ok very very rough idea of this but i have been putting alot of thought into the Merit system and how it is hugely outdated. also the fact that this game is set up assumeing people only play 1 job.
i have played this game since the ps2 release in NA, for about 2 years i only had 1 level 75 job. after getting relic weapon for it and being 5/5 dynamis gear and haveing all sky equips and fully meriting it i do have to admit i got bored with it a tad and wanted a change of pace. i dident hate my old job i just really had nothing else to do for it and still wanted to play and pimp something out. i leveld another job to 75 and after that leveld another one i had at 60 to 75. and then i leveld 2 more to 75.... so now i have currently 5 level 75 jobs. they are all fairly well equiped but there is a few things that bother me about haveing 5 jobs at max level.
my main job is PLD. and anyone can agree that a PLD is a big part of any kind of organized event on ffxi. Gods/dynamis/limbus/HNM ect. haveing pld and knowing its a nessisary part of a team makes it so i had to focus on its gears and merits the most. also haveing aegis just pretty much guarantees u are PLD for life.
anyways the point is that haveing your main job be PLD means u need good gear and cant go half ass on it. first thing ill touch on is rare/ex items, mainly shit like COP rings/COP earings/DM earings
COP ring- Sattva obvious choise. HP enmity and VIT, kind of a tripple threat
DM earing- i got Knightly for shield skilll and i think anyone getting anything different would be stupid but thats me.. some go with suppa but thats more a DD thing no.. and even thow we can do it good but it shouldent be a main focus esp over tanking.
COP earing- ethereal earing. convert 3% damage to MP. such a good tank peice esp /war.
these are all great items for PLD. but if you leveld a Melle or mage job u would be missing out on some great equipment. lets say u did a DD class.
COP ring- Rajas and you would be a fuckin fool not to get it, but since your main is pld you had to get that over rajas.
DM earing- suppa for the /nin or nin people or busshi for most other DD.
COP earing-not so much a big deal cause there are not great DD ones.
the biggest hit to your DD now is definatly not haveing that Rajas ring. really it just blows balls that u cant have it. ok i agree maybe u shouldent be alowed to have all 3 rings or be able to put 2 on at once, but why not let someone have all 3 but only be able to carry one? possibly gear storage NPC will hold ur sattva and let u carry rajas? and when u need your sattva u trade it back in? and id say the same thing for the earings, because if u dont have correct one u just gotta buy something from AH that is sub par.
the next thing im gonna talk about is merits and the BS merit system is the main thing that just makes no sence to me right now. again useing the same example of haveing a PLD as main and a DD as a 2nd job. if you fully merit pld it will heavily restrict you on meriting your DD job.
the main catagory that fucks you up is COMBAT SKILLS. being pld the first thing u gotta do here is max shield. u put 4/4 in shield right away or should. i also did 8/8 sword, maybe people disagree with sword being important but.. the added acc and att helps even if your only useing your TP for 300% spirits. i also went 4/4 in evasion. did it for thf so stfu haters!!! it dont hurt to have on pld either even though pld have LOLeva. total used 16/20.
this did get improved apon in a recent update they what doubled it? but the more jobs u have the more u need space in here. if you JUST do weapons u need 8 upgrades for any job. and just about every job uses a differnt main weapon. you quickly can cap this out and be stuck and not be able to upgrade other jobs. lets say you had PLD DRK RNG THF all 75. pld 8/8 sword, DRK would prolly wanna go 8/8 GS and 8/8 scythe, RNG 8/8 bow 8/8 Xbow, THF 8/8 knife. 56 upgrades needed but only 20 availible. only haveing 20 will make you have to make a dession on what you value the most and want to be strong.
