Classes vs jobs , are classes near obsolete now?

Hello everyone ,

I see that almost everyone after unlocking a job , they stay with that ,
so what is the purpose of classes , other than level to unlock jobs or level to keep them jobs leveled?

If they intented to throw classes out of the window why not completely replace them with jobs and make jobs leveled. I think they should have expanded the class system and do away with jobs or completely replace with jobs , I think this is going to cause a few implications but I have yet to see.
I personally liked the class system , it was like a job/subjob system only that it wasn't limited to the entire subjobs skillset instead you could choose skills from other classes.
You still can but its ineffective , isn't it?

You level the class to get a feel for it and add abilities / stats with the job crystal. You can attempt to play without the job crystal but you're directly nerfing yourself.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

You level the class to get a feel for it and add abilities / stats with the job crystal. You can attempt to play without the job crystal but you're directly nerfing yourself.

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Exactly!
So what is the point of the class system? why not replace it with jobs then?

What do the PVP'er say concerning the "self nerf"? (really am interessted)
I would expect some pretty powerful specc's (as long as the iLvl 55+ gear isn't job based...)

Classes are, in my honest oppinion, a relic Tanaka has left here and Yoshi pseudo stays with. They where not balanceable! I loved tanking with my Puggie, or help a low lvl char doing leves wearing a chainmail, 'cause i had nothing other. But the compromiss was/ has had to be balance.

Classes = FFXIV 1.0
Job's = just another?

Classes are just a "starter" state of your character and it evolved into a job...this all makes sense. You can stay in the class by not equipping your stone and keep all your cross class skills and take the stat hit for not having your stone equipped. Maybe they will come out with something later on in the game that you can go back to your class and not be nerfed...who knows???

I think the system will work better when they release the second jobs for the rest of the classes, that way, the classes will be more of a platform then just a baby-job.

Surprised they didn't make it so classes were the "solo" option to leveling more efficiently. And when you go into a group thats when you would swap to a job…but to do this stats would have to be adjusted dramatically from class > Job. Like a DPS would have to lose a lot of defense and a tank would have to lose a lot of attack to make the class option more appealing. Like classes all being a neutral stat class. ranking C in everything and the only thing that made them different were their abilities.

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Originally Posted by Mikedizzy

Classes are just a "starter" state of your character and it evolved into a job...this all makes sense.

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The overarching idea, derived from both the mechanics and the story, is basically this: your character starts off their adventuring career as their class (MRD) and, once you've *finished* that class at level 30, you then set out to become your job (WAR) to continue rising in power beyond the limitations of your class. It's just like the quest in the first FF where you get the Rat's Tail in order to get your class upgrade. By your logic, why not just have Fighters start off as Knights, Mages start off as Wizards, Black Belts start off as Masters, and Thieves start off as Ninjas? The point is that you have a *progression* for your character that is felt on a fundamental level rather than just telling you by way of the story: by going from your class to your job, you are *forced* to recognize the increase in power and the fundamental change in your character because you literally become something different (not to mention that you're basically changing your affiliation from a relatively common "guild" that pretty much anyone can join to, at worst, an highly visible elite unit like the Swordsworn or, on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, the lone individual that has discovered an art/science lost to the ages, like SCH). It's part of the desire to make you feel like a legendary hero from early on, as opposed to just one of the masses that blends in with everyone else and is overshadowed by virtually any NPC worth mentioning (like what happens in WoW).

Mechanically and, even from a story perspective, your job supplants your class as soon as you hit 30 and do the quest (which, bear in mine, also requires you have level 15 in one other class). The difference is that, mechanically, this means that there isn't much reason to have there be a difference at all, but, from a thematic and story-based perspective, it represents a transformation of your character into something greater than you were before, which is an *excellent* reason for it to remain as such.

Of course, even mechanically, there's a reason for jobs and classes to remain discrete: when 2 jobs are designed to share the same basic skill suite, like SMN and SCH, you can have 2 jobs branching off of a single class, and, since you level your *class* and not your job, you're don't have to level up the two separately because the only major difference between the two, where their abilities are concerned, are the 5 job abilities, which are significantly outnumbered by your class abilities. As long as secondary jobs are designed to still use the same fundamental skill suite as their base class they share with the "primary" job, there will always be a mechanical reason for class and job to remain distinct entities.

