[dev1033] Ideas for a Two-Tier Class System: Jobs on Top of Weapon Specializations

[Carpe]

Ideas for a Two-Tier Class System: Jobs on Top of Weapon Specializations

I. Introduction

So there have been a lot of ideas floating around the forums about how to incorporate traditional FF jobs into FFXIV. One of the main reasons people want traditional jobs is that they feel right now there isn't a very strong sense of class uniqueness or role identification in the game. For example, a Conjurer is a hodgepodge of different skills that can be used for nuking, buffing, and and/or healing.

Warning: This post is really long (sorry ; ; ). If you don't want to read the background/intro stuff then I suggest skipping to section III where I lay out the details of this system.

We need more Class Uniqueness and Role Identification

As the game is right now there is no way for a player playing a Conjurer to let other people in their party know what type of role they want to play. Sure, you could create a specialist class (ex. healer/buffer) by mixing abilities from various classes, but it's hard to identify with vague class hybrids the way that we were able to identify with clear-cut classes (classes filled with a rich tradition of lore) like those in FFXI and previous FF games.

Bring back Traditional Final Fantasy Classes

Obviously there are many ways to go about doing this, some more obvious than others. A lot of people on the forum have been suggesting that one way to handle this problem is to just bring back traditional final fantasy jobs alongside the classes that are already established in FFXIV. One idea is to unlock them FF Tactics style, and have the classes that are out now be “base” classes and that leveling up these base classes, you could unlock the “advanced” classes. This idea puts FFXIV classes on the same plane as FFXI jobs, which doesn't make sense with the current armory system because in FFXIV class=”weapon skills”, and in FFXI class=”job”.

Armory System : Jobs are not Classes, Class = Weapon Specialist

In another post, Cairdeas clarifies the difference between class and job, explains what the armory system really means, and where the confusion about what classes in FFXIV are comes about:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...t-Jobs-dev1033

The basic idea is that within the armory system a class is just a weapon specialist. A gladiator is a sword expert, a pugilist is a hand-to-hand expert, a marauder is an axe expert, etc. DOMs are a little trickier to classify, but you can think of a conjurer as a direct-magic expert (with elemental themes) and thaumaturge as a damage-over-time-magic expert (with light/dark themes).

The classes we have right now do not define roles, but instead comprise a collection of skills associated with a particular weapon. We tend to think of gladiators as “tanks” (because they have some defensive abilities such as “rampart”, “sentinel”, “cover”, etc.), but there is nothing inherent to them being “the” tank class...in fact, if marauder could wield 1-handed axes with shields you could argue that they would be equally effective tanks (if not better) with abilities like “defender”, “disorient”, “foresight”, etc. So as the system stands right now, classes do not define any particular roles, but are the building blocks for creating roles or “jobs”.

Armory System allows for a lot of Customization

Even though the armory system seems to create rather “grey”, “undefined” classes, it does have some benefits that are worth keeping or putting into consideration when thinking about a possible redesign. I'm sure everyone can appreciate the convenience of being able to change your current class simply by changing your weapon. The other advantage of the current system is all the options for customization available—being able to directly swap abilities between classes allows us to really support our own playstyle to maximum effect.

Goal: Class Uniqueness and Role Identification with a lot of Customization

Hopefully whatever redesign gets implemented, it will give us the “best of both worlds”: give us the role identification and class uniqueness we are looking for, but let us maintain the customization that allows us to put our own little twist on our characters.

[Carpe]

II. Customization and Job System in FFXI

Let's look back at how Jobs and customization were handled in FFXI. In FFXI you had your base jobs WAR, MNK, THF, BLM, WHM, RDM that you started off with. After level 30 (in any job) you could do quests to unlock certain “advanced” jobs like: PLD, DRK, NIN, DRG, etc. “Advanced” Jobs were on the same plane as “base” Jobs; there was nothing essentially different about “Advanced” Jobs in that you could level up and play any Job to maximum level.

Jobs were broken up into Abilities (active), Traits (passive), and Spells. Within each job, progression was pretty much linear any LVL 40 RDM was essentially the same as another in that they had access to the same abilities, traits, and spells.

You had weapon skill levels for each of your weapon types. Increasing these levels granted you access to Weapon Skills that you could use in combat with TP. Certain jobs were more proficient (had higher max levels) with certain weapon types, but weren't limited to only using those weapon types. If you wanted to learn to use one-handed swords and two-handed swords, you had to level them up seperately which was extremely cumbersome for something that didn't really have the same sense of accomplishment as levelling up a job.

