Truely separating class from job - an overhaul (again).

[Reika]

I'm Kinda reserving judgement till beta but i have one comment.

With the op's examples of skills and progression it really doesnt work out any differently than totally detaching jobs from the armory system alltogether. you just just as easily have a seperate skill set from 1-20 as you do 20+

the advantage of seperating them entirely though means you have infinitely more diversity because each and every job can be built on a totally blank frame. where by keeping them connected a black mage will still be built on a thaumatage frame and thus be restricted to thaumatage mechanics of a sort.

Not neccicarily. The thaumaturge wont have the attack M potency increases, but instead will have debuff acc incteases and changes to its heals and ressurect. If you were a lvl50 Thm under this system and you equpped the soul of the black mage, your role would change entirely. I used THM as my main example because I would like THM to go back to being a healer class, tho not OP like it was in the beginning, and for BLM to be the DD 'class' not playing at all like you would a THM.

THM lore (and still as depicted on the ARR website) is debuffing with curses. BLM lore (also on ARR website) is weilding destructive magic. THM shouldnt be the destroyer, and BLM shouldnt be the curser, they should be different completely.

But yes, I know what your saying. I did before and still do believe the jobs should have leveled up independent of the classes, from 1-50, and thus be completely different than that which unlocks it. But, Its already too late for that lest they remove all current players jobs, and make us all unlock lvl1 jobs again. I however would not be against that at all.

[Orophin]

I'm Kinda reserving judgement till beta but i have one comment.

With the op's examples of skills and progression it really doesnt work out any differently than totally detaching jobs from the armory system alltogether. you just just as easily have a seperate skill set from 1-20 as you do 20+

the advantage of seperating them entirely though means you have infinitely more diversity because each and every job can be built on a totally blank frame. where by keeping them connected a black mage will still be built on a thaumatage frame and thus be restricted to thaumatage mechanics of a sort.

Plus in the ops example everything that follows the thm path could pretty easily fit a red mage job frame.
in which case my arguement would be that it would be simply better to have 2 totally seperate jobs. blm and rdm, both independant from the other than to try and branch them both out from one frame

My idea is that if you really want to separate the two, do it at level 30 when you get the job. This could also help with them making multiple jobs off one class in the future if they ever want to go that route.

In the case of Gladiator, everything goes as normal until level 30, where after then, Gladiator starts gaining skills specific to its class and Paladin gets its own abilities. The whole job gets 5 abilities and the rest of its class's abilities wasn't too impressive IMO, but I guess it was the best they could do for a quick fix. I'm really curious to see where classes and jobs go in beta.

[BlaiseLallaise]

I have been thinking about this topic a bit over the past month or two. I have come to the conclusion that it would be wiser to focus on figuring out how to branch a class into two or three jobs without essentially making two or three identical jobs. The end result is not too dissimilar from what the OP proposes. The difference, however, is that the class/job dynamic would be closer to what it is now.

Using the THM example, if a THM was rebuilt such that it had its old debuff mechanics as well as its newer nuking mechanics, then the jobs would be built such that the soul of the Black Mage allows access to only the nuking mechanics of the THM, while the soul of the ... (Necromancer?) would allow access to only the debuff mechanics of the THM. There would likely be exceptions to this rule, and possibly a few spells or abilities only accessible to THM and/or other classes.

As such, what we have is a class that can play different ways, however the player wishes. From that we have multiple jobs that are unique, well-defined, and focused, designed to hone one aspect of the base class at the cost of another. That's how I feel about classes and jobs. Classes should have an array of play styles, while jobs act as the role-defining mechanic they were originally meant to be.

[PSxpert2011]

Why....?

Let the DEVs do their job. All we do is give them feedback.

No more overhauling the job/class system, it's fine!

[Reika]

Why....?

Let the DEVs do their job. All we do is give them feedback.

No more overhauling the job/class system, it's fine!

No its not :/

[Xeia]

Personally, I would prefer the class specialization you've talked about to instead be a different job (eg from THM, both BLM and NEC), but that whole job progression thing is a discussion for elsewhere. I can see your point for wanting the base class to fulfil the role rather than adding more jobs, I just prefer the thought of more jobs.