Kitru , why not have advanced classes then? e.g. the jobs that are branching now , being able to level them and their roots sperately and nerf the classes abilities and have them equalized in a manner (job , advanced job system in FFXI) , besides some people including me want to be able to take the journey again , I mean leveling up but not with a different character and just want to have more classes/jobs there .

To level a job/class and learn it , is fun in a way as long as you don't make it a pain in the behind like FFXI pre lvl sync , I still have nightmares from leveling up my drk to 75 there.

Plus they busted the mythos a bit , we had classes with names befiting another world more close to home not exactly FF like and now they did a mix and match routine and voila , they patched it to Eorzea.

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Originally Posted by Letzt

Kitru , why not have advanced classes then?

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Because that's the system the devs decided to go with, lol. And they're not likely to change the system since, honestly, this one works quite well for the purpose in which they intend it. I wouldn't expect *every* current class to get additional jobs, but the system is designed such that the devs *can* if they so choose. There's a logic to it.

The way I see it the current class system is completely useless after lvl 30, and far inferior to the Job/Sub system from XI. But that's the price you have to pay in order to make Jobs actually work in 2.0 due to the restrictive nature of the new gameplay design.

You can see it in how the new team is completely against emergent gameplay and how they go out of their way to block every attempt of players to play in a way "that was not intended" So obviously the freedom from the old armory system had to go as it would have been too much work for them to balance in the new, much more restrictive version of the game.

It's unfortunate that while the old 1.0 system was an improvement over XI's (and actually managed to make the job/sub system look restrictive in comparison) the new 2.0 one is two steps backwards from that.

It is working as intended, but it's blatantly obvious how inferior it is compared to it's predecessors and how much closer it is to games like WoW instead. And since there isn't much anyone can do about it you either learn to tolerate the dumbed down gameplay or look for another game to play, because the new course for classes and jobs has already been set in stone.

Raydeus , yes that's the thing , I like how classes were and instead they choose to listen to the fans when they shouldn't have and impose the job system on XIV.

Tanaka was a relic but if classes were his design choice then we should really listen to the wisdom of our elders.

FFXIV was becoming it's own game, though I thought at the time given how the game world was empty and barren , it was manifested by new designers and not by veterans.
Now I am not so sure but the truth is that SE almost kissed bankruptcy because of this game , so I guess , some of the moves were in hasty thinking.
That's why the class system feels out of place for me.

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Originally Posted by Raydeus

It is working as intended, but it's blatantly obvious how inferior it is compared to it's predecessors and how much closer it is to games like WoW instead.

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I seriously have to wonder why you seem to think that the measure of a class/job/etc. system is derived from the the number of choices that a player has as opposed to something that actually has a practical effect on things, such as, how well balanced it is or how fun and well designed the given classes/jobs actually are.

In games where you think you have a bajillion choices, the truth of the matter is that you do not, in fact, have all of the choices you seem to think that you had/have. FFXI's system purported that it allowed for 462 different combinations of jobs for primary/sub when, in practical terms, the number of *real* options was tiny in comparison: the only subjob you'd ever see a PLD use when actually doing stuff would be WAR and the only real subjob for a WHM was Summoner until the advent of Scholar. The practical limitations on your choice of subjob held true across *all* jobs such that, at any given time, the most real choices you'd have for any job was about 3. The fact that the game allowed you to combine any two jobs was simply an illusion of choice. The only real "advantage" derived from the potential number was, honestly, a one-off advantage to those theorycrafters who enjoy going through and looking at every possible option/combination before finding the optimal one, and, of course, once *that* has been done, there's not really much point in doing it again unless something substantive happens to a class. It's nominally a sandbox but, for all practical purposes, provides as few options as any other game. It's the same reason why talent tree systems are a complete illusion of choice because, if you're not taking what is often derogatorily referred to as "cookie cutter", which gains such a label because it's the most effective, you end up being less effective. In most ways, the illusion of choice actually penalizes casual players that *don't* feel like doing research into what they think should just be a relaxing/enjoyable way to spend their free time.

