Quote Originally Posted by TeraRamis View Post
The one that most comes to mind for me, at least, is rogue. Personally, I would much rather play a rogue than a ninja is pretty much any Final Fantasy setting (I'm of the belief that Locke is more compelling than Shadow or Edge, but I know there are tons of people who would go the other way). A rogue is a thief; a brigand; a social outcast who lives off their wits. By contrast, ninjas generally operate under some kind of code - their trade is heavily influenced by eastern traditions, mysticism, Bushido, etc. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the transition from a rogue to a ninja is an enormous stretch - the difference between a dirty pit fighter who gets his or her nose bloodied often, and being such an astoundingly slick warrior as to be nigh-unhittable. FFXIV reflects this transition by essentially dumping the majority of the rogue kit the moment you become a ninja - you've "outgrown" everything from abilities to animations (ninjas and rogues don't even run the same).
It may have been a while since you've done these quests, but rogues in this game aren't lone wolf brigands who live by their own set of values. If you go back to the rogue quests, they are a formal part of the law enforcement of Limsa Lominsa, and have a code they live by. This is the core of all of their quests, so even if rogue were separate from ninja, your dream of how they would be implemented is already gone.

Also when it comes to animations... I hate to ruin it for you like it was for me, but the rogue weapon drawn walk/run animation is just the paladin walk/run animation. It's the same as every crafter/gatherer uses the paladin movement set, they didn't create one for rogue and one for ninja, they just had rogue copy over paladin. And other animations, the animations for your skills that copy over are still the same.