Anyone else miss the game before jobs?

[Shurrikhan]

I only miss it insofar as the concept of being able to form our own "jobs" out of a variety of synergistic and compensating skills and traits. That said, the skills at the time, though not for lack of possible fixes, did little to encourage truly creative uses or toolkits.

Not quite trolling:
Then again, I might go so far as to say that even classes shouldn't have been a thing, instead having only weapon- and role-related learning (skills, traits, masteries, whatever), with some overlap, which synergize well with almost anything, and archetypal or "echoic" (job) learning, which are permitted to synergize with fewer in order to be better in keeping with their theme, and of which only one path can be taken until level 60 (at which point you can "multi-job" (e.g. a Paladin with Summoner affinities summoning aetherial swords or aetherially extending his shield, a la Dissidia Arcade's Warrior of Light).

[Saccharin]

The problem has and will always be balance. YoshiP has a real hard-on for absolute balance where you could play whatever you want and still achieve stuff.

Because players have a "hard-on" for balance. 'Gamers' these days will pick the best dps job as others are 'unviable'. You either cater to that mentality or you sink (like 1.0).