One of the things that I love about ARR is that the developers realized that the illusion of choice has no real practical advantage (other than allowing those people that pride themselves upon being deviants from normalcy and explicitly choose non-standard builds, even if they *do* perform in a suboptimal way), as do so very many other artifacts of historical MMO models. I've seen people complain all the time about how there is barely any deviation from a character of one class to the next (the only variation is choice of CC abilities and, in most cases, the illusion of choice still exists because it's obvious to anyone that there's a specific suite you're supposed to use or that you can choose whatever you want but it won't mean anything), but I applaud the devs for doing so, not because I enjoy having fewer choices (as a power gamer, even if there are 20 options, my inclination towards building a character that is as effective as possible breaks it down to 1 or 2; the only thing that additional options represent are the *potential* for supplanting a previous option as the new optimal selection, as opposed to real choice), but because the devs realized that giving players a massive slew of choices is simply hiding the effective/intended/balanced playstyle amidst a suffocating horde of suboptimal options (with the very occasional completely unintended choice that ends up being way more powerful than expected, which pretty much always gets nerfed into oblivion anyways).

The devs applied this central concept to absolutely everything about the game: cut out the chaff, only presenting *real* options, and make those options as high quality as possible. Each class only gets one weapon type (WAR gets axe, PLD gets sword/shield, MNK gets gloves, etc.), which deviates from the two traditional models wherein characters either get a multitude of different weapon types that are all effectively identical (such as in WoW) or they get a multitude of options in which there is one that is, quite obviously, the intended choice that is explicitly better for that class than any other (FFXI). The devs realized that the choice either didn't matter or was made for the player ahead of time, so they just said screw it.

The model allows them to focus upon the quality of the abilities that they *do* present, both in usability as well as balance. You might complain that every WAR in ARR is effectively the same but have you actually asked yourself whether it's more fun to play this iteration of WAR than it is to play others (for me, that answer is a resounding "yes", as it is with pretty much all of the jobs)? People get hung up on whether or not they have a lot of options to choose from when, if you think about it, there's really no reason to (unless you're the type of person that believes that choice explicitly exists to either allow a sufficiently skilled player to break a system or to penalize anyone who *doesn't* have sufficient skill, which is a pretty toxic mentality in a social environment) because quantity of choice comes at the explicit cost of quality of choice (yes, game development is a zero sum system; if you focus development effort on one aspect it has to come from another; the only time this changes is when your boss actually decides to increase your budget, which doesn't really happen).

People are actually, paradoxically, happier when there are fewer choices *even if one of the newly available choices is personally better for them*; it's something called overchoice. The constant push that some old school gamers have for each new game that gets developed to have more and more choices available to them is actually bad for the game. There should be *some* choices, but there should always be a small, relatively manageable amount if people are going to enjoy it (this all goes out the window if the choice is known to have no effect upon performance because then you eliminate anxiety over having made the wrong choice so that people can make their initial decision more easily and not think back later concerning whether they made the correct one).

So I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with you that the current system is "blatantly obvious" in its inferiority. If anything, the FFXI model where you've got a massive number of potential choices but a highly restricted number of practical choices buried amongst the vast majority of worthless options is the one that is inferior when you actually look at it as a system designed for quality as opposed to quantity.

ARR was designed for quality, rather than quantity. That aspect, right there, makes it superior to FFXI as well as a huge number of other MMOs out there.

I agree with Kitru. Too many choices is not that good. At the end of the day, humans will go down the path with the least obstacles. Optimal builds will be crafted, exploits will be discovered, and all other choices will mean nothing except more stuff for developers to deal with that ain't nobody got time to play with

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Originally Posted by Raestloz

I agree with Kitru. Too many choices is not that good. At the end of the day, humans will go down the path with the least obstacles. Optimal builds will be crafted, exploits will be discovered, and all other choices will mean nothing except more stuff for developers to deal with that ain't nobody got time to play with

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An easy path , a path with less obstacles , its like an empty victory , is it not? what's the worth of something in life if you haven't tried hard for it? It is the difficulty that makes something worthwhile , off course no need for XIV to become Dark/Demon Souls
hard , most would quit.

