Familiar?

Don't you wish Beastmasters could, you know, actually have a Familiar?
I think the BST 2HR ability really should be renamed and the job should be reworked if they want it to maintain relevance outside of Abyssea.

One very easy way I can see to do this would be to allow the player to use a job ability similar to charm that allows the player to permanently 'catch' a familiar of that enemy type. (I believe it'd be best to have the actual charmed enemy 'die' at that point so that it can respawn later, or they could even let it act as if it just depopped so that it can respawn sooner.)
From here on, rather than giving the pets equipment like Puppetmasters have, I believe there ought to be a merit-like system that allows players to buy upgrades for the pet. Of course I'd like them to go in-depth and create different merit sets for each pet type (like allowing you to buy spell upgrades/AI changes related to spellcasting, etc for Hecteyes type mobs should a player decide to use a Hecteyes) but even simple things would be an improvement.

It wouldn't even necessarily require gaining EXP to utilize this system if folks at Square-Enix are more creative than I am; that's just one easy way (in my mind) to make it work.

This would also allow merit abilities such as Killer Instinct to see more use depending on which pet type the player has chosen. Would also be neat to see people's various pet specializations, like someone might bring a Dhalmel for healing/berserk or someone might bring a more dangerous pet. Who knows? There's so many pet possibilities, yet we're restricted by jug pets (which, also would be available as back-ups if your pet isn't particularly useful in a certain situation)


Does this sound too far out there or do you guys agree that this would be a great addition to Final Fantasy XI?

I think it sounds really out there, however, I wouldn't be against something like a permenant Jug for a familiar type. The storage space needed for each pet type would be.. a lot. Some sort of capture system, maybe simular to BLU spell learning.

But the current system for jugs isn't a glaring issue for me.