All the fights are heavily scripted. If fights in each phase had 5+ variations in what the AI(and if it's scripted AI is doing very little decision making anyway) decides to do then I might consider fights complex. Only thing that realistically makes fights hard is failing a mechanic and you get one shot(artificial difficulty) because of it which then leads to a party wipe if you can't meet a DPS check. And honestly all of the big fights in the game should have independent Tank, Healer, and DPS checks on top of party coordinated checks(you know like stack markers, party splits and the enrage where boss wipes raid if you don't kill the last 5% HP in time).

Job classes should have their each unique playstyle that separates themselves from everyone else instead of heading down the DPS Warrior Fell Cleave 2 minute meta rabbit hole where the only thing that separates them is aesthetics and appearance.

PvP does things right where jobs have a clear identity alongside a personal Limit Break that they build gauge for by doing stuff or overtime in combat. Give classes stuff that says "Only a BLM can do this and only a NIN can do that" would go a long way.

All the jobs in the game are easy to learn hard to master due to the necessity for everything to be accessible to everyone of all skill levels starting from rock bottom.

Only jobs I'd consider difficult or is the right word stressful is Healers. But it's not because of fight design. It's due to bad players causing the stress if they are bad at the game or just new to playing.

Until fight design starts off with easy stuff in ARR and then moves onto more complex things like stack markers and then even later on gives debuffs for players to keep track of it's going to remain faceroll.

And the only reason endgame fights were even hard was the gear they gave you kept you undergeared for the content on purpose. And once you get into what gear actually does it's actually pretty worthless in hindsight and you never feel stronger.

It's why your defense and DPS/HPS gets reset at the start of a new expansion. Feels awful half of the time.

Not really sure what the answer is. It amazes me that FFXI has great job complexity and identity and a subjob system that amplifies the main job you play but in XIV it is so cookie cutter in comparison.

But I think XIV has done things a certain way for so long it does not know how to do it any other way. It is a worn leather shoe that is rough and rigid and you've just grown accustomed to wearing it you can't imagine wearing anything else.