Job Individuality/Pride/Dedication

[Crevox]

I really think the armory system is silly, especially being able to switch classes anywhere. Your class becomes a meaningless choice. Anyone can be anything anytime, so who or what you've grown yourself to be ends up being irrelevant. There's so many times where this comes into play.

1. People want you to swap to the job that is most effective for the situation, all the time; too bad if you want to play X, you're forced to play Y or be kicked. In FFXI I'm sure this happened too, but mid dungeon they're like "we're against coincounter? you can't play melee, swap to ranged now or we're kicking." This happened for many encounters. In other games such as FFXI it was like "I know that job you're playing isn't THE BEST for the situation, but I'm sure we'll get by." People also don't seem to understand that just because you have the class/job doesn't mean you want to play it and doesn't mean you are experienced/geared/skilled with it. I played WHM a lot and sometimes I was asked to go BLM and I said I probably wasn't going to be comfortable with it (lack of gear, didn't play it enough to feel safe on enmity, didn't want to take the risk) and people just didn't seem to understand why I wouldn't go BLM for them (and I was seen as rude).

2. It's not fun when you're like "oh check out my cool dragoon armor and lance" and the other guy goes "oh yeah" and just swaps to it too immediately. It ruins individuality, and gets rid of the ability to say "I AM A DRAGOON" (because technically you can be anything anytime). The class/job choice you make is meaningless, and you just don't have that good feeling about it. I understand people can swap jobs in FFXI too, but anyone can be anything anytime... I want to feel good about having Carbuncle walk around with me, and yet anyone can have him out with them with a push of a button.

3. A large portion of the reason everyone levels up every class/job is because it's so easy. Swap your weapon, gg good to go. It's difficult to feel accomplished saying like "I am a level 50 WHM" in your party. Not only does most of the party have that too, they'll be like "oh I can just switch to that." Sure, you can switch at your house or whatever in FFXI, but that was a LOT more effort to take for a lot of reasons (gotta have the gear which was harder to fully get, had to have the high level job which was harder, and had to spend a long time going back to who knows where to switch and come back). You were appreciated for playing that class, you had individuality, you felt good; in this game, who cares. If a party is 7/8 and just needs a WHM, instead of looking for that dedicated soul who actually is skilled and geared and loves the class, it's just "I'll just switch to WHM" *equip staff*. In worse situations, someone who loves their job (that dedicated dragoon guy) is forced to play WHM because the party is pressuring him to (they know he has WHM).

In FFXIV 2.0, I'm gonna want to main Summoner. But, what bums me out, is that EVERYONE is going to be leveling it at launch, even though a lot of people have zero interest in it. They're just doing it "because they can." Yeah I know a lot of people want to see the lower level content and don't have any other classes to experience it, but still... what's going to set me apart from the people that are just "summonerlols" and me, a serious dedicated person to the job? It should feel like a strong dedication and others should be like "wow, you got that far with summoner/you have that much gear/SOMETHING" rather than just *swap weapon* "yup I'm as good as you now."

I'm finding it difficult to articulate my point, but I hope you understand.

And I know I posted this in another thread, but I felt it was a slightly different topic and the content of the post deserved its own thread.

EDIT: Here's a good post by IronSoup that also explain some of what I'm trying to say:

In FFXIV, it is fairly easy to be good in any jobs it has to offer compared to FFXI where you needed skills to be able to simply play the job correctly. Even mastering a job is easier than it was in FFXI. Based on that and being an old FFXI player, I have a hard time feeling proud or using the word dedication to master a job since I put more time and efforts doing the same in FFXI.

Unless they completely change the gameplay, I don't think I'll ever feel the same pride in my main job as I did in FFXI or need to dedicate myself to a single job to master it. The level of effort needed is lower so the feeling of accomplishment is also lower.

Here's more from me:

Also, even if you're playing a warrior in a 2.0 dungeon, how easy is it gonna be for you to grab gear for your alternate jobs? Most of the time, you don't even have to play that job and you end up gearing it just because "hey look I got an garuda bow, now my archer is pro." That's not dedication to archer at all, you just happened to grab a bow playing a different class. If you were forced to play archer in order to get archer equipment, and some archer guy had TONS of great archer gear... now that's dedication.