If they were to remove something from the jobs , that would be the stat increase from having the soul on , I think thats the fuss in the end of the day. Then we could really talk about skill.

War has additional skills Mrd hasn't , that make him a good tank , but Mrd can get some abilities from gla and mnk that would do the same.Why people don't accept mrd in a party? Because of the few extra stats from the soul.Pretty simple really.Of course we could press delete on Mrd and put an end to these debates but I am certain new would arise to take their place like "Gawd , why did they took out the classes they were so cool".

And a few more choices they could add , like more weapons per class/job , e.g. gla/pld could get maces and hand axes and do some stuff from Skyrim like , maces could ignore 20 points of defence , swords could have an increased crit rate and hand axes could cause a small + short dot effect called bleeding. And then people could choose a bit more to customize themselves cause thats what it all is about in the end of the day , CUSTOMIZATION , its a video game , video= I see , Its what it looks like and if I like it. But those visuals need to have a meaning don't they?

This isn't too much of a work . I can make a mace in 3ds max in 30 mins with above average texturing a bit more time for a quality looking piece.
What I want to say is this , It's all a matter of SE's volition.

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Originally Posted by Letzt

"Counter argument".

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Kitru pretty much broke it down. Pretty much end of conversation.

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Originally Posted by Shadow_Sama

Kitru pretty much broke it down. Pretty much end of conversation.

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Nice one! I will write this down :P

How so my friend , Kitru talks about the illusion of choice , right , classes still exist and there isn't much of a choice in how to play , SE limited the weapons from the begining and there just too few viable choices ,
What? FFXI 462 combinations , yeah I know that but how many were viable? those are the combinations most people count. Could you get invite into a pt(or be effective cause thats the point) as whm/war? NO. Whm/thf? NO what about whm/drk? Still NO.

And about the mythos , hey you could be war ,whm , blm , mnk , thf , knt from the begining , of course not paladin or red mage or scholar. So what is the use of the classes? did they really had to be carried over from v1?

Of course stuff from version1.0 like the all powerfull thm spells had to go , "some" classes were one man army and you could make 1 class combinations to tackle the instance dungeon.
You could get any abilities from other classes and pay a small price to counterbalance it.
Now they are restricting the skills you can choose from other classes but that doesn't matter now anyway. But hey , classes are still good for solo.

Thanks.

Incoming WALL-O-TEXT.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

I seriously have to wonder why you seem to think that the measure of a class/job/etc. system is derived from the the number of choices that a player has as opposed to something that actually has a practical effect on things, such as, how well balanced it is or how fun and well designed the given classes/jobs actually are.

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This depends entirely on the type of game you are playing. A linear path is good for some games and not at all for others.

And in an MMOG where you want people to enjoy the game for extended periods of times (preferably years) emergent gameplay is more important than planned content, simply because no company has the amount of resources to keep pumping out content that will last that long while still keeping people interested in paying a sub.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

In games where you think you have a bajillion choices, the truth of the matter is that you do not, in fact, have all of the choices you seem to think that you had/have. FFXI's system purported that it allowed for 462 different combinations of jobs for primary/sub when, in practical terms, the number of *real* options was tiny in comparison: the only subjob you'd ever see a PLD use when actually doing stuff would be WAR and the only real subjob for a WHM was Summoner until the advent of Scholar. The practical limitations on your choice of subjob held true across *all* jobs such that, at any given time, the most real choices you'd have for any job was about 3. The fact that the game allowed you to combine any two jobs was simply an illusion of choice. The only real "advantage" derived from the potential number was, honestly, a one-off advantage to those theorycrafters who enjoy going through and looking at every possible option/combination before finding the optimal one, and, of course, once *that* has been done, there's not really much point in doing it again unless something substantive happens to a class. It's nominally a sandbox but, for all practical purposes, provides as few options as any other game. It's the same reason why talent tree systems are a complete illusion of choice because, if you're not taking what is often derogatorily referred to as "cookie cutter", which gains such a label because it's the most effective, you end up being less effective. In most ways, the illusion of choice actually penalizes casual players that *don't* feel like doing research into what they think should just be a relaxing/enjoyable way to spend their free time.

