To the OP, good work for your idea and posting it in an understandable and structured post.

At first, I really liked your idea and after going through the 36 pages of replies, I have to say I prefer the FFT unlock way. I mean with your way of doing it, a gladiator could only become a PLD/DRK. With the FFT unlock way, let's say you unlock two new classes and they start at R1, when you get these classes to R20 you could unlock new classes from new classes. Not sure if I'm wording that clearly!

Also I don't think they should remove the ability to equip other disciplines skills. There are already a few abilities on each discipline that are unique to these discipline. What they should do is improve the penalty for equipping DoM abilities on a DoW (i.e: Sacrifice II on Pugilist). The armoury system is great imo, because it allows the player to really customize their character. Personnaly, I don't care about theory crafting and being "maxed out" like I used to when playing WoW. I play to have fun. If they restrain me from trying a lot of different combinations, I won't have as much fun as I could have trying all kind of different setups.

I know some of you really want to be the best DD/tank/healer/support/etc... and will look at spreadsheets and TC but until they really introduce challenging content in FFXIV, this is kinda pointless. Also with the FFT unlock way, they could have so many different disciplines that you would see a lot of different tanks/DD/healer/support/etc... As for the weapon = class, they would need to find a way to deal with that as a RDM/BLU I want to be able to use sword.

Again, great job with your post. A lot of people were able to give their opinion and I hope SE takes a look at this post and also that it's what they had in mind for future updates.