Let's talk about character progression

[Erudito]

Character progression? That only happens when there are levels, skills and abilities to learn and master.

No, what we have in this game is small character progression until you hit max level with the jobs you care about and then you move to the nonsensical thing called gear progression.

Gear progression in itself is horrible, for gear is only raw stats and looks. No special abilities, not added bonuses and are outright replaced every 3-6 months. And, get this, you can only do gear progression for one combat job. ONE! In a game that lets you be all of them! You would figure they would make it possible to gear up 3 of them but nope, just one.

True, there are ways to gear up 2 jobs at once, but that would require raiding and I flat out refuse to do any sort of gearing where RNG is involved.

If the gear in question does not have glamour value, then exposing yourself to the RNG behind some gear makes no sense as the gear will be replaced before long.

Sorry if that sounded rather bad, but this patch has left me somewhat salty.

[Balipu]

I'll take a fourth option and say I want a sphere grid that goes along with the leveling. Mostly. You get a sphere let's saaay from level 10 onward for each fifth level. If it is shared between jobs you'll get it when you reach a level first with any class/jobb.
If you want to spice things up, make some special "talents" only unlockable with special spheres that you get from playing content related to it. Like a trait that increases the chance of getting a triple triad card for winning a lot of rounds. Or something related to each beast tribe, for maxing their reputation. Or something for the raiders to brag about if they clear a savage raid before the next patch.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Well, if people absolutely want one, a sphere grid like Balipu said above would be nice, especially if you keep getting spheres the more max jobs you have. That could work.

[Balipu]

Well, if people absolutely want one, a sphere grid like Balipu said above would be nice, especially if you keep getting spheres the more max jobs you have. That could work.

Yes, but only to a certain degree. The problem Yoshie has with more character progression is that it would go on indefinitely after leveling up. At least that is what his claims. So the maximum size of the sphere grid and the number of spheres obtainable has to be finite. Of course it can and should increase whenever the level cap goes up.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Perhaps there's only spheres enough to earn from having 5 max level jobs, Smn/Sch counted as 1?

[Lisotte]

It does seem dumb that 240 anima weapons are immediately replaced with the 250 crafted weapons or the 255 sophia weapons with 3.4 and won't be a decent weapon again till 3.45.