What makes a good Job mechanically?

[Payadopa]

in MMO theory, a job has an identity, that feels different from others.

I remember when Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter were pretty much the same characters with different gi colors. Fans considered them great characters once Capcom began differentiating them from one another. They were similar, but different.

Most jobs in XIV feel like Ryu and Ken when aesthetics were the only thing which differentiated them.

This may not be a XIV problem, but an MMO problem in general. I feel players should define their own roles. What is the job/class to you? Champions Online and Final Fantasy XI are the only MMO I know were players defined roles.

Ninja was not designed to be a tank in XI, players made it one. It could also be a powerful Melee, ranged attacker (back in the day with Shurikens) or caster.

SAM was designed to be an off-tank, players made it a DPS.

RDM was designed to be a melee mage of shorts, players made it a off-healer. RDM Melee can also be beastly.

MNK is actually a DPS, but it can tank (Counter tanking a mob in XI who used Hundred Fist results in DBZ -esque rapid strikes between you and the mob).

BST is designed to be a limited job, but can DPS heal, debuff and tank.......whatever you want....BST was known to take down monsters which required an entire group to defeat. Ironically, it was not OP in parties. Its' durability is what made it special. It could use whatever creatures were around as weapons. If one falls, charm another. or, heal the one you have before it falls.

Champions Online actually allowed players to pick powers from any other class in the game to create their own Frankenstein class. It surprisingly was not broken.....

I think one of the problems is the Duty Finder. It's just too static. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back to the days of XI where you LFG for hours but everything needs to fit into either DPS, tank, healer. No hybrids, no experimentation, no nothing. And it's made worse by DPS checks and enrage. Now all DPS must be equal. I don't know what the solution is. That's why we have game designers, but I think SE can't really afford to remove even more systems. There barely is anything left at this point. I never understood why XIV couldn't learn from XI, instead of being as different as possible. As per usual in this game there is no middle ground.