Incentive at 60: Character Growth

[Mraj]

More job diversification is what I'd like to see in next expansion - and have them build on that. We've spent far too long making sure that everyone won't be left out of parties. Why not start giving them some flavor? Granted, the dev team is not one to introduce these revolutionary changes in between patches, if at all. We really only see faint glimmers of customization and other systems in side content like PvP or Deep Dungeon where they can't "confuse" most players.

Merit system for a main job as a reward for playing that job would be nice, but I wouldn't expect it. FFXIV supposedly allows freedom to play all classes, but with the tome system it usually means you can only have one best-geared class. So, given that, some sort of merit system might also be a decent way to give alt classes a bit more of an edge ( or even make different party compositions more appealing ).

Let's entertain the merits of a merit system for a moment:

Favorable example: It's Brayflox 4.0 - and we have a new tome-relic grind. You have a choice now, though. You can take Vivi the BLM, who is pretty well geared and has the usual BLM AoE *or* you can take Edge the ninja who, thanks to his ( likely gated ) merit points, has slightly augmented AoE. That, combined with his gear, now makes him as good as, if not better, than the average BLM. There's choice for you. Granted, people can say "but given the choice between a max-geared BLM and a max-geared NIN, the 'better' choice is still BLM". Perhaps so, and the BLM would have their own merit points too, perhaps. However, given the general trend of extremely casual progression in the game, and the players realizing that there is little incentive to rush or achieve anything by gearing up outside their own pacing, I believe the first scenario is one players would come across far more often.

This is just one example - and perhaps a flawed one - but it would be a step towards giving jobs more flavor alongside more job-specific traits / passive buffs / augmented abilities. Could even go really wild and throw in more / different cross-class skill options.