I'm familiar with the game Caysen is talking about, and I played it for a very long time before giving it up. The lack of the trinity, and everyone having their self sufficient capacities, resulted in zergs through dungeons with very little team work. I played an archer in that game as well, and managed to solo some packs of mobs, and even a boss (as a caster) when my party died because of those "utility" abilities. I'm not saying FFXIV:ARR is doing this, just what I perceived  during my time playing this particular game.
Personally I haven't messed with the cross class abilities of 2.0, but in 1.0 our options were plenty. Those options, however, didn't always result in making one's role in a team more effective or efficient. As an archer I was able to watch combat from a mid to long range vantage point, and I would see many of my teammates making very odd decisions not just with what they were using, but with what they would choose to ignore because "It looks cool". We weren't dying, and they were having fun, so there wasn't always any real harm in playing around.
As Caysen also mentioned; Limited cross-class skills is good. None is bad. Too many is also bad. SE's goal seems to be to generate camaraderie via forms of necessity and the removal of certain types of competition. We have our "holy trinity" of roles, class designs that are kept unique with limited branches into other classes, and the removal of the familiar FFXI exp grind/claim system means players no longer fall asleep while leveling or go into a rage because their targets are getting stolen.
There's also the addition of future classes and/or jobs. With the list of possible additions we'd be looking at a very saturated pool of abilities with overwhelming results without those abilities being treated more uniquely.
I really liked what I saw in the first weekend of Phase 3 (Besides animations. Whoah those animations.), and I've got high hopes for the mid to high level content.
Personally I haven't messed with the cross class abilities of 2.0, but in 1.0 our options were plenty. Those options, however, didn't always result in making one's role in a team more effective or efficient. As an archer I was able to watch combat from a mid to long range vantage point, and I would see many of my teammates making very odd decisions not just with what they were using, but with what they would choose to ignore because "It looks cool". We weren't dying, and they were having fun, so there wasn't always any real harm in playing around.
As Caysen also mentioned; Limited cross-class skills is good. None is bad. Too many is also bad. SE's goal seems to be to generate camaraderie via forms of necessity and the removal of certain types of competition. We have our "holy trinity" of roles, class designs that are kept unique with limited branches into other classes, and the removal of the familiar FFXI exp grind/claim system means players no longer fall asleep while leveling or go into a rage because their targets are getting stolen.
There's also the addition of future classes and/or jobs. With the list of possible additions we'd be looking at a very saturated pool of abilities with overwhelming results without those abilities being treated more uniquely.
I really liked what I saw in the first weekend of Phase 3 (Besides animations. Whoah those animations.), and I've got high hopes for the mid to high level content.
