[dev1033] Ideas for a Two-Tier Class System: Jobs on Top of Weapon Specializations

[Augury]

No. Please no.
I don't want anything to be Permanent.

It goes against the spirit of both the Job system from past FF games and the Armoury System.

Well, no matter what you do, not everybody can be pleased, but people complain most about how each job "lacks uniqueness"- and there isn't a whole lot to make something unique moreso than making it irreversible. On the same note though, trying to take away from a job's overall modularity to give it some kind of "identity" works in the other vain against the "spirit" of such things. Regardless- some things must be given up for the game to be well rounded, and I'd much rather give up the direct approach of Job = Role in favor of Job = Toolbox.

[Misha]

Ya anything permanent would be horrible... The FF online games pride themselves on being able to do and achieve everything with one character... If I can't access or change into certain jobs ... just *bleh*, would be a horrible thing to put in game!... I want access to full jobs and classes on my character, simple as that If things branch out like Yoshi has stated, who's to say you can't go down both paths(By lv'in separate or however it'll work)?^^ Locking your character into 1 of 2 possible jobs is horrible, I prefer the freedom from 11 and so far 14's open endedness!!!

[Arcell]

Ya anything permanent would be horrible... The FF online games pride themselves on being able to do and achieve everything with one character... If I can't access or change into certain jobs ... just *bleh*, would be a horrible thing to put in game!... I want access to full jobs and classes on my character, simple as that If things branch out like Yoshi has stated, who's to say you can't go down both paths(By lv'in separate or however it'll work)?^^ Locking your character into 1 of 2 possible jobs is horrible, I prefer the freedom from 11 and so far 14's open endedness!!!

I 100% agree, I don't really care too much what they do as long as we're not locked into any path and restricted on what we can do with a single character.

[northernsky]

Well, no matter what you do, not everybody can be pleased, but people complain most about how each job "lacks uniqueness"- and there isn't a whole lot to make something unique moreso than making it irreversible. On the same note though, trying to take away from a job's overall modularity to give it some kind of "identity" works in the other vain against the "spirit" of such things. Regardless- some things must be given up for the game to be well rounded, and I'd much rather give up the direct approach of Job = Role in favor of Job = Toolbox.

Why exactly?

People complain about the lack of class uniqueness (one vs the other), not character uniqueness. Classes could very well be unique even if a single char can play them all.

[Augury]

Why exactly?

People complain about the lack of class uniqueness (one vs the other), not character uniqueness. Classes could very well be unique even if a single char can play them all.

Fair enough- there's no need for me to stubborn about it either so here's a cool idea... What if only families could share skills/spells (as opposed to locking players into a family of jobs)? Or received the full effect of using their cousin-job's skills? Monks who have both sneak attacks from Thief and rage skills from Berserkers... Paladins which can "Sonic Boom" or track (or Hunters equipped with Knives who can use Dragoon's "Jump" command). The thing of it is jobs should completely congeal with armoury skills, but Job-based skills are quite a bit trickier to design and should blend more selectively (or so I think)

[Cairdeas]

Fair enough- there's no need for me to stubborn about it either so here's a cool idea... What if only families could share skills/spells (as opposed to locking players into a family of jobs)? Or received the full effect of using their cousin-job's skills? Monks who have both sneak attacks from Thief and rage skills from Berserkers... Paladins which can "Sonic Boom" or track (or Hunters equipped with Knives who can use Dragoon's "Jump" command). The thing of it is jobs should completely congeal with armoury skills, but Job-based skills are quite a bit trickier to design and should blend more selectively (or so I think)

In FFXI a Ranger can equip daggers and /dragoon and use jump. Why couldn't they be allowed too in XIV? :P

[Alyssasidhe]

Still sounds like a complicated mess that doesn't solve the underlying problems.

People will simple choose the best skills that doesn't involve percentages, or where percentages don't matter.

It's make a never ending struggle to balancing something that shouldn't need to be balanced every single patch.

The goal here has always been to stop fighting the multi-headed hydra. All you're proposing is to one head breath fire and one head breath ice.

As from another poster, if you're trying to tip-toe around the issues and try to satisfy everyone, then it's doomed before it began.

The only feasible way such a proposal will work is to axe the armoury system, and send it to the moogles. Static skills, static traits, ala FF11.

The tree system might be a somewhat better choice in the greater scheme of things. Make it so that a path can not be back tracked. If you have cure3 you must equip cure 1 and cure 2.

"Oh please, take all thought out of choosing my job. I certainly don't want to be burdened with having to customize my character. Make it easy. Make it simple. Take all freedom, customization, and thinking out of the system. Make it like WoW, where every character is exactly the same barring racial abilities and which talent tree they choose. That way I can be level 80 in a week, 85 with maxed equipment in two, and be exactly the same as every other player in the game who has a level 85 <insert my class here and talent tree here.>"

People have been complaining about the fact that the game needs to be rebalanced? You rebalance things by changing your own skills. Yes, it's a broken system, but it's EQUALLY BROKEN for EVERY CHARACTER. There is no need to balance as that is up to the players themselves. And, as Cairdeas said, WoW rebalances every patch, sometimes once a week for two or three weeks in a row. If you want "static skill, static traits, ala FF11" THEN GO PLAY FF11. That was what made FF11 so frustrating to me. It took me an HOUR to change my job, EVERY TIME. I had to go to my mog house, change my job, change my subjob, then put away and retrieve the equipment I needed for the job, reset macros, and finally I go to start playing the game and I realize that there is something in real life I need to do.

