Could have SE unknowing set FFXIV to fail....

[Luvbunny]

Nah, the trinity class is great. It is less flexible indeed, but it is far more controlled and easier to balance content. And it's not excluding jobs XYZ if you are not the VIP Job of the Month. FFXI is the worst, cherry picking certain jobs, and pretty much decide the rest of the rooster are crap since you are not monk, ranger, samurai, bard, scholar and white mage. Those are the VIP jobs of the moment on FFXI, Paladin is used heavily for some bcnms, but pretty much deemed useless for others. We do not need that discrimination here.

[Prototype909]

Nah, the trinity class is great. It is less flexible indeed, but it is far more controlled and easier to balance content. And it's not excluding jobs XYZ if you are not the VIP Job of the Month. FFXI is the worst, cherry picking certain jobs, and pretty much decide the rest of the rooster are crap since you are not monk, ranger, samurai, bard, scholar and white mage. Those are the VIP jobs of the moment on FFXI, Paladin is used heavily for some bcnms, but pretty much deemed useless for others. We do not need that discrimination here.

Discrimination happens in XIV anyway, just in different forms. In XI it's have the preferred jobs, in XIV it's "know the T9 dance or boot after one wipe" or "hit X dps". In XI fights are decided by players playing their job to a high level, in XIV it's 8 players playing a single player game and hoping the other 7 people don't lose their single player game. In XI if you make your own groups you can go in with non-standard compositions and still clear, just like you can make your own groups in XIV with people who know the fights or are willing to accommodate people who are learning. People prefer those jobs because they're time-tested strategies that guarantee a larger percentage of success with pick-up groups, no different than people not wanting to take first timers into Coil instances or EX primals.

[kyuven]

The trinity exists for a reason. There's even a deep seated psychological gravitation towards it even in systems that don't focus on it.

There's a degree of "blandness" to the classes purely to prevent what's called "character select forcing." We already see it with the overall preferred group make-up be: 1 WAR, 1 PLD, 1 SCH, 1 WHM, and 1 BRD for raids with the other slots filled by whatever. But that's NOTHING compared to other games.
In FFXI, certain job/subjob combinations were just plain laughed at.
In EQ1, there was a time when you NEEDED a group consisting of a warrior, cleric, and enchanter in order to get anything done. The concept of multiboxing was refined so people could have a healer in their party to actually do things. I should mention that EQ1 had, at launch, more classes than FFXIV has jobs. 14 classes in EQ1, with 3 of them being absolutely required until they got around to giving the other tank and healing classes new toys to play with.
Thankfully those days are long gone. I'll take the holy trinity over being pigeonholed like an EQ1 druid any day.

In addition, as some others have mentioned, the Support role is traditionally less popular than even healers and tanks. It's much easier to just give the different parts of the trinity some form of support and thus give variety and viability to the disparate jobs, rather than have ANOTHER role that forces long queues because not as many people want to play it.

[Morningstar1337]

There's a degree of "blandness" to the classes purely to prevent what's called "character select forcing." We already see it with the overall preferred group make-up be: 1 WAR, 1 PLD, 1 SCH, 1 WHM, and 1 BRD for raids with the other slots filled by whatever. But that's NOTHING compared to other games.
In FFXI, certain job/subjob combinations were just plain laughed at.

Are people gonna add 1 NIN to that list?

[kyuven]

Are people gonna add 1 NIN to that list?

Not likely. People really overestimate the value NIN adds to the party. a 10% debuff every 60 seconds for 10 seconds IF they manage to set it up correctly doesn't make them as infinitely more valuable as people seem to want to believe. If anything they just make the bards less overtly necessary. Number crunchers have really blown the whole situation out of proportion.
And Dancing Edge doesn't stack with Storm's Eye. Really aside from that 10% debuff, which requires more set-up than some people think, there's nothing Ninja brings to the table that another class doesn't also bring, while also bringing their own perks to the party.

