Do away with the Job Roles

I've been somewhat following the kind of hilarious drama going on with the Jobs right now, but I wanted to offer a solution if you all think it might be a good idea or not:

Delete the Roles as it is:

For instance let's take a Paladin Player -

He can setup his gear and skill tree to be more based in a healer, offensive or Defense role.

Each Job will have a unique set of skills that offer different benefits for the party.

Technically the Job Roles will still be there as you would still need at least two healers, but the difference is that every Job can do it and are no longer bound to their restricted job role.

Each Job will have their own strengths & weaknesses depending on the Gear/Skill Path the player has chosen for that job.

So the system as follows:

1) All Gear in the game are no longer bound to a specific Job Role with the reworked Job System, all Gear is now more based on the stats you want for your Job. Want your Paladin to be a hybrid Defense/Healer Skill Tree? Go for it. Want your Paladin to be a full healer skill tree, but lacking in everything else? Go for it. Want your Paladin to reign down its own set of Holy Magic on everyone (Magical Based Paladin) or go full packing steel with your holy sword (Physical Based Paladin)? GO FOR IT.

2) All Skills in the game are re-worked to follow the changes, and new skills added to make up for the deletion of the restricted Job Role.

3) Skill trees added for every job that follows a certain path that give abilities that are defensive, healer or offensive based and all come with unique ways to deal with a battle situation. However due to this change there is a limit to how many skills can be slotted to the hotbar to avoid balancing issues.
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How would this Skill Tree look like?

So for the Paladin Class as a example again >
Healer Skill tree
Magical Based DPS Skill Tree
Physical Based DPS Skill Tree
Defensive Skill Tree

The Four main branches, all of which you can mix and match to fill your needs for the party as it calls for it. You can save multiple Skill Tree Paths so you quickly hotbar them without having to manually do it every time if your party wants your Paladin to go into a certain role.

This also allows for a lot of experimentation in combat to be tried out.
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How this system could fail:

I understand people wanting to go to the path of least resistance which is inevitable because "Meta".

This is why Dungeons, Bosses, and Monsters need to be carefully designed so that Meta Builds cannot exploit their way into victory.

This is why the Devs ignore the EU forums, do we truly need more of the same topic here?

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Originally Posted by Kathryn

This is why the Devs ignore the EU forums, do we truly need more of the same topic here?

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I was about say something snarky, but you could just ignore the topic.

FFXIV isn't going to completely drop its job design and take up WoW talent trees.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

FFXIV isn't going to completely drop its job design and take up WoW talent trees.

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I know.

The whole thing is so screwed lmao.

How about no.



GW 2 did that, and it was not fun in terms of fight design. Bosses randomly hitting people because there is no tank is not fun. Guess what they had to do to have raids in the game? Added roles.

Eh as much as I would love a Healer Paladin I don't ever see this happening.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

How about no.



GW 2 did that, and it was not fun in terms of fight design. Bosses randomly hitting people because there is no tabk is not fun. Guess what they had to do to have raids in the game? Added roles.

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See now this is the problem, its because other MMOs have tried other things, but no one seems to like it after awhile.

So we got a problem.

What system ACTUALLY WORKS? Because I have not read or heard anyone say that other MMO's Battle System was any good.

I agree. Bozja and to a lesser extent, pvp proves this can work. DRS in particular is the pinnacle of raid design and we need more of that.

You can go play GW2 if you want that. The devs arent about to throw away 10+ years of work, plus the amount of work to redesign over 100 instances would be insane and SE doesnt have the dev man power to do so.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

See now this is the problem, its because other MMOs have tried other things, but no one seems to like it after awhile.

So we got a problem.

What system ACTUALLY WORKS? Because I have not read or heard anyone say that other MMO's Battle System was any good.

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I mean, the system we have works pretty damn well. It just needs a few tweaks.



Asking for them to rework the combat and encounter design to fit an entirely new job design is basically asking for a new game. It's not happening

I remember when THM specialized in enfeebling magic and also had the best healing spell in the game. Was probably the last time I really had fun in this game due to a job itself. But the devs made the game this way because it's how they want it to be. If you're gonna suggest a change it should be within the framework of what the game actually is. They will never break away from the guiding principle of homogenization.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

I was about say something snarky, but you could just ignore the topic.

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If only you could do this to all the people posting crazy new good ideas that will so totally not backfire at all. It would be like 99% of these forums

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Originally Posted by Len_

I remember when THM specialized in enfeebling magic and also had the best healing spell in the game. Was probably the last time I really had fun in this game due to a job itself. But the devs made the game this way because it's how they want it to be. If you're gonna suggest a change it should be within the framework of what the game actually is. They will never break away from the guiding principle of homogenization.

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If that last time you had fun with this game is like, 14 years ago, why are you still here....

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

I've been somewhat following the kind of hilarious drama going on with the Jobs right now, but I wanted to offer a solution if you all think it might be a good idea or not:

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No, because games that start this way and went in the other direction (towards classes) got their players so extremely upset that the developers had to dial it back to simply being buffs. Games this way rely on power creep and are essentially solo play. No skill whatsoever.

But to humor you...

Let's say we reset the clock back to 1.0, instead of you arriving in X after having a minor fight with a boss-tier monster only to be saved by the scions, you instead are defeated because your "Base class" is just "adventurer/onion knight" (a la FF3) or "adventurer" in FF5. If you recall, it had separate character and job experience levels.

