Quote Originally Posted by Malithar View Post

However, that's on a per job basis. When you branch out into stats, weapon skills, magic skills, HP/MP, even +/- enmity, the limiting nature of the caps hinder jobs. Does it cripple as you keep saying? No, but it hinders, and who doesn't want to max out their character the best way that they can? How are you able to look past that as "customization" when it applies to all jobs, rather than just your current job, like Job Merits do.
You seem to be looking at the merit system differently than others of us. To me, merits are that little bit of extra for the jobs I truly enjoy. I max out sword merits and its "Now I'm a little bit better when using a sword". If I'm interpreting you right, if you don't put any merits in sword, you see it as your sword skill not being capped. The only thing I could see as a hinderence to another job is the emnity+/-, just because some jobs want the hate and others don't.

This is reminding me of when I played D&D. I pick a rough idea of what I wanted with my character, and would maybe end up with 2 or 3 classes. Other people would spend hours trying to min/max everything they did trying to take 1 or 2 levels from 10 different jobs, then complain to the DM that the experience penalty for multiclassing was unfair.

I understand that there might be tradeoffs to being strong in one area but having to become weaker in another and I'm O.K. with that. But not everybody thinks that way.