Classes vs jobs , are classes near obsolete now?

[Raydeus]

Incoming WALL-O-TEXT.

I seriously have to wonder why you seem to think that the measure of a class/job/etc. system is derived from the the number of choices that a player has as opposed to something that actually has a practical effect on things, such as, how well balanced it is or how fun and well designed the given classes/jobs actually are.

This depends entirely on the type of game you are playing. A linear path is good for some games and not at all for others.

And in an MMOG where you want people to enjoy the game for extended periods of times (preferably years) emergent gameplay is more important than planned content, simply because no company has the amount of resources to keep pumping out content that will last that long while still keeping people interested in paying a sub.

In games where you think you have a bajillion choices, the truth of the matter is that you do not, in fact, have all of the choices you seem to think that you had/have. FFXI's system purported that it allowed for 462 different combinations of jobs for primary/sub when, in practical terms, the number of *real* options was tiny in comparison: the only subjob you'd ever see a PLD use when actually doing stuff would be WAR and the only real subjob for a WHM was Summoner until the advent of Scholar. The practical limitations on your choice of subjob held true across *all* jobs such that, at any given time, the most real choices you'd have for any job was about 3. The fact that the game allowed you to combine any two jobs was simply an illusion of choice. The only real "advantage" derived from the potential number was, honestly, a one-off advantage to those theorycrafters who enjoy going through and looking at every possible option/combination before finding the optimal one, and, of course, once *that* has been done, there's not really much point in doing it again unless something substantive happens to a class. It's nominally a sandbox but, for all practical purposes, provides as few options as any other game. It's the same reason why talent tree systems are a complete illusion of choice because, if you're not taking what is often derogatorily referred to as "cookie cutter", which gains such a label because it's the most effective, you end up being less effective. In most ways, the illusion of choice actually penalizes casual players that *don't* feel like doing research into what they think should just be a relaxing/enjoyable way to spend their free time.

This is not true at all, yes for most PARTY situations /WAR was the most convenient choice for PLD, but there were many other combinations that while not as widespread still provided with many different ways of doing things. And players would choose the way that made the most sense for a certain situation. In XI you have the freedom to play a Job, rather than a role, if you choose to.

Example: Say you are killing a NM that hits like a truck and you don't have enough healing to keep your PLD alive. If you have a THF your PLD could sub /NIN and mitigate a ton of damage that way, with the THF (or /THF) covering for the emnity loss of not having Provoke from /WAR while not requiring Defender since you are Utsu-tanking.

And as WHM, SMN was never as popular as you seem to think because it was completely a playstyle choice. Most people I know only subbed SMN for Auto-Refresh and a (very slightly) bigger MP pool. /BLM offered conserve MP, Dark based Sleep, stun, spikes, etc. and RDM offered Fast Cast and Dispel (and spikes depending on level) for those times where you wanted cure to fire faster or help debuff.

There's also the WHMs that subbed /NIN for survivability and dual wielding wands at lower levels to maximize stats and avoid death since lower level tanks some times didn't have the tools or the practice to handle hate that well at lower levels. Or the WHM could just be tanking if they came up with a good strategy to go for it.

Etc. etc.

None of these emergent/situational ways of playing the game, and tailoring your jobs according to your playstyle with subs and gear would be possible in XIV. Over simplifying things with generalizations is just not the best way to discredit a more open game system.

One of the things that I love about ARR is that the developers realized that the illusion of choice has no real practical advantage (other than allowing those people that pride themselves upon being deviants from normalcy and explicitly choose non-standard builds, even if they *do* perform in a suboptimal way), as do so very many other artifacts of historical MMO models.

I've seen people complain all the time about how there is barely any deviation from a character of one class to the next (the only variation is choice of CC abilities and, in most cases, the illusion of choice still exists because it's obvious to anyone that there's a specific suite you're supposed to use or that you can choose whatever you want but it won't mean anything), but I applaud the devs for doing so, not because I enjoy having fewer choices (as a power gamer, even if there are 20 options, my inclination towards building a character that is as effective as possible breaks it down to 1 or 2; the only thing that additional options represent are the *potential* for supplanting a previous option as the new optimal selection, as opposed to real choice), but because the devs realized that giving players a massive slew of choices is simply hiding the effective/intended/balanced playstyle amidst a suffocating horde of suboptimal options (with the very occasional completely unintended choice that ends up being way more powerful than expected, which pretty much always gets nerfed into oblivion anyways).

The devs applied this central concept to absolutely everything about the game: cut out the chaff, only presenting *real* options, and make those options as high quality as possible. Each class only gets one weapon type (WAR gets axe, PLD gets sword/shield, MNK gets gloves, etc.), which deviates from the two traditional models wherein characters either get a multitude of different weapon types that are all effectively identical (such as in WoW) or they get a multitude of options in which there is one that is, quite obviously, the intended choice that is explicitly better for that class than any other (FFXI). The devs realized that the choice either didn't matter or was made for the player ahead of time, so they just said screw it.

The model allows them to focus upon the quality of the abilities that they *do* present, both in usability as well as balance. You might complain that every WAR in ARR is effectively the same but have you actually asked yourself whether it's more fun to play this iteration of WAR than it is to play others (for me, that answer is a resounding "yes", as it is with pretty much all of the jobs)?

