What is your RPG playstyle?

[PaleYonder]

In other games, I love the freedom of Bethesda games and all who are similar; I want to vary how I play and what I play and discover something new whenever I get bored. In 14 I love being able to switch jobs at will; in my ideal world there'd be no jobs at all and I'd pick and choose freely from all the skills and set my own stats, but that's not happening, and that's okay too.

In fantasy settings, I usually play a mage (bonus points if I can summon things) or dual-wield swords, and I want full immersion and personal roleplay potential for my characters. In 14, I'm primarily a Black Mage, Summoner, Ninja and a Dark Knight (which for story/roleplay purposes I pretend is a pure mage, but I do enjoy the gameplay a lot), and I'm super looking forward to Viper. I loved Rogue, wasn't as happy with the switch to Ninja and just wanted an advanced Rogue back, and Viper has the potential to be what I was looking for all along.

In single-player games, I also like to get creative with magic, mess around with different spells and playstyles; 14 is a lot more strict about what skills to use and what job is like what. Speaks to how much I love the game in general that I take that compromise and restriction lol. And in general in RPGs, I like to be tanky by stats because I don't like to defend and be cautious; I prefer to throw myself in the thick of things and self-heal if necessary. 14 is set in its trinity of roles, but when I'm solo questing, I'm often on Dark Knight out of my favourite jobs because then I have to worry less about health.
In the only other MMO I play (ESO) I've been primarily a healer for a long time and gave it a try in 14, but it's not for me here - too busy, too squishy for so much responsibility; its just not my playstyle.

[Taranok]

For me, I like sitting still and casting. I like learning boss effects, avoiding spots they are going to attack, so I can sit still and enjoy the spectacle of the fight itself. Unfortunately, EW has been directly attacking this playstyle, and if the fight design continues this way, my preferred way of playing FFXIV, of sitting still and casting, will probably be dead by 8.0, just as how RDM and BLM's population numbers collapsed heavily in EW. It's just not fun constantly running around when you want to sit still and cast, regardless of how good your job is at doing this, or the tools available to do this.

[Post]

I love variety. I don't usually approach a game with a style in mind, rather I like to meet the game on its terms and if it gives me interesting problems to solve that's when I start to try different approaches to solve then. So, I like when they let me be flexible and try different things easily. FFXIV is great at this, yet was better in the past in my mind despite things like accuracy caps for gear, because the jobs themselves offered more variety in gameplay, partly the moment to moment rotation and partly the 'RPG' aspect which has been diluted with the removal of many things which were significant parts of the battle content before.

The other thing that drives me is liking feeling useful to a group, so I'll usually swap to a job that's not already covered, most geared, and especially if it's a new party trying to learn a fight, one that can help recover from more mistakes. Need a tank? PLD. Someone already on it? WAR. Need heals? SCH is easily the best. Someone on it already? SGE, because they're both way stronger healers than the 'pure healers' for the purposes of saving players and recovering. You know, the healer role. DPS? Probably RDM or SMN, because they're the only ones that rez, not because I enjoy playing them. Holy hell do I dislike playing modern SMN, went from my go-to to my f-u in one patch. But, it's the only goddamn dps that can rez sub Lv.64 and the party (understandably) doesn't want BLU. BLU's could be better, but it's relatively great for what I like about RPGs and problem solving.

Where before I could think about bringing things like slashing debuff if no WAR or piercing for extra ranged players, I basically only have the option to fill arbitrary party stat role bonus now and be a spare rez.

Now, we have all the freedom to change our job in the world and very little reason to change. Many feel very similar to play. That's why if I'm doing roulettes, I just /random 19 to let the game pick a job for me so at least I get some moment to moment gameplay variety, which is not the same as RPG gameplay variety but it's what this game (strugglingly) offers in its place