So you instead wake up in the inn at your destination and mildly berated for "getting into a fight without any knowledge of fighting" and that's when you get encouraged to learn how to defend yourself. At that point you are told to check out (name of a DPS guild in the starting cities) and instead of being asked if you want to join the guild you get a prompt on what weapon they would like to use. From this point forward, all "DPS" of the same type, work the same. So all melee fights are 1-2-3-4-5 , all ranged are 1-2-3-X, all casters are 1-2-X, and all heavy(tank)'s are 1-2-3. (X in this case are just "reload" mechanics)

Before you get to the first dungeon, you get that little story outside Sastasha about "groups matter". Queuing for the first dungeon can be done with any role. A "role vote" starts the dungeon. You can click "DPS", "Tank", or "Healer", if you have been to the Tank and Healer guilds, otherwise it will not be available. If everyone selects DPS, then the two highest rolls get to play DPS. The game then allows the player to freely switch between their DPS roles as long as they are of the level required to enter the dungeon. Whoever gets the "tank" role gets to tank, and whoever gets the "healer" role gets to heal. The game removes the buttons from the bar that aren't their role.

From this point forward the game will enforce the "trinity" by having the players choose the role after the dungeon starts the instance, rather than before. The game will cross-off jobs that do not meet the minimum requirements to complete the dungeon. So there might be dungeons that you're not allowed to use melee at all, there might be dungeons like the FF6 Cultist tower that only permits casters (only DRK, BLM, RDM, SMN, AST, WHM, SGE, and SCH.) If you entered a dungeon that you have no role for, or you lose the roll for by not having a role job, it will instead give you the "onion knight" role, which lets you have one of each DPS attack (melee, ranged, caster-healer, tank), one heal button, and one tank button, at the minimum ilevel of the dungeon with whatever button's you don't need for the role disabled.

Continuing to use the "Onion Knight" role opens up a skill tree separate from how the other jobs work (See the Chocobo.) So if you keep going into dungeons without leveling any of your jobs, and keep losing the rolls, you will keep leveling the "Onion Knight" mode. If players do not roll after entering the dungeon, they get "onion knight" assigned to DPS, Tank or Healer. Any weapon you have equipped when you enter the dungeon is used, including crafting gear for the onion knight, but the stats for playing the onion knight are set based on which role the roll selects. This is the only condition where you could enter with the healer gear but play a tank via Onion Knight.

Onion Knight the first time would just have "1 button, single target" type of combat, and if it was ranked to 10, might have 8 buttons total. Same with Tanking and Healing. If a dungeon only calls for casters, then only the caster buttons will be available.

The problem, is that this style of play is just not very interesting. It's the kind of thing you do in a single player game. Other MMO games that basically let players choose-your-own-build tend to have no interesting combat mechanics. You enter the dungeon, you bee line to the boss, and use your nuclear DPS button, die, repeat until defeated. You can even do that if you're 10 levels below the suggested level. If you're even one level above the suggested level, the trash mobs don't even hurt.

Those games, don't have healers, because the power creep never requires one. You buy 999 pots, and just spam pots the entire time. If you're under geared, you burn through your healing items, if you're over-geared and over-leveled, you never end up using them. This is why free-to-play games "like" this style of play because they can put the healing items in the cash shop so impatient people spend money, and the difficulty ramp up is steep.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Asking for them to rework the combat and encounter design to fit an entirely new job design is basically asking for a new game. It's not happening

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Also this would be a huge bait and switch for subscribers after 10/11 years to just abandon the core design of the game. This would be a flat out disaster.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

If that last time you had fun with this game is like, 14 years ago, why are you still here....

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I dunno, why'd you quote and reply to my post apparently without reading it? It's called prerogative.

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Originally Posted by Dysvalence

I agree. Bozja and to a lesser extent, pvp proves this can work. DRS in particular is the pinnacle of raid design and we need more of that.

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Is DRS like normal mode with the 3 arbitrary strikes and you die? I hate this. Encounters were actually fun, but the 3 strikes really ruined it for me. I didn't like it because it pushes failure away from the battle system and focuses everything into the encounter mechanics.

In order to make this really work, characters in game should only be able to take one job.

The example of Paladin is a good one. Holy Paladin heals. Retribution Paladin does DPS. Protection Paladin tanks.

So, let's force players to create a new character to play Black Mage (and won't a Tanking Black Mage be something, eh?)


Oh. And let's acknowledge that Roles still have an effect in games that actually do things that way.

This is what happens when other jobs step on the jobs toes. It’s been like this why complain now I ask (non condescendingly)

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

Do away with the Job Roles

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Request [DENIED]

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Originally Posted by Valence

Is DRS like normal mode with the 3 arbitrary strikes and you die? I hate this. Encounters were actually fun, but the 3 strikes really ruined it for me. I didn't like it because it pushes failure away from the battle system and focuses everything into the encounter mechanics.

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No most of it drops down to two mistakes. Also wdym battle system? If you mean dps, mit, and heal checks, right now there's more in DRS than most savage content. It's still not the tightest thing ever but with so many players things someone somewhere will screw up badly.

I'm not gonna go too into the suggestion here on specific points, but what I will say is that a lot of the things the healer strike crowd are complaining about are things borne of certain jobs being too good in simpler content, which is a balance issue.

The answer to balance issues isn't really to take each job and split them into three subjobs, that's just likely to make the problem worse. It'll just be replacing people complaining about roles with people complaining about jobs.