People get hung up on whether or not they have a lot of options to choose from when, if you think about it, there's really no reason to (unless you're the type of person that believes that choice explicitly exists to either allow a sufficiently skilled player to break a system or to penalize anyone who *doesn't* have sufficient skill, which is a pretty toxic mentality in a social environment) because quantity of choice comes at the explicit cost of quality of choice (yes, game development is a zero sum system; if you focus development effort on one aspect it has to come from another; the only time this changes is when your boss actually decides to increase your budget, which doesn't really happen).

Over generalizing again, but at least you are aware that they did what they did due to budget and time limitations, rather than wisdom.

And reading you are a power gamer that only plays in the most efective way I can understand why this concept of choice and exploration of the game and it's systems increasing replayaility is so foreign to you.

All I can really say is that for many it is the choice and the different ways to enjoy the world that allows them to play a game for years (or over a decade in my case playing XI.)

People are actually, paradoxically, happier when there are fewer choices *even if one of the newly available choices is personally better for them*; it's something called overchoice. The constant push that some old school gamers have for each new game that gets developed to have more and more choices available to them is actually bad for the game. There should be *some* choices, but there should always be a small, relatively manageable amount if people are going to enjoy it (this all goes out the window if the choice is known to have no effect upon performance because then you eliminate anxiety over having made the wrong choice so that people can make their initial decision more easily and not think back later concerning whether they made the correct one).

It is actually the opposite in my experience. People will most certainly enjoy the linear choice-free ride at first, but after the first job is at 50 and all the nice superficial Main Story is over you are left with a very restrictive system that only allows you to play it one way, and if you deviate from that you can expect SE to come plug those pesky holes in a future update.

And while that is not a good or bad feature of a game per se it does affect the longevity in a game like this. Because it makes it so longevity completely depends on what content the developers can add to the game rather than allowing the players to come up with different/alternative ways of enjoying the limited virtual world they created.

The Dev team is very well aware of this issue, but they painted themselves into a corner content-wise when they decided to remake the game in this way. Because now to add more open content they need time, but the restrictive content they've added doesn't give them the time required for that because it lacks the basic replayability more open games have in their dungeons, so they have to make more restrictive content to buy more time, etc. etc.

It's a mess, and I certainly don't envy their position.

So I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with you that the current system is "blatantly obvious" in its inferiority. If anything, the FFXI model where you've got a massive number of potential choices but a highly restricted number of practical choices buried amongst the vast majority of worthless options is the one that is inferior when you actually look at it as a system designed for quality as opposed to quantity.

ARR was designed for quality, rather than quantity. That aspect, right there, makes it superior to FFXI as well as a huge number of other MMOs out there.

I'm glad you actually find this game enjoyable enough to disagree so vehemently, and I hope you can conserve that amount of passion for the it in the years to come.

That being said though, ARR was certainly not designed with quality over quantity in mind, but with "Oh crap we've spent too much money on this!!!" and "We don't have time to develop better content but we need to get the game out or we'll go bankrupt!!" instead. XD

[Nahara]

Example: Say you are killing a NM that hits like a truck and you don't have enough healing to keep your PLD alive. If you have a THF your PLD could sub /NIN and mitigate a ton of damage that way, with the THF (or /THF) covering for the emnity loss of not having Provoke from /WAR while not requiring Defender since you are Utsu-tanking.

Or... they could have just brought a NIN/WAR, pretty much the default NIN tank setup, to be the tank instead of trying to make a party around PLD/NIN.

Kitru's example may have been off (as a WHM, I subbed BLM until SCH came out), but the fact of it still holds true: Sure, you had a huge number of possible job and subjob combinations, but only a few of those options were ever truly viable.

[Raydeus]

Or... they could have just brought a NIN/WAR, pretty much the default NIN tank setup, to be the tank instead of trying to make a party around PLD/NIN.

Kitru's example may have been off (as a WHM, I subbed BLM until SCH came out), but the fact of it still holds true: Sure, you had a huge number of possible job and subjob combinations, but only a few of those options were ever truly viable.

What happens if you don't have a NIN available or if the one needing the fight is the PLD? In XIV you simply wouldn't be able to do it at all. While in XI you had the chance and the option to try to do it differently and adapt to the situation just changing your sub and tweaking your strategy. And too many times it worked with such a wacky setup for me. After all, "Truly viable" is only true until you actually get things done in a different way. (And that's how things like those pesky speed runs were born wasn't it?)

Then it's just about "oh well, yeah, you got the fight done but it would've been easier if you've had the leetest setup!11one" which is ridiculous for obvious reasons.

If you need to get something done it is always better to have options to do it rather than being walled by the limitations. Sometimes it will work and others wont, but even the simple act of trial and error provides emergent content that is not present in a more static game like XIV.

Of course, that doesn't in any way mean you can't actually enjoy having a more linear experience. But from that to actually try to discredit the advantages of having more choices in a game like this (just to excuse the Devs) is simply wrong.


PS > And that's not even counting 1.0's Armory system was even more customizable than XI's since you could take abilities from multiple classes at once without the massive limitations and nerfs present in 2.0. Which brings us back to how pointless the Armory system is right now and how it has become just a vehicle to get you to lvl 30, so you can get your "real" Job and never have to look back at your laughable starting class ever again.