I hope you realize that jobs with that level of "options" were pretty few in FFXI (Blue Mage and Puppetmaster) and were added years after the release of the game. It's not impossible that some day we'll see the same in XIV.

In contrast, physical DPS jobs are far more interesting to play in XIV.

Mages can go either way. FFXI had far more spells, but mostly consisted of spells having the exact same function:
- one status healing spell for each status effect.
- elemental series spells all did the same thing but with improving damage.
- cure series spells all did the same thing (mostly, Cure V at the time was a bit different) but had improved healing.
- etc, etc for most spell series.

FFXIV already has a problem with certain spells falling into disuse, imagine how it was in FFXI. So, the argument is whether you prefer a long list of spells, but most of them being outdated or unused, or a smaller list with most of them being relevant.