Customization came about mainly through the use of the Sub Job System (later the Merit System). You could mix and match any two job having one as your main and one as your sub. You're sub job provided you with stat boosts and you could use skills for that job up to half the level of your main job. The Job/Sub Job system allowed for some cool combinations, but it also had a lot of “less than ideal” combinations that came from mixing two jobs that didn't have good synergy with one another. It was also very linear and self-contained—your class developed in a pre-defined way and you only had the abilities from your job and sub job available to you.

Weapon choice had little impact on your role in FFXI compared to the impact of Job/Sub Job choice. Weapons only granted a couple of weapon skills which contributed little to your job experience.

In FFXIV however weapon is everything. FFXIV relative to FFXI is like a very advanced weapon skill system. They've combined the abilities, traits, and spells from jobs with weapon skills and shoved it into one big package, your armory class.

This is one of the reasons why classes feel so undefined—one could argue they threw TOO MUCH into these weapon classes.

[Cairdeas]

Thanks for making the system I have been trying to explain make sense, actually make sense.


http://i56.tinypic.com/15h0jt1.png

Heres a picture for you.

[Carpe]

III. Proposal for a Job (Title) System on Top of an Armory (Weapon) System.

1. New Job/Subjob System = Title/Weapon

This system, which has been promoted several times by Cairdeas and a few others:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Class-Renaming

is to have a new kind of Job/Sub-Job System.

The idea is to reintroduce traditional jobs as “titles” or “job names” (I'll use titles from now on because this term seems to be catching on).

A Title is basically a higher tier class; one that defines a kind of role specialization the way that jobs in FFXI do.

A particular title will give you access to class unique abilities, traits, and spells that are not available to other titles.

Your “sub-job” will be a weapon specialization (the classes that are available now: PUG, LNC, THM, etc.) they will identify you as a specialist in a particular weapon and give you access to spells and abilities associated with that weapon.

You can mix titles with weapon specializations to define your role and set you apart from other characters with the same titles or weapon specialties. Here's some examples:

Bow Ranger
Title->Ranger
Weapon-> Archer

Gun Ranger
Title->Ranger
Weapon->Musketeer

Sword Dragoon
Title->Dragoon
Weapon->Gladiator

Lance Dragoon
Title->Dragoon
Weapon->Lancer

As I suggested earlier, they packed too much into weapon classes in FFXIV. By introducing titles, we have a place to unpack some of these “role” and “specific” skills into and let weapon classes focus more on the “action” and “general” skills.

2. Building a Job: Dark Knight

Let's take as an example the Dark Knight job. Let's see how we would build this job in the current system and how we might build it in the new system. My goal here is to try to map what we have in FFXIV to what we would expect from a Dark Knight in FFXI. (I shortened the list of skills to make it easier to read)

FFXI -> FFXIV: Dark Knight

Spells (from FFXI)
Stone -> CON
Poison -> THM
Drain -> THM
Water -> CON
Bio -> THM
Aero -> CON
Bind -> THM
Aspir -> Siphon MP, THM
Fire -> CON
Blizzard -> CON
Sleep -> CON
Tractor -> CON
Absorb-ACC -> THM
Thunder -> CON
Absorb-VIT -> THM (DEF)
Stun -> N/A
Absorb-STR -> THM
Absorb-TP -> Siphon TP, THM
Dread Spikes-> Shock/Stygian Spikes, CON/THM

Abilities
Arcane Circle-> Rampart? (GLA) Shell? (CON)
Last Resort -> Ferocity? (LNC) Still Precision? (GLA)
Weapon Bash-> Jarring Strike? (PUG)
Soul Eater -> Rage of Halone? (GLA)

Traits
Attack Bonus -> N/A
Resist Paralyze -> N/A
Arcana Killer -> N/A

As you can see, the spells that are used by a Dark Knight map really well from FFXIV, but the Abilities and Traits that define the flavor of the Dark Knight are laughably missing good substitutes. If you want to be a melee, then your best bet is probably to be a Marauder or Lancer since they are the only two-handed melee weapons atm, but this kinda gimps out all the DOM spells that are giving more flavor to your “class” than your marauder or lancer skills.

With the title system, you have all these spells that come from THM and CON the same way as before, but you gain abilities and traits like Last Resort, Soul Eater, and Attack Bonus that you didn't have before.

[Carpe]

Two questions come from this:

1) How do I level up my title and learn Job-specific traits/abilities?

