Job-Specific (Artifact) Gear

[Jashynvald]

From this interview (at the bottom)

ZAM: The implementation of jobs is coming up. Will job quests be similar to FFXI? Also, how will job-specific armor be obtained?

Yoshida: We are currently plotting job quests, so I cannot reveal too much. There will be many different stages involving different trials and stories. There will be job-specific gear obtained during the process of job quests and in battle content. All of this will be available in patch 1.21.

ZAM: How will job-specific armor compare to other high-level gear in the game?

Yoshida: Job-specific armor will have higher abilities when used by its specific job. All job quests must be completed in order to obtain job-specific armor, so they will be difficult to obtain. However, we plan on having gear created by attaching multiple materia surpass job-specific armor in quality.

Now maybe people will use certain pieces of the job specific armor to stack stats to be more narrowly focused but it would be a sad day when everyone starts to look homogenized.

[Brannigan]

Now maybe people will use certain pieces of the job specific armor to stack stats to be more narrowly focused but it would be a sad day when everyone starts to look homogenized.

Yeah it'd suck if everyone was just using crafted gear with materia because it's by far the best wait oh crap

[Jashynvald]

Yeah it'd suck if everyone was just using crafted gear with materia because it's by far the best wait oh crap

At least with crafted gear you can chose to dye or not dye the gear in various colors (depending on piece of course). It has been confirmed that you have no choice in even a bit of customization with Artifact Gear.

Some Variety > No Variety.

I would prefer there be more ways to bling out gear (maybe make HQ look a bit better?) or different styles of the same item (beyond concerns for just gender) for aesthetic reasons (like embelishments or engraved patterns) but I can only hope for so much in what the art team puts out and is implemented in game.