Classes vs jobs , are classes near obsolete now?

[Mikedizzy]

Classes are just a "starter" state of your character and it evolved into a job...this all makes sense. You can stay in the class by not equipping your stone and keep all your cross class skills and take the stat hit for not having your stone equipped. Maybe they will come out with something later on in the game that you can go back to your class and not be nerfed...who knows???

[Kitru]

Classes are just a "starter" state of your character and it evolved into a job...this all makes sense.

The overarching idea, derived from both the mechanics and the story, is basically this: your character starts off their adventuring career as their class (MRD) and, once you've *finished* that class at level 30, you then set out to become your job (WAR) to continue rising in power beyond the limitations of your class. It's just like the quest in the first FF where you get the Rat's Tail in order to get your class upgrade. By your logic, why not just have Fighters start off as Knights, Mages start off as Wizards, Black Belts start off as Masters, and Thieves start off as Ninjas? The point is that you have a *progression* for your character that is felt on a fundamental level rather than just telling you by way of the story: by going from your class to your job, you are *forced* to recognize the increase in power and the fundamental change in your character because you literally become something different (not to mention that you're basically changing your affiliation from a relatively common "guild" that pretty much anyone can join to, at worst, an highly visible elite unit like the Swordsworn or, on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, the lone individual that has discovered an art/science lost to the ages, like SCH). It's part of the desire to make you feel like a legendary hero from early on, as opposed to just one of the masses that blends in with everyone else and is overshadowed by virtually any NPC worth mentioning (like what happens in WoW).

Mechanically and, even from a story perspective, your job supplants your class as soon as you hit 30 and do the quest (which, bear in mine, also requires you have level 15 in one other class). The difference is that, mechanically, this means that there isn't much reason to have there be a difference at all, but, from a thematic and story-based perspective, it represents a transformation of your character into something greater than you were before, which is an *excellent* reason for it to remain as such.

Of course, even mechanically, there's a reason for jobs and classes to remain discrete: when 2 jobs are designed to share the same basic skill suite, like SMN and SCH, you can have 2 jobs branching off of a single class, and, since you level your *class* and not your job, you're don't have to level up the two separately because the only major difference between the two, where their abilities are concerned, are the 5 job abilities, which are significantly outnumbered by your class abilities. As long as secondary jobs are designed to still use the same fundamental skill suite as their base class they share with the "primary" job, there will always be a mechanical reason for class and job to remain distinct entities.

[Letzt]

Kitru , why not have advanced classes then? e.g. the jobs that are branching now , being able to level them and their roots sperately and nerf the classes abilities and have them equalized in a manner (job , advanced job system in FFXI) , besides some people including me want to be able to take the journey again , I mean leveling up but not with a different character and just want to have more classes/jobs there .

To level a job/class and learn it , is fun in a way as long as you don't make it a pain in the behind like FFXI pre lvl sync , I still have nightmares from leveling up my drk to 75 there.

Plus they busted the mythos a bit , we had classes with names befiting another world more close to home not exactly FF like and now they did a mix and match routine and voila , they patched it to Eorzea.

[Kitru]

Kitru , why not have advanced classes then?

Because that's the system the devs decided to go with, lol. And they're not likely to change the system since, honestly, this one works quite well for the purpose in which they intend it. I wouldn't expect *every* current class to get additional jobs, but the system is designed such that the devs *can* if they so choose. There's a logic to it.