Quote Originally Posted by Rowde View Post
If you are looking for some kind of rewards for leveling other jobs, perhaps you should start thinking along the lines of glamour, minions, mounts. Actually the glamour one could be something interesting since that is a thing I see creep up on the forums all the time. Thinking along the lines of Tactics support abilities like "equip _____(type of armor)". Only in this game it would be "glamour _____(job)". So you could learn traits that allowed you to glamour job-restricted gear on other jobs to make your ultimate fantasy warrior outfit...
Like I said the issue I have with the current system is that it feels lesss like I am developing a character and more like I have a paper-doll that I swap out abilities for. In this case rather literally by weapon and soul-stone. While I understand that with the abilities before Stormblood some this was necessity. Like I said, I don't like the archer and the only reason my archer is as leveled as a job as it is currently is due to having to unlock the damage boost for my black mage. I also remember having to level both the archanist and thurmaturge for abilities and to unlock my white mage. So yes, I get both the good and bad of the issue.

Giving cosmetics or unlocking glamours is nice but the meat of my issue is that by separating all the jobs completely the sense I am playing a character who is growing in power is stripped as well. If I learn how to run faster as a ninja, why can't I run faster as a WHM? Which makes even less sense when characters implicitly tell you they are TEACHING you these things, such as the BLM using ley lines.

Yes, I am aware that even if you have every class have equally tempting abilities on all ranks that there will be a meta. Yes I started with saying small bonuses, but halfway through I guess I realized what I am saying now. The best way to negate a meta is to have more viable options then opportunities to take. To get to the same point we have with jobs now, that all jobs are viable and welcome in parties unless you are doing cutting edge content in which case there is a meta to party composition. We currently have 15 jobs, which means potentially 15 traits each tier to choose from If even half of those are viable options for most jobs one way or another, I feel that the inevitable meta would be given less weight by players as a whole.