One of my biggest gripes in FFXI has always been the fact that only a handful of useful PC stats are actually listed. While there is food, gear, and buffs that obviously affect statistics like accuracy, ranged accuracy/attack, magic accuracy/attack, etc., there's never been a real way to see exactly how much various things help/hurt you. When Ballista came out, it became one of the only ways to actually test many of the spells and equipment that had been available to players for years (and frankly, is just about it's only use these days)
I don't mind equipment that has hidden or latent effects, there's some value to having some "surprise" bonuses, it can be fun for the player base to be able to "discover" things like that. But vital stats like magic accuracy and ranged statistics need to be visible to the player, so we can more effectively make our characters better.