FFXIV has an endgame problem and it needs to be changed

[Nalien]

Gear itself has two problems IMO;

We only need one main stat, for the most part. The fact that tanks can go for Vitality and Strength is something I like, though I dislike all three being identical, and I wish that applied to all Jobs... Bring back having two main stats from 1.23 and adjust them somewhat... Strength, Dexterity, Mind and Intelligence all do one thing, and that is raise a specific stat by 1, which seems redundant to me (for example, on Ninja 1 Dexterity gives me 1 Attack Power), Vitality and Piety at least change it up by giving you more than 1 HP/MP per stat, but that's still all they do... Sticking with Ninja, I'm also fairly annoyed that Intelligence (or Magic Attack Potency) does nothing for me, when skills that increase magic damage (Foes Requiem) do... With each Job having two main stats, that's something you can work in, but instead every Job just has <main stat> and Vitality... Dark Knight, for example, could have Vitality and Piety, with both now increasing defense (physical for Vitality, magical for Piety) and attack power to a degree. Vitality is the default tank stat, Piety because Dark Knight uses a lot of MP and seems to be the magic oriented tank. Warrior is very much about DPS, the existing Vitality/Strength set up works there. Paladin should be casting White Magic (Clemency was such a tease...), so Mind seems like it should work there...

Take something like that, and apply it to all Jobs, and you've got a situation where we can have more horizontal progression, because the difference between two pieces of same item level gear is greater than just which 2 out of 4 secondary stats does it have... Yes there is always going to be a BiS, but designing around that is just designing less content... It's the same problem with dungeons, yes people will speed run them, but having an entirely linear dungeon because of that? You're just forcing everyone to play that way, rather than giving players options... Plenty of people will not speed run, plenty of people do not care about BiS... Limiting our options because of the playstyle of a few is not good, IMO.

As for other stats... Final Fantasy IX got it right. Works as a merit system as well, have a new window in the Actions & Traits page, similar to the Actions & Traits page in the PvP Profile. Have AP based off your current level (you could also perhaps have +AP on gear, that would be an easy way to make the top gear obviously so), when you equip gear with Enhancement stats on them, you can now set AP to activate that "trait". Doing combat with that "trait" set eventually results in you unlocking it permanently, letting you throw away the gear the stat came from. Potential balance issues can be dealt with fairly easy by just being smart about what stats you put where... Tomestone gear, for example, would probably have the better stats, since everyone is going to get that stuff fairly easily. Meanwhile, something like Void Arks gear? That could just have variations of Demon Killer (a slight increase in your attack/defense/etc against Voidsent type enemies). This would potentially add demand for much of the gear in the game, rather than most of it just being passed over (dungeon gear, for example, which is really just vanity/GC seals to most...), while at the same time not locking you to using that gear forever. You'd want to set Demon Killer for Void Ark, but if you do a merit style grind to unlock the stat off the gear permanently, that doesn't mean you have to wear the gear for Void Ark.

It also wouldn't particularly be something people are forced to conform to... The only way one could tell if you have Demon Killer set or not is by breaking the ToS, it would be more like XIs original merit system, rather than the ability one... People could tell if a Dragoon didn't have Angon, because they couldn't use Angon and probably had Strafe instead for some odd reason, but they couldn't really tell which combat skills you'd opted to merit, could they?