Class names, how I feel about my character and it's developement.

[Malakhim]

You miss the point. FF2 still had a way to define your class as a thf or a blm or a whm or whatever.

7 still had a defined system. Aeris was a whm. Tifa was a mnk. Yuffie was a ninja. It was defined, regardless of what abilities you could customize them with.

8, same thing as 7.

In 14...you can give a Gladiator cure from a conjurer...but that Gladiator won't be a "paladin." You can give a Conjurer cure....but it won't be a "white mage." You can make your Con use fire...but it won't be a "black mage." Do you see what I'm saying?

Any ability you may have had to define your character role in FFII is just as present in FFXIV if not moreso.

Final Fantasy VII and VIII had characters that had set weapons and MAYBE the history/personality to go with them, but at the end of the day you could do whatever the hell you wanted with them. If you wanted Cloud to be a Blue Mage or Selphie to be a support mage? you could do that. Want Vincent to be a Black Mage and Squall a Dark Knight? Knock yourself out. You defined what the characters did. There were no set boundaries like in a traditionally rigid system.

The armory system is just an extension of that freedom. Whether you feel that it "ruins" your sense of identity or not, that's purely up to you, but if you want to say nothing like this was ever present in other games in the series, well that's just an outright alteration of fact.

Don't say people "missed the point" because they point out fact. You're starting to sound like you just came here to whine about it.