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This is not true at all, yes for most PARTY situations /WAR was the most convenient choice for PLD, but there were many other combinations that while not as widespread still provided with many different ways of doing things. And players would choose the way that made the most sense for a certain situation. In XI you have the freedom to play a Job, rather than a role, if you choose to.

Example: Say you are killing a NM that hits like a truck and you don't have enough healing to keep your PLD alive. If you have a THF your PLD could sub /NIN and mitigate a ton of damage that way, with the THF (or /THF) covering for the emnity loss of not having Provoke from /WAR while not requiring Defender since you are Utsu-tanking.

And as WHM, SMN was never as popular as you seem to think because it was completely a playstyle choice. Most people I know only subbed SMN for Auto-Refresh and a (very slightly) bigger MP pool. /BLM offered conserve MP, Dark based Sleep, stun, spikes, etc. and RDM offered Fast Cast and Dispel (and spikes depending on level) for those times where you wanted cure to fire faster or help debuff.

There's also the WHMs that subbed /NIN for survivability and dual wielding wands at lower levels to maximize stats and avoid death since lower level tanks some times didn't have the tools or the practice to handle hate that well at lower levels. Or the WHM could just be tanking if they came up with a good strategy to go for it.

Etc. etc.

None of these emergent/situational ways of playing the game, and tailoring your jobs according to your playstyle with subs and gear would be possible in XIV. Over simplifying things with generalizations is just not the best way to discredit a more open game system.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

One of the things that I love about ARR is that the developers realized that the illusion of choice has no real practical advantage (other than allowing those people that pride themselves upon being deviants from normalcy and explicitly choose non-standard builds, even if they *do* perform in a suboptimal way), as do so very many other artifacts of historical MMO models.

I've seen people complain all the time about how there is barely any deviation from a character of one class to the next (the only variation is choice of CC abilities and, in most cases, the illusion of choice still exists because it's obvious to anyone that there's a specific suite you're supposed to use or that you can choose whatever you want but it won't mean anything), but I applaud the devs for doing so, not because I enjoy having fewer choices (as a power gamer, even if there are 20 options, my inclination towards building a character that is as effective as possible breaks it down to 1 or 2; the only thing that additional options represent are the *potential* for supplanting a previous option as the new optimal selection, as opposed to real choice), but because the devs realized that giving players a massive slew of choices is simply hiding the effective/intended/balanced playstyle amidst a suffocating horde of suboptimal options (with the very occasional completely unintended choice that ends up being way more powerful than expected, which pretty much always gets nerfed into oblivion anyways).

The devs applied this central concept to absolutely everything about the game: cut out the chaff, only presenting *real* options, and make those options as high quality as possible. Each class only gets one weapon type (WAR gets axe, PLD gets sword/shield, MNK gets gloves, etc.), which deviates from the two traditional models wherein characters either get a multitude of different weapon types that are all effectively identical (such as in WoW) or they get a multitude of options in which there is one that is, quite obviously, the intended choice that is explicitly better for that class than any other (FFXI). The devs realized that the choice either didn't matter or was made for the player ahead of time, so they just said screw it.

The model allows them to focus upon the quality of the abilities that they *do* present, both in usability as well as balance. You might complain that every WAR in ARR is effectively the same but have you actually asked yourself whether it's more fun to play this iteration of WAR than it is to play others (for me, that answer is a resounding "yes", as it is with pretty much all of the jobs)?

People get hung up on whether or not they have a lot of options to choose from when, if you think about it, there's really no reason to (unless you're the type of person that believes that choice explicitly exists to either allow a sufficiently skilled player to break a system or to penalize anyone who *doesn't* have sufficient skill, which is a pretty toxic mentality in a social environment) because quantity of choice comes at the explicit cost of quality of choice (yes, game development is a zero sum system; if you focus development effort on one aspect it has to come from another; the only time this changes is when your boss actually decides to increase your budget, which doesn't really happen).

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Over generalizing again, but at least you are aware that they did what they did due to budget and time limitations, rather than wisdom.

And reading you are a power gamer that only plays in the most efective way I can understand why this concept of choice and exploration of the game and it's systems increasing replayaility is so foreign to you.

