i know what you mean madi, i didnt feel a special connection in any of the classes or jobs in 14. i was very dedicated to dragoon in xi and was seeking something on the same personal level. i keep telling myself that the right job for me just hasnt been introduced yet but i also contemplate if that is truly the case. most the jobs play exactly the same way, despite their better efforts there still isnt asigned roles or nearly so compaired to xi. it works both for and against it. in xi you had melee classes but each had a sub specialization, game style, and interworking within a group. xiv you have melee who are more or less just melee and very interchangeable. it works that groups dont have to be picky about whom they have along unless they really want to be, wherein xi you had to really weigh on what mob you were fighting and whom your other group makeup was and also any bias they may carry. so being more generic has its ups but i also feel like i lose out without a more clearly define role than spam 1 until its dead.

I think someone mentioned at some point that they're trying to balance out the mage and melee jobs. So that's why they are releasing 3 new mage jobs for ARR. Once that gets balanced out some, they can move on to adding the other melee jobs that people want. DRK, THF, NIN or whatever.

Even switching jobs in the middle of the instance.

Honestly, if NIN was released that would be awesome but more of a debuffer than the tank it was made to be FFXI. When I first started FFXI I became NIN after being a warrior and remember that getting invites like crazy they asked me to "tank" which was weird but I said "sure I can do that" at the time I had no Utsusemi Ichi or provoke and I thought I got this

14 was all a big pile of moves no matter who you where. that might have been different in the higher instances but i never had a chance to do em

Haha that reminds me, of my first month on XI. Originally I started as a white mage then a friend asked me to switch servers so I rerolled and decided I wanted to become a dragoon. I was armed with the first edition Brady game guide and thought it was the FFXI bible. It advised to to level whm to 5 to sub to warrior up to level 30 then I could go get Dragoon. And yes that is what I did.
I'm so shocked anyone ever invited me to party..with my level 5 whm subjob. I'd cast cure 1 on myself and heal for like 20 hp then rest because it drained my entire mana pool..losing all my TP. People would ask me to tank and I would refuse because I was too afraid to die.
It's really an embarrassment reflecting back but I think I turned out pretty ok in the end (even if I never lost my stubbornness.) But at the time I was so sure of myself that I was doing the smart thing because of that blasted book.

Going back to XIV, the simpleness to jobs works well for pick-up-and-playability which most the demographic these days requires. Like Ridere pointed out, even if I had more fun personally with XI's original grind fest, most people would be hard pressed to find the time or attention to do so. I kinda hope that they will eventually introduce advanced jobs that do require some degree of grinding (albeit perhaps not as intense as XI) as sort an optional flavor of game play and reward for those people who really do want to invest into it).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as of ARR this isn't possible. Once you enter an instance, your job gets locked, just like Hamlet did.

As for identity, you guys just need to pick a job and be a stubborn asshole about using it even if it sucks, like me.

I hope not, i loved job switching several times throughout an instance to optimize the run, was so much fun.