Well, for some of us, reality matters.  It is nice to have a character that is really the alchemist.  I feel the same way.

However, most people like to play pretend.  Let's pretend your alchemist is the alchemist, even tough the meat-head warrior is just as good.  Let's pretend because it is the easy way.

But, this is a game.  And your character, even though you had them work so hard, is just a pretend character.  There is some reality here, and I love that for immersion.  But, again, this is a game.  Everything here is pretend.

The brutal reality is that we are here to escape reality.

And it blows when you have to dump real hours and hours into some things that have............ what kind of rewards?

What I would love is for PA to put in some work, move the goal-posts forward (not to be achieved after 10 years, like what Guru 100 must be), and hire a bunch of people to create meaningful content, instead of giving us brainless grinding to use our time.

This is an amazing game.  Amazing lore, but crappy story.  Amazing battle mechanics, but no purpose, except what we make of it.  Myriad of lifeskilling to dabble in, but no real value from it.

We can have fun with this, if we set some goals and achieve them.  I wish this game actually had some real goals, from the game itself.  It would make me feel better about playing it.  Awesome stories, quests, group PvE content and restoring PvP to what it was would be great.

Then I'd feel better about all the hours I've dumped into this game.  Yes, I've had fun.  But fun with a purpose behind it?  More than awesome.

I understand what you are saying quite well. The problem is that most players do not consider your perspective acceptable for themselves, because the downsides of character-specific lifeskills far outweigh the benefits of family-wide lifeskills.

I have also played many games where lifeskills were character-specific. You can take ESO, WoW or GW2 as an example. And you know what is the important difference? In those games, the characters that achieved certain life skill levels were actually rewarded (individually) for doing so. Moreover, not leveling multple lifeskillers did not limit/annoy a player in any way. A player could do everything on a single character and they would be okay. They just did not get some rewards - whatever. If they wanted some more rewards, they could level more, if they did not, they did not feel like they were shooting themselves in the foot - and still they could enjoy every aspect of the game.

In BDO, this is not the case. Apart from roleplaying and life fame, there is no purpose in leveling different lifeskillers (and I do not mean only material rewards). This is just so weak for most players that it does not warrant character-specific lifeskills. Moreover, we are forced to level different characters' lifeskills, because not having lifeskillers spread across the world (or not being able to ride horses fast, etc.) is annoying. In BDO, lifeskills make players feel forced to go through annoyance, so that they would not feel like they are shooting themselves in the foot. This is bad game design for most players - they are not getting some bonuses that make them happy, instead they are forced to jump over holes in the road. I know what I am talking about, as I started with a single lifeskiller, I was not warned that this was a terrible idea, and the experience was pure annoyance. In another thread, I also outlined the benefits for every lifeskill when exp is merged.

Life skilling is crap. Its something you have to do not want to do. Do you want horses? Better afk! 

It has been lessened în necesity over the years and thats a good thing. 

Honestly, if you're that wrapped-up in RPing or character identity, you're already playing pretend anyway, it's not that big a stretch to pretend your XYZ character is an alchemy noob.

If you're really just worried the xp from multiple Guru 50s is going to go to waste, I have a feeling any plan they come up with will involve higher guru levels so you don't get burned.

There are too many classes in the game for it to be reasonable to continue anchoring content to a single character.  The more they separate content from character/class, as opposed to family/gear, the happier I'll be.

If you know nothing about Life skills you really shouldn't have any input on the topic.  If you want to level horse training you do not AFK  horse train, in fact that is really slow at leveling the skill to the point that you will not get much skill ever.   You get way more XP training horses.

Except gathering, all lifeskills have an extreme amount of afk required. There is nothing good, fun and engaging about afking, therefore its crap.  

"My character name is Maltie Keiting. On my bio, I have "Atelier Maltie" and some other stuff, as a joke, since I started doing a lot of alchemy. MALTIE is the alchemist. Dudes want to make waifus and role play, to develop their characters, but they must be forgetting that to some of us, our characters have life skill identities!"

Sorry to break it to you but the joke flavor text in your bio and you vehemently emphasizing that your alchemist character is the alchemist,  is the most basic form of roleplay there is. Then you proceed to hammer down the point by calling it a "life skill identity". Roleplay is not only making a guardian with massive honkers and typing sex noises at your fellows on the RP channel.

I perfectly understand what you want, you want to keep your class fantasy alive. You want to keep your alchemist as the sole alchemist in your family. It is not hard to grasp. On the hand you don't seem to realize your argument stems from an RP standpoint.

As for the last sentence, in a live service games systems are constantly added to deducted from, redesigned and discarded.  A good example for this is the toning down of the OWPVP features of the game in recent years.

So if i just boosted every character's lifeskills to my lifeskiller's what exactly would be the difference between boosting and merging?

Does it make sense? No. Does it respect your time and/or wallet? Yes.

Except the guys who have multiple characters with high lifeskill levels in the same lifeskill. Cause without changes, thats several hundred hours down the toilet. But without specifics I'm yelling into the void with this one.

It changes nothing for the majority of lifeskills, and adds an optional buff to gathering and hunting. If anything it adds more life to it because I can do them more.

There are many reasons. It is convenient to leave that character I don't use to tend to my farms. Striker is objectively the king of narcion hunting, makes sense to play it if I want maximum silver. Musa has unbeatable movement for gathering i can get maximum silver/hr if I use him. Need a trader alt because restrictions don't let me trade on my combat character. Gotta have an Ancado alt to get those Hakoven runs done in time.  Do you need any of this? Up to you. Not sure what your point is here.

To minmax energy usage.

It will be an unintended consequence of the changes. it is an easy way to play around the restriction of the energy bottling system. Some will do it, but to many who can't be bothered to do it, nothing will change, they will continue to chug energy pots off cd, or just burn however much their preferred character has.

This is the least thing I am worried about, I highly doubt they won't adjust somethign as glaring as the life fame, especially when there are lifeskills that are especially hard to grind. Also it gets deleted how? It counts combined lifeskill levels, you might have less after the theoretical merge, but it will still be there. If anything, your suggested boosting system could be easily used to cheese family fame?