Branching jobs / Advancements

Now I know the devs struggled with SMN and SCH split but I feel like that's partially due to the fact that they broke off into radically different roles with playstyles that didn't work due to thier shared beginnings. But, take this hypothetical: if the jobs that branched off were more close in nature (retained the same roles and similar playstyle) do you think it could possible in said situation?

ex. Archer ---> Bard OR Sniper

What even is the point of splitting the job in something that feels and plays similar? Too much resources used for too little of a result. People would complain the jobs feel to similar, like they are doing with healers, no job identity and all that. Just my opinion though.

Personally, I'd just like to go towards multiple flavors of jobs, this time by not half-assing that system through the likes of Additional or Role Skills and allowing each job greater playstyle diversity through how it can reasonably source thematic, gameplay-affecting traits to and from other jobs.

I don't want to see "two-for-one" deals, exactly, especially where the two jobs are fundamentally different, but I wouldn't mind seeing some experience overlap among any and all jobs to the degree that they may share themes, sources, or capacities among their skills. For instance, alongside the weapon-based actions and traits themselves, you might unlock various further ones by which you can choose, upon sufficient experience, to level up your job.

For instance, as a Paladin I could choose to go deeper into Holy magics (options from which are permitted earlier by having leveled WHM), turning my enemies' attacks against them via Pugilist techs, better using my shield as a paired weapon via Gladiator, natively imbuing my shield with protective magics via Arcanist, or go deeper into natural fortification or Oaths via native Paladin traits (the prior of which is accelerated by the tank role as a whole) etc., etc.

I'd have a limited number of actions and traits, so at a given level my total action and trait count is the same, and the choices themselves are curated for the jobs and levels thereof so as to keep close power levels even if some are obviously better for speedrunning through leveling dungeons and are therefore recommended for what to shoot for next, but you'd at least see progress carried over in a reasonable fashion from the overlapping themes and capacities reached on other jobs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RicaRuin

What even is the point of splitting the job in something that feels and plays similar? Too much resources used for too little of a result. People would complain the jobs feel to similar, like they are doing with healers, no job identity and all that.

---

That depends on whether they take the obvious opportunities such splits would present.

For instance, at present a Bard cannot house much fully supportive options because it needs to feel sufficiently strong in light party and solo content. It thus has to be watered down, made more Archer than Bard. It's like you've been given a spectrum by which to near either a pure Archer or pure Bard on a spectrum, but, lacking any choice in the matter, you're stuck 30% from Archer, functionally, with the presence of "Bard" mostly limited to some skill reskins and flavor text.

Allowing choice, and enlarging the playstyle pool each job can source, would allow for jobs to be more diverse, not less, on the whole. Lacking choice, we're already pulled towards the least common denominator, so to speak. From here, the largest available space is towards diversity, even if there may also be a few more options by which a Bard can play like a Gunner, or a Machinist like an Archer, or so forth.

Well i love that sch and smn are tied, where the ties didnt work was on the balancing and before that the stats allocation. Both of which are resolved issues ,even though a lot of people will still swear that it was bad and should be buried cause yoshi p said that one time years ago that he regretted it. If anything currently ,where the jobs are basically completely different, they are hurt far more than when they were more similar like in stormblood. Smn needs aetherflow back desperately while scholar needs the level 50 dps kit he lost. The strongest point of smn and scholar ,both lore wise and gameplay wise, is or was that they were tied. Nobody was dissatisfied when playing one job cause the other one existed , in fact it introduced people into the healer or dps role cause its easier to leave your comfort zone when its immediately available , curiosity about it will strike in at some point and some did make the swap completely.


That being said No. they shouldnt make more jobs chained together not cause they would be too similiar but because its quite impossible. How would you be able to introduce a job that you had not seen at all through out the campaign as something that was always there and tied to something as common as a class. this is the reason as to why new jobs start at a higher level.

I don't like that everyone has written it off because of the SMN/SCH split though, it feels like that's just a botched first try which never stopped them in other forms like Diadem or Eureka

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kiurai

I don't like that everyone has written it off because of the SMN/SCH split though, it feels like that's just a botched first try which never stopped them in other forms like Diadem or Eureka

---

Not everyone on the team has given up. Why i say this? well..... ink mage =.=
they cast ruin 3 and broil 2 but when i got hit by broil 2 the name of the spell was Absolute ruin 3, so even jokingly they at least aknowledge that those 2 jobs wont ever break.

