What is RDM all about?

[saevel]

That last statement was just plain ignorant. It very much is the eleventh final fantasy which derives its elements from the others. A white mage is a healer, it wasnt morphed into some abomination. Black mages didnt become melees, monks arent slinging magic, summoners dont enfeeble the monsters only. This game was strongly molded on concepts of old, from airships and chocobos and ferrys used to travel, down to the monsters we love to hate. If the game shared very little with other games, id support that statement, but the game was an experiment at taking the games of old and evolving them into something for online mmo fame. There are far more things this game has in common with older final fantasy games than with just about any other mmo. Most statements you make actually have some merit, and make sense, even if i dissagree, but its not "somewhat familiar class names" its identical class names, and the classes look and behave majorly like they did ancestorally. And hell even if rdm wasnt good at X in old games, or if it indeed was, that doesnt stop players from wanting things to be improved in the current game.

And thats what this forum is for, to let our thoughts be shared and heard. If they dont want to hear them, they wont, but im going to be frank here. We have seen if they like an idea, they will just do it even if most people want it or not. We as players should remind them of the game's roots, and should point out glaring flaws. That said, i am sorry to have attacked you for this, because nothing comes of that, but i just couldnt help but show where i felt you were ignoring too much of the final fantasy fandom that many of us enjoy, we play ffxi to enjoy the game and feel that nostalgia. /end-rant

+1,

This pretty much. FFXI wouldn't be called "Final Fantasy" without the job system from FFI / III / V / Tactics and sorta-kinda X-2. The job system is what defined game mechanics of Final Fantasy, its the whole reason FFI was able to save SquareSoft and prevent them from going into bankruptcy. People like GG and co don't even know why it was called "Final Fantasy". At the time Square had released several failed games for the Japanese Famicon and was pretty much out of money. As a last ditch effort they decided to make a Role Playing Game, something they were originally hesitant about due to Enix's crushing market share / popularity with Dragon Quest. So in the end they said "screw it" and decided that instead of a pre-made generic fantasy RPG they would instead put ~YOU~ the player as the main character and have you decide the main characters of the story and their unique jobs. They created six different class's yet only four party slots, thus guaranteeing that you'd want to reply it again with a different setup for a different experience. It was named Final Fantasy because it would be their final game and would be a fantasy RPG. It was a smash success and saved the company from default, its sequels are some of the highest selling fantasy RPG's every made. They were so successful that they eventually bought out their main competitor, Enix, and became Square Enix. The six original jobs were Fighter (Warrior), Monk, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage, Black Mage.

To try to ignore those past success's would be ignorant at best, down right dishonest at worst. Just because you have players only playing one member of a group does not invalidate the job system nor the concepts of those jobs. If your thinking this then go back to playing WoW, DAOC, or one of the many MANY fantasy MMO's in the marketplace.

Seriha's right, we don't have Black Mages wielding great axe's and wearing heavy armor. We don't have White Mages wielding swords nor spamming Flare / elemental nukes. We don't have thief's calling pets. Each job has both a theme and a concept, most of them work pretty well, some of them SE messed up during the execution phase (Summoner big time).