Crazy Idea: Split SCH from ARC and make it a 30+ job like HW

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Originally Posted by Sjol

And I LOVE mechanical pet jobs. Necromancers, beastmasters, hunters, rangers, mechanics. If it has a pet, I'm on board. But I still understand the designers need to compromise to get to something that satisfies as many people as possible -- not make them happy or ecstatic -- but satisfies. People wanted to summon big bads. I remember when the new rework came out and so many people were saying, "finally, I'm a real summoner now".

And it's in line with most of the FF franchise where summons weren't something you controlled. They were just something you hit from time to time and watched a minute and a half cutscene as all the knights came by.

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Then I guess I am mistaken that you do not like pets. For that, I apologize.

To answer the last line, and I think I mentioned this in a thread somewhere, the evolution of summoning in FF went towards pets:

• FFVIII - summons had HP.
• FFX - summons take the slot of party members and are able to command what to use.
• FFXI, FFXII, FFXIII - summons have become persisting entities that follow you.

ARR and HW SMN were building up to have primals summon-able as the story progressed.

If they removed the dots from ACN, for as long as the pet mechanics remained, they can simply reintroduce it specifically to the jobs. Just look at Bio.. it is now a SCH spell.

What would be the benefit? I don't know that being odd but otherwise mostly harmless is a good qualifier for this extensive of a change.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

What would be the benefit? I don't know that being odd but otherwise mostly harmless is a good qualifier for this extensive of a change.

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I'm sure the fact that one class can branch into two jobs creates a ton of special conditions in both the code and design of the game. E.g., they can't rely on weapon alone for your job. They can't cleanly separate sub-50 DoM gear into Intelligence and Mind. And because they can't do that, they won't do it for DoW with Strength and Dexterity.

They also can't make weapon synonymous with job stone, so we need two gear slots instead of one.

There's got to be a ton of specialized logic in the code to handle it. Like, not allowing you to unequip your jobstone while in a roulette because that would change your job from healer to magical DPS.

And it wouldn't just affect existing code, but also new code. One of the major efficiencies in developing software is when you get to make solid assumptions. Every oddity ends up with its own check. Every oddity makes each design decision in that same space that much more complicated.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

I'm sure the fact that one class can branch into two jobs creates a ton of special conditions in both the code and design of the game. E.g., they can't rely on weapon alone for your job. They can't cleanly separate sub-50 DoM gear into Intelligence and Mind. And because they can't do that, they won't do it for DoW with Strength and Dexterity.

They also can't make weapon synonymous with job stone, so we need two gear slots instead of one.

There's got to be a ton of specialized logic in the code to handle it. Like, not allowing you to unequip your jobstone while in a roulette because that would change your job from healer to magical DPS.

And it wouldn't just affect existing code, but also new code. One of the major efficiencies in developing software is when you get to make solid assumptions. Every oddity ends up with its own check. Every oddity makes each design decision in that same space that much more complicated.

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Well if we're talking the software side, there has to be enough of a benefit to development to go back and change the code that much. I have plenty of things that could have been done better but would be far more costly to go back and change so sometimes I just have to work with what's there.

I was also talking about the benefit to players and the gameplay.

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Originally Posted by rawker

Then I guess I am mistaken that you do not like pets. For that, I apologize.

To answer the last line, and I think I mentioned this in a thread somewhere, the evolution of summoning in FF went towards pets:

• FFVIII - summons had HP.
• FFX - summons take the slot of party members and are able to command what to use.
• FFXI, FFXII, FFXIII - summons have become persisting entities that follow you.

ARR and HW SMN were building up to have primals summon-able as the story progressed.

If they removed the dots from ACN, for as long as the pet mechanics remained, they can simply reintroduce it specifically to the jobs. Just look at Bio.. it is now a SCH spell.

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My memory is fuzzy, and I didn't play VIII, X, or XI. In XII I thought they followed you around, but you didn't really give them orders as such. They basically did their own thing. More or less same for XIII though you could go into Gestalt Mode where they turned into a vehicle and do some special moves. Less pet management than minigame.

In terms of where they were going with ARR and HW, they clearly never got there for whatever reason they chose. SMN now has them, just not mechanically as pets.

Since they also changed ACN to work like SMN in terms of early game. The egis aren't mechanically pets. Then ACN flows directly into SMN in terms of mechanics. When you first get SCH now you pretty much start with a clean bar. Even their roles are different -- SCH is healer, ACN is magical DPS.

While I would love a real mechanical pet job and I have high hopes for beastmaster (completely unfounded hopes, but high hopes), I'm also not against having other jobs have pets. Other MMOs have multiple pet classes and FFXIV could as well.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Well if we're talking the software side, there has to be enough of a benefit to development to go back and change the code that much. I have plenty of things that could have been done better but would be far more costly to go back and change so sometimes I just have to work with what's there.

I was also talking about the benefit to players and the gameplay.

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I think benefit to code and devs is benefit to players due to the fact that better code means faster development means more and better features.

But that aside I also made a couple of design points like how they have to put mind and int on gear while you're in the range you could conceivably be swapping.

It also prevents a clean conversion from classes to jobs. If you didn't have the split/dual thing going on, you could cleanly change the icons once the gear was acquired. ACN's icon would change everywhere to SMN as could CNJ to WHM. There are all sorts of little knock-on effects by having two jobs split off one class in terms of what they can and can't do.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

I think benefit to code and devs is benefit to players due to the fact that better code means faster development means more and better features.

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Not always. It could be delaying other features or improvements that would be more visibly useful to users to go back and change that code.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Not always. It could be delaying other features or improvements that would be more visibly useful to users to go back and change that code.

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Only in the short-term, and if this were a start-up or actively in a rush and not a 10+ year-old MMO I might agree. But, ignoring design and technical debt in order to focus on "the next release" will eventually kill a product. I've seen it several times at companies I've worked for already. Short-term thinking in order to get out the next feature to please the customer. It's unsustainable and will eventually lead to less and less content per expansion/release.

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Originally Posted by rawker

Then I guess I am mistaken that you do not like pets. For that, I apologize.

To answer the last line, and I think I mentioned this in a thread somewhere, the evolution of summoning in FF went towards pets:

• FFVIII - summons had HP.
• FFX - summons take the slot of party members and are able to command what to use.
• FFXI, FFXII, FFXIII - summons have become persisting entities that follow you.

ARR and HW SMN were building up to have primals summon-able as the story progressed.

If they removed the dots from ACN, for as long as the pet mechanics remained, they can simply reintroduce it specifically to the jobs. Just look at Bio.. it is now a SCH spell.

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In VIII they had HP, but that was only present during the summoning time, the summons themselves were not persistent. XII and XIII summons were still not permanent, they only stayed active for a certain amount of time before leaving. In XI they were persistent as long as you had the MP to feed them and in X they were commanded in the same way the other characters were, it's unclear to me if it was supposed to be Yuna commanding them or if it was just a mechanic to be enjoyed by the players, and they were still temporary.

This sounds like a suggestion I would make, with the expected reception to boot. I would even make such a suggestion based solely on the unpopular opinion that it should be split so players cannot level two jobs at once. Never mind any distinctions and defining characteristics between the two jobs that branch from the same class.

However, I am also someone who believes that dev time and resources should spent on things that improve the game substantially, and these two jobs being tied to the same class isn't really something that is broken that needs fixing. I can't really see a large benefit for either SCH or SMN from the split. I instead kind of view it as SMN should have always been what the ACN becomes once hitting 30, while SCH should have been the second healing class that came along with the HW expansion starting at 30 instead of AST.