You'd still have to balance all those branches against each other and against the other jobs (and their branches) - that might be the biggest problem, unless the only thing the branches change would be animations and not potencies (which could be an intresting concept, though).

If there is no fundamental change within those branches (and we're not going the "only animations are changing"-route) - aka lets say a Ranger and a Bard would both still be physical ranged dps - I'm not sure if the branches would be worth to add to the balance-headache that the devs obviously already have.
There doesnt seem to be a real shortage of ideas for actual, new jobs floating around either and I dont see a clear benefit for branches over new, proper jobs (maybe that you'd be leveling two jobs at once, like you're doing with SMN/SCH right now? But if both of those jobs fill the same niche, how much did you really win?).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kiurai

I don't like that everyone has written it off because of the SMN/SCH split though, it feels like that's just a botched first try which never stopped them in other forms like Diadem or Eureka

---

If you want to know the dev's reason, its because it made SMN/SCH infinitely harder to balance than any other job. By having multiple jobs draw from the same skills from a class, you cause a situation where any changes to those base skills intended to buff/nerf one job will inadvertently affect the other. SCH accidentally got multiple buffs/nerfs through the years because they gave/took away Ruin/Miasma/Bio potency on SMN, to the point they had to start de-coupling them in Stormblood and now in SHB, the two jobs basically have nothing to do with each other in the slightest skill wise and all the ACN skills have been replaced with job-specific actions. (Broil, Biolysis, Art of War on SCH, Ruin 3, Tri-Bind(or whatever its called now), Miasma/Bio 4 on SMN)

Which is honestly the only way this system is truly going to work. And if they have to make the two jobs so de-coupled from each other and the base class to make sure skill changes don't become a nightmare, why bother with the split in the first place and just make it a unique, fleshed out independent job?

Also thematically, SMN/SCH suffered a bit of an identity crisis since they shared so many spells till the de-coupling began. In 2.0 they played almost identically outside of a few OGCDs (Apply dots, use aetherflow stacks on single target damage ability, spam ruin between dot reapplications), 3.0 they still shared multiple core systems but had drifted slightly, it wasn't until 4.0 that they began to drift far from each other and gain identities. I dunno about you, but if I was playing Bard spamming heavy shot, then decided to try out sniper and saw I was spamming heavy shot still, I'd be raising eyebrows.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MariaArvana

If you want to know the dev's reason, its because it made SMN/SCH infinitely harder to balance than any other job.

---

You realize SCH and SMN can have different potencies for the exact same spell, right? That's not "infinitely" harder. That's the addition of a trait to SMN.

That would be great, but people are obsessed with meta. If we have 1 job and 2 "specializations", if one is going to have 1 dps more than the other, the other will be locked out of Party Finder. Its better to fix basic jobs first, because there are things to fix.

I know why it's near impossible at this point, there's almost 20 classes in this game. No matter how similarly they play to each other right now, there is so many jobs as is, it would be a nightmare to balance due to quantity alone. This is a hypothetical after all I don't think they could ever truly do it due to how the game works but it's more or less food for thought.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cetek14

That would be great, but people are obsessed with meta. If we have 1 job and 2 "specializations", if one is going to have 1 dps more than the other, the other will be locked out of Party Finder. Its better to fix basic jobs first, because there are things to fix.

---

That, too, is largely a consequence of having incredibly few seemingly unique or impactful advantages beyond mere damage-dealable-over-fight-length.

The more we streamline to pander to the shallowest forms of a "only damage matters" perspective--rather than leaving DPS relatively tight but providing more, and more impactful, uptime-saving tools or other indirect forms of possible advantage--the worse it'll get.

Sadly, because we generally push healing no further than a minimization metagame and active mitigation so barebone, there are very few opportunities for anything else.

Do we really want to simplify all that even further, until all we have left are varying forms of either direct-damage or percentile-damage-raid-buff CD whack-a-mole? Because that's what limiting ourselves to solely what is made appealing by easily quantifiable rDPS values will do.

The closer you push different choices' means of capacity, the tighter you have to push those capacities too. Homogenization helps balance for the all of two weeks it takes the community to adjust its standards and demand you perform within 3% of the lead choice's easily-quantifiable-rDPS, down from some 8%.