Also, every class is not the same and every player is not the same. Unless you have maxed every class at current there is a limit to what you can do in a party. Also, if you have better equipment for a role you will do better in that role than your party members. Yes, everyone has the same POTENTIAL, but not everyone is going to be living up to it simultaneously. I currently have a rank of something like five in Archer, Lancer, and Pugilist. I have a rank of 14 in Conjurer. Obviously I would be playing my conjurer in almost every party. If another player favors another class this definitely does not make us carbon copies.

And rebalancing is only required if there is no in game system for it. At current, the players choose their own stats. YOU are the rebalancing system. If you don't want to be the rebalancing system then this isn't the game that you want. I love this game BECAUSE it's different. Quit trying to make it the same as every other MMO out there.

[Alyssasidhe]

I still think they should take away the physical level and manual stat allocation and replace it with the same stat system blue mage from XI has.

I'd rather have the current stat system but with jobs for the physical level. The current physical level could be the "Bare" job from Final Fantasy 5 and the rest of the jobs could be the classic jobs every one who has played Final Fantasy is familiar with. This way you can still majorly customize, but the additional jobs allow you to specialize. Once you've reached a certain level with each job you get abilities that allow you to dual class (just like in Final Fantasy 5) but if you want a dedicated class in which the stats are more out of your hands then you can use Paladin or White Mage or whatever. This way we keep the previous system but also implement dedicated classing.

If anyone remembers correctly, once you mastered the other jobs in Final Fantasy 5 the Bare class become much better because you could customize it and make it stronger than most other classes by adding abilities. The only caveat with this is you had to master the other classes first. I think this would bring back a fun and customizable system that I'd really enjoy having again.

[Alyssasidhe]

I love this write up, you have clearly spent alot of time thinking this through. But in all honesty, I don't want to play FF11-2. I think you did a great job in devising this, but I don't want to have Dark Knight, Ninja, Ranger, etc. And SE promised this game would be drastically different from FFXI, so while the basic premise of you system works, I don't think they'd use Soul Eater, Arcana killer, etc. But what they could do is use a FF: Tactics approach. I believe gladiator and archer were DD classes in the gameboy FF tactics. So it appears they have already taken a tactics approach to FF14. So instead of ranger, Dark Knight, etc. they could go fighter, assassin, sniper, sage, time mage, etc. (whice are tactics named classes).
This would work well with your design, if you wanted your "Gladiator to focus on brutal aoe and single target sword attacks, they would specialize in the "Fighter" title. If you wanted your conjurer to cast heavy DD spells with few support spells, they'd master in "Sage." If you wanted your Thaumaturge to be specialized in time based magic (Slows, gravities, Stop, paralyze, haste type spells) they'd take a Time Mage title. So on and so forth.
I really think you have an excellent idea, lets just implement different stuff than was in FF11, if they used your model, with a FF tactics theme, this game would rock so hard.

*Edited for spelling and grammar errors*

Be sure to be clear that you are talking about Final Fantasy Tactics ADVANCE. The original FF:T was for playstation and had more classic Final Fantasy names, like Knight, Archer, Samurai, Ninja, etc. There were no Gladiators in the original Tactics.

[Alyssasidhe]

Yes and not.
The main reason people want traditional jobs is because people don’t like changes.
A conjurer is an healer, a buffer and a DPS, all depends how you play it. However, you are not the best healer if you don’t take sacrifice for example, and for dps purpose you need Bio/Dia/Poison and various buffes from different jobs.



You need, Not “we”. There is a simple way to communicate with others. It’s called “chat”. If I want DPS I can say “I’m a DPS”; If they want an healer, they can ask “do you want heal?”
In previous games what? In ff7 we use materia, everyone could heal or dps. In FF8 we use summons, and absorb magic. In final fantasy10 there are spheres, and everyone can do everything. In FF12 same with that chess-like board. Final Fantasy is a system where everyone can do everything, it's just a matter of time.


Not really. Gladiator, Conjurer, Thaumaturge are classes. They can do a “role”. I can be a debuffer as a thaumaturge; I can decide to improve my character with conjurer, gladiator, lancer... but I’m not forced to do that. It’s my choice, because I wanna rasp a bit some imperfection.


No another time. You continue to put everything into a box, but this is not how FF14 works.
A conjurer is a Damage dealer, an healer, a buffer, everything. A thaumaturge is a damage dealer, an healer, a debuffer.



And if do they add a job/weapon/class called knight, who got the missing skill you are asking? SE can add a class with 2hweapon able to stun, absorb SP, with skill who deal damage using your HP. Does he need to change everything for that?
I continue to not understand why you (and other players of course) want weakness. If you don’t like cure2 with a marad or a pugilist, don’t use it.
A lot of videogames, mainly the so-called “sandboxes” don’t have classes, only skills. Players pick up the skills they prefer and mix. It’s SO DAMN fun!
When you, and other players, will start to think “this is FF14, not FF11” and will begin to think “how do I want my character?”, you’ll finally grab the core of the game.
If SE adds classes/job/weapons, it’s nice, if these classes got something interesting I’ll play with them. But the system you have posted is only a complicated wire.

I like the current system also, but if they add more customization to it I don't mind. I'm only concerned that they will take the current system, which I like, and make it more rigid and less fluid. If they take my ability to customize my character away from me I might as well go play WoW with all the rest of the players who want the gaming company to do all their thinking for them. If they make the system have another layer or additional options (an easy button) then I'm all for it, as long as I am not REQUIRED to use the easy button.