Multi-classing has no reward?

I am new to this game but read up on it before getting it. I was looking forward to the cross class system, one of the main things that pulled me to the game. Without it... It seems the game is just punishing people for multi-classing. Multi-classing has been a hallmark of the FF series since FF V. I know some people don't want to play certain class so be it. It is not a requirement to beat any off the game's content. I would like any semblance of reward for it though. Thoughts?

The reward for multi-classing... is being able to play multiple classes.
I don't see how there's anything "punishing" about that.

The cross class system was removed because it was too demanding on players.
Cross class skills became meta, and then you weren't required to just level up the classes you wanted, you HAD to level up every class that shared a skill with it as well.

Warriors HAD to level up Paladin as well, or they wouldn't have access to Provoke. Summoners HAD to level up Back Mage, or they wouldn't have Thunder. etc.
Basically, you were punished if you DIDN'T multi-class.

If you get every combat job to level 80 you get a mount you can't get any other way. There are other such things as well.

So it is better to punish people for multi-class, there must be some method of compromise.

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Originally Posted by Oxi

So it is better to punish people for multi-class, there must be some method of compromise.

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Where’s the punishment?

What is the punishment?

How is the game punishing you?

Answer that.

Removing cross-class is a punishment on anyone who wants to multi-class.

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Originally Posted by Oxi

Removing cross-class is a punishment on anyone who wants to multi-class.

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https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/14005973/

I don't feel punished for leveling up a bunch of different jobs. I like it.

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Originally Posted by Oxi

Removing cross-class is a punishment on anyone who wants to multi-class.

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How? Why? Where does it punish you? What mechanics are in place that punish you? You’re not answering.

It's not a punishment, it's just also not a mechanical reward. But it's preferable to making people play roles and jobs they don't enjoy lest they lack crucial parts of their abilities (provoke, swiftcast, blood for blood, quelling strikes, etc) - all of the FF14 jobs are designed to be complete on their own, so if you're leveling alternate jobs it's so that you can flex jobs or roles to fit different parties, not because you need an ability from Monk you don't get until level 46

If you want the ability from the monk so bad it is simple, play a monk.

What do you think about the crafting system? I believe there is a health amount of interdependence in it. If you level them all they support each other.

Well.. it is already great that you can multi-class without creating a new character
You get easier access to groups when you are flexible
There is also a mount and few achievements to get if you are a completionist

Keeping multiple classes geared up is definitely proving to be a pain, I can tell you that much..

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Originally Posted by Tsiron

Keeping multiple classes geared up is definitely proving to be a pain, I can tell you that much..

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The crafted gear that you can create at every Tier reset is more than sufficient for all your needs.

Why can't it be its own reward? Twelve why does everyone want a pat on the back for everything? Wait....get them all and there's a mount...

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Originally Posted by Oxi

If you want the ability from the monk so bad it is simple, play a monk.

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Is this supposed to be in response to someone? Or did you just forget to log in to your main...

It seems the main concern about the cross class systems is what is meta? I agree all tanks need a taunt and the core skills have there place. But I don't care about meta, I want to experiment. I want to play a White mage using the DOT spells of every other class. I want to be a tank that can cure myself when my healer drops the ball. I want to goof around and I think most people do. If you really care about meta so much play a MOBA (I would play a FF MOBA, sounds dope). RPGs are about exploration and creativity. And yes doing some level grinder and feeling rewarded from it.

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Originally Posted by Oxi

RPGs are about exploration and creativity. And yes doing some level grinder and feeling rewarded from it.

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Out of curiosity, do you feel similarly about all of the RPGs throughout history that give you a fixed party with no meaningful ability allotment expression, including multiple Final Fantasy games, or is this strictly about MMOs?

Because, sure, while a major sticking point of FF14 is its obscenely rigid class and fight design, that's also one of the main selling points of the game, and changing that comes with a host of problems with respect to class identity (at least, what parts of it they haven't dashed across the ground due to tank/healer homogenization) and job balance (which this game does far and away the best out of every MMO on the market right now)

It just kinda seems like if you want a more free-form system with respect to exploring the options the game gives you there are... other games that do it better you could try?

Back in ARR, you got rewarded by having multiple classes/jobs leveled. Most role actions were skills from other jobs (like swiftcast).

But with Stormblood, they introduced role actions, so players dont need to have other jobs leveled to have the full set of skills available.

The reward is you get the open freedom to swap any jobs at will & each job retains to its uniquely gameplay wise,

What more could you want?

