14' s hunt for new jobs may be overlooking a simple solution.

[Lyth]

It really helps to have some context for this.

The original article alluded to in the OP comes from the 'We Are Vana'diel' commemorative event website created for FFXI's 20th anniversary. This particular interview, entitled 'We discuss Vana'diel', was posted as a conversation between producer Matsui with Yoshi-p as a featured guest, although it's predominantly about XI. The excerpt in question comes from Part 2, with Part 3 coming out in about a week's time. Just bear in mind that the main subject of discussion is FFXI.

Yoshida: The FFXIV staff in charge of lore and items have a great respect for FFXI, so I believe the references come from their playfulness and their strong feelings towards previous titles in the series. Mr. Hayashi* in particular has a long history of developing items for FFXI as well, and he seems to bring over certain names that would evoke the memories of players who have played FFXI. I’ve never given him specific instructions regarding that aspect, but I do ask him to check with me when he’ll be using the name of an item with great importance to the series.

* Yosuke Hayashi, currently the Lead Item Designer of FFXIV.

Matsui: It’s honestly quite a struggle to give names to things in long-standing titles like FFXI and FFXIV.

Yoshida: Job names are especially tough. (laughs wryly) After all, there’s no point if a job is similar to its namesake in name only; its gameplay experience needs to match their pre-established design too. At this point, I’m thinking we have no choice but to come up with brand new jobs that haven’t appeared in the FF series before.

I certainly see why, considering there’s already 22 jobs in FFXI and 20 jobs in FFXIV.

Matsui: As long as new game elements aren’t being introduced, new jobs are designed to fulfill a battle role that can already be filled by an existing job. That said, we can’t release a superior version of a certain job, and a new job that offers the same experience as an existing one would defeat the purpose of adding a new job. In that sense, it’s very difficult to come up with a new job.

Yoshida: From a system perspective, if the number of jobs is fixed and well-balanced, there’s no need to add more, and adding new jobs would obviously cause a stir. But nevertheless, we always need to add more jobs to keep providing new gameplay experiences.

A lot of this simply comes down to player expectations. A job that's never been in the series before has no history or legacy, so you're free to take it in whatever direction that you want.

Contrast that with a job that we've seen before, and has had multiple different iterations across the series. If you're not faithful most to those, players will complain about the implementation of it. We've seen some of this already. And there will always be limitations on what can or can't be achieved in an MMO. As such, we are likely to see more jobs in the future that are brand new to the series, like Reaper.