I really don't understand the use of the word "Warrior" in this world

So doing the Warrior job story, we learn that Warriors, the job, originated from a tribe of Roegaedan who specialized specifically in the use of greataxes and harnessed the power of their "inner beast", and called themselves Warriors.

So Warrior in this setting is a person who wields an axe and uses their anger as fuel for their attacks. Specifically this is what constitutes a "Warrior" in Eorzea. Except......that's not true. Warrior is used in the literal dictionary definition by many characters to refer to combatants. Because that's what a real-world warrior is. Lets look at the dictionary definition:

"Warrior: (especially in former times) a brave or experienced soldier or fighter.
"the warrior heroes of ancient Greece""

Warrior, the term, is used in what is obviously the proper meaning of the word colloquially throughout this game. And, of course, our characters are called Warriors of light.

So we have the actual dictionary definition of what a warrior is (what anyone would assume one means when they say "warrior")......and we have a unique class of people who specifically wield axes and use their anger in battle....who call themselves "Warriors". So we have ordinary warriors.....and then we have warriors (the job). So a Warrior player is Warrior Warrior of Light. It's kinda silly.

Now I understand every game has to have a warrior class. But in most games, warriors are just people who can wield a wide variety of weapons and just don't have any special powers, just basically some dude who picked up a sword or whatever. But in this game, Warriors, the class, are their own unique class, who wield a specific weapon and nothing else. Like a Red Mage, or a Monk, or an Astrologian. It makes sense with these classes because they're literally a class with their own unique field of training. Warriors are just supposed to be ordinary dudes who picked up any weapon and go to battle. They're the "vanilla" class of any game, they're not really a class.

It's just ......wierd to me that Warrior in this setting is both the literal definition of the word warrior and also a unique class with it's own unique powers. Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way though.

Is this important to you?

It's like the Bard situation, where there is the minstrel type who are travelling musicians earning coin by singing in taverns and the like... and the actual Discipline of War (Job class) that are Archers who started singing songs in battle to inspire their comrades - two seperate concepts which also are similar.

The confusion with the WAR Job and the Warrior of Light term goes back to the original FFI where the concepts first originated, (FFXIV owes a lot to the original FF game), and the two ideas from then on became reoccurring elements throughout the FF series, WAR as a reoccurring Job, usually a physical damage dealer that specializes in most weapon types but tended to favour axes or swords, and the Warriors of Light which was usually the term given to the player characters in the earlier FF games (the term kind of dropped out of favour by FFVI, only to be 'rediscovered' later on when Square started rereleasing touched up versions of the early FF games on modern consoles), and it's use here in FFXIV is part of Yoshi's desire to have FFXIV honour and reference the FF series in general.

Interestingly there was little confusion in the original NES version of FFI between these terms as they were translated slightly differently - the WAR Job was actually known as Fighter in the original NES FFI, and the 'Warriors of Light' were written actually as the 'Light Warriors', so the confusion is more a modern thing, ironically.

Yeah, they probably should've named the Warrior job after the classic job they're actually patterned on, Berserker. But perhaps they didn't because that would've been confusing to the people who started using the job and saw it has... like, buttons, and interactivity. Traditionally, not a Berserker quality.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

It's like the Bard situation, where there is the minstrel type who are travelling musicians earning coin by singing in taverns and the like... and the actual Discipline of War (Job class) that are Archers who started singing songs in battle to inspire their comrades - two seperate concepts which also are similar.

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I really don't understand why they didn't just make Archer transition to Ranger and instead made them become Bards. Though, could this be like the Paladin class fantasy problem (They're just Gladiators with holy-themed abilities) where it's simply an issue of Japan not having or understand the concept of a Bard because it's a western thing like Paladin? By that I mean they fundamentally did not understand what constitutes a "Bard" and thought making a bowman who also plays music made sense. Sad that thanks to the way jobs are designed we'll never get a proper bowman class because we can't have two classes who use the same weapon.

Unless they go the route of Arcanist and have Archer branch into Ranger as an alternative and still use the same weapon/animations.

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

I really don't understand why they didn't just make Archer transition to Ranger and instead made them become Bards.

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Why would Ranger be any better? The archetypal fantasy-Ranger is Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. He never uses a bow.

Think of Warrior of Light as a title.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Why would Ranger be any better? The archetypal fantasy-Ranger is Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. He never uses a bow.

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But this is a Final Fantasy, and Final Fantasy rangers typically use bows.



Doubling jobs on another class, though, please no. If anything they need to separate SCH From ACN already.

