[Feba]

Chessboards certainly isn't high tech, and its low tech nature places some pretty severe design constraints.

Which isn't what I said. I did not say low tech is bad, I said that technical limitations should not be a source of difficulty. For example, Super Mario World is a great game, what it could do was limited by the hardware of the time, but the player was not challenged from some hardware problem the developers couldn't compensate for. What I'm saying would be like if, due to poor manufacturing facilities, you could only make one shape of chess piece, and you had to remember which ones did what role and who's team they were on. I think we can both agree that would be a poor implementation of chess.

Not that much more complicated,

Spoken like someone who hasn't really used it. It can do some very complicated things, even if most people use it to just add infinite lines.

If a FPS game has a bot scripting system capable of letting anyone capable of logical thinking make bots--bots more capable than human at navigating to weapon/ammo spawn points, targeting, and shotting accurately--would you call that superior system?

If FFXI was based on reflexes instead of strategic thinking, you might have a point. If I was advocating bots and not scripts, you might have a point. We're talking Apples and Spaghetti here, though.

As it is, the FFXI macro system is a technical hurdle to the player; instead of helping the player as it should. Allowing people to have more complex macros isn't going to make them perfect, it's not going to let your RDM go make a sammich while you're leveling, it's not going to do anything but make their interface more organized and less of a hassle. I'll say on this the same I said on customizable UIs: do you honestly think that if you went up against another player who was using them in some form of competition, they would be better because of the tool, where you would fail? If you can honestly say that someone else having a half decent macro system is going to make the game harder on you, firstly, Windower already did that, and you're still here; secondly, you're just an awful player to begin with. Tools make the game better-- not players worse.

There will always be technical limitations--how to use those limitations (how to allocate and budget the limited memeory of PS2 in this case) is just as important as how to use the technical capabilities a platform has.

Agreed. Learning how to push the limits is very important. However, MAKING THE GAME HARDER OR WORSE because of those limits is a very, very bad idea. That is what making the challenge in equipment "who can hold the most" instead of "who can plan ahead the best" does.

Going to guess that your real complaint is that S-E won't move its customers off of PS2.

Absolutely not. There is a very large portion of people playing on PS2. My real complaint is that SE won't move beyond the PS2. It's perfectly possible for them to make improvements to other clients (like customizable UIs, improved Macros, seamless zoning, improved graphics, etc.) without dumping the PS2 client. Look at What SE could do, but won't. , it might refresh your memory.

it was a game play which emerged pretty early on-

This, obviously if gear swapping was intended to be a major mechanic they would've added a way to swap more than one per line (for macros sake), and likely would've devoted more memory space to gobbie bag.

Again, I realize that it would be a huge change to the game, and I don't think it's something that 'desperately' needs to be done, I'm just saying that it's one of FFXI's flaws.

FFXI, overall, is a great product. When I critique it, it's almost always because it could be better (and because I care about it, and want it to be better), not because there's something horrible ruining the game and making it unfun.