Quote Originally Posted by Xelanar View Post
The main issue with stats is that people will look up optimal stats and gear for their jobs, regardless of what they do.
Even with the current, very simple system, this is already happening.

Making stats more complex and meaningful is not going to change what players already do:
- Wear and meld whatever they want without consulting external resources.
- Or look up guides and BiS gear tables that tell them what to wear and meld.

In an ideal world players could prioritize stats that suit their playstyle, and each playstyle would be equally viable or at least very close to each other.
The harsh reality of math is, however, that this is very difficult to accomplish for the amount of jobs available.

I do agree that stats should be more meaningful and fun, and I'm pretty sure the devs do too. They just have not found a solution to rework stats in a way yet, that actually incentivises players to pick their gear up and meld it without relying on theorycrafters telling them what to do. And neither have I to be honest.
I have thought about this a lot, specially when I kept juggling skill speed for Samurai around, and I always came to the conclusion that gearing up and managing stats is never fun (for me). It ends up being a priority system of Stat 1 > Stat 2 >= Stat 3 > Stat 4 with or without threshholds, to a point where having to pick up gear with suboptimal stat distribution can even feel bad. Most of the time changing what stats do will not break this system, which is probably why devs don't even bother with them anymore.
So what ?

let people who like to optimize optimize as they want..

and people who like to try new things let them do what they want..

in the end all of them can clear content it is just playstyle rather than "let's find the optimal stat and do it"

let people build their character..
we feel like we have nothing to build