Jobs: unconnected and now feeling flat

The Final Fantasy franchise practically exists for variety. Every class based FF allows job skill/ability mixing, except this one. It had it, and they took it out because they wanted to reduce button bloat and make it easier for the most nomadic of nubs, and while a small handful of that was useful, the rest was needless, and now everything is just that much less interesting.

Thanks to the old way, I was able to solo Edda in PotD on an arcanist, and it was like winning the bloody playoffs for me and my 3 dead friends who can't not look at gazes. You could use those abilities to accomplish a lot if you used your brain. Now, no brain is required, just take what you're supposed to take. The other role actions aren't really fun enough in practice to risk being without the important "meta" ones. It's really sad.

Say whatever you want, I miss the old way, and I would gladly take it back, or take a hybrid form as others have suggested. Gonna stop there before I start to rant too hard and get bummed. I do still love the game. I'm just concerned it's gonna end up as bland and tasteless as WoW, and then God only knows what I'll have to play instead. Today's MMO-scape does not fill me with hope and excitement. :P

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

in a game where it is actively advertised that ANY job is viable for ALL content, imbalance is a dire threat to that stability.

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There's a difference between optimal and viable. Imbalance between the two primarily relates to the former, not the latter. Indeed, there will always be imbalances, leading to optimal jobs. One example of a current one is the preference for DRG in the current end-game meta. Back in Heavensward, PLD was hurting compared to other tanks. That's an example of imbalance, and it's already here.

The thing is though, because of how SE balances content relative to job setups, we know that content is doable with non-optimal setups. Awesome. So, given this fact, why in the hell should SE work so hard to suppress variety and creative mechanics for the sake of smaller imbalances?

I'd also like to point out that the issue of balance really only impacts the hardest content, content appreciated by the very people who are most willing to play a non-favourite job in order to optimize success. Imbalances won't affect casual players queuing up for a piss-easy 'Expert' dungeon; they'll affect FCs setting up Ultimate runs. So, people negotiate, they level what's needed, they ensure an optimal setup, and then as content slowly becomes easier as people gear up, they get to relax and play their preferred jobs again. Just like in FFXI, and countless other MMOs.

So where's the 'dire threat' that you mentioned?

I also started about 5-6 months before Stormblood launched and preferred the old system wherein if you wanted to unlock a specific job you had to level its class to 30 and another class to 15. It gave a feeling of accomplishment and made players try out a different class they might not otherwise have bothered with.

That's all well and good, but when players are possibly buying the game because the latest expansion sounded interesting, the last thing devs should be wanting to do is forcing players to put story progression on hold to level a class they have no interest in.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

That's all well and good, but when players are possibly buying the game because the latest expansion sounded interesting, the last thing devs should be wanting to do is forcing players to put story progression on hold to level a class they have no interest in.

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I leveled all the magic classes to 30 in less then a week, especially helped by getting the ring that boosts XP under level 30. Plus remember one of the ADVERTISED aspects of the game is that you can try other classes at any time (once you get your first to level 10). The game even points this out and encourages you to try new classes. I mean...did YOU just stick to one job? It's natural to get curious, and the best part of this game is trying content from new perspectives. Such as finding out how hard content as a BLM is when you can't move around as much while doing your job, hard but challenging and fun.

Furthermore encouraging players to try old content with new jobs is a great way to keep players sticking around. If I had to go through the MSQ with each job like most mmos....well I would have just stuck with healer and been done with it. Forget leveling alts. But this game again encourages you to do it, and what better encouragement can there be then also rewarding players for doing it with things that might make their favorite job stronger? I mean I heal but I HATE the scholar (which is funny since I originally came in thinking to make it my main), but getting new abilities for playing it that my white mage could use was rewarding and made dealing with a DoT pet class (two things I loathe in mmos) much more bearable and worth it.

