Yoshi-P confirms Ninja/Thief and gun-using class?

Folks on Reddit were watching the NicoNico event, covered by media here:

http://www.psu.com/a023154/New-Jobs-...er-PvP-details

Thought it best to post in DPS roles, but lots of speculation that one of these two new classes could be the Support role.

Thoughts? Is the gun-wielding class a Chemist? Blue / Red Mage? Gunner? What about the daggers?

Hmmm gun using job not what ppl expect. So not muskateer?

Musketeer is confirmed as the base class. We already had the guild since 1.0

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Originally Posted by BrielleBeaudonet

Thoughts? Is the gun-wielding class a Chemist? Blue / Red Mage? Gunner? What about the daggers?

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Originally Posted by chococo

Hmmm gun using job not what ppl expect. So not muskateer?

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www.psu.com:
"The guns, meanwhile, could be a reference to the Chemist, a Final Fantasy Tactics class that used guns to deal elemental damage. It could also be a modified Gunner, as seen in Final Fantasy X-2. Either way, we may get some surprises: Yoshida apparently said that the gun class isn't what people are expecting it to be. It may materialize as the first "Support" role, a promised addition that will co-exist with traditional Tank, Healer, and DPS roles."

I really think the class and job stemming from this will still be what people expected which are Musketeer and Corsair respectively. It may not behave the way "most" people expect but I believe the names won't be a surprise at all.

In FFXI Corsair did use both physical ranged DPS (guns) and magical ranged DPS (elemental infused playing cards which were thrown). Corsair was also a very heavy support role, rolling dice for buffs taking a gamble on how effective the buffs would be. Now if FFXIV follows a similar path for Corsair then it won't be a surprise for the job itself but the class may not perform how you would expect with that particular build since it will have to be that way to setup for Corsair as 5-6 job actions are to few to implement EVERYTHING.

However, this isn't FFXI so I can't guarantee it will be exactly that and it may not even be something similar (IE Bard using a bow with LIMITED support and Summoner being more like a Warlock from WoW w/o Demon Form). If it does follow this path it may simply be an alternative/compliment to BRD or it may actually be a true support job.

Either way I doubt it will fill a "hybrid" role more suited for jobs like RDM, BLU, or DNC. You could argue that support + DPS is a hybrid but support isn't 100% necessary for the average party to succeed any given battle (thus far).

i'm amped for gun class actually. popping caps in fools.

if i'm not misremembering thf was originally intended as a gun wielding class ffxi. so maybe musketeer/thf will be the new class? just a shot in the dark. was ninja officially mentioned or is it just assumed?

ninja was also gun using ffxi. maybe they will split 1 tank 1 dps similar to arcanist splitting into healer/dps.

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Originally Posted by rex1976

so maybe musketeer/thf will be the new class? just a shot in the dark. was ninja officially mentioned or is it just assumed?

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Have you even completed the story from 2.2? Both Yugiri and Thancred dual wield daggers and are basically stated to be the introduction to THF (via Thancred and his buddies in Limsa) and NIN (via Yugiri). On top of this, firearms have never been anything approaching iconic weapons of either THF or NIN. It's basically guaranteed that the gun using class will be completely different from THF/NIN, even more so since Yoshi has been referring to them separately (and has always referred to them separately, even before saying that they would both be coming).

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maybe they will split 1 tank 1 dps similar to arcanist splitting into healer/dps.

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Yoshi has already stated that the very idea of NIN being a tank is completely and totally ludicrous. Anyone that knows the history of FFXI knows that the only reason that NIN was a tank was because the devs made a major design blunder by providing them with a mitigation ability that was *way* too strong and didn't notice their blunder until NIN was so entrenched as a tank within the metagame that they couldn't fix it. NIN was never intended to be a tank and has never been anything like a tank in any FF game before or after.

