The problem with WoW-type raid-focused gameplay.

[Ryel]

That's because they kind of stopped with Class development.

They need to add more cross-Class skills. Some can be situational, some can obsolete earlier ones, the point is we keep getting new skills to handle whatever the open world throw at us.

Whether Classes end up OPed in the open world (remember raids will be Job-only) or not isn't that huge an issue. It's open world content, no one will get excluded

The issue with this is allocation of resources:

Open world content as it currently stands doesn't have enough depth to warrant adding considerations for classes, I'm sure by your comment you mean that classes don't have to be balanced around open world content because it doesn't require a party so class balance isn't a thing, but that actually works against tuning classes as well.

From a development perspective the argument would be as follows:

If open world has no meaning, and classes aren't going to be used in group content anyway, why add abilities that players will almost never use? That time would be better spent adding more abilities / actions to jobs with the understanding that they will see usage in ALL content and not just a fraction of it.

Sadly that's how it will be viewed, and while i personally love flavor skills as much as the next person i would still rather them flesh out jobs as opposed to trying to go back and retouch classes.

As for this:

The reason is ... balance. The more options you give the player in customization of their Job, the harder it will be to balance, as you have to take into account every possible combination of skills selectable - if you miss one and it ends up "OPed", player tears will drown out the sun.

This is still dependent on how raids are designed. If encounters were not balanced around DPS checks and how much up-time a DPS can keep on a mob in order to clear, but instead were balanced around the completion of mechanics / objectives you give jobs more leeway to branch out in unique design and ability.

Up to a point players were able to complete endgame content with classes (while overgeared usually) with often hilarious cross class combinations, I would still prefer the cross class system be expanded on jobs to promote more unique play (or at least a larger illusion of choice as that's what it'll be at the end of the day), as opposed to pointlessly trying to breathe life back into classes.

[Bishop81]

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Open world content as it currently stands doesn't have enough depth to warrant adding considerations for classes,

...

If open world has no meaning, and classes aren't going to be used in group content anyway, why add abilities that players will almost never use? That time would be better spent adding more abilities / actions to jobs with the understanding that they will see usage in ALL content and not just a fraction of it.

Sadly that's how it will be viewed, and while i personally love flavor skills as much as the next person i would still rather them flesh out jobs as opposed to trying to go back and retouch classes.

That needs to be fixed. Seriously, not everyone is super hard up on the challenge of raiding.

As I said earlier, I play for the atmosphere and to explore a fantasy world.

This is still dependent on how raids are designed.

Raid encounters are probably designed the same way they are in WoW.

The developers build the encounter around existing Job abilities. They remove anything if it doesn't play well with specific Jobs. Damage and mechanics are designed to be beatable by existing Job abilities and such that each Job is as close as possible performance-wise.

As you can imagine, the more Jobs (and Job variations; which are from their point of view pretty much separate Jobs), the more they have to test the raid encounters against, the more simulations they have to run.