There were two main issues with the old system though. First off, some of the abilities were flat out REQUIRED to do your job. When a reward becomes a requirement it makes the grind more apparent and feel like a chore. The second is that you had to level X to get Y and couldn't get it from another job. By making the rewards passives and having more options then you can take, as you level various jobs you unlock options naturally. Furthermore...having to get past parts you don't like to get to the good stuff is not only a standard of mmos but every instance the job system has been introduced in the FF series. I mean, in tactics if you wanted to do something like have your main character be a awesome sage/black mage combo you first had to level through all the various jobs to build him up to those jobs. You couldn't just go to a trainer and be that job. Even FFXI had a more immersive job system then we have currently.

In short (to late) look at any of the FF series that had a job system in the past and you will see a web. Look at FFXIV and you will see your character in the center with just jobs sticking out like spokes on a wheel. Not only does that convey how bland the system is, it reinforces my point that you aren't building up a character, you are swapping out outfits like with a paper doll. You aren't building power, you are just cruising along a linear progression over and over. Which is fun for now...but with less then a year of game time I have already almost maxed out all my classes...what then?

Honestly, I wish that they kinda did it like how PSO2 does it for other jobs. Classes in that game do exist in their own bubble with their own individual skill trees and pieces of equipment and such, but there's a bonus thing. If you can get one of said classes to max level, you receive a small but permanent stat boost that applies across ALL classes. For example, maxing the rifle-toting class Ranger gives you a small amount of extra Ranged Attack. For the casual player, the small stat boost doesn't matter. But for the min-max'ers and the completionists, it's a nice little bit of incentive.

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Originally Posted by Malkria

Which is fun for now...but with less then a year of game time I have already almost maxed out all my classes...what then?

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Go start an alt. Heck, go play another game. This game is also advertised as one you can take breaks from and still not have too hard a time catching up, like you yourself proved. And that's assuming you haven't found something to keep you interested given that this is a theme park MMO. Farm achievements. Work on your crafting log. Join a raid if you're interested. Leveling is good and all if you like it but it's not the be all end all content in this game.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

That said, XIV's entire Job system always felt like a huge step backward from FFXI, and I can't say that the system ever had much depth.

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The job system has been lacking depth since 2.0, but the original class system in 1.0 and even the 1.0 version of the job system certainly were not. In the original release of FFXIV, every ability you learned was just another ability that could be assigned, and the number of abilities you could assign was based on your level. So if you wanted to be a pugilist with zero pugilist abilities and all lancer and marauder abilities, you could. That system didn't last long, but while it did, it resulted in certain classes being mandatory to level and everyone of every melee class using essentially the same skills. This is "depth" but it certainly wasn't good. That's why they got rid of it.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

Look at FFXI - Ninja was a required subjob for Warriors. It just was. But the game didn't suffer because of that; people learned, saw what others were doing, and went out and leveled it. Worst-case, they viewed it as a chore, and their efforts essentially donated tanks for low-level parties; best-case, they found a job they liked, that they might want to main instead. But then for other content, they still had choices; maybe they were baby-sitting a friend in a lowbie party, and subbed WHM for Raise. Maybe they were fighting an enemy that hit rapidly for lower damage, and opted for MNK so they could Counter it to death. Were these choices mainstream options for end-game content? Usually not - but choice was nevertheless present.

We shouldn't be so scared of imbalance. It'll always exist, and homogeneity is an equally dire threat to FFXIV.

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I don't think the evidence exists that could back up the claim that FFXI didn't suffer because of things like this (or that it did). But that's a pretty big assumption. The worst case with the /NIN situation was that people stopped playing FFXI. Indeed, FFXI had far less subscribers than better-balanced games that came later (including XIV), and this could very well be a factor in why. Other truths about FFXI, such as DRG being shunned for years, BST never getting parties really ever, BLM not being useful in Colibri parties, and so on, also most likely hurt the game's subscriber base, and much more so than having to sub NIN.

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Originally Posted by Malkria

In short (to late) look at any of the FF series that had a job system in the past and you will see a web. Look at FFXIV and you will see your character in the center with just jobs sticking out like spokes on a wheel. Not only does that convey how bland the system is, it reinforces my point that you aren't building up a character, you are swapping out outfits like with a paper doll. You aren't building power, you are just cruising along a linear progression over and over. Which is fun for now...but with less then a year of game time I have already almost maxed out all my classes...what then?