FFXI is anomalous within the series in so very very many ways. I seriously have to wonder why anyone brings it up as if it were supposed to be evidence of any kind, especially when it's directly contradictory of the entire rest of the series.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

Yoshi has already stated that the very idea of NIN being a tank is completely and totally ludicrous. Anyone that knows the history of FFXI knows that the only reason that NIN was a tank was because the devs made a major design blunder by providing them with a mitigation ability that was *way* too strong and didn't notice their blunder until NIN was so entrenched as a tank within the metagame that they couldn't fix it. NIN was never intended to be a tank and has never been anything like a tank in any FF game before or after.

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This is one big collusion of misquotes getting misquoted...
I believe the xiv related quote was that *blink* tanking wouldn't be viable in ffxivarr.
And in xi, the devs didn't anticipate ninja being so popular as a tank. That game was much more of a sandbox environment than anything these days. Ninja gear was packed with enmity and evasion...ninja had barely the second highest evasion in the game and utsusemi...what else were they supposed to do other than absorb some hits? XI devs did strange things compared to modern mmo devs.

I miss ffxi ninja, but I don't care if ninja is tank or dps in this game. I would really like to have A new tank - any new tank.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

Yoshi has already stated that the very idea of NIN being a tank is completely and totally ludicrous. Anyone that knows the history of FFXI knows that the only reason that NIN was a tank was because the devs made a major design blunder by providing them with a mitigation ability that was *way* too strong and didn't notice their blunder until NIN was so entrenched as a tank within the metagame that they couldn't fix it. NIN was never intended to be a tank and has never been anything like a tank in any FF game before or after.

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Not saying that NIN should be a tank in FFXIV, however I would like to see some type of evasion/blink tank in FFXIV at some point. But for anyone (including SE) to say that NIN tank in FFXI was not only a mistake but should never have happened is ludicrous in itself. Without NIN tank there would have been only one socially acceptable tank (PLD) out of 20+ jobs (perhaps 15+ at the time of NIN release) and merely another DPS job added to the lineup of at least 9 other DPS jobs. So as you can see NIN helped to balance that ratio as opposed to further hindering it. I don't know what SE's priority or vision was for FFXI at that time but NIN tank was not a bad thing to happen for THAT game.

On a side note however, NIN was very much a hybrid in FFXI. Being able to tank OR DPS, and yet people complain about having more options rather than having less options. If the community forces you to play only as tank then that isn't a developer issue, it's a community issue. And trust me that happens everywhere inside and outside of any social aspect of life itself and not just gaming. The more a developer builds against "sandboxing" (or in layman's terms builds a game so that the CONSUMER can't do anything creative themselves nor play in a way that's not exactly the same as 99% of other players) the more BORING, REPETITIVE, LACKLUSTER, UNORIGINAL, being forced to play an EXACT way (not fun at all IMO), etc., etc. that game will be.

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Originally Posted by Kirinichibon

This is one big collusion of misquotes getting misquoted...

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Or it's just you not knowing what you're talking about.

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I believe the xiv related quote was that *blink* tanking wouldn't be viable in ffxivarr.

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He said it specifically when asked about whether ninja would be a tank, not whether it would be a blink tank. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's never mentioned anything about the mechanics that NIN will or could use. The only context in which he's discussed NIN was when he referenced the missing "stealth/scout type class".

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And in xi, the devs didn't anticipate ninja being so popular as a tank. That game was much more of a sandbox environment than anything these days. Ninja gear was packed with enmity and evasion...ninja had barely the second highest evasion in the game and utsusemi...what else were they supposed to do other than absorb some hits? XI devs did strange things compared to modern mmo devs.

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Ninja was only given tank gear *after* the player metagame had cemented them as tanks. The FFXI devs explicitly stated that they only ever intended NIN to be a DPS/debuffing class. Utsusemi was only supposed to be an ability to allow a NIN to survive a few attacks in the case that they drew aggro.

The very *idea* that NIN should be a tank class/job is ludicrous on the face of it, and nowhere in the course of any FF game has ninja been anything approaching a tank. The *only* reason that NIN was a tank in FFXI was the devs shortsightedness and obliviousness combined with a slow reaction and inattention to the player metagame. It's the exact same reason why SAM went from being a tank job to being a DPS job and why RDM went from being a generalist to a Refresh bot.

