abilities back, outright removing some, bundling them with others. The whole newest expansion has NO new abilities, just a series of passives that buff current abilities that survived the ability wipe. This was very detrimental for a lot of players. They gave what people wanted, lots of abilities, class fun leveling, etc...but it had to be edited several times; stat numbers had to be changed, because the game went into insane numbers following the trend.

XIV is keeping itself from falling into either category. Is it slow? Yeah, sometimes. Does it get better, yes--would be a whole different problem if it didn't.
Additionally, some classes feel worse then others and that feeling is different player by player.

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Originally Posted by Asheilin

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too many abilities means variety/versatility(or maybe just enough to make things less linear overall), at current your given every action and are expected to use most of them(rampart and sentinel do the same thingO_o), paladin has the least amount of attacks(1 combo with branch off to a mp drain)

the quirk of higher spell ranks in 11 was due to bad scaling with MA/healing(my assumption), however the tp system allowing more choice when using WS was great, charge, use at 1k or save for the bonus later(been ages since i touched my prima guide)