Hybrid Jobs Discussion

The point of hybrid classes where you queue as one role or the other (like the Crystal Exarch or classes in WoW) vs having multiple types of utility at the same time is to make it so that one character can do multiple different types of content. We can already do that though with the ability to swap jobs on the same character, FF14 chars are basically a hybrid class just by existing.

Tying multiple roles together into one class/job with a base set of shared abilities causes more headaches than it solves things, just look at how summoner and scholar have been decoupled as time's went on because SE realizes that having the two tied together limits how they can develop the identity of either of them.

The only problem this would really solve is having to level another class, but between roulettes and the armory bonus it's really not that bad to level another job if you want to.

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Originally Posted by Brightshadow

No your role is changed automatically after 1 - 5 minutes of waiting in the duty finder to fill whatever role is missing. As for premade/fixed parties they could come up with a way to allow us to choose.

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That gets a "no" from me, then. It's one thing to allow the player to choose the role they want to take up beforehand. It's another when you're basically forcing them into a role because reasons.

I think the hybrid concept would work well for limited jobs -> Advanced Jobs. Like if SE feels that they have to make an indepth creative side to puppet master but also don't want to mess up game balance or be banging their heads against the wall for years to come, like if Hunter in WoW had in depth animal husbandry or something but then you could take one out for combat as it is now in that game (balanced into specific archetypes avoiding too much player choice lol, but makes easier balance). Here you could have a DoL husbandry sort of beastmaster content, maybe break some rules by allowing them to have a few pets out at once (little undersized party roaming the world haha), but in combat they'd trim down some of the concepts and make it follow a tighter structure (while improving some of the gameplay loops to feel like a complete job with rotation/form).

May think of it a bit like pvp and pve sides of jobs we already have. I think the hybridization would be easier to implement if it was split across two different bodies of content. Like we may think of SMN and SCH as a hybrid job, but it's had a lot of stress due to trying to share some of that original core and each expansion SE breaks further and further away from that to gain greater creative control- at this point they're long lost cousins. Not saying it's impossible or can't work.. just thinking to myself that it would be easier to hybrid content if they're spread over two different concepts. I imagine what you're suggesting is somewhere a bit after that, here I mean- like thematically it's the same but mechanically they're not necessarily the same and abilities might not share any relationships. Where I suppose the benefit is easier budget but the cost might be something along the lines of "why not just make a new job then, if everything but the theme is different?". Where again the cost would be less if you kept the same art and stuff but just a bit further and we could potentially have something very new instead of mostly new, though I admit that's less valuable if you love the theme of what you want to split and you don't need a new one ("no new theme, theme perfect, only more gameplay options").

A more difficult example on limited but still different enough that it fits the "pve x pvp" idea is blue mage having a chained and unchained mode (chained being with strict DF balanced spells, that work together smoothly) and unchained (which may have some interactions with chained systems, and some spells that are just direct upgrades that are unbalanced, but also a lot of goof spells that are like "yeah okay, blow yourself up"). Still a bit different from SCH / SMN since going from chained to unchained is rather like becoming all roles rather than changing roles entirely, and also clearly unchained is "I'm not balanced, please don't look at me like I should be" where SCH and SMN both need to be balanced.

I think you could exhibit this feeling to a small extent (but still fairly balanced) in a single job by improving the diversity of SMN's pets and perhaps adding a transformation based job (the egi are sort of that way, and you have phoenix with that light regen healing, but if SE can find room for a bit more thematic differences that'd be awesome). I wouldn't suggest either job to be able to fully go into another role though, but as we've seen with some respectable red mage raise and cure potential that it's possible to stick your foot into another role without entirely collapsing under your own role. Like if you could transform into a bruiser form that had a unique damage reduction ability that allowed them to /temporarily/ take and deal decent damage, but they'd still collapse just like any other DD if you put them under the thumb too long (meaning they couldn't tank, they just had an impressive temporary management of a situation, like a red mage could theoretically temporarily take over raises and very light healing or a Paladin and healing.. temporarily).

Tl;dr (ish lol):

I think multi-role concept could work but like SCH / SMN if they share a root it has potential to become a lot of rope to hang one's self with. I respect the creative desire of whoever thought of the idea of SCH / SMN, but just feel like the connection between the two has been a burden they've lessened with each patch and fear we'd make another like that (to be fair some of that issue could simply be the jobs they chose to pair and not the concept itself). So personally I imagine if a job has a sense of duality it's either an expansion of themselves (like blue mage becoming unchained in unsynced content, but chained for DF) or unusual crossings of systems like animal husbandry (unique DoL) and beast master or puppet master and puppet craft (unique DoH). Where in all three of the examples basically dictate there needs to be a liberal approach to the unique side, and a restrictive approach to the DF side- freedom paired with chains vs SCH and SMN which is chains paired with chains. I'm not saying can't work, it just seems more difficult to work with.

A hybrid job is actually what I thought Blue Mage would be. It would have different skill trees for different roles and you'd fill them out based on what role you want to be.

Yeah, I didn't level RDM just to be forced into a wannabe WHM role. That sort of FFXI poison can go back into last decade. If anything, I'd give up Verraise and make Cure self-target if meant making the job's DPS more competitive, but I'd also like the melee phase/aspects to be more rewarding than they currently are.

BLU obviously needs helps, but in the end, that should also rely more on the spells you select than whatever gets forced upon you.

Never going to happen.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

What ends up happening though and was the biggest pain for the CC system was you had to level multiple jobs you would never play in order to get skills.

Like back in the day where certain jobs would have to play BRD to get Hawkeye or CNJ to get protect and cure to use on other jobs. I don't even want to imagine if a system like that were to be matched with lvl 80+ content where you would have to level those jobs you may never play to get a single skill.

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There was literally zero mention in the OP of what you're indicating.

Can anyone link that "skip thread contents; hastily reply using standard retort based on irrelevant flaw from XIV's earlier history" topic list we're almost all tacitly following?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

There was literally zero mention in the OP of what you're indicating.

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Quoting this for emphasis.

What the OP is suggesting is basically the game auto-selecting a specialization for your job depending on which role is needed if your job is considered a hybrid job. Instead of complaining about the defunct cross-class system (that has nothing to do with the OP's suggestion at all), what should be discussed is the feasibility of multiple roles/specialization within each job (short answer: most jobs don't have the leeway required for this to work across all jobs).

While RDM is the obvious go to because of it historically being a hybrid job that would greatly benefit from a specialization system (think the WoW class specs or the talent trees from Rift), the one that would be a real winner here would be Blue Mage, as that could be its gateway to getting to play the rest of the game with us instead of being confined to their carnival and solo runs of old content. Admittedly, it'd be difficult to balance and require more work than the developers might be willing to put into the job because of all the other stuff on their plate, but it is possible.