FFXI was an absolutely horribly designed MMO. They made so very many bad decisions and absolutely refused to admit that they made mistakes until it was too late for them to actually address them. Bringing up design aspect of FFXI as if it's something that should be emulated rather than treated as a demonstration of what *not* to do is just asking for a facepalm.

That's great. Link to the quotes please.

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Originally Posted by OmegaNovaios

Without NIN tank there would have been only one socially acceptable tank (PLD) out of 20+ jobs (perhaps 15+ at the time of NIN release)

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PLD was the only viable tank because the FFXI devs were just so bad at actually designing classes properly. WAR was intended to be a viable tank as was SAM and RUN. The only reason that they *weren't* was because the FFXI devs were so bad at designing classes properly. If the FFXI devs actually knew what they were doing when they were designing classes, there would have been other viable tanks though, it should also be mentioned that the FFXI devs could never quite decide whether they wanted the game to be a sandbox or a trinity game, and it was obvious in their class design.

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If the community forces you to play only as tank then that isn't a developer issue, it's a community issue.

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Actually, it's a developer issue because, at the heart of it, the community is going to react to the effectiveness of a given class at a given role. If the devs design a DPS class and it ends up sucking as a DPS but makes a decent healer, the community is going to make people play said "DPS class" as a healer because, from a practical standpoint, that's what it is. The community doesn't make arbitrary decisions; it makes those decisions in response to what the developers have done. When the developers screw something up and whatever they designed ends up working in a completely unintended and illogical way, you can call it a community issue when the class ends up being something completely different from what was intended, but the root cause of it was still the devs screwing it up.

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The more a developer builds against "sandboxing" (or in layman's terms builds a game so that the CONSUMER can't do anything creative themselves nor play in a way that's not exactly the same as 99% of other players) the more BORING, REPETITIVE, LACKLUSTER, UNORIGINAL, being forced to play an EXACT way (not fun at all IMO), etc., etc. that game will be.

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Except that "sandboxes" are never balanced and never deliver the breadth of real options that people claim.

They're never balanced because there are simply too many options for the developers to actually do the comparative design work for. There's always stuff that the devs never expected to happen that the community takes up and abuses the crap out of. The only way to actually counteract this is to explicitly limit the viability of all but a scant few options such that the decision is already made for you.

You can claim that there are 462 (22 * 21) different job/subjob options in FFXI, but, when you get down to it, there were, at most, 30 different effective combinations because jobs had an extremely limited number of jobs that were actually effective subjobs for them. The benefit of "options" in sandbox MMOs always end up turning into ways that people can make themselves less effective than they could be purely because they don't want to be like everyone else. New options only end up being short term variations until the optimizers and theorycrafters have determined whether those options are optimal (wherein they either displace the existing optimal choice or are cast to the side).

Sandbox MMOs either end up providing a illusion of choice or a laughably unbalanced system. In any game where players actually have to compete or cooperate to do most content, balance becomes a helluva lot more important than the illusion of choice because the imbalance inherent in a crapton of options already limits the practical options to a tiny subset of the theoretical options that can be used to complete said content.

Limiting the number of classes allows developers to focus on actually making those classes *good*. You can bitch and moan about BLM not having all of the options that it did in FFXI, but you can be damned sure that it's a helluva lot more fun to play. You'd never get an Umbral Ice/Astral Fire type system in a sandbox MMO without it being completely borked. The same is true for Greased Lightning. Limiting options allows developers to improve the quality of those options which means that you end up with more practical options in the end. Plus, those practical options end up being a lot more complex tactically. The only playstyle complexity inherent in a sandbox class design is in your selection of classes; the fact that those selections have to be modular so that they can work together makes them bland as hell.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

PLD was the only viable tank because the FFXI devs were just so bad at actually designing classes properly. WAR was intended to be a viable tank as was SAM and RUN. The only reason that they *weren't* was because the FFXI devs were so bad at designing classes properly. If the FFXI devs actually knew what they were doing when they were designing classes, there would have been other viable tanks though, it should also be mentioned that the FFXI devs could never quite decide whether they wanted the game to be a sandbox or a trinity game, and it was obvious in their class design.

