Quote Originally Posted by Llana_Virren View Post
Maybe it's just me, but if everyone could do everything there'd be no point in playing a fantasy world at all.
While I feel you're being too literal with my statement (I just used it as an ice-breaker for my argument), I'll try to answer that. What exactly is the job system? Simply put, it's an excuse for people not having to level other characters to experience other classes. And if you ask me, it's quite an elegant solution, because it's an acceptable loss of ingame realism (amnesia on job change) for player convenience. I firmly believe SE should consider this approach more often and just ignore realism loss for the sake of convenience. Sadly, they're obsessively compulsive about this and always try to justify their gameplay choices by some twisted lore arguments. See Traverser Stones, they gave them a completely unnecessary lore background (that no one even buys) just to satisfy their need for lore consistency, which is ironic considering its inconsistent explanation. The point being, looking for ingame explanations for game mechanics is unneeded at best, at times even annoying (sitting through minutes worth of cutscenes just to hear how exactly the Moogle is enchanting your trial piece is just one example).

So changing jobs is all good and well. We don't need to concern ourselves with explanations of how and why when it's very simple: so people can play multiple jobs. Merits on the other hand push this further. They push this lore inconsistency onto a single job, and that's what bothers people. Because when people decide to play a job, they don't do it for specific merit paths. They do it because they like it and wanna learn it and be good at it. They have accepted the inconsistency of the job system itself gladly, because it enhances their game experience. This time, it's different. This time they find themselves at a point where they can't do something an equally skilled and geared player of the same job can't. This time, for no lore reason at all, something impairs their game experience. And as you can no doubt understand, people have an easier time accepting the first case over the latter.

There is also a fundamental difference with merits, namely that you cannot switch at will, something the job system was specifically designed to do. To compare it accurately, you can imagine a job system where switching jobs will delevel your previous job to 49. I don't think it's hard to see why people wouldn't go for it. If the merit system allowed to switch unconditionally whenever you're in the Mog House it would already be a great help, though still not perfect. At least you wouldn't have to sacrifice utility in one event for utility in another, which is what you currently do.

And for the record, everyone knows what merits were intended for and what they do. But that is precisely what people have a problem with.