Item Levels, and proper 18 vs 6 man setup.

[Theytak]

Battle System

- Players and party members that are on a monster's enmity table cannot change gear until that monster is killed
- Players in a party that take action against a monster place their entire party on the monster's enmity table, even if the other party members have not taken any action against the monster
- Monsters of the Merrow Family no longer have Rising Swell (AKA Stripga)
- Certain monsters and Named Monsters that have abilities that remove players' equipment have been modified to no longer have those abilities
- Monster stats have been adjusted in accordance to the changes to equipment and expected power level of player characters

Job-related

- Stat gains and scaling for all jobs have been revised in accordance to the changes to equipment

Items

- Numerous gear and rewards have been revised and redesigned

I just had the greatest dream...

Wishful thinking aside, I think what's more likely to happen is just more powerful macro pieces. Sure, with the stat jump seen with weapons, it may be possible to have gear with item budgets that could eliminate swaps, but I seriously doubt it'll happen.

That's not a great dream, that's a nightmare. If SE did that, FFXI would die. End of story. Gearswapping has become fundamental to FFXI, and remains one of its... interesting if a bit nonsensical perks. The time it would take for them to rebalance the entire game around the sudden lack of ability to gear swap would make it impossible to do in a single update.

If they removed the ability before finishing the rebalancing, suddenly 90% of the game would become unplayable for weeks, if not months, as people scramble to completely rewrite everything we understand about how game mechanics work, how to gear ourselves, and what gear is good, while also suddenly finding themselves unable to make use of 90% of their equipment, to handle nearly any content that hadn't been rebalanced, and most aggravating of all, writing basically every single macro they have.

If they waited to remove it until they completely rebalanced, then the scramble would take place differently, as everyone desperately tries to use their last moments of godhood to grab hold of the gear they would need to function in the new system, by abusing the mobs now balanced for the soon to be significantly weaker players.

Either way, a huge portion of the playerbase would want no part in it, and would probably just quit.

I don't see how that's a good thing.