Why not abolish the Class system entirely in favor of Jobs? [@ Devs]

The class <> job system in my opinion adds flavor to the game, it gives it that little bit extra like cherry on the cake. It would be simple to have your cookie cutter job with pre set skills, abilities, and so on. Like in XI were 5 people would play 1 job the exact same way, as you could add no variation.. With the 2 class make 1 job deal you still have the per job skills, but past that each person can add there own little touch to the job, determined by how they play..

That aside, the jobs and classes can be played quite differently.. and offer different things to the table.. in some fights a class can easily out perform it's job, and the same is true on the revers side of the coin... I am now sure why OP would want to remove this aspect.... even if you are not happy with it you can over look it and focus on something else.

One does not make a better game, by changing things for no solid reason.

*face desks* Ugh, this again? Who revived this old turd from the bowels of the forums? At this point we're beyond any changes like removing classes. Doing so would delay ARR even further than what we've experienced now. Besides... I can think of a number of reasons why keeping most classes is more important, one being that they offer a much more diverse play style than jobs. Jobs are what they're counted as, advanced versions of those classes. For small party setups a nuker/healer hybrid may be needed, that's where for example a thaumaturge could come in, more specifically, a conjurer.

A monk would be more of a liability in a small group than a pugilist who can still dish out roughly the same damage while having a means to cure themselves beyond Second Wind. They're doing heavy changes to all the classes and jobs in ARR so nobody actually knows how they'll play, but I do believe the team mentioned making classes much more desirable for smaller parties than they are now. Though, hopefully they might extend bard's song repertoire a bit. Add in a HP regen song and give it to archer or bard. Archer in my opinion is much better for straight DPS but it's outclassed by other jobs making it only suitable for solo play and even then there's probably better options.

They're supposed to be a more versatile class less evolved than bard, but they only have one song (If you can count it that.) available to them. Giving them a HP regen song or the MP regen song and giving bard the HP regen song instead would at least make the class more useful in some situations. Could be a different song too, as long as it's one that could be beneficial to a small party setup.

Getting rid of classes is easy, you just call them jobs and call jobs advanced jobs.

Lets see if they fix the usefulness of disciplines before we abolish the system.

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Originally Posted by Yoji

The issue is that classes are a base of jobs, fine if classes are separate entities, but jobs are limited by class. And this game is supposed to be about group battles. I really don't know how SAM or NIN could be added unless a new class was, and then they'd be similar. It's just totally not necessary. I just don't want to see jobs ruined for the sake of fitting the class.

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SAM is all about brute force and damage dealing. NIN is like THF, but they buffed themselves (Utsusemi, Tonko) and debuffed (elemental with status downs) enemies.

I think the contributing problem in the class to job system, is that it stifles the job system's ability to expand itself in the long run.

To give some examples of this, I must first explain the obvious. How the system currently is. There has been no updates on how Square will be handling the Class/Job thing. But based on what we had before, assuming they're keeping to the same system, the following will most likely be the case.

Keeping the current system means one of two things. We're going to have one new class introduced with everyone one job:

Arcanist > Summoner
Scout > Theif

Or

We're going to have multiple jobs to a single class:

Gladiator > Paladin / Dark Knight
Archer > Bard / Ranger

And so on.

The problem with the first way, is that it makes the classes redundant. You are merely gaining an additional 5 abilities that can be drawn from any class (a total of 10) as opposed to a job, which can chose 5 abilities from pre-selected classes. However, you gain 5 "unique abilities" particular to your job. (Still giving you a total of 10). Any job can solo, and all jobs have a way; native or not, to heal themselves. Paladins can cure themselves. Warriors have an ability to restore HP through a native ability and second wind. Monk, Bard, and Dragoon are the same case. They're preselected classes allow them to heal themselves. Some jobs can solo more efficiently than others, but the fact remains if classes were removed, a job can still solo. They just have to play differently to stay alive (as they should).

In the second route, it makes jobs pointless. Why would you want to be a Dark Knight, if you're going to do the same weaponskills a Gladiator does aside from 5 unique abilities the dark knight and paladin gets, it sorta makes for boring gameplay. Jobs that share a base class will all do the same thing aside from 5 abilities. Where is the fun and uniqueness in that ? Jobs sharing a route class also ruin the balance of the job. A Dark Knight is supposed to be a damage dealer, yet all the abilities and traits learned on Gladiaor favor tanking abilities and traits. How can these abilities help a Dark Knight ? A class well known to perform damage but sacrifices deffence ? Does that mean Square has to create talent trees now so your gladiator can be more tailored for a Dark Knight ? Or must we all endure a broken Dark Knight because its native class, the Gladiator, only offers tank traits ? Dark Knights don't need provoke, or Rampart, or Sentinel. They need they're own native abilities. And no matter how you slice it, no class can tailor and new job tacked on to it. So square can only go the first route. Which is redundant anyway.

I too believe the class system should be abolished, and have only the jobs. Perhaps just give them a little more flexibility, or just introduce the "Onion Knight" job. Which essentially acts like a class. You can pick and chose whatever abilities you need to a degree, and that can be your solo class. Just food for thought.

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Originally Posted by Naraku_Diabolos

SAM is all about brute force and damage dealing. NIN is like THF, but they buffed themselves (Utsusemi, Tonko) and debuffed (elemental with status downs) enemies.

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Thats FFXI, it doesn't have to be that way ya know.

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Originally Posted by Thebard

Thats FFXI, it doesn't have to be that way ya know.

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Nor do classes have to abolished, there are plenty of game that start you out as one class and evolve it to a advanced class.

The current classes are too closely related to their respective jobs, all except Archer>Bard which wasn't the best fit so Bard lost it's identity sort of, I'd like it if Archer was converted to a Ranger. As someone already said the only way it would probably work is 1 class 1 job. But then it's an extra class each time for the sake of introducing a job... Gladiator wouldn't be a good base for a Dark Knight. It just makes things harder to do, jobs are more important to this game and what FF is about.

I have to say it does seem an odd time to debate this topic when we haven't seen the changes that have been made for ARR yet.