All I can really say is that for many it is the choice and the different ways to enjoy the world that allows them to play a game for years (or over a decade in my case playing XI.)

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Originally Posted by Kitru

People are actually, paradoxically, happier when there are fewer choices *even if one of the newly available choices is personally better for them*; it's something called overchoice. The constant push that some old school gamers have for each new game that gets developed to have more and more choices available to them is actually bad for the game. There should be *some* choices, but there should always be a small, relatively manageable amount if people are going to enjoy it (this all goes out the window if the choice is known to have no effect upon performance because then you eliminate anxiety over having made the wrong choice so that people can make their initial decision more easily and not think back later concerning whether they made the correct one).

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It is actually the opposite in my experience. People will most certainly enjoy the linear choice-free ride at first, but after the first job is at 50 and all the nice superficial Main Story is over you are left with a very restrictive system that only allows you to play it one way, and if you deviate from that you can expect SE to come plug those pesky holes in a future update.

And while that is not a good or bad feature of a game per se it does affect the longevity in a game like this. Because it makes it so longevity completely depends on what content the developers can add to the game rather than allowing the players to come up with different/alternative ways of enjoying the limited virtual world they created.

The Dev team is very well aware of this issue, but they painted themselves into a corner content-wise when they decided to remake the game in this way. Because now to add more open content they need time, but the restrictive content they've added doesn't give them the time required for that because it lacks the basic replayability more open games have in their dungeons, so they have to make more restrictive content to buy more time, etc. etc.

It's a mess, and I certainly don't envy their position.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

So I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with you that the current system is "blatantly obvious" in its inferiority. If anything, the FFXI model where you've got a massive number of potential choices but a highly restricted number of practical choices buried amongst the vast majority of worthless options is the one that is inferior when you actually look at it as a system designed for quality as opposed to quantity.

ARR was designed for quality, rather than quantity. That aspect, right there, makes it superior to FFXI as well as a huge number of other MMOs out there.

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I'm glad you actually find this game enjoyable enough to disagree so vehemently, and I hope you can conserve that amount of passion for the it in the years to come.

That being said though, ARR was certainly not designed with quality over quantity in mind, but with "Oh crap we've spent too much money on this!!!" and "We don't have time to develop better content but we need to get the game out or we'll go bankrupt!!" instead. XD

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Originally Posted by Letzt

Why people don't accept mrd in a party? Because of the few extra stats from the soul.

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I uh... have no idea why you think the 10~30 some odd stat point difference is the reason why people want a WAR over a MRD in a party setting. You want a Warrior because of Defiance (you know, the tank stance that they get as their first ability, that gives them way more HP, and increases their incoming heals).

Here how I look at it. (WoW reference incoming) Classes feel more like the base class and Jobs are more like talent tree's in FFXIV. In the future, Classes will start branching out to other jobs. Example: ACN is the main class while SCH is the Healing Tree and SMN is the DPS Tree. You are able to switch trees (job crystals) when ever you feel like it.

Originally all you had was class rank and an overall level. It was interesting for a while but very confusing at the same time. Just for giggles I might deck out a Gladiator or Muarader with some HQ crafting gear and penta meld some materia in it.

But then again it would be a huge gil sink and I would be gimped in comparison to any job. It really has become a thing of the past and looked down upon. Archers being actual range DPS instead of bard support? I'm growing OLD!

classes are a base and jobs are basically specializations. mrd can branch off and be a war = tank or later in the future become a berserker dps. Or a gld can become a pld tank or become a drk dps

For all the multi classing arguments on choices….

Having an "illusion" of choices for sub jobs comes from bad sub job design. Every sub should look appealing for several situations

examples of what "could" of helped made ffxi's sub job system a lil more appealing in my opinion.

Tanks
/drk - en-drain added to attacks, absorb defense adding a nice long duration buff, en-stun with a low proc rate
/mnk - large max HP boost 30% maybe, counter(didn't dodge all damage, instead added in another auto attack when struck), chakra (remove many debuffs from user on a short cool down)
/Blu - cocoon (this was actually in the game….but people refused to try war/blu when I played…)

Damager
/rdm (en-element actually made your melee attacks do magic DMG, like formless strikes)

just some 2sec examples… when you make other choices so overpowered compared to the others…thats how you create cookie cutters…this is a fault on the designers.