One thing that would make multi-classing worth it for me personally is if they carried over this FFXI system I've been hearing about where, correct me if I'm wrong, if you have the appropriate class leveled up to wear a piece of equipment, you can then use that for glamour regardless of your current class? Is that how it goes?

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Originally Posted by Tsiron

One thing that would make multi-classing worth it for me personally is if they carried over this FFXI system I've been hearing about where, correct me if I'm wrong, if you have the appropriate class leveled up to wear a piece of equipment, you can then use that for glamour regardless of your current class? Is that how it goes?

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Glamour is restricted by job. E.g. You cannot wear White Mage specific equipment as glamour on a Paladin.

On topic -

Honestly this whole "multi-class no reward" thing is a bit weird to me. You get to use the same characters and play whatever job you want. If it's not your thing you simply don't, but a lot of us enjoy being able to play different roles on the same character. There's literally no reward required as it is entirely optional.

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Originally Posted by Tsiron

One thing that would make multi-classing worth it for me personally is if they carried over this FFXI system I've been hearing about where, correct me if I'm wrong, if you have the appropriate class leveled up to wear a piece of equipment, you can then use that for glamour regardless of your current class? Is that how it goes?

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Yes, the style lock system in FF11 lets you use the 'glamour' of any piece of equipment you can use on any job you have leveled, even if the job you're actually on can't use that piece of equipment as gear.

It'd be a massive, insane upgrade to this game's glamour system and an incentive both to level other jobs and do dungeons/trials/raids for glamour and the fact that FF14 is intentionally kept handicapped in this respect compared to FF11 is frankly shameful

Cross class abilities never made you the equivalent of what you think of as multi-classes in D&D. You didn't get the ability to use all of the Monks toolkit as a Bard, for example, and couldn't fully use the Bard's toolkit as a Black Mage.

Cross class abilities didn't really add 'flavor', as most of the abilities were extremely low-level by the time Heavensward came out. Truth be told, all of the Good abilities you got from cross class are encapsulated in the current Role abilities you get.

It also felt weird that you couldn't advance as a Bard unless you took the two required cross-classes to level 15. There was a decided pause in your gameplay while you attempted to learn a new class simply because the game required it, not because the benefits outweighed the disadvantages. It was a relic of 1.0, and SE removed it when the second expansion came out, if memory serves.

The unique part of FFXIV is that a single character can take on more than one job. My Warrior of Light can be both Bard and White Mage, Warrior and Ninja. RIFT did something like that by switching out Souls.

In WoW this was impossible, and the reason that I maxed out on the number characters on both Alliance and Horde side on two different worlds. If I wanted to play a Night Elf Hunter, I logged in as a Night Elf Hunter. If I wanted to play as a Blood Elf Death Knight, I logged in as a Blood Elf Death Knight. (To be fair, I had one character for each class on both sides of the aisle back then).

Well then what is your opinion of the subclass system from ff11?

white mage with dots from all of the other classes
tank with cure so there's no need for a healer to be around
this sounds more like a case of wanting a custom mod for ff14 on a private server for goofing around

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Originally Posted by Oxi

What do you think about the crafting system? I believe there is a health amount of interdependence in it. If you level them all they support each other.

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Leveling gatherers and crafters as a group has no cross-class benefit. None of the DoH/DoL classes share skills the way they used to and all are separate, discrete, classes able to be played fully on their own. The only "benefit" one gets from leveling multiple DoH/DoL is the ability to supply yourself with necessary materials and/or finished goods rather than having to resort to buying from the market board or material vendors.

The equivalent to the above is getting gear for multiple DoW/DoM classes/job from dungeons run on a different class/job. I know I've gotten plenty of gear for Bard while running dungeons on Dragoon.



On the topic of sub-classing, that feature was one of the things I loved most about ARR. FF Tactics is hands-down my favorite FF game (after XIV) and I absolutely LOVED the multi-classing/cross-classing in it. Having to gain levels in A, B, C classes to unlock Class D was very flavorful and opened the door for a lot of customization.

HOWEVER; as other people have said, that feature in ARR essentially made the community require people to level things they may not have wanted to in order to access cross-class skills considered optimal just to be able to get a group for certain content. Some may consider that a form of punishment even though it wasn't on the part of SE.

On top of that, cross-classing made developing new classes/jobs quite difficult on SE, so they ditched it in favor of combining skills into role abilities to make game development easier. To be honest, with as much skill bloat as we've got these days, the lack of cross-class skills is welcome.