To me this sounds a lot like how WoW works with each class having multiple specialisations. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing at all, it's one of the things which makes that game attractive to a lot of people. And it is something I enjoyed while I played that game.

But I don't think FFXIV needs something like this. Every character can play every class and switch when they like. The game is designed so that it does not need classes to branch out into other classes, but instead that the class becomes more advanced when it becomes a job. The only real exception to this is sch/smn but SE have redesigned these jobs to have less overlap than before so their goal is quite clear; jobs are to be distinct instead of being merely different flavours of the same base class. I wager that if SE could turn back time they would not have arcanist be able to branch out to two jobs. They even said they regret this decision.

And personally I would far prefer to get actual new jobs instead of "hey here's another archer type job but instead of having a music theme we made it a sniper". Players already often complain about homogenisation and I think doing this could lead to more. Regardless of how a person feels about combat balance, I think most would agree they would prefer a brand new job with its own fantasy instead of introducing different interpretations of current jobs.

However this does not mean we should entirely throw this idea away. Going back to the archer, instead of having archer being able to branch out into multiple types of archers, SE could instead introduce a sniping job that uses crossbows. If they want to make it look even more different to bard and mch they could have the job dual wield two small crossbows. So we would still get a new type of ranged physical dps that uses projectiles, but it would be a job in its own right instead of just being something that branches out of an already existing job or class.

One of the reasons why multiple specialisations of one class work so well in WoW is because every character can only play one class. If you want to try a new class you have to make a new character. Having specialisations means players can experience different class styles on one character. FFXIV allows every character to play any job and switch between all of them whenever a player wishes. Which then makes the need for multiple specialisations within a job/class unnecessary.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Penthea

And personally I would far prefer to get actual new jobs instead of "hey here's another archer type job but instead of having a music theme we made it a sniper".

---

"I'd really like a Corsair!"
-- "Sorry, RDM and MCH are already in the game."

"Umm, Ranger? Can we ever get a Ranger?"
-- "Sorry, Bard is already in the game."

"Puppeteer?"
-- "Sorry, we already have a pet job and a technician job."

"Beastmaster?"
-- "We'll consider it."

"Viking!!"
-- "Sorry. We already have a shield job and an axe job."

"Geomancer? It's gotta be Geomancer, right."
-- "We were planning on this, but it was impossible to make new hand animations by which to grip the bell, and any other choice of weapon was impossible because we already have two staff-bearers and one-handed blunt weapons were taken by Blue Mage."

"Foebreaker?"
-- "Already have an axe, sword-and-board, single-sword, and technician job... And, c'mon, you know we don't do typal debuffs since Heavensward. That shit's only there to awkwardly hold back Monk and Red Mage a little extra."

I'd rather just get new jobs. With new interesting weapon types, rather than using existing ones as a base.

In a vacuum, the idea of archer splitting into ranger or bard for example could be interesting, but the game isn't really designed for that. They did it once, didn't like how it worked, have regretted it ever since. And arcanist/smn/sch was DESIGNED TO SPLIT. Retroactively forcing it onto prior classes? I don't think that would go so well.

I do wish the game had more customization, I miss talent trees and specs from WoW, but I don't think forcing them in this far after the fact is a good idea, just as I like subclass systems in other games but don't think it would work forced into FFXIV at this point. I'd rather just get new, self contained jobs than limit new jobs to existing classes aesthetically or mechanically.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

"I'd really like a Corsair!"
-- "Sorry, RDM and MCH are already in the game."

"Umm, Ranger? Can we ever get a Ranger?"
-- "Sorry, Bard is already in the game."

"Puppeteer?"
-- "Sorry, we already have a pet job and a technician job."

"Beastmaster?"
-- "We'll consider it."

"Viking!!"
-- "Sorry. We already have a shield job and an axe job."

"Geomancer? It's gotta be Geomancer, right."
-- "We were planning on this, but it was impossible to make new hand animations by which to grip the bell, and any other choice of weapon was impossible because we already have two staff-bearers and one-handed blunt weapons were taken by Blue Mage."

"Foebreaker?"
-- "Already have an axe, sword-and-board, single-sword, and technician job... And, c'mon, you know we don't do typal debuffs since Heavensward. That shit's only there to awkwardly hold back Monk and Red Mage a little extra."