[Amiantos]

Not likely. People really overestimate the value NIN adds to the party. a 10% debuff every 60 seconds for 10 seconds IF they manage to set it up correctly doesn't make them as infinitely more valuable as people seem to want to believe. If anything they just make the bards less overtly necessary. Number crunchers have really blown the whole situation out of proportion.
And Dancing Edge doesn't stack with Storm's Eye. Really aside from that 10% debuff, which requires more set-up than some people think, there's nothing Ninja brings to the table that another class doesn't also bring, while also bringing their own perks to the party.

Most warriors I know use Storm's Eye themselves so really all nin does bring to the table is that whopping 10 second debuff.

[SpookyGhost]

Most warriors I know use Storm's Eye themselves so really all nin does bring to the table is that whopping 10 second debuff.

That 10% debuff is pretty substantial at the start when all CDs are available, and pretty much every time after.

Also, y'know, Goad.

That said, I don't think NIN rises to the level of BRD in terms of utility, as it isn't a utility based job.

Name one job not accepted in end-game content.

Though this has been addressed many times and to be fair this job would actually do fine in end game provided the player has more i120/i130 gear, DRGs are being forced to switch to MNK or NIN for FCoB progression. Some have made it to t13, but I don't think any have passed it just yet. Also there was the entirety of 2.0 where many WARs were excluded from Coil.

[ReplicaX]

Balance to this day has always been a major issue in XI. For endgame content besides being properly geared in the eyes of the community they also expect gear swaps which were never intended for the game and a good portion wanted you to have 3rd PT apps due to lack of QOL features.

Most warriors I know use Storm's Eye themselves so really all nin does bring to the table is that whopping 10 second debuff.

Most Wars when I am on NIN don't even bother and that is fine. Still Goad them and put DE up.

[ruskie]

Are people gonna add 1 NIN to that list?

I don't think so. But I do believe the makeup is that +1 more a mnk/nin slot with the other two filled up with whatevers or based on the fight a blm/smn.

[Duelle]

Discrimination happens in XIV anyway, just in different forms. In XI it's have the preferred jobs, in XIV it's "know the T9 dance or boot after one wipe" or "hit X dps".

Except this is within reasonable reach of the player. You can't change a FFXI BST or PUP or <insert loljob> to make it work in a standard party setting and causing it to be accepted by the masses.

Here you can improve yourself to deal the necessary DPS or have enough experience/familiarity with encounters to be an asset to your team rather than a detriment. Big difference, and we still win.

Balance is a word which is thrown about like confetti at a wedding

Except that word actually means something tangible instead of being the product of blind emotion, unlike some of the other words that get brought up (accomplishment, interesting, unique).

If so, then what's the point in having Ninja, Dragoon and Monk? We might as well just create 'generic melee', 'generic tank' and 'generic healer' and leave it at that. By making no jobs able to stand out in a given situation it makes ALL jobs bland and sterile.

There's two more overly abused words. "Bland" and "generic".

General balance in a game like this means yes, DPS have to be comparable to each other. Tanks have to be comparable to each other, as do healers. The reason for this is so that you don't funnel people into certain classes and create/encourage flavor of the month gameplay. In spirit it follows the "bring the player, not the class" idea, which is fine because it is fair for all involved and puts skill, situational awareness and encounter familiarity on higher priority than whether you picked the "wrong" class or not.

You may try to play the debunked "but u cn4 ch4ng3z ur cl4zz" card, which I'll counter by saying people don't like being forced to play specific classes and prefer to play what they like. Case in point, I may have DRG and MNK at 50 but I don't play them. Reason? Lances and fists don't do anything for me. I leveled WAR to 50 because I wanted to see the storyline, but I strictly play PLD because I like it. And I'd hope the game doesn't try to force me to become a WAR or DRK or whatever other tank job is introduced for future content. Now, if I decided to change mains because I liked their gameplay better, then that's alright.