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Originally Posted by Oxi

It seems the main concern about the cross class systems is what is meta? I agree all tanks need a taunt and the core skills have there place. But I don't care about meta, I want to experiment. t.

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Well even back then you would have been sad because there was very little experiment to do as the list of available skills from other job was really small.

The only thing that could have offered experimentation is blue mage but almost every spell are the same with just potency and area of effect difference
Very few ogcd, very few unique Buff and almost no synergies between skills

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Originally Posted by Oxi

Well then what is your opinion of the subclass system from ff11?

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A good system that had a game that fit it. Many possibilities with the main job/sub jobs combinations.

Though it was also meta based as well.

There was no point in playing SAM and going /BLM for 1/2 level skills and 1/2 level spells. Even with gear swapping, SAM/BLM wouldn't be viable in even EXP parties.

Also some jobs required you to level multiple subjobs based on the content you were trying to do:

WAR could get away with just leveling /SAM and /NIN for almost all of the content, even endgame.
RDM, on the other hand, probably had the widest berth of subjobs: /BLM and /WHM for EXP and general endgame. /DRK for level 75 cap CS+STUN (became obsolete when you can get Stun with /BLM thanks to level cap raise), /NIN for solo and some strats for endgame content, /SMN for some strats that required kiting.

I know you want something that is like FF5, FFT, Bravely Default, etc. for FF14. They are never going to implement it here for general content. There is no true cross class in this game where you can be a WHM and use BLM spells.

There is no punishment for multi-classing either. You will have full flexibility to meet any demand... which could be looked at as a "punishment" since you could be shoe-horned into roles that are in constant demand.

Then again that's no different than being shoehorned into a role in FFXI (speaking from experience as the forced BRD).

The original concept of XIV's job system was to be like V, where you leveled multiple jobs so you could mix and match actions, traits and gear across all of them. As well as the ability of changing jobs mid-dungeon.

That was taken away because this game was redesigned to focus on people who hate playing video games for longer than an hour. So the "balance" of jobs became the biggest priority so that no one feels the need to level and gear up more than one job for raiding.
Also the current XIV community has a really stupid obsession with meta, even though even in many games where it exists it never stopped content from being cleared or enjoyable without it. Even people who stand zero chance of ever being world first at anything think they need to be super concerned with clearing a raid a minute or two slower.
I wonder if those people also only play as the S tier characters of fighting games since according to them anything not part of the meta is "an illusion of choice". What a joke.

Oh dear, you seem to have forgotten.

Geomancy Paravir. Dual Wield Illusion Magic Sage. Concentrate Assassin. Charge Fusilier. Dual Wield Sword Magic Quad Cut Freelancer.

Mixing and matching can produce absolutely absurd combinations that just utterly crush anything that gets in their path... which is exactly why it shouldn't be in a multiplayer game. I appreciate your love for the systems in FFV, FFT, FFTA, FFTA2, and the Bravely series. But cross class systems like that would break the hell out of the game.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

If you get every combat job to level 80 you get a mount you can't get any other way. There are other such things as well.

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I know it'll never happen but advanced jobs would be fun. My dream is a "Mystic Knight" that is like a combination of Red Mage with Samurai.

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Originally Posted by Oxi

So it is better to punish people for multi-class, there must be some method of compromise.

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I know it is kinda a late reply, but here I come:


You know about alting, right? Many games go with the one character one class, so if you want to try other classes, you have to make other characters. The time you invest in multi-classes in such games will multiply of the number of your characters. If you spend a week to reach end-game on a character, then you will have to 4 more weeks on other 4 alt characters with the class you want. Now, adding the the gearing, building, dailies, weeklies... You will suddenly find the game a part-time, or even full-time, job if you try to progress them all. Some games will encourage alting with daily/weekly rewards and account-bound stuffs, so the more alts you have, the better you gear your main, the more times you spend in the game (or the more money you spend to cut down the grind time, in case it is a F2P). Also, there are character slots to fight with if there are more classes than available slots. And oh, don't forget the relogging to change characters.



So how do mutli-classing help with this? You only need play a single character, go through the story to the end-game once, can collect gear for other classes on the same character, don't have to relog when you want to change class, don't have to regrind what I already grind... For someone who only play typical MMO with one character/class like me, being able to multi-class makes me very happy. I hope there will be more games doing the multi-class thing so that I only need to invest in a single character.