Attributes suck too, as pld i went 5/5 vit... and yah i know LOLvitality but adding to base is cool and if you can put something on w/o gear that sticks to you why not? haveingt that i cant do STR for my DD jobs, and my THF could use 5/5 Dex. even if you just have a DRK as main and THF as sub and u went 5/5 STR over 5/5 dex. you would prolly prefer dex > str.
others catagory i went 4/4 enmity and wow... ill tell you haveing maxed enmity merits on a DD job just flat out blows, as if it wasent bad enough fighting with people who cant keep hate already. you throw in a fairly good geared melle DD with enmity merits i just eat dirt to many times when u shouldent.
im not gonna go on and on with examples of this.. i think.. or at least hope i made my point about it. the way i feel about this is that its highly outdated. i dont think SE expected people to level more then 1 max level character. maybe they though they level cap would be 100 eventually fuck even 200 who knows. maybe they were gonna let u take ur job up higher and higher. the fact though is that they stoped us at 75 and most likely will never let us go above that level and they show no sighn of changeing that.
i love this game and prolly spend much more time on it then i should. the main thing to do in this game is EXP. and thats what new people do who are fresh to game. how much % of the comunity have hit 75 on at least one job or character? i would guess alot wouldent you? you hit 75 on a job then you hit sky/limbus/sea/dynamis w/e you decide to do to make it better and stronger ect, thats the nature of the game. but what happens when u then get all or most of your gear for that job. maybe you dont have that RDM af2 hat for your RDM and your 3rd on the list for your group. you have all ur other gear but thats last u need. you want to get that and arent done till u get it maybe. well doing dynamis 2x a week and xacabard maybe 1 time a month that goal of rdm hat would take long. so what do you do in your spare time? well what else is there to do if you are already fully equiped.
LEVEL A NEW JOB!!!!!!
leveling a new job brings new life into the game. will take you a while to hit 75 and when u do that u can use it for all those old events you used to again ect. can get a new set of af2 or some homan/nashira gear maybe new god equip idk. main thing is it gives u goals and someting to work for. alot of the older players have at bare minimum 2 level 75 jobs. alot of 3, some have 4 5 6 7+ 75 jobs. since we have been stuck at 75 for so long this is what people have done with there characters, they leveld multiple 75's and most likely worked towards equiping them.
the problem that i see is that your not allowed to be fully merited or equip a 2nd job or 3rd 4th ect. merits have restictions on them and i understand that, you cant just exp non stop and go full out in every possible stat.
example would be attributes, im sure anyone would like to do this
STR 5/5
VIT 5/5
DEX 5/5
MND 5/5
INT 5/5
CHR 5/5
sure why not, for any job i leved ever it would have some nice looking stats lol. +5 to all stats? mini osode implanted in my body? WOOOT FUCK YAH!!!! its obviously a lil much and i fully understand why we cant do it and i dont wanna say that SE should let us. what i do think SE should let us do though is customize your stats more in your mog house. if im in my mog and im gearing up for an event and im gonna use SAM im gonna go 5/5 STR for sure, assumeing i spent the 27 merits to get that. but if im going RDM maybe i wanna put 5/5 MND or 3/5 MND 2/5 INT. i think that in your mog house you should be allowed to change where you put your merits. u shouldent be able to take them all off every catagory and put them wherever but you should be able to put 27 merits into the attibutes catagory maxing it out. when u max it out u should be able to switch it around within the catagory. moveing ur stats to VIT STR DEX MND CHR INT.
the bigger one would be combat skill and i think even SE noticed we wanted more of them cause they did increase it. you really should be able to change them around though, going drk to an event go full GS and scythe merits. going SAM instead go 5/5 GK and bow.
doing this would give players good insentive to merit and level new jobs. right now i have 5 jobs and the big 2 things holding me back from doing more is 1: no inventory space 2:lack of areas to put merits. i have id say 215 merits. 200 being all on PLD shit and 15 being on SAM. and all my SAM merits are exclusive the the SAM spacific abiltys and traits. no rajas, no bushi, no GK merits no bow merits no STR merits no crit hit rate no enmity down and feeling pretty gimped out campared to my PLD, and there is absolutly nothing i can do to get them clooser to the same level except strip PLD merits and fuck if i would do that.
lemme know what u think about my idea and feel free to suggest things. i typed this up fast and this is the first time i have put anything down on paper or in text besides talkign to people on game about it. but every time i say it i get "FUCK YAH THEY SHOULD DO THAT" ect with people agreeing and thinking its a good idea. so if i can get any help reviseing this idea and presenting it to SE please help me, im not a great speller and dont have good grammer and i ramble on damit!!! so yah if you want to flame me on that go ahead but lets try to focus on the fact that if we present this well and present it to SE that they might actually change it in the future and i think the comunity as a whole would be very happy.