Remember the first Final Fantasy? You started as a fighter/mage/thief/black-belt and later upgraded to a knight/wizard/ninja/master. Same concept here. No reason to downgrade once you've been upgraded.

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Originally Posted by Sypherblade

Having an "illusion" of choices for sub jobs comes from bad sub job design. Every sub should look appealing for several situations

examples of what "could" of helped made ffxi's sub job system a lil more appealing in my opinion.

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One thing i was thinking when i first learned of the whole job and swapping thing was that you could and sometimes would be encouraged to swap jobs while in a party/dungeon. Say one boss needed more people being dps/tanks/healers, and if you did that, it would go better. Yeah, this would cause problems with people queueing as tank to get quick queues, but would encourage multiple jobs and play styles. I do like that i can have different jobs on one character, but a bit more static than i was thinking.

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Originally Posted by rabbitzero

One thing i was thinking when i first learned of the whole job and swapping thing was that you could and sometimes would be encouraged to swap jobs while in a party/dungeon. Say one boss needed more people being dps/tanks/healers, and if you did that, it would go better. Yeah, this would cause problems with people queueing as tank to get quick queues, but would encourage multiple jobs and play styles. I do like that i can have different jobs on one character, but a bit more static than i was thinking.

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Probably could of been more possible if we had a changeable sub job system…this boss i'll sub X…next boss i'll sub Y…but can't change main job in dungeons.

In the age of youtube and countless blogs detailing the best strategy, I agree wholeheartedly that needlessly complicating the game with the illusion of choice is pointless. People will find the most effective variations with usually one or maybe two other "acceptable" substitutions for a couple of situations, and that will be all that is used by serious players.

If you are asking for choice simply to make the game more complicated and give players more of a reason to feel "elite" by looking down on everyone who does not follow the latest and greatest raid tactic video on youtube/populer player blog, then you may want to reevaluate what you are asking for.

If you are asking for choice simply because you want more choices to run around town in and never use in any serious party, you may want to reevaluate why you would ask developers to spend money and time creating pointless features when they could be expanding the game.

If you are asking for choice because you think you will be the one player to come up with the most awesome new strategy that no one ever thought of, well... I hate to say it, but you aren't a special snowflake and you probably won't.

There will be more choice in the future , possible , hopefully meaningfull and not just eye candy and more importantly worth of the 14 euro custom the game requires as a monthly subscription. Hopefully more classes more variations , more choices for the lot of people playing this game.

Of course nothing will deviate from the regular tank ,dps ,healer ,support class but there are many ideas for how to differently implement roles. So have at them.

Cause there is definitely not enough content/choices/variety in gameplay and it doesn't come out fast enough to warrant 14 euros is there now?

I'd say capping at around ~20 is good enough

Enough to do 4:4:12 (healer:tank:dps)

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Originally Posted by Raydeus

Example: Say you are killing a NM that hits like a truck and you don't have enough healing to keep your PLD alive. If you have a THF your PLD could sub /NIN and mitigate a ton of damage that way, with the THF (or /THF) covering for the emnity loss of not having Provoke from /WAR while not requiring Defender since you are Utsu-tanking.

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Or... they could have just brought a NIN/WAR, pretty much the default NIN tank setup, to be the tank instead of trying to make a party around PLD/NIN.

Kitru's example may have been off (as a WHM, I subbed BLM until SCH came out), but the fact of it still holds true: Sure, you had a huge number of possible job and subjob combinations, but only a few of those options were ever truly viable.

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Originally Posted by Nahara

Or... they could have just brought a NIN/WAR, pretty much the default NIN tank setup, to be the tank instead of trying to make a party around PLD/NIN.

Kitru's example may have been off (as a WHM, I subbed BLM until SCH came out), but the fact of it still holds true: Sure, you had a huge number of possible job and subjob combinations, but only a few of those options were ever truly viable.

