Through all the flowery prose I think I see your point. This game, while very nicely balanced, can be quite bland. Really it's bland because the developers went to the trouble of devising systems to ensure that classes were all more or less equal in their output and then they basically give everyone equal access to equal equipment.

In FFXI and many other MMOs that I'm less experienced with, certain BiS items would come from the absolute most difficult content, while others were crafted, came from older content, or even quested and several levels below the level cap. In this game, everyone's best equipment is the newest tome/raid equipment (with so few exceptions it's not really worth mentioning and more of a fluke) and everyone has exactly the same skills and abilities. There's basically the optimal setup (all appropriate CC skills and best equipment) and everyone else working toward the optimal setup. No branching or differentiation at all.

I hope that they try to remedy this in Heavensward a bit, but it would be dangerous to be overly ambitious considering the balance they have currently. Trying to add more freedom often results in simply creating several 'wrong' ways of playing that eventually nobody will use.