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PLD wasn't the only viable tank, it was the only socially acceptable tank aside from NIN. WAR, SAM, RDM, BLU, DNC, RUN, BST and perhaps a couple others that I didn't really get into were actually VIABLE if you knew what you were doing, but most people didn't. Everything about the way you were "forced" to play FFXI was peer pressure and tradition. It had nothing to do with what was possible. It was the ultimate form of being conservative.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

Actually, it's a developer issue because, at the heart of it, the community is going to react to the effectiveness of a given class at a given role. If the devs design a DPS class and it ends up sucking as a DPS but makes a decent healer, the community is going to make people play said "DPS class" as a healer because, from a practical standpoint, that's what it is. The community doesn't make arbitrary decisions; it makes those decisions in response to what the developers have done. When the developers screw something up and whatever they designed ends up working in a completely unintended and illogical way, you can call it a community issue when the class ends up being something completely different from what was intended, but the root cause of it was still the devs screwing it up.

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No need to blow things way out of proportion for a hypothetical point when the real one isn't so drastic, and yes the community has a massive impact of the way people actually play whether or not the devs do something as intended or not as inteded (it doesn't matter). FFXI is a prime example, and it's harder to find in games with more restricitons. NIN could both tank or DPS. The community chose tank. RDM and BLU could do everything. The community chose refresher/heals (sometimes nukes) and DPS. DNC could tank, heal, and DPS. The community chose DPS. There are a LOT more situations like this that either I don't care to list or wasn't even aware of when I played. The fact is that the community will choose if the devs don't. The ISSUE is BOTH THE DEVS AND THE COMMUNITY need to broaden their horizons and accept other things otherwise MMOs won't ever change.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

Except that "sandboxes" are never balanced and never deliver the breadth of real options that people claim.
They're never balanced because there are simply too many options for the developers to actually do the comparative design work for. There's always stuff that the devs never expected to happen that the community takes up and abuses the crap out of. The only way to actually counteract this is to explicitly limit the viability of all but a scant few options such that the decision is already made for you.

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MMOs take a long time to develop. They have plenty of time to balance many options if they have a separate team completely focused on that before and and after launch. WoW was the "most successful" MMO with FEW options and they couldn't balance anything to save their life over the course of 10+ years. Evatually they scrapped skill trees and then later they scrapped role trees. That's a dev issue. Now WoW has extrememly restricted options and it's horrible compared to what it once was and it's still LOSING subs.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

You can claim that there are 462 (22 * 21) different job/subjob options in FFXI, but, when you get down to it, there were, at most, 30 different effective combinations because jobs had an extremely limited number of jobs that were actually effective subjobs for them. The benefit of "options" in sandbox MMOs always end up turning into ways that people can make themselves less effective than they could be purely because they don't want to be like everyone else. New options only end up being short term variations until the optimizers and theorycrafters have determined whether those options are optimal (wherein they either displace the existing optimal choice or are cast to the side).
Sandbox MMOs either end up providing a illusion of choice or a laughably unbalanced system. In any game where players actually have to compete or cooperate to do most content, balance becomes a helluva lot more important than the illusion of choice because the imbalance inherent in a crapton of options already limits the practical options to a tiny subset of the theoretical options that can be used to complete said content.

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The biggest illusion is the MMO in general. Sure you can look past your options and see the end of the road, but without those options the end of the road is already within sight. What good is there in a game when merely eliminating skill trees, subjobs, cross class skills, and adding in other limitations just so people can't copy a build when people just copy a play style instead. You can just go to YouTube and watch how to beat said content on your class, mimicking every action at every second. When you enter a dungeon that you will already know exactly what will happen and how everything will play out. When you see a BLM enter your party and you already know his EXACT optimal rotation and if he doesn't follow that then he is just hindering you. Perhaps balanced, but what is so special about this kind of MMO?

i just assumed that the dev team would put out a tank class... there are many reasons that the game needs another tank class... my choices for speculating on wich of the 3 will be the new tank class are ninja, thief, and musketeer? that being said i jumped to the conclusion that ninja would be most viable as a tank class because alot of people enjoyed playing a ninja tank in ffxi. you clearly enjoyed nothing about ffxi... assuming that you agree a tank class will be added wich of the 3 is it most likely to be then oh wise one?