There are many possible approaches for leveling up your title. The idea that seems most simple and straight-forward to me is to simply start gaining Job Points while a particular Job/Title is active. I don't think you would level up your job/title in the same number range (ex. 1-50) as your weapon class , but you would want something that would balance out the progression so that you would have something to work towards over time.

An interesting idea would be to incorporate Jobs maybe with the Company System. Imagine becoming an apprentice to a master Dark Knight. Doing Quests/Leves issued by the company could give you Job Marks that would allow you to buy/unlock Job-Specific abilities and traits.

Edited: 3/18/11 Based on discussion with northernsky, Akumu, cairdeas:

You aren't going to have to level your title from 1-50 the same way you level your weapon class since there won't be that many class-specific skills to learn. The idea of Ranks was actually something they had in crafting in FFXI (recruit, initiate, novice,..., veteran) and could be used again for jobs in FFXIV. Each rank could give you a new ability and/or new traits.

So with DRK:
Dark Knight - Recruit learns Arcane Circle & Attack Bonus
Dark Knight - Initiate learns Last Resort & Resist Paralyze
Dark Knight - Novice learns Weapon Bash & Arcana Killer
Dark Knight - Apprentice learns Soul Eater & Attack Bonus II

I'm just using FFXI as an example, but seems like something like this would work.

How to hit those rank thresholds is definitely up for debate, but maybe just gaining job points at the end of combat or through leves/quests might be the simplest. Since gaining a new rank has a new rank name I think having a kind of "test" quest would be really appropriate/fun like northernsky suggested.

2) Are my Magic skills weakened since I am using a Melee Class?/What Prevents me from being a "Master of Everything"?

The way spells and abilities work right now is that they have an optimal rank and base weapon class. So at rank 26 THM you learn Drain. Drain is a THM skill so it's most effective when used by THM, also it's optimal rank is 26 so if it is used before r26 then it's less effective. I don't know exactly how the penalties work, but we do know a r26+ THM will be able to use Drain to maximum effect, a r26+ from another weapon class will get a penalty from using a cross-class ability, and less than r26 job other than THM should get the most penalty, with the penalty increasing the lower the rank that is using the skill.

My proposal is that when introducing Titles, have abilities and spells learned from weapon classes now FAVOR certain titles. So now a spell like CURE would have the following info on it:

CURE
Action Cost: 2
Conjury Optimal Rank: 4
Favors: WHM, PLD, etc.
CastTime, MPCost, Etc....

This could have different kinds of effects and balancing, but a simplified balancing could look like this.
(Assuming all meet optimal rank)

Title: WHM
Weapon: CON
CURE base CON
CURE favors WHM
CURE (+WHM, +CON) = 100%

Title: PLD
Weapon: GLA
CURE not base GLA
CURE favors PLD
CURE (+PLD, -GLA) = 75%

Title: DRK
Weapon: MRD
CURE not base MRD
Cure not favors DRK
CURE (-DRK, -MRD) = 50%

So having abilities and spells favor certain titles doesn't prevent you from using CURE with your DRK, it just has more penalty costs (mp, stamina, cast time, potency, etc.) than if you were using it with a WHM/CON. This discourages you from using cure with DRK, but gives you the option to do so when the benefits of using it outweigh the costs.

This again is similar to the Job/Sub Job system. In FFXI, you could use /WHM as your subjob with DRK to let you cast spells like cure, but doing so made them much less effective than casting it as WHM/BLM, or even BLM/WHM.

Also, going through spells and abilities and seeing which ones FAVOR your DRK gives you a guideline for creating your job and making it as effective as possible.

Addition (Recommended): For more details about how title/weapon interaction works and how penalties are compounded to discourage "masters of everything" builds, check this post: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ll=1#post42174

Addition: Unlocking a Title FF Tactics Style

Since so many people on the forums seem to love the idea of unlocking jobs FF Tactics style (myself included) I just wanted to show how easy/sensible it would be to do this in this system:

Instead of just having to hit some ranks in certain base weapon classes (like unlocking BLM by hitting 10 THM and 10 CON), I think a better idea would be to have a kind of threshold that has to be met, a certain number of abilities that favor that title that have to be learned. So for the same example of BLM, in order to unlock the BLM job, you would have to learn 10~15 spells/abilities that favor BLM. You could also make it more specific and say that certain specific spells/abilities that made up the "core" of BLM would have to be learned to unlock the job. For example, you would unlock BLM after learning: Fire, Blizzard, Areo, Stone, ..., Burn, Frost, Rasp, ..., Poison, Slow, Gravity, and Bio. This looks like a lot of spells but would only require leveling THM to 12 and CON to 12.

