Just as the title says, I am now going to talk about why I think Accuracy is a terrible stat in general to put in a video game, and why it stinks to balance all the endgame content around loading your character down with it.
First, let's talk about why we as humans play RPGs (especially MMOs) in the first place. We play J-RPGs and MMORPGs because we enjoy making progress on our character, bit-by-bit.
Whether it is by leveling up, or gaining a new spell, or ability, or piece of equipment, getting progress on your character fires off all the right synapses in our brains, that triggers a pleasurable sensation.
MMOs are built and designed around this concept, and sometimes MMOs exploit this with Skinners' Boxes (I'm not going to go into that here though, nor am I blaming FFXI or its devs for this). Either way, this is the core concept around an MMORPG: Character Progression.
Accuracy is the worst stat that anybody could have thought up of, for character progression. It was so bad that World of Warcraft learned its lesson and outright removed it entirely, first for tanks and then for everybody else an expansion later. If I recall correctly, the same is being talked about for FFXIV.
May I ask, why are we still designing around accuracy today in FFXI?
I am not saying we can, or even should, remove Accuracy from FFXI -- that would create all kinds of balance problems, and require a lot of work. What we can do, however, is make new content not require so much accuracy to do that it might as well be meaningless to care about Accuracy.
Why do we want to do this?
Because Accuracy is anti-fun. Bear with me here for a moment, and I will explain why. Let's say you play a melee job, and you oftentimes engage in solo content, whether it be farming, questing, or just gaining some XP or Job Points on the side. You're not going to care about Accuracy for these things: No matter what you do, you will never get above 95% chance to hit your enemy.
So, when you do Endgame, and you get weapons and armor that are simply loaded down with accuracy (such as Ambuscade armor...), you're going to go out and do your farming... but that nice shiny new piece of armor you just got? It doesn't feel any better than the piece you were using.
To be honest, I would find this absolutely disheartening if I went through the trouble of getting an Ambuscade Body+1 only to find out that it didn't increase my damage whatsoever at all unless I'm doing Endgame Content. The entirety of the game shouldn't revolve around Endgame Content, though, because that's the trap every other MMO falls into (and that's why they are all boring to me).
Part of the reason I'm playing FFXI, is because there is so much stuff to do that I can work on freely without worrying about the typical Endgame stuff (finding people, finding a linkshell, being available when other people demand me to be available, blah blah). There's plenty of things to do outside of Endgame.
However, with Accuracy.... it's "You must have _____ Accuracy to do this!"
I hate that. When I get a new shiny piece of armor, I want it to cause me to do more damage. I want to see better performance at all tiers of the game, and Accuracy simply doesn't do that. I don't want to sink dozens upon dozens of hours into Ambuscade for a +1 Body that only marginally increases my character except for Accuracy.
Accuracy doesn't give you the same pleasure as other stats. When I grab a piece that has 20 more strength or +weapon skill on it than the piece I was wearing, I'll notice that I'm hitting harder. Maybe my THF hits for 320-350 instead of 270-290. Maybe her Exenterators are hitting for ~2800s on certain mobs, when I was only doing ~2500s. That's performance I can SEE.
When you get above 85% or so Accuracy, you're not going to notice a difference in your character's performance unless you are at Endgame unless you parsed your logs and did some number-crunching. +300 damage average on weaponskills? Yes, you see that. The occasional extra miss that is missing? No, you're probably not going to notice that while you're fighting. It's a big enough deal that everybody wants you to wear Accuracy Gear and eat Sushi, but yet it's not big enough that you can actually eyeball the chat log and notice the difference.
And on the subject of Sushi......why are we still eating the same foods that we were using back during Treasures of Aht Urhgan? That's a separate subject I'll be covering later, but still. Sushi. Sushi. Sushi. Don't come without Sushi. *sigh*
Accuracy just doesn't make a player feel good like good ole fashioned raw damage does. It's an empty stat that's there, just for the sake of being there. Other MMOs are starting to see how much the stat is anti-fun and they are removing it, and I think we should (essentially) do the same ourselves. Not remove it, just reduce the Accuracy requirements of endgame battles so that it doesn't become the be-all and end-all of melee.