I suspect that Archer didn't become Ranger or Hunter for the same reason that we got Machinist instead of Musketeer: it's hard to make a whole moveset on this game's scale out of 'Good At Shooting'. Only so many ways to spin that over thirty-plus abilities before it gets stale, so you have to find a clever extra angle both to give new mechanics and to add variety to story and flavor. So, Archer becomes Bard to get both songs and musical-aesthetic animations, and the gunner gets a bunch of extra gadgets.

Also because when they were introducing jobs they wanted to include a 'support DPS' option for variety's sake, and all the other classes had pretty clearly not-that evolutions, so... well, let's graft bard songs onto Archer, why not?

It's just one of those things. Like many games have an Assassin class. But an assassin is also simply a murderer. But both meanings of the word exist at the same time.

A scholar is a student. But a Scholar is a shiled healer who uses fairy and a long lost art.

A monk is a religious figure who practices a certain lifestyle. But a Monk is a fighter from a precise Ala Mighan order.

There's countless example if we did in it, I'm sure.

I think berserker would fit them better than just Warrior, but it is what it is.

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

Though, could this be like the Paladin class fantasy problem (They're just Gladiators with holy-themed abilities)

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If I'm not totally mistaken, the the Paladin is called Knight in JP and wasn't internally called Paladin until HW when they finally got their first holy skill in Clemency. Knights have historically had some limited access to White Magic hence the Conjurer sub-class requirement originally.

Words in a video game world can still have multiple meanings. Just because a group of people call themselves warriors doesn't meant that word is completely blocked from everyone else to use.

There's a dancer job from Thavnair that is specific to that location with combat abilities. If we say that there can only be one Dancer, does that mean that the girls dancing at Costa del Sol and Ul'dah are no longer dancers? Do we need to change the name of our emotes to remove "dance" from them because that's stepping in someone else's territory?

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Interestingly there was little confusion in the original NES version of FFI between these terms as they were translated slightly differently - the WAR Job was actually known as Fighter in the original NES FFI, and the 'Warriors of Light' were written actually as the 'Light Warriors', so the confusion is more a modern thing, ironically.

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In FF1 Warrior is still 戦士 (Well, ok, no, it was せんし but only because it was designed for kids) and Warrior of Light is still 光の戦士, just like they are in FF14. There is no confusion because...why would there be any confusion? I want to give the OP the benefit of the doubt, but I am finding this whole thing a bit weird as I never associated the two. Your bard example seems fine.

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Originally Posted by SineNomine

In FF1 Warrior is still 戦士 (Well, ok, no, it was せんし but only because it was designed for kids) and Warrior of Light is still 光の戦士, just like they are in FF14. There is no confusion because...why would there be any confusion? I want to give the OP the benefit of the doubt, but I am finding this whole thing a bit weird as I never associated the two. Your bard example seems fine.

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I wasn't talking about the original JP version of FFI but the US English language version released 3 years after, where 'Warrior' and 'Warriors of Light' were indeed translated into English as 'Fighter' and 'Light Warriors' respectively (this is why the infamous FFI sprite webcomic 8-Bit Theater used those terms as well, they lifted them straight from the game). And I should know, I had a copy of FFI NES US NTSC version myself in my collection (until it was stolen).

Much of FFI's English translation/localization was.... crude to say the least (besides the 'Fighter'/'Light Warriors' thing, crystals were also translated as 'orbs', and other spell and item names often had odd abbreviations like the infamous mispelling of 'Masamune'), but it was not so much lazy translations as more just a technical limitation with Square having very limited character space to work with when replacing text, so they had to be creative.

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Originally Posted by Tlamila

It's just one of those things. Like many games have an Assassin class. But an assassin is also simply a murderer. But both meanings of the word exist at the same time.

A scholar is a student. But a Scholar is a shiled healer who uses fairy and a long lost art.

A monk is a religious figure who practices a certain lifestyle. But a Monk is a fighter from a precise Ala Mighan order.

There's countless example if we did in it, I'm sure.

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This is basically it. Words can have different meanings in context, strangely enough. Language would be pretty limited if not.

Also, how often do we actually hear the straight up Job names mentioned outside of their quests?

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Why would Ranger be any better? The archetypal fantasy-Ranger is Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. He never uses a bow.

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WRONG. Aragorn uses a bow in Balin's tomb alongside Boromir and Legolas to hold off goblins from breaking down the door and he uses his bow at the Bridge of Khazadum to fend off goblin archers.

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Originally Posted by TeemoTeemosson

WRONG. Aragorn uses a bow in Balin's tomb alongside Boromir and Legolas to hold off goblins from breaking down the door and he uses his bow at the Bridge of Khazadum to fend off goblin archers.

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You must be referring to the movies. They are wrong about many things - that is just one of them.
In fact when they are leaving Rivendell it is explicit that "Aragorn had Anduril, but no other weapon"
Legolas was the only one of the Fellowship to carry a bow.

