I picture Bard being similiar to Corsair in XI. It doesn't completley not make sense to me. I don't expect a bard to hold the same damage potential (you can bet it won't multishot) as an Archer. And I highly doubt whatever they do to PUG/LNC/MRD will ever make them more desirable than an Archer (most people won't even attempt dungeon without a handful of archers).

The whole reason the producers are working on jobs is the bring in the FF lore back into the game. People used to complain at how AWFUL it was that we didn't have original class names in the game (it never bothered me, and wouldn't have). Also, the jobs I think will not be as highly customizable as your classes. A LOT of people complain as to how if you have one job at rank 50, it almost certainly isn't good enough. You need multiple abilities / etc from other jobs to be as effective as you need to be. Jobs I think will make a "rank 50 a 50" so to speak, and lose people a lot of frustration.
->(Note: I don't think personally leveling multiple jobs is a bad thing. I myself have done it. I fully don't expect jobs to replace classes ever)