i really hope Thief is NOT a BASE class.
Please no!
Base class is useless and never used.
just as a quick sidebar:
correct me if i'm wrong but the first reference to "Doma" in the FF series was in Final Fantasy 6. This is where Cyan was from and he was a Samurai.
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Cyan_Garamonde
Since this game seems to draw references like this from previous FFs, it stands to reason that Doma in ffxiv will follow suit with the "far east" style classes and content.
Thancred was originally a type of Bard before we got this western 'bard' - It's more than likely Rogue since having a FF thief won't work in this game when you get down to it, they designed the game far too limited to have a 'Thief' style of class which is why outside of FFXI you hardly see an actual 'Thief' type class.
However, "all but actually said that thancred used to be a thief" is not the same as actually saying it. You're making assumptions about what that guild actually was. In most games Thieves and Rogues are extremely similar. Please detail how what they did was any different than just pointing out a rogue? What about this made it obviously a thief and not a rogue? If we consider Final Fantasy history we can easily identify Thief as one of the very common standard Job classes for the series. Also, there isn't a single instance where one of the standard final fantasy jobs titles was used as a class title in this entire game. Using those two points it's very easy to conclude that the guild in question can not possibly be thief. It makes far more sense that they are simply a band of rogues that will serve as the base class that Thief and Ninja will eventually be jobs for. I think peoples wish full thinking is getting the better of them and they are making broad assumptions.
I wouldn't say that, but in the near future sure.
I don't think we'd be getting thief as a type of job for ARR. I mean, yeah it was a iconic job from back in the day, but the way all the jobs are talked about in this particular game (Them being some forbidden, or nearly forgotten art to some degree) just makes it seem like Ninja is the one to more likely be a Job. I mean, Doma did get razed to the ground so Ninjas are probably far and few between. When it comes to thief...can you really see that as being some sort of lost art or something?
Let's look at Thief and see how it wouldn't work.
Recurring abilities:
Flee - Because we can't have movement speed+ in the game, or even instantly remove aggro from mobs, and prevent aggro for a few seconds (however the latter would need to be balanced right to avoid exploitation)
Steal - Because we can't have us taking items from mobs.
Mug - Because we can't have an upgrade to steal to inflict damage as well.
Dual Wielding daggers - Because we can't take daggers from GLA and add them to another class, although one uses daggers on GLA and we definitely cannot have dual wielding we have no classes available that can attack with both hands. we also could never have a "dual dagger" weapon type added.
And let's take FFXI for the last two:
Sneak Attack - Because we have no way to inflict more damage using positional requirements.
Trick Attack - because we can't have any way to dump some hate.
These are the basics we would need to have a thief class/job in game, the increased speed would come from the dual wield daggers if you can see through the sarcasm you will see we can easily add a thief type class/job to the game with the current game design.
Is it me, or did everyone in this thread turn into Naoki_Yoshida???
I would bet it will be thf class and nin job...corsair could be a second job as well (which would make since if it's dex based).
My only concern would be potentially adding two dps roles to the game. NIN could be a tank like ffxi, but people would qq about it pretty loudly. Either way, it could open up some great new cross class skills.