The community cries out for it because the game demands it. FFXIV isn't like your typical MMO. The nature of this game doesn't allow for a huge variety of healing for a few reasons. Fights are tightly tuned and therefore very regimented. They are designed with a very specific routine in mind. Though the game has always operated in this fashion it has only become more predictable/consistent of late. There are very few surprises or major alterations in a fight. The tighter they tune fights the more we kind of expect consistency. One of the major expectations in this game is for healers to heal as little as possible and get right back to DPS.

Big moves tend to align with major cooldowns and healers all are expected to react a certain way with minimal hesitation and get right back into DPS mode. In order to make this work some consistency is required. Healers in this game can't be constantly reacting to things they don't expect because it would be impossible to put up any sort of reliable numbers. We all love FFXIV because it lets us contribute, but unfortunately this isn't without tradeoffs.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy DPS'ing as much as any other healer. I would still argue that was mostly makes healers unique and fun in most other games is unpredictability and improvisational flare. When healers are expected to always be healing and constantly on their toes, it allows for more surprises in a fight where you can play health bar whack-a-mole. Healers can have grandiose kits with some really unique and different approaches to healing because their skill in that game is being able to react quickly and efficiently to chaos. Games that really excel at making healers unique also tend to have larger sized parties. Even games like World of Warcraft have only ended up homogenizing their healers as their raid sizes went down.

Unfortunately I just think that if the game is going to continue down it's current path, homogenization was inevitable.