In most MMO's, every patch cycle obsoletes the previous skill set. FFXIV basically acknowledged this is what normally happens and instead "stacked" the skills that are basically the same, and scales them by level/level-sync. But other MMO's also tend to lock you to one class/job, so if you pick healer in another game, you are basically picking the hard/hardest class to level because you do so much less damage and have much less of DPS toolkit, if any. Where as if you pick a DPS class in other MMO's, you usually end up with no self-healing toolkit at all and have to rely on expensive pots. So if you are really good at getting money in the game, it's easy. If you're not, then it's a grind either way.
Like for all the flack FFXIV gets for being easy, it doesn't let you faceroll all the content by acquiring the best gear and no skill, which is what many other MMO's do. "Here's new gear, it makes (easy content) so easy that you 1-hit-ko everything, including the boss."
If they tightened up the ilevel sync to the original release values, it would be more fun when replayed, but it would make gear pointless.