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

I really don't understand why they didn't just make Archer transition to Ranger and instead made them become Bards. Though, could this be like the Paladin class fantasy problem (They're just Gladiators with holy-themed abilities) where it's simply an issue of Japan not having or understand the concept of a Bard because it's a western thing like Paladin? By that I mean they fundamentally did not understand what constitutes a "Bard" and thought making a bowman who also plays music made sense. Sad that thanks to the way jobs are designed we'll never get a proper bowman class because we can't have two classes who use the same weapon.

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It's not an issue of Japan not understanding the difference. For many reasons, but it also is demonstrably not the case when XI clearly knew the difference between a ranger and a bard.

It's an issue of archer being a pretty boring job concept without any additional gimmicks. In a game where every other job has some sort of magical element on top of a weapon style, the "archer job" needed something like songs or an animal companion on top of it so as not to be totally underwhelming. Obviously they went with melding archer with bard rather than beastmaster, probably because it had better overall synergy and didn't trod too much on the companion system's toes. I also suspect a huge justification for it was because XIV is a more dynamic, weapon- and attack-focused game than XI, and they needed to give bard *some* sort of actual weapon. Either way, I think it was the right choice because I consider "harp-bows" to be perhaps one of the most innovative takes on classic FF jobs in the entire game (alongside AST and SGE).

I wouldn't have looked twice at a boring ranger bow job, frankly, and I don't know why people keep pushing for that idea without proposing something more to actually make the concept, yaknow, interesting. Something that exceeds just using a weapon and moves into fantasy heroism. Even warrior, perhaps the most "basic" job design in XIV, has some elements of berserker and geomancer in it to give it some additional magical flavor and better carve out a job fantasy niche. A bow-wielder by itself is not much of a job fantasy.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

I wouldn't have looked twice at a boring ranger bow job, frankly, and I don't know why people keep pushing for that idea without proposing something more to actually make the concept, yaknow, interesting. Something that exceeds just using a weapon and moves into fantasy heroism. Even warrior, perhaps the most "basic" job design in XIV, has some elements of berserker and geomancer in it to give it some additional magical flavor and better carve out a job fantasy niche. A bow-wielder by itself is not much of a job fantasy.

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I get the complaint, because... well, some people's favorite Avenger is Hawkeye or Black Widow. There is genuine appeal to the guy that can keep up with crazy superpowers because he's Just That Good. I have a friend who actually hates the Shadowbringers Machinist rework not because of playstyle, but because it moved so much of Machinist away from 'good at guns' and into 'has Batman's utility belt'. I'm not even sure what I'd want to recommend to someone who wants to play a 'naturally good and that's it' character in this game. Monk, maybe, if you ignore the outright Hadokens? Samurai, but basically only if you love Kurosawa enough to accept the theatrics as theatrics instead of magic?

I think the main problem comes from the fact that, in games like this, it's actually really hard to stretch the concept of 'just that good' into the entire skillset. Samurai only barely gets there, Monk falls short, and those two actually have the easiest job since it's just a melee skillset, and there's been a lot of media that's found ways to stretch those. You go into something like a range toolkit? Every FFXIV job has to have thirty-something powers and animations over its lifetime, how many things can you give someone with just a gun before you run out of ideas? Hell, way back I used to play City of Heroes; they only had nine powers per moveset, no required mechanic gimmicks, and all of comic books to borrow from, and their Archery and Assault Rifle powersets still had to get wacky. (Specifically Archery had to pack some Green Arrow-style trick arrows, and Assault Rifle had to make its default model a 'Frankengun' with multiple barrels, a flamethrower, and a grenade launcher.)

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

You must be referring to the movies. They are wrong about many things - that is just one of them.
In fact when they are leaving Rivendell it is explicit that "Aragorn had Anduril, but no other weapon"
Legolas was the only one of the Fellowship to carry a bow.

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This is off-topic, but while I don't think it is ever explicitly stated that Aragorn had other weapons, I think it is highly likely that he did have a bow at least before the Fellowship assembled and then left. He was a Ranger, a woodsman who would have had to live off the land himself most of the time, so like proper medieval rangers who were basically game wardens, he would have had to have had a bow since good luck getting a nice deer with a sword.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Hell, way back I used to play City of Heroes; they only had nine powers per moveset, no required mechanic gimmicks, and all of comic books to borrow from, and their Archery and Assault Rifle powersets still had to get wacky. (Specifically Archery had to pack some Green Arrow-style trick arrows, and Assault Rifle had to make its default model a 'Frankengun' with multiple barrels, a flamethrower, and a grenade launcher.)

