1. Adding to what Meklore said, if you take the time to get your crafting classes to 40+ you'd be able to repair all of your own gear forever just by using Dark Matter, which is a lot cheaper post game than going to an NPC to repair everything for you. And you can even repair during a dungeon or a fight.

2. Originally they had it where your chocobo lost time for every rank it gained. Mine was around rank 8 at the time when he could only be summoner for 15 minutes. Plus buying a stack of 99 gysahl greens only costs like 3k gil.

3. Meklore said it perfectly, couldn't agree more with 'em.