---

I really don't know why you're telling me this. Genuinely puzzled.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Penthea

I really don't know why you're telling me this. Genuinely puzzled.

---

You're asking for 100% unique jobs, using weapon/spell-school proficiencies (which is all classes amount to) as reason by which to disallow potential jobs. How many jobs are there left that have no weapons, techniques, or sources of their abilities in common with the existing ones?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kiurai

I know why it's near impossible at this point, there's almost 20 classes in this game. No matter how similarly they play to each other right now, there is so many jobs as is, it would be a nightmare to balance due to quantity alone. This is a hypothetical after all I don't think they could ever truly do it due to how the game works but it's more or less food for thought.

---

I don't think this kind of thing would be an actual nightmare though. From a game design standpoint, it would be the most efficient and effective.

Splits would permit for a much more massive amount of classes with less resources, tech demand, and balancing. You'd balanced it based on the core class that the splits are based on and trade less to make a "separate class". A sniper would have more DPS at the loss of bard music benefits and would have some different moves to allow this to be made up. Basically, classes would have so many base skills shared, that there would be very different, but just enough to change the approach to gameplay. Since so little is being altered and it is balanced around a central class, it would not be that much work to balance.

When you consider this from a design standpoint, it's genius, I'm gonna save this little insight for if I ever manage to get a game company going.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darus

...

---

While you could save some on art assets here and there over the leveling experience, and any shared quests of course, chances are you're going to have adjust potencies and so forth through job-traits, the same skills will source very different mechanics, and most of the skills will be thematically reskinned from one another by max level. It wouldn't entail any significant increase in design-efficiency by the time we're, as here, a few or more expansions in.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

You're asking for 100% unique jobs, using weapon/spell-school proficiencies (which is all classes amount to) as reason by which to disallow potential jobs. How many jobs are there left that have no weapons, techniques, or sources of their abilities in common with the existing ones?

---

What you listed were not my opinions and not how I would personally react to the suggestions of those classes/jobs. You're making a lot of assumptions about my personal thoughts.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

"I'd really like a Corsair!"
-- "Sorry, RDM and MCH are already in the game."

---

I would say that rdm chiefly uses rapiers and the corsair could use a cutlass, and the majority of mch's weapons are large guns, not classic revolvers. However I understand the concern that the corsair could end up being like a more physical version of rdm, but this can be fixed with class ability design.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

"Puppeteer?"
-- "Sorry, we already have a pet job and a technician job."

---

The technician point didn't stop SE from introducing gnb after mch and it did not take anything away from sch that is supposed to be a strategist. Also pets can be literally anything. They don't have to be egis, carbuncles or faeries. There is no reason why we can't have another pet class with a totally different type of pet with totally different mechanics.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

"Viking!!"
-- "Sorry. We already have a shield job and an axe job."

---

We don't have a melee class that specialises in blunt weapons such as a mace. Shields are not only associated with paladins across all media, and there is no reason why the viking cannot use a two-handed mace or dual wield them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

"Geomancer? It's gotta be Geomancer, right."
-- "We were planning on this, but it was impossible to make new hand animations by which to grip the bell, and any other choice of weapon was impossible because we already have two staff-bearers and one-handed blunt weapons were taken by Blue Mage."

---

This could be solved by putting the bell on the staff. As far as my memory tells me, there isn't a single staff in the game with a bell on it. Perhaps this is intentional because SE are still not completely decided about geomancer?

Right now whm and blm are competing with one another for aesthetics because they use the same weapon, so we tend to see certain visual aspects for one class but not the other. Blm staves often have a meteor/dalamud design at the top, while whm staves often have themes of nature such as branches, foliage and flowers. A bell or another unique symbol could be used specifically for geomancers. But I do understand SE's apprehension with bringing in a third class that uses the same weapon. Three is a bit too much. Many players would respond to this with "there are so many weapons types that are absent from the game that you could have used instead." I personally would prefer to see geomancer use something different to a staff.

Furthermore with the whm ShB offensive abilities and the removal of Stoneskin it is clear that SE are moving whm away from specialising in the earth element. I do sometimes wonder if this was intentional so that by the time geomancer comes we won't have two classes that specialise in the same element even at max lvl.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

"Foebreaker?"
-- "Already have an axe, sword-and-board, single-sword, and technician job... And, c'mon, you know we don't do typal debuffs since Heavensward. That shit's only there to awkwardly hold back Monk and Red Mage a little extra."

