The big problem with Red Mage having a greater amount of Melee time beyond the obvious "Red Mage is a caster DPS not a melee", or the amount of time that would take for an overhaul is that any additional time spent in Melee range will force it to compete with actual Melee jobs for uptime. Right now the Melee combo is so quick that it's unobtrusive for the flavor it adds, but more than what Red Mage currently does and there's likely to be problems.
More Melee options could be added in the form of more combos with the same activation requirements though. You'd still have the Enchanted Riposte>Zwerchau>Redoublement combo, which would give you a status that would alter your next Melee combo into something like: Enchanted Ballestra>Botta Drita>Stromacione (obviously could be named something else, I just grabbed a bunch of terms from Italian Sword treatises). They might need to fold each combo together into a single progressing combo button akin to a PVP combo for bar space, or just have the Redoublement combo upgrade into the Stromacione combo equivalents when under the effects, but that would add more Melee flavor without creating positioning or gameplay flow issues.
As for not getting any huge additions, I'd say most jobs really didn't really change from their playstyle in Stormblood. Red Mage got some utility skills to help with mobility and positioning, and it's shiny big new thing was a secondary Finisher that follows up your first finisher. That's about on par with what every other job got barring Summoner, Ninja and Machinist. the latter two which were unplayable on launch from their additions and the former which was basically a whole new job.
Besides Red Mage could have it worse, most people enjoyed Red Mage in Stormblood and it's gameplay loop is still satisfying. It's not like Monk which was despised in Stormblood and they just rereleased that version but with less rotational skills and not even a new finisher addition while spending months saying they were taking feedback.