I just wrote a quick plugin to run a test using your same snippet and it works fine
$.fn.test = function() {
return this.each(function(){
var new_id = 5;
$(this).attr('id', this.id + '_' + new_id);
$(this).attr('name', this.name + '_' + new_id);
$(this).attr('value', 'test');
});
};
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#field_id').test()
});
<body>
<div id="container">
<input type="text" name="field_name" id="field_id" value="meh" />
</div>
</body>
So I can only presume something else is going on in your code. Can you provide some more details?