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Assault Rifle was good, too. Almost every big team would have at least one there, just blasting guys with bullets. Usually had a cigar in his mouth. I think every good fantasy team should have one person who is mundane but still awesome.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I get the complaint, because... well, some people's favorite Avenger is Hawkeye or Black Widow. There is genuine appeal to the guy that can keep up with crazy superpowers because he's Just That Good. I have a friend who actually hates the Shadowbringers Machinist rework not because of playstyle, but because it moved so much of Machinist away from 'good at guns' and into 'has Batman's utility belt'. I'm not even sure what I'd want to recommend to someone who wants to play a 'naturally good and that's it' character in this game. Monk, maybe, if you ignore the outright Hadokens? Samurai, but basically only if you love Kurosawa enough to accept the theatrics as theatrics instead of magic?

I think the main problem comes from the fact that, in games like this, it's actually really hard to stretch the concept of 'just that good' into the entire skillset. Samurai only barely gets there, Monk falls short, and those two actually have the easiest job since it's just a melee skillset, and there's been a lot of media that's found ways to stretch those. You go into something like a range toolkit? Every FFXIV job has to have thirty-something powers and animations over its lifetime, how many things can you give someone with just a gun before you run out of ideas? Hell, way back I used to play City of Heroes; they only had nine powers per moveset, no required mechanic gimmicks, and all of comic books to borrow from, and their Archery and Assault Rifle powersets still had to get wacky. (Specifically Archery had to pack some Green Arrow-style trick arrows, and Assault Rifle had to make its default model a 'Frankengun' with multiple barrels, a flamethrower, and a grenade launcher.)

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I will grant your "just that good" argument as something that appeals to people with different personal preferences. But I slightly disagree that SAM/MNK/WAR hit that job fantasy...you're right that they come the closest as far as melee jobs go but I think they are just further evidence that "no supernatural assistance" jobs just don't exist in FFXIV. I would argue BRD, DNC, and MCH--one of which is already fulfilling the "bow" job archetype, and all of which still needed a little extra pseudo-magic on top of their kit (songs, dances, automatons) to fit in with the rest of the spread--come even closer. But thank you for supporting my observation that there are only so many ways to shoot a bow.

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Originally Posted by Beytran70

Assault Rifle was good, too. Almost every big team would have at least one there, just blasting guys with bullets. Usually had a cigar in his mouth. I think every good fantasy team should have one person who is mundane but still awesome.

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I remember pretty much all of the 'mundane fighter' powersets in CoH being good. Granted, CoH eventually embraced power creep so hard that every build was extremely capable, but I remember Katana and Broadsword being similarly 'no-nonsense good' to Archery and Assault Rifle. Later on you saw some really impressive stuff out of Willpower, Shield Defense, and Street Justice. I don't remember Dual Pistols being all that impressive, but it was very popular, and being one of the only DPS sets that could do a lot of Toxic damage was something.

And agreed, every fantasy team of any level needs a 'Mundane But Cool' person. The Scions have one in Thancred, but even then, we can't be exactly his type of 'not-special special'.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

I will grant your "just that good" argument as something that appeals to people with different personal preferences. But I slightly disagree that SAM/MNK/WAR hit that job fantasy...you're right that they come the closest as far as melee jobs go but I think they are just further evidence that "no supernatural assistance" jobs just don't exist in FFXIV. I would argue BRD, DNC, and MCH--one of which is already fulfilling the "bow" job archetype, and all of which still needed a little extra pseudo-magic on top of their kit (songs, dances, automatons) to fit in with the rest of the spread--come even closer. But thank you for supporting my observation that there are only so many ways to shoot a bow.

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It's not "supernatural assistance", it's just aether. Aether is a natural part of the XIV setting, it isn't supernatural or mysterious, it's down to a science.

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Originally Posted by Stepjam

It's not "supernatural assistance", it's just aether. Aether is a natural part of the XIV setting, it isn't supernatural or mysterious, it's down to a science.

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I think the main bit here, at least for me, is that there are ways to make the obvious aetherial power less obvious. I think some of the issue comes down to power creep, as earlier during ARR and HW I don't remember things being quite as flashy, at least not for the majority of moves. As time has progressed though newer abilities tend to keep upping the scale of fantasy to make higher level and more advanced abilities more flashy, but the core kits are often fairly mundane. Monk, for instance, is what I play, and I'd say about half my attacks are relatively tame; I punch, kick, do some kung-fu moves, with mostly minimal particle effects. At max level though I am doing frequent kamehameha blasts, breakdancing maneuvers, anime power-ups, and more. I'd be just as happy seeing the mundane stuff continue, even if it costs a bit of visual spectacle.

Also, I don't know about anyone else, but I turned other players' particle effects to limited, so I don't see as much of that from others anyways. The visual clutter is TOO strong sometimes.