Quote Originally Posted by Aden_Yeshua View Post
Can I just switch jobs at any point without negative effects on my character? This doesn't seem right.
Yep! Your character can level every single class/job and switch as often as you want. Your progress for each is saved and you carry on where you left off. I know other games require you to be a different character for different roles, but in this one you have the flexibility for everything. Lore wise you join the guild of the respective class/job and they "train" you which is why you can somehow be all these things at once. Plus you're the "Warrior of Light" (saying that as an attempt to explain everything lol).

Before 4.0 there used to be cross class skills so you benefited from levelling up other classes on the same character. With the new role skills in 4.0 this isn't so much the case any more, but as nearly everything is locked behind the main story, it's still more efficient to do everything on a single character.

Quote Originally Posted by Aden_Yeshua View Post
Still less diverse than I'd like... but it helps.
Just curious, but what sort of diversity are you looking for?

As other have explained you get some flexibility in what materia you put on your gear, but generally speaking most people will increase the same attributes (job dependent), much like we did before when we had attribute points.

I know it's not really the same thing (at all), but mentioning in case it's of interest, at level 50 you can unlock glamouring which means you can make one piece of gear look like another. There are a few limitations/restrictions, but generally speaking it gives you the ability to personalise your character and I don't know if that's the sort of diversity you're looking for?