New Job Idea - Tamer

I've recently been thinking about a potential new Job for future expansions of Final Fantasy XIV. One idea I came up with was a class where a player could tame pets out in the world and use them to fight alongside your character in battles (besides the use of chocobo companions). Yes, it would be similar to the Hunter class in WoW, but its main weapons would be whips (in a Physical Ranged DPS role).

What do you all think about that idea of a new Job in FFXIV?

That's FFXI's Beastmaster (BST) Job (although they didn't use whips but knives and bladed weapons from what I remember) and... well, once again something that worked well on paper did not work nearly as well in practice. The 'tame' function was only a temporary thing, the enthrallment of the monster would wear off after a while, you couldn't tame them permenantly.

And it would not work at all against certain enemy types like undead and beastmen... which made up a good deal of the enemies that roamed the overworld in FFXI, thus further limiting what you could use, and there was a good chance the tame attempt would fail, especially if the enemy was a higher level than you, meaning you had no choice but to just tame weaker enemies, that would die fairly quickly.

Then SE brought in the 'jug' monsters after complaints about how useless the Job was, that was basically a monster in a can pre-tamed to you, and stayed out until they were killed, making it just SMN with consumable summon items, and kind of destroyed the idea of a 'tamer' of beasts in the first place.

Now there is no evidence SE would merely copy such mechanics here (FFXI's systems were rather brutal and unyielding), but given Yoshi's stated dislike for pet-type Jobs in general (due to such difficulties in balancing, especially in instanced content), I don't think SE will ever introduce it other than possibly another 'Limited Job' like BLU, and given the whole fiasco over that....

I've seen this exact same idea 4 or 5 times by now.

And I'll answer in the same manner:
Pets are bad in this game, you don't want them.

Look at SMN, it got massive QoLs and the job was dumbed down by a lot, yet its bigger problem is again tied to pets.
Look at DRK&MCH, they have a unfun automated pet, yet its AI can be frustrating against multiple targets.

We have the companion system that can be fleshed out for this.

I agree with CKNovel that I do not see a pet job happening. But if we do, and it isn't limited, rest assured we will be limited to a single pet, most likely of a very cute and newly designed species that they can merch the hell out of.

Also, side note, I would call something like this a "trainer" rather than "tamer."

There are only 3 ways of a Beastmaster, tamer, etc happening:

1) If they incorporate pets into the job's animations, like they do with RPR, however this takes a lot from what a pet job really is: micromanaging one or more extra entities to maximize their potential. It seems, by observation, that we can only have one combat pet at a time, because makes no sense that the current Carbuncle (that does nothing) having to disappear for the other SMN pets to manifest. Plus with the current system, is unlikely (like RPR) that these pets would be customizable at all, which would be a bummer for a pet job.

2) If they make it a limited job, but unlike blue mages, there is a separate pet x pet combat being the main feature. Something like this happened in WoW, and is pretty much a direct inspiration from Pokemon or other pet-based games.


3) If they do a huge improvement in their code/structure so to make pets viable in the main battle system, which in turn would probably benefit SCH and other jobs where "pets" are vestigial like DRK and MCH - However I'm not very sure how feasible this actually is because we don't know exactly what needs to be changed, and this would probably impact a lot of other pet-unrelated things (maybe for good, maybe for bad?).


I'm honestly not a big fan of the Beastmaster to begin with, but I'd welcome its addition in either options. I'd love if they made #3 a reality and improved the thing overall across the board though.

Tamed (aka charmed) pet classes are an absolute nightmare to balance -- going all the way back to original EQ, required oft-shifting restrictions and cons (e.g. random charm breaks), and mobs of many types flagged immune. While they could be completely overpowered in an area with potent 'charmable' creatures, the entire mechanic would need to be supplemented with other DPS options for the job in an area where creatures aren't usable as pets.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

Tamed (aka charmed) pet classes are an absolute nightmare to balance

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I remember a MMO that used Taming, it was never balanced.

First version, no limit:
Players could capture strongest monster making pvp unwinnable and pve a breeze with this class.

Second version, limited capture:
Players could still capture very strong monsters already difficult to 1v1.

Third version, limited and nerfed capture:
The class core was unused, a specialisation was without pet and much stronger. Everybody played that.
And that was the most balanced version.

Fourth version, same but with new monsters added through patches:
Back to second version, monsters difficult to 1v1 would define the meta.
In case of nerfed damage, monsters with strong utility (and there was a lot of monster mechanics) would be insanely valuable.

On top of all these version, you were griefing your team if you didn't played the right monsters.

In short, it would become a limited job like Blue Mage, but we all know Blue Mage popularity.