I just want to say a big thankyou to SE, for the addition of Jobpoints and Gifts to FFXI.
This system is the most enjoyable thing that has been added to FFXI in many many years, I have really been having great fun customising my character with this system.
On "jobpoints and character solidity" in the RPG setting, I will say that from my player perspective, my character now has greater depth, and a feeling of solidity that is far beyond how I felt about my character before the system was added. My character feels deeper and more real to me, now that she has this multifaceted extra dimension of jobpoints and gifts.
On "customisation" I have really enjoyed specialising the aspects of my two main jobs, and improving aspects of those jobs which are more frequently useful to me in my individual game style. This was not possible with merit points, they were far too uniform to allow for depth of personal choice. But with jobpoints I have been able to enhance the things I find most useful, and in an RPG sense, enhanced the attributes which I feel reflect my character's cautious and thoughtful personality.
I found jobpoints quite slow to earn in the beginning, but as I got multiple +5%CAP gifts, and the CAP+ cape, I have found that I can earn a decent slow-and-steady amount of jobpoints on solo with trusts. With my limited game time of an hour before work, some occasional crafty gaming during work-hours (shhh!) and a couple of hours in the evening before bedtime, I have been able to obtain 81 jobpoints on PUP and 105 jobpoints on WAR. And this has been mostly solo, and on a casual timeframe over several months. I am happy with the rate of CAP gain, and it got easier after I obtained a handful of the +5% CAP gifts, and a cape.
I really love the jobpoints and gifts system, it is the most fun I have had in FFXI for many years. My character feels more real and solid to me as a roleplayer, she has a greater depth and is much more customised towards how I always wanted her to be.
I am really looking forward to making more progress through this system at higher stages, and excited about further developing my character in future updates to the system.
Thankyou very much SE, for adding jobpoints and gifts. It is a really great system, with lots of future potential, and has made FFXI much more interesting and fun to me as a player.