---

We don't have a class that specialises in maces, morning stars or flails. As far as I recall foebreakers could use hammers. And no the blu weapon does not count because it looks like little other than a fancy walking stick. Their weapon looks more like a magician's accessory than something used for melee combat. An actual mace usually looks quite different to a blu weapon.

However my stance is quite different when it comes to a sniper that uses a bow.

Unlike whm and blm, bard is not competing with another job for the aesthetic of its weapon. Because of this SE have tremendous freedom in weapon design and it really shows. There are small bows, large bows, flamboyant bows, simple bows, bows that look like little other than vanity display pieces, bows with a strong military design, bows that fold and unfold...there is an exceptionally large range of aesthetics and sizes that bard bows cover. Because of this I would be concerned that a sniper class that uses a bow could have weapons that look too similar to bard. This is why I suggest a crossbow. There are some crossbow inspired bows for bard but they are a tiny handful among the large range of weapons. If they dual wield crossbows they would look even more different to a bard. And I think crossbows are cool so I would love to see a job in the game that specialises in them :D

Also whm and blm don't share the same base class, but OP appeared to suggest that a sniper would share the same base class as a bard.

Well we already have a branching jobs this expansion with Marauder spliting in to WAR and DRK at the cost of the last one and is not going specially well.

I know it would use up dev time to appeal to a niche minority but anyone else sometimes wish we could get more classes and jobs? Something to select at character creation or level 10 (like rogue). Sometimes jumping in at level 50/60 with a ton of abilities is overwhelming but starting from 1 or 10 and gradually learning systems might feel better.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ayuhra

I know it would use up dev time to appeal to a niche minority but anyone else sometimes wish we could get more classes and jobs? Something to select at character creation or level 10 (like rogue). Sometimes jumping in at level 50/60 with a ton of abilities is overwhelming but starting from 1 or 10 and gradually learning systems might feel better.

---

come on dude, you can just go to any low level dungeon and get less spells to use.

I'd be more interested in a return to the old system but with advanced jobs. For example, maybe mastering Samurai and Red Mage could unlock Rune Fencer with their three big sen hitters upgrading to "elemental"-themed spellblade type attacks after building up their b/w mana gauge.

Branching classes doesn't really fit in well with the theme of jobs where you can master them all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ayuhra

I know it would use up dev time to appeal to a niche minority but anyone else sometimes wish we could get more classes and jobs? Something to select at character creation or level 10 (like rogue). Sometimes jumping in at level 50/60 with a ton of abilities is overwhelming but starting from 1 or 10 and gradually learning systems might feel better.

---

FWIW, I find the Palace of the Dead very useful for jobs that start at higher levels. PotD is honestly terrible for teaching you how to play your job in your role for real content, but it's great for letting you take a job that gets introduced at a higher level and going through the toolbars methodically rather than trying to absorb everything for it all at once.

I learned what all of Gunbreaker's abilities were by wiping my hotbars and heading into PotD to level from 1 to 60 when I decided to level GNB. As I unlocked each skill in there, I read the tooltip and put it onto the bar, figured out how it worked with the other bits, then continued playing. It gave me a clearer picture of how things fit together than just reading through the tooltips all at once would have, and it took very little time (since leveling in PotD goes obscenely fast). I still needed to then go play real content to actually cement how it all worked together, but it was a great deal less overwhelming to queue for something and land in, say, Weeping City for Alliance roulette or Castrum Abania for leveling.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kiurai

Now I know the devs struggled with SMN and SCH split but I feel like that's partially due to the fact that they broke off into radically different roles with playstyles that didn't work due to thier shared beginnings. But, take this hypothetical: if the jobs that branched off were more close in nature (retained the same roles and similar playstyle) do you think it could possible in said situation?

ex. Archer ---> Bard OR Sniper

---

The summoner and scholar split works as is because they operate in different roles. Having one as caster and one as healer let’s them level together but operate independently.

Having two now users in the physical ranged category is going to step on so many toes thematically.

It’s why Geomancer would come as a caster rather than healer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tymora

Branching classes doesn't really fit in well with the theme of jobs where you can master them all.

---

What's to stop you from mastering all of the branches?