JSALLEN, as you are seeing, there are lots of ideas of what is "the best". What I would suggest is holding off on the exhaust until you do a little bit of "noise research". What do I mean about this, simple. As you drive around, listen to other Ford trucks and how they sound. When you find one that sounds like what you are after, politely tell the person that you like how their truck sounds and what did they do to the exhaust. Most people are going to be more than willing to tell you what they did. Find the commonalities to the systems that you like the sound of and go from there.
To give you an idea of what I have, I went more on the wild side and went with a true due exhaust setup using dual 2.5" pipes and ran the dual pipes back to a dual in/dual out Flowmaster 70 series muffler and then dual pipes out from there (2.5" pipes). I get lots of people asking me what I am running as the note is not much more than stock in volume, but has a little bit of a rumble to it and when I get on it, you know I have done something to the exhaust, yet it is not objectionable either outside or inside the truck.
Please keep in mind that things like having the "California emissions" (aka, 4 cats vice 2) will provide some more back pressure which can allow you to run a less restrictive muffler while maintaining the necessary back pressure. I built my system more around maintaining low end grunt vice high end power as I do my share of 4x4ing and never take the truck up to 5,000 RPM. Most of my time is down under 2,000.
So, get out there, listen to some other trucks and see what you like.
