'I Think I've Fallen Out of Love with FFXIV'

[Arohk]

I think what Kaiten did beyond just adding damage to damage buttons, was to introduce player agency and choice when it came to kenki management.

Yes "The Illusion of Choiche" , Kaiten was never a Choice to use or not, it is a Mandatory Buff before every Iaijutsu,

Playstlye with Kaiten = always stay above 30 kenki
Playstlye without Kaiten = always stay above 10 kenki

[Valence]

Yes "The Illusion of Choiche" , Kaiten was never a Choice to use or not, it is a Mandatory Buff before every Iaijutsu,

Playstlye with Kaiten = always stay above 30 kenki
Playstlye without Kaiten = always stay above 10 kenki

On that I don't disagree, it removed one of the two kenki consumers that required to keep the gauge above a certain amount, and I personally dislike "keep your gauge above X at all times" as a gameplay loop (but that's just my personal taste). They did remove Dark Arts past SB for that exact same reason as it was used before literally everything back then, unlike in HW where you had to make choices (please DRK mains correct me if I'm wrong there, it's been a long time).
But the buttons still technically accounted a bit more than just "deals X damage" as it still interacted with the gauge and job resources. Else then you can also remove shinten, all resource spenders, everything...

[Absurdity]

On that I don't disagree, it removed one of the two kenki consumers that required to keep the gauge above a certain amount, and I personally dislike "keep your gauge above X at all times" as a gameplay loop (but that's just my personal taste). They did remove Dark Arts past SB for that exact same reason as it was used before literally everything back then, unlike in HW where you had to make choices (please DRK mains correct me if I'm wrong there, it's been a long time).
But the buttons still technically accounted a bit more than just "deals X damage" as it still interacted with the gauge and job resources. Else then you can also remove shinten, all resource spenders, everything...

Remove Kenki entirely, merge Shinten and Gyuten potency into Senei and Guren respectively, keep 60 seconds cooldown, adjust potency for the lost Shinten/Gyuten casts over 60 seconds, done.
You can extrapolate that design to every other redundant button.

Remove Meikyo, you won't need it anymore, just give Tendo Setsugekka a 55 second cooldown and two charges.
Remove Ikishoten, just give Ogi Namikiri a 2 minute cooldown.
Remove Sen entirely, consolidate the Sen generating combos into a single button combo that does 240->300->370 potency, make the damage and speed buffs passive effects, put a (assuming 2.08 GCD) 16 second cooldown on Midare, consolidate Midare and Kaeshi:Midare into a 1280 potency hit.

I could go on but I think you get the picture.
Button bloat and "illusion of choice" solved.