So has Ninja actually been confirmed, or is this just another FFXI/NIN discussion, which is pointless and does not add to this thread..

As far as I know, Yoshi confirmed a dagger job. NIN use kunai right? Or do we get a dagger class with a NIN job? Either way, Im hyped!!

Though nothing has been officially confirmed as far as what the actual jobs are, we do know what weapons these said jobs will use, and he speculation of NIN is coming from the story in 2.2. NIN seems the be the obvious choice/reference, though it is yet to be seen if they will be using daggers, kunai, or katana.

Yeh, the storyline does make us believe we will get a dual wield, stealthy job. I just hope they don't add two dps.. We need tanks and another healer would not hurt.

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Originally Posted by rex1976

i just assumed that the dev team would put out a tank class... there are many reasons that the game needs another tank class... my choices for speculating on wich of the 3 will be the new tank class are ninja, thief, and musketeer? that being said i jumped to the conclusion that ninja would be most viable as a tank class because alot of people enjoyed playing a ninja tank in ffxi. you clearly enjoyed nothing about ffxi... assuming that you agree a tank class will be added wich of the 3 is it most likely to be then oh wise one?

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There is a quest in 2.2 where you have to help move some "old armor" that's been passed down in the generations, and you have to pick up scales that fall off the armor.

Samurai is implied here, but we don't actually get to see the armor.

I don't think Nin will be a tank, i could be wrong.
I would think more that Dark Knight will be the new tank, no?

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Originally Posted by Maero

I don't think Nin will be a tank, i could be wrong.
I would think more that Dark Knight will be the new tank, no?

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Every new class that is proposed comes with droves of people kicking and screaming at the suggestion that the class could be a main tank. This game really could use a new tank job. I don't frankly care what it is - but since NIN has a history of tanking in FF online games, it isn't a stretch to assume it might be a tank again here.

I really just want happy fun times killing big monsters with others. I could care less if PLD, NIN, or WHM tanks...

I'd be stoked for a FFX-2 style Gun Mage. That way we can satisfy the need for BLU and not be copy-paste from XI.

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Originally Posted by Kirinichibon

Every new class that is proposed comes with droves of people kicking and screaming at the suggestion that the class could be a main tank. This game really could use a new tank job. I don't frankly care what it is - but since NIN has a history of tanking in FF online games, it isn't a stretch to assume it might be a tank again here.

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But then Red Mage could be a healer, not sure how well that'll roll over. Just make Viking tank and leave Ninja to DPS, like it was intended in FFXI and perverted by the community.

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Originally Posted by Kirinichibon

since NIN has a history of tanking in FF online games

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Game. Singular. There is a single instance where Ninja has been a tank. In every other instance, it's DPS. Even in the one case where it was a tank, it was a tank accidentally.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if the patch where we get NIN is actually full on Asian themed and we get SAM (as a tank) and Oracle/Geomancer (as a healer; Oracle was called "Yin Yang User" and Geomancer was called "Feng Shui soldier" as well as "Taoist").

Dark Knight + Samurai = Tanks

Thief + Ninja = DPS

Gunners = Elemental/Support role

I would be happy much ^^ (Fates, wait for me, I'm baaaaaacccccckkkk!)

*Hope SE will give us another gown for achieving 5000+ fates.. (make it 10000, forgot Atmas lol)

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Originally Posted by Exstal

But then Red Mage could be a healer, not sure how well that'll roll over. Just make Viking tank and leave Ninja to DPS, like it was intended in FFXI and perverted by the community.

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I didn't say anything about RDM. I anticipate a new tertiary/support role to be introduced, as I don't see how they can keep squeezing more jobs into the three current roles and keep up with encounter variety.

And case in point (along with a couple others after you) about folks against a particular job doing a particular role.

And nobody in this thread has yet to produce the quote from XI developers about ninja tanks or the yoshi on ninjas in this game. I don't recall that either placed ninja in a particular role - except Yoshi saying that *blink tanking would not be viable in FFXIVARR.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

Game. Singular. There is a single instance where Ninja has been a tank.

