I agree that the stat issue would have to be worked out and wouldn't mind if different weapons/wield styles were used situationally, but mainly I just want to see more variety. The armoury system as is excludes soo many weapon types, because you would have to create a new class and corresponding job for each weapon: katana, great katana, scythes, greatswords, guns, etc.,.

I would still make very few weapons available to more than one class/job combination to avoid the competition you're referred to with the beastmaster example . For example swords/Gswords would be Paladin only. Axes/Gaxes would be Warrior only. And you could even draw a distinction between knives/dagger for thief/blm and staves/staff for dragoon/whm in areas where you wanted overlap.

If you kept classes as they are (one weapon style/wield type) and gave jobs an additional wield option you would eliminate the need to have weapons of the same type such as Great Axe that are equipable by only one or the other i.e. - "Why can't my Warrior wield that Marauder only G.Axe but as when it's upgraded to Relic it's suddenly Warrior only?" This thinking makes little sense to me in terms of lore. If they wanted to put weapons in the game that only jobs could equip you could use the alternate weapon.

I understand wanting to be able to equip two different weapons in a dual-wield system but that presents a lot of complexity and flexibility that would be great for users but hard to play balance. If you are worried about the aesthetics of dual-wielding, the two "paired" weapons don't have to look the same. By paired I mean that instead of each having separate stats, they have a combined total of stats and DPS and one materia slot per the two weapons.