A plea for 3.0 and beyond: Job Customization

The only thing I could really see working is basically having all Classes open to take abilities from, but locking out certain skills depending on which job you're currently playing.

For example, you can use Stoneskin and Cure on a BRD, but Aero and Cleric's Stance are locked. You could also use Awareness and Convalescence, but you don't have access to Flash, Savage Blade, or Provoke.

Things like that, where all jobs can cross-class skills/abilities from any class you normally can now, but the ones you can are limited, with locks on ones SE doesn't want you to have. It adds customization while keeping any class from being overly broken.

AN AA system like EQ/EQ2 would be the best bet giving people multiple options and not feeling like you have to have certain AA's for doing raids and what not. As long as they design it right there shouldn't be a problem when pick and choosing your AA's.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The only thing I could really see working is basically having all Classes open to take abilities from, but locking out certain skills depending on which job you're currently playing.

For example, you can use Stoneskin and Cure on a BRD, but Aero and Cleric's Stance are locked. You could also use Awareness and Convalescence, but you don't have access to Flash, Savage Blade, or Provoke.

Things like that, where all jobs can cross-class skills/abilities from any class you normally can now, but the ones you can are limited, with locks on ones SE doesn't want you to have. It adds customization while keeping any class from being overly broken.

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According to previous posters that's exactly how 1.0's class system worked, and according to an official poll also posted earlier the people who actually tried that system disliked it.

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Originally Posted by Miitan

You know what was fun? During the early days of ROG levelling, people were cross classing Physick and doing low level dungeons as ROGx4. Of course, the minute you turned into a NIN, you lost access to any interesting combinations as you were funnelled into your predefined role as a dps, and the bonus to stats from becoming a NIN meant that it just wasn't worthwhile to stay ROG.

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Psychic can be cross-classed by Black Mages and ae useable by Summoners out of the box, both are DPS. Summoners can also use Resurrection. Paladins can alsu use Cure but at a low potency. If they didn't wnat DPS and Tanks that could heal then why did they allow the healing spells to be cross-classable.

As for DPS and Tanking, Dragoon has access to Marauder abilities, (Of course this is rendered moot by the fact that AoEs make it feel like their HP is always 1)

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

Psychic

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A nitpick but it is Physick.

Illusion of choice.

That's what most cross classable skills in the game are. The rest are so essential they should just give the skills free to the job/class and remove the cross class system altogether.

Wouldn't make any difference.

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Originally Posted by Jamez82

Illusion of choice.

That's what most cross classable skills in the game are. The rest are so essential they should just give the skills free to the job/class and remove the cross class system altogether.

Wouldn't make any difference.

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You could also say that "horizontal" progression is also an illusion of choice, doesn't stop people from asking for it though, your point?

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Originally Posted by Alukah

According to previous posters that's exactly how 1.0's class system worked, and according to an official poll also posted earlier the people who actually tried that system disliked it.

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Well then there's going to be no better customization, because the players had it but didn't like it.

Quit fooling yourselves. XI didn't have job customization either. /nin or gtfo.

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Originally Posted by Amelia_Pond_Behemoth

Quit fooling yourselves. XI didn't have job customization either. /nin or gtfo.

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Pfft. /Sam every day. /Nin for certain fights only.

Actual XI customization began with the Merit Point system where you could enhance specific stats, traits and abilities, but could only do so to an extent. You couldn't max everything available to your job, so you had to pick which stats/skills/traits you were going to prioritize enhancing, or only give meager boosts to all if you weren't going to buff a few select ones all the way (not suggested, but possible).

Subjobs were another way to play how you wanted. In some situations /nin was needed and for some jobs was pretty much the only subjob they ever needed. But for other's /nin was only ideal in specific situations.

Still, the subjob system allowed for a variety of ways to play a job and some odd combinations worked for different things.

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Story time.

Back when I first started FFXI at the NA launch I knew right away I wanted to be a Dark Knight (research an whatnot before the game was even out) and I figured out of the starting jobs available warrior would be the ideal Subjob to start out with. So I leveled warrior all the way up to 40 (because why not?) using greatsword the whole time (and nobody said a thing because we were all noobs then) to boost my greatsword skill in prep for Dark Knight since I knew I would have to raise Scythe when I finally got Dark Knight unlocked. So naturally, I leveled Monk to 20 for my Warrior subjob (When I had taken Warrior to whatever level it was Subjobs were unlocked at... 20?) and continued on.

Unlock Dark Knight and begin that journey to 75 initially using warrior for my subjob. Along the way, I realized at a point that parties wanted Dark Knights with Thief subjob for the sole reason of SA+TA weaponskills onto the tanks to solidify aggro and close skillchains. This was around the Yhoator/Yuhtunga(sp?) Jungle leveling range if I remember correctly. So I stopped leveling Drk and worked on leveling up Thief to appropriate SJ level, which lead to unlocking Ninja and leveling up Ninja to 20 for my Thief's subjob. I realized I kinda enjoyed the Thief and Ninja jobs a bit in the process, though not enough to immediately level them up any further than I needed at the time.

So I get back to leveling up Dark Knight after a good long break due to leveling subjobs and things are great and eventually I hit level 75 Drk sometime after the ToAU expansion. Yes.. it took that long. But man, as strange as it sounds, I enjoyed that. (though I don't think I could ever go through that again at this point in my life)

Eventually I would go and level up Paladin to 75 as well and well.. since I had /war already leveled and it was the only SJ needed for Pld, ever, I was good.

After that I decided to work on Samurai because it looked fun watching the level 75 Samurai I knew. Then one day I just decided to slap Sam on as my Drk subjob because I thought the skills would be pretty cool to use on Dark Knight. I tested it out in solo first, against "Easy Prey" mobs and found that if I used my skills right not only did I have a nice damage output but actually had increased survivability compared to /war and /thf. So I pretty much stayed /Sam from then on, using it in Dynamis and for Merit parties and it was awesome. It actually became a popular thing in the Dark Knight community on my server (and likely all other servers). (I did it before it was cool, man!)

Though I did end up going back to level up my Ninja more to make it an adequate subjob for my Dark Knight because there was a fight or two in CoP that I pretty much needed it for the strat to work.

Each SJ I still used, but it was depending on the situation, though I will say I pretty much never really went back to /war after getting /sam. Though /Thf I used when solo hunting NMs, and /Nin I used in specific fights where consistent damage nullification was key.

Story Over.

tl;dr - XI actually had quite a bit of customization. Not just in the form of subjobs, but more fully with the Merit Point system.

Side note: I ended up quitting some time after Wings of The Goddess in 2008 so any other systems they added, I don't know about and can't rightly use in my point.