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And in how many other final fantasy games had paladin as a tank? Warrior? How many other final fantasy games had any concept of a main tank? Are any of these in ffxivarr now?

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When you see a BLM enter your party and you already know his EXACT optimal rotation and if he doesn't follow that then he is just hindering you. Perhaps balanced, but what is so special about this kind of MMO?

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Answer: In short, the ability of the development team to create challenging encounters balanced around the very well defined rotations and outputs of the classes they know will be participating in them.

I agree that it can make playing classes feel somewhat bland, but I much prefer the design philosophy of FFXIV over FFXI. FFXI was great for its time, but everyone has said that it was horribly imbalanced with some classes being able to totally overpower some content while others were practically useless. And when the class you really love is the useless one, it makes the game a lot less fun.

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And nobody in this thread has yet to produce the quote from XI developers about ninja tanks or the yoshi on ninjas in this game. I don't recall that either placed ninja in a particular role - except Yoshi saying that *blink tanking would not be viable in FFXIVARR.

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While this isn't the nail in the coffin, the excerpt from this thread comments about Thief and Ninja being a stealth class, and traditionally stealth classes do not tank. While they could break the mold with it, I don't expect that to happen.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...s-Release-Plan.

So, for gunner what's more preferable: a gun kata tanking class or a chemist healer class?

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Originally Posted by Katchii

I agree that it can make playing classes feel somewhat bland, but I much prefer the design philosophy of FFXIV over FFXI. FFXI was great for its time, but everyone has said that it was horribly imbalanced with some classes being able to totally overpower some content while others were practically useless. And when the class you really love is the useless one, it makes the game a lot less fun.

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This is just my take on it...but I think XI devs were more concerned with the art of game design than creating something playable. XI had a beautiful meta-game and horrible mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Kirinichibon

And in how many other final fantasy games had paladin as a tank? Warrior? How many other final fantasy games had any concept of a main tank? Are any of these in ffxivarr now?

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Single player games have always used different definitions of the trinity roles because you're explicitly allowed to have useless or near useless characters specifically because you're controlling an entire team rather than a single entity while simultaneously not having characters that only exist for a single purpose (e.g. healers have to do something useful when someone doesn't require healing).

What defines a class/job that translates into a tank is a character/class that is designed to soak a lot of hits. PLD, DRK, WAR, etc. are all designed around having the gear with the best defense and having the most hp. *That* is what makes them tank material. There's only a single "healer" anywhere in the FF series (WHM), but you don't see people getting their panties in a knot because SCH is a healer. In fact, if you wanted to look at what class/jobs do in the FF games based upon the trinity definition, basically everything except for WHM would be DPS because no one is allowed to not put out appreciable damage. Hell, even WHM could throw out useful amounts of damage because they need something to contribute when the party doesn't need heals.

NIN has *never* been a durable class with the exception of FFXI. Not even when you factor in evasion because it was ever high enough to offset their low defense and hp. In no way does NIN meet the qualifications that could cause someone to interpret NIN as a tank rather than a DPS.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

basically everything except for WHM would be DPS

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And this is why these discussions always come up. A lot of folks still think of SCH as a lesser WHM is FFXIV. And a lot also post that DRK shouldn't be a tank.

I'm less concerned about which role NIN will fill and more about getting more fun party play in XIV. Thief class and ninja job would fit the series' history (hello FF1), but more popular tank would really help the game - and additional DPS jobs would not make the game especially more fun. My knickers will stay un-bunched either way.

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Originally Posted by Kirinichibon

And this is why these discussions always come up. A lot of folks still think of SCH as a lesser WHM is FFXIV. And a lot also post that DRK shouldn't be a tank.

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It's because in every other game except for FFXI, there was no TANK/DPS/HEALER. It was DPS and WHM.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

It's because in every other game except for FFXI, there was no TANK/DPS/HEALER. It was DPS and WHM.

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So, why are you arguing what role jobs should fill?

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Originally Posted by Kirinichibon

So, why are you arguing what role jobs should fill?

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It's about what makes sense.