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What happens if you don't have a NIN available or if the one needing the fight is the PLD? In XIV you simply wouldn't be able to do it at all. While in XI you had the chance and the option to try to do it differently and adapt to the situation just changing your sub and tweaking your strategy. And too many times it worked with such a wacky setup for me. After all, "Truly viable" is only true until you actually get things done in a different way. (And that's how things like those pesky speed runs were born wasn't it?)

Then it's just about "oh well, yeah, you got the fight done but it would've been easier if you've had the leetest setup!11one" which is ridiculous for obvious reasons.

If you need to get something done it is always better to have options to do it rather than being walled by the limitations. Sometimes it will work and others wont, but even the simple act of trial and error provides emergent content that is not present in a more static game like XIV.

Of course, that doesn't in any way mean you can't actually enjoy having a more linear experience. But from that to actually try to discredit the advantages of having more choices in a game like this (just to excuse the Devs) is simply wrong.


PS > And that's not even counting 1.0's Armory system was even more customizable than XI's since you could take abilities from multiple classes at once without the massive limitations and nerfs present in 2.0. Which brings us back to how pointless the Armory system is right now and how it has become just a vehicle to get you to lvl 30, so you can get your "real" Job and never have to look back at your laughable starting class ever again.

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What happens if you don't have a NIN available or if the one needing the fight is the PLD? In XIV you simply wouldn't be able to do it at all.

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They made it so it's possible to do fights with all manner of classes. Easiest? Not a snowball's chance in hell. Possible? For sure.

Classes were ment to be for Solo-play and Jobs for Group-play. Thats what Yhoshi-P said himself in 1.x and interviews. Even then you do not gain anything from Cross Classing because you miss the Talents. Therefore it was and is better do stay in your Job. You get laughted at when joining a Level 50 Dungeon without equipped Job-Crystall, even results in leaving Players before combat starts. Forced Group-play then destroyed Solo-Play completely and made Classes useless.

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Originally Posted by Kerwin

Originally all you had was class rank and an overall level. It was interesting for a while but very confusing at the same time. Just for giggles I might deck out a Gladiator or Muarader with some HQ crafting gear and penta meld some materia in it.

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I've mentioned this before, but I feel the original level and rank system from 1.0 was basically what The Secret World got. "Weapon" level progression separate from base level progression. I sometimes wonder if 1.0 was going to get Jobs the way Decks were implemented in TSW.

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Originally Posted by Raydeus

What happens if you don't have a NIN available or if the one needing the fight is the PLD?

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Then you're SoL because lolPLD pre-Ochain/Aegis. Let's not pretend FFXI encouraged innovation because once the hive mind set its expected curricula, you followed it or were laughed at/ignored.

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After all, "Truly viable" is only true until you actually get things done in a different way.

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You forget that the context of viable in FFXI was "guaranteed victory so that time spent camping/farming pop items/traveling to the spot is not utterly wasted". That's what pushed people towards specific set ups where the ace jobs reigned and everyone else was worthless.

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Of course, that doesn't in any way mean you can't actually enjoy having a more linear experience. But from that to actually try to discredit the advantages of having more choices in a game like this (just to excuse the Devs) is simply wrong.

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The more "options" are availab,e the more difficult the game would be to balance, not to mention design of encounters taking a notable hit. FFXI was a clusterfuck on several levels between combat design, possible roles, job balance and things they should have fixed but never did.

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Which brings us back to how pointless the Armory system is right now and how it has become just a vehicle to get you to lvl 30, so you can get your "real" Job and never have to look back at your laughable starting class ever again.

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As mentioned before, the class is the foundation, the jobs are the branching roles and possibilities of growth for that class. That's more than good enough without making things messy on both players and developers.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

The more "options" are available, the more difficult the game would be to balance, not to mention design of encounters taking a notable hit. FFXI was a clusterfuck on several levels between combat design, possible roles, job balance and things they should have fixed but never did.

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Fun case in point: Absolute Virtue. SE created the boss and had an idea of how players should have fought and killed it. Instead, players pulled shenanigans like throwing 18 SCH at it with Modus Veritas or DRKs with Kraken Clubs and Souleater. If you have too many options, it becomes incredibly difficult (if not impossible) to properly balance anything.