What is RDM all about?

[saevel]

This statement is completely ignorant of the actual problem that's being addressed here. It's about which elements are being derived from previous Final Fantasy games. Are the games all the same, just because most of them have Shiva, Ifrit, Chocobos, Airships and Cid? Those elements are all added for nostalgia's sake, as a nod to previous titles (as indicated by the fact that they look/behave differently every time). Same goes for job names. But those are not gameplay elements, SE needed six different classes, so they took one of the few FF games that actually had classes to borrow their names from, that's all there is to it. Again, even they behave differently, which they had to, because online games have inherently different mechanics to implement than offline games. Sure there are still similarities, but that's coincidental. Are you saying DNC is based on WoW priests, because both have the ability to heal a player? There are certain mechanics they just have to implement, if a coincidental similarity arises you can't go around and start making up relations where there are none.

And the funny thing is, even if there were similarities at some point during the design, it's still not the same. You can't make all offline content work in this environment. SE knew that too, they still know it and make the jobs with massively multiplayer content in mind (even when they screw up), not with the roots of their jobs. Do you think any ability at all makes the devs wonder "How was this used in some old game?" instead of "How could this be used now?"? If you do, you're insulting SE by accusing them of shitty game design.



Yes, it would. And it doesn't have the job system from any of those. What other "similarities" did you find? That you can increase your character's strengths from getting experience by defeating monsters? Guess it's been stealing from every other RPG in existance then? You do realize that Final Fantasy games strive to be as different as they can from previous games? SE takes this principle to all extremes, even removing good features in upcoming games, just because they want something different (see the Auction House in XIV). Honestly, I'm thinking they're running out of ideas. They even wanted something different than "levels", so they removed them in X and had a different system in place. For XIV, they tried "two different kinds of levels" and hence the physical level was born. SE's compulsive obsession with inventing new gameplay elements should be a major clue that any game mechanic resembling older games in the series is purely coincidental, disregarding the nods to older lore content, as I mentioned before.

Depends on the Final Fantasy. FF I / III / V / Tactics / X-2 (if we can call that a FF) / Tactics Advanced / Tactics A-2 / FFXI all pull from the same Job system. The names and core concepts of these jobs are pretty much the same from each game to the next.

Fighter / Warrior -> Use's various weapons to physically attack monsters and protect their friends (Guard / Provoke)
Knight / Paladin -> Fighter who can use Holy magic, Knight Swords and heavy armor.
Thief -> evasion and fast fighter who use's knifes and short swords, can steal items from the enemies
Monk -> fighter that fights with their bare fists, has high attack but low defense and lacks in equipment
White Mage -> Caster who specializes in casting white magic which is restorative and defensive in nature
Black Mage -> Caster who specializes in casting black magic which is destructive and offensive in nature
Red Mage -> Fighter / Caster who has no specialization, can cast both black and white magic and can wield swords, daggers and wear medium armor. Doesn't get access to the most powerful magic nor weapons and armor.

Then later,
Summoner -> Calls forth summons to fight for them.
Bard -> sings songs that benefit party members and hinder the opponents.
Blue Mage -> Fighter / Caster who learns magic from monsters and wields swords and medium armor.

And these are from I / III / V. You have many others, time mage, samuria, ninja, dragoon, berserker, geomancer, dancer, mystic knight, dark knight, then green mage, fencer, and all those GBA/A2 tactics jobs. Not all games had the same jobs but common reoccurring themes could be found, specifically in the first six jobs (Fighter / Thief / Monk / White Mage / Black Mage / Red Mage). Seeing as Red Mage happens to be one of the first six jobs ever made, has largely remained untouched throughout the series and this being a Red Mage forum, it's very relevant to discuss the job's origins and design. Now if we were talking Scholar, a job that has never existed before XI (Sage doesn't count), then it would be pointless referencing past games as it didn't exist.