This would solve a potential "problem" of having someone level up, say, a Marauder to lvl 20 and then doing the quest to unlock BLM without having learnt any spells/abilities that actually favor the BLM title.

[Carpe]

3. Weapon and Armor Styles

The last question I want to tackle is just: how do you create the “look” of a job. Well what does the look consist of? Certain jobs are obviously characterized by certain types of weapons (DRK = Scythe) and certain armor styles (DRK = Heavy Armor).

The way weapons are set up right now class=weapon. So if you use a sword you are a gladiator and if you use an axe you are a marauder. But, we don't want to limit our DRK to only being able to use axes or swords. We want them to use Scythes and Great Swords!

Characteristic/Specialized Weapons will be subsets of more General Weapon Types

Obviously, there wouldn't be enough skills and abilities to introduce just to add Scythe as a new weapon type, so my idea is to have it be a subset of an existing weapon type. So Scythe in this case would be a weapon type AXE, it would turn you into a marauder, but it would favor DRK. Scythes should also have stat bonuses on them like +ATK to increase your specialization as a DRK or DD). Similarly, Great Swords could be type SWORD and turn you into a Gladiator, but favor a DRK/PLD Title.

As far as armor is concerned, they didn't want to make using armor in this game too restrictive I think to relieve stress on inventory. Having to swap between different sets of armor all the time because your current job couldn't equip it was a hassle and killed your inventory space. My idea then is just have have armor favor titles in addition to weapon class.

So a heavy set of Armor could favor GLA/MRD/LNC as well as DRK/PLD/WAR/DRG. Armor that is more specific to a particular title would only favor that title or very similar titles. This doesn't prevent you from wearing the armor with another class/title but just compounds the penalties for doing so.

Conclusion

Introducing Titles as a job system on top of the current armory system gives us the “best of both worlds”. It let's us have that open sandbox customizability that we enjoy right now in FFXIV but it bring us more definition in our roles and allows us to increase our effectiveness as a specialist.

The main theme of character development in FFXIV i think should be not to prevent certain choices, but to encourage/discourage certain choices.

This is similar to the effect we got from the Job/Sub Job system in FFXI, but that system I think was more awkward and restrictive than the system that I'm proposing here.

I like this proposal better than some of the other proposals I've seen out there because it seems to me to be a simple augmentation of the current system using similar rules and themes that have already been established for this game, which to me increases the simplicity and plausability of something like this being able to be implemented.

Edited 3/17/11: Just wanted to add these points about the advantages of this system:

1) (pointed out by northernsky) In FFXI if you had a lvl 20 RDM and wanted to have your subjob BLM, you had to go back to a lvl 1 BLM and lvl it up independently to atleast 10 to get maximum effect for your lvl20 RDM. In this system I'm proposing this problem doesn't occur because you rank up your job title in tandem with your weapon class. So you can be a "r3" DRK/r50 MRD and switching to r30 GLA will make you a "r3" DRK/r30GLA. You still rank up your DRK because it's active but now you gain sword sp instead of axe sp. So with this system you get a lot of "kill two birds with one stone" goal-oriented leveling. If you want to go back and level up a r1 CON, but you have your DRK maxed out , you could always switch to a new Title (r1BLM?) to level it up with so as to "kill two birds with one stone".

2) Implementing this system lets you keep all the progress you've made on your weapon class ranks so far! This system doesn't make any fundamental changes to how you rank up your weapon skills so there would be absolutely no point in you losing your r50 glad because they decided to change/rename that into a new class that you didn't really want to play in the first place.

[Cairdeas]

Scythes being introduced as a variant of Axes is an interesting idea. Another would be to introduce them as a variant of Polearms.

[Caimon]

Very nice explanation of your proposal. Hopefully they do something like you guys keep describing. I'm thinking they may be to far underway with programing and troubleshooting their own plans to change to your ideas. But hopefully they dont need to change and their ideas are like yours lol.

[Grit]

Holy wall of text, bat-man!

I read most of it, and I agree with you on almost every level. Though this would require an entire overhaul of the armoury and skill systems to function properly.. I don't think that can be avoided anymore.

[Cairdeas]

Holy wall of text, bat-man!

I read most of it, and I agree with you on almost every level. Though this would require an entire overhaul of the armoury and skill systems to function properly.. I don't think that can be avoided anymore.

This system would require less manipulation of the current armoury system then most of the other suggetions people have made. And would satisfy the players who actually enjoy the current armoury system.