I'm always surprised how many people I see advocating this idea. While it looks nice on the surface, I can't see it working fairly without a complete overhaul of the way classes and jobs are currently set up. To follow your example, let's say I'm a level 50 BLM but have never touched NEC. Now I go and unlock it and all of a sudden I'm a top level Necromancer. Why is that a problem? Other than the fact that the two jobs would be strikingly similar, balancing issues between classes.

Continuing with the example, we now have two full-fledged jobs stemming from Thaumaturge and tied in levels. That means that leveling THM is more worthwhile than leveling, say... ARC. How do we fix that? Well, now let's make ARC split into two paths too. BRD and... I dunno, RNG. Now we're in a situation where in order to make each class tree equally useful they need to think up two jobs for each class they add. People are already worried that the armory system limits the introduction of new jobs because they have to think up a new class for each one... and while the suggestion you gave is often cited as a fix, I think it compounds the problem. Think of SMN. What on earth could be its partner job? Arcanist really can't go into anything other than Summoner because it uses Carbuncle.

---

Bah, I guess that wasn't really the point of OP's thread, so I'll try to be brief in getting back to what I wanted to say:
I like the current system. I think it works BECAUSE classes are comparatively weak. And while I agree there needs to be more distinction between jobs and classes, anything added to the class will also be added to the job, so it wouldn't accomplish that. I'm against the class having abilities the job won't inherit (other than cross-class). I like to think of classes as the level of expertise any normal person can achieve through hardwork (NPCs in the guilds), while jobs are only the few special, "gifted" elite (us players). Of course jobs are stronger.

That being said, I'm categorically in favor of added abilities, especially spells for mages. The number of different spells we have access to at the moment is depressing.

On a side note, I -NEVER- equipped my soul crystal while soloing as a Gladiator.

[valetarkus]

The Idea of classes was from the beginning as said by square, developed to carry multiple jobs. Eventually all the classes will start getting new jobs so they don't have to keep creating more classes for each new job they make. This of course is way down the road. So separating them like this would defeat the initial purpose of them. Because if they were separated they would just be called jobs again.

[Dzian]

I'm always surprised how many people I see advocating this idea. While it looks nice on the surface, I can't see it working fairly without a complete overhaul of the way classes and jobs are currently set up. To follow your example, let's say I'm a level 50 BLM but have never touched NEC. Now I go and unlock it and all of a sudden I'm a top level Necromancer. Why is that a problem? Other than the fact that the two jobs would be strikingly similar, balancing issues between classes.

Continuing with the example, we now have two full-fledged jobs stemming from Thaumaturge and tied in levels. That means that leveling THM is more worthwhile than leveling, say... ARC. How do we fix that? Well, now let's make ARC split into two paths too. BRD and... I dunno, RNG. Now we're in a situation where in order to make each class tree equally useful they need to think up two jobs for each class they add. People are already worried that the armory system limits the introduction of new jobs because they have to think up a new class for each one... and while the suggestion you gave is often cited as a fix, I think it compounds the problem. Think of SMN. What on earth could be its partner job? Arcanist really can't go into anything other than Summoner because it uses Carbuncle.

Yup that was one of my points. on top of that though if you consider that later down the line every class has a new job added. then all of those new jobs are instantly max level. which ultimately seems likely to make levelling for newer players harder and harder. jun 2014 patch 2.x - we've added 8 new jobs (one per class) and everyone has them at max level almost immediately.

just doesnt really seem to make sense that way.

[Psykotsu]

Thank god for the Internet right ?! I mean, in real life if someone said the first part of your statement in a conversation you would get punched in the mouth for being an a-hole. But not on the forums, am I right !?

Ahhhh the Internet , housing cowards since 1969.

I like your ideas op, they help flesh out a system that needs it without ruining either class nor job. Don't listen to Joan Rivers up here. She just doesn't know how to act in public anymore

lmao, so true.

Not to mention just plain sounding geeky.

[Masamune1004]

Way too much work at this point, and I think it would be better to just release new classes and jobs, probably take the same amount of time too.