New gathering class

I thought of a cool new gathering job they should add in the future and was wondering what people thought of it. There are currently a lot of crafting jobs but only 3 gathering jobs. A lot of final fantasy games have thiefs and steal abilities. I was thinking it would be cool to add a theif job where you could steal from enemy npcs for various items and if they catch you then you have to escape before you die. They could add skills or actions like a smoke bomb for a easy escape or actions that let you grab multiple items or make it harder to get caught.

Thief is ROG/NIN by Yoshi's own statement (he didn't actually call them 'thieves' literally because he didn't think the image of a criminal stealing items fitted the Warrior of Light, so we got THF by another name instead, as a Disciple of War not the Land. And they even use smoke bombs).

As for a new gathering class period, there had been way back in the original 1.0 version of FFXIV a plan to introduce a fourth Disciple of the Land class in the form of 'Shepherd' ('SHP' for short), which even had a class logo designed (a pair of antlers) and a class guildhall (which was never used and locked up so you couldn't enter it) that was found in the pre-Calamity Falcon's Nest. From what little was know apparently the class had been planned to be a kind of animal trapper that would capture animals/monsters for other classes to use for their materials (skins/bones etc).

Alas, whatever SE had planned was abandoned long ago and all references to it has long since disappeared (even the guildhall was not included in the 'post Calamity' Falcon's Nest in HW). So sadly I don't think this will ever appear.

So like a Thief (the game) mode. . . That could be cool. I think that it might work better under the limited job section line of thought over a gathering class specifically. Perhaps a limited job gathering class lol. More particularly, and just kind of baiting my own preferences of the limited system into the conversation, but perhaps combining it into Rogue or Ninja as an advanced job sort of feature. Which would then perhaps negate so much the need for levels and just progression into the system itself (like if you unlocked smoke bombs, or whatever).

At that point it's not particularly a job of it's own, nor something you need to level up; although, it may have a progression system, and so it's just it's own sort of 'extra thing' you can do. Like ocean fishing is to Fisher. With the 'advanced' concept being a bit like Bard is to music instruments (or what I had originally thought the word for, which is for blue mage being able to do both normal and limited content with albeit a few rules for balance reasons).

Going back to the general idea then, the infiltration, stealing, and other "Thief" concepts (thinking again the game, that SE is publisher of lol). You might have a list of objects and destinations of interest from some organization (perhaps the Rogue guild themselves), some of these tasks might just be finding them and is something I thought might be fun when talking about 'roleplay' gameplay that doesn't affect balance in high end content (which was stuff like rogues/ninjas being able to unlock some doors or chests in the open world, etc). Others might be following a trail of clues like a little investigation- like climbing a peak spotting the object of interest in a guarded camp, needing to get into the camp undetected, steal a key, steal the object, return the key, and escape. Like another one of their games you might introduce Hitman-lite like concepts. Infiltrating beastman strongholds could be wild XD. The hitman-lite element especially perhaps evolving as you unlock the evolution of Rogue (Ninja).

It could be a fun side content, personally I don't see it being a full blown gathering job, but I could see some growing systems for fun (like the smoke bomb, water dart, etc- so you can turn the level design to your favor, as you would in a Hitman or Thief game). Would be relatively easy to scatter chests and some straight forward steal from this npc tasks, the larger setups that require instancing and some patrol / etc like concepts would be more costly though. Would need to attach some value to this, I imagine adding the ability to get large amounts of exp could be a fun way to let Rogues / Ninjas level, but that'd not really be that great for max cap players and also isn't a great incentive for those who would do it just for the side content (though the leveling could help, make the side content more accessible). So it'd need some sort of glamour, or thing. .

Being able to play as a proper thief would be wonderful. Firstly, this game has no small amount of role-players and regular players who do not envision their character as the or even a Warrior of Light. Secondly, ESO implemented an entire system based around bounties and criminal acts. Having something similar in FFXIV would be pretty neat, I think. An element of WoW that I really miss is also being able to play some genuinely 'dark' jobs. There's a great many JRPG's out there - including some FF titles - where the player character uses darker powers and methods to achieve victory.

The limited job system would be perfect for such a feature, I reckon.

Besides, the game and community are both very different compared to the days when Yoshi-P made such a statement on the whole thief thing. Let's not forget, he was also on record as finding the idea of male viera to be strange and...well, we saw the backlash from that when female hrothgar and male viera were left out. ;)