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A web? Clearly you've never played FFIII! But anyway, as someone else said, if you like leveling, and you get everything to max level, make some alts. That's what I did. I mean, I think I'm crazy, but maybe you're the same brand of crazy.

Aside from that, there are advantages to having multiple jobs leveled, as people have pointed out. You get more plot (i.e., job questlines), you have more options, you can take better advantage of multi-job max-level gear, you can come as whatever is needed in level synced content like Eureka or when helping a friend level, and so on. Does there really need to be an incentive beyond the act of leveling jobs being fun?

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Originally Posted by Talraen

The job system has been lacking depth since 2.0, but the original class system in 1.0 and even the 1.0 version of the job system certainly were not. In the original release of FFXIV, every ability you learned was just another ability that could be assigned, and the number of abilities you could assign was based on your level. So if you wanted to be a pugilist with zero pugilist abilities and all lancer and marauder abilities, you could. That system didn't last long, but while it did, it resulted in certain classes being mandatory to level and everyone of every melee class using essentially the same skills. This is "depth" but it certainly wasn't good. That's why they got rid of it.

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Sounds like it just wasn't balanced not that it couldn't work. I can think of two other games that had similar systems and yet did NOT have everyone playing the same build: Rift and Secret World. The former much more constrained with using 'souls' (skill trees) that you mixed and matched abilities and passives from, and the latter being about as free form as you are describing. If a community tolorates having a meta dictated to them, then yes things will get pretty cookie cutter. But I still recall the fun in making a rogue in rift that could stealth and fight at range like a sniper (massive fun in open world pvp), or in defying the meta in secret world and passing the gatekeeper (a role check you had to pass to raid) using a rifle build people said was to inferior to the meta to pass with. Which I not only did but did easily on the FIRST TRY. Meta's are like fashion, while it might be easiest to go with the flow striking out and trying something new can sometimes shake things to the core.

It's like going back to that car analogy. The min-maxer would carefully calculate the best car to choose from with the individual car specs, but the average person told to choose between three sports cars to take out and drive would simply take the one most appealing to them, and that is a personality/individual thing. You and others keep confusing passive traits for active skills, and they aren't the same and you can do more with passives then you can with skills. Hell they could even introduce cosmetic traits for the seasonal events...such as an aura trait or one that changes an abilities' looks. But also passives that introduce meaningful choice for diversification of jobs that the role-action system just doesn't currently deliver.

Finally i'm going to call out that telling me to go level alts is exactly why I feel you are missing my point. An alt wouldn't really be an alternative character in this game, everything except the cosmetic look of race would be exactly the same. What you are telling me to do is basically reset and do everything all over again which in the end would give me two characters that play EXACTLY the same...do you see the problem here?

In thinking about it, I want to point out to all the people who have been worried about end-game raiding and the meta, this is a PvE focused game. To the point that at this point PvE and PvP are not only separate, but the PvP in no way now affects the PvE. This in turn means that the only thing you fight in Eorzia at large...is the computer. If PvP was open world, if you fought or competed against other players directly, if somehow your build negatively impacted another players experience in any direct way....I would concede that balance would be a major issue. But this is like saying that if you don't build your character in Skyrim by the meta you are doing it wrong, never mind that it's an RPG where you build your character from the ground up.

JRPGs as a whole don't usually allow you to build up your character to fit your play style, or even break outside of a character's mold. Square and their Final Fantasy have long been the best example of the exception, from the job system to the guardian force system to even the grid system; and while I haven't played them past FFX (this game being the obvious exception) I imagine that they still allow you to change up characters like you have always been able to. Character customization where you could make meaningful choices about a character's build and role is as much a staple of the Final Fantasy series as the storytelling.

Finally the thing about the meta is that we need to stop considering the meta the only way to play. I've done high end raiding in guilds that went for server first and even had membership fees (in game money) to be a part of the guild. I've been a part of that...and there is a reason I don't do that in this game. Not everyone strives to be on the cutting edge, and said cutting edge I imagine is NOT the majority of players. So while the way they choose to play the game is no less legitimate then others it also isn't more important then others. Everyone plays for different reasons, so please stop acting like having more variation to the game would break the game when the only thing the majority of us are fighting is the computer.