Classes vs jobs , are classes near obsolete now?

[Raydeus]

The way I see it the current class system is completely useless after lvl 30, and far inferior to the Job/Sub system from XI. But that's the price you have to pay in order to make Jobs actually work in 2.0 due to the restrictive nature of the new gameplay design.

You can see it in how the new team is completely against emergent gameplay and how they go out of their way to block every attempt of players to play in a way "that was not intended" So obviously the freedom from the old armory system had to go as it would have been too much work for them to balance in the new, much more restrictive version of the game.

It's unfortunate that while the old 1.0 system was an improvement over XI's (and actually managed to make the job/sub system look restrictive in comparison) the new 2.0 one is two steps backwards from that.

It is working as intended, but it's blatantly obvious how inferior it is compared to it's predecessors and how much closer it is to games like WoW instead. And since there isn't much anyone can do about it you either learn to tolerate the dumbed down gameplay or look for another game to play, because the new course for classes and jobs has already been set in stone.

[Letzt]

Raydeus , yes that's the thing , I like how classes were and instead they choose to listen to the fans when they shouldn't have and impose the job system on XIV.

Tanaka was a relic but if classes were his design choice then we should really listen to the wisdom of our elders.

FFXIV was becoming it's own game, though I thought at the time given how the game world was empty and barren , it was manifested by new designers and not by veterans.
Now I am not so sure but the truth is that SE almost kissed bankruptcy because of this game , so I guess , some of the moves were in hasty thinking.
That's why the class system feels out of place for me.

[Kitru]

It is working as intended, but it's blatantly obvious how inferior it is compared to it's predecessors and how much closer it is to games like WoW instead.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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.

[Raestloz]

I agree with Kitru. Too many choices is not that good. At the end of the day, humans will go down the path with the least obstacles. Optimal builds will be crafted, exploits will be discovered, and all other choices will mean nothing except more stuff for developers to deal with that ain't nobody got time to play with

[Letzt]

I agree with Kitru. Too many choices is not that good. At the end of the day, humans will go down the path with the least obstacles. Optimal builds will be crafted, exploits will be discovered, and all other choices will mean nothing except more stuff for developers to deal with that ain't nobody got time to play with

An easy path , a path with less obstacles , its like an empty victory , is it not? what's the worth of something in life if you haven't tried hard for it? It is the difficulty that makes something worthwhile , off course no need for XIV to become Dark/Demon Souls
hard , most would quit.

If they were to remove something from the jobs , that would be the stat increase from having the soul on , I think thats the fuss in the end of the day. Then we could really talk about skill.

War has additional skills Mrd hasn't , that make him a good tank , but Mrd can get some abilities from gla and mnk that would do the same.Why people don't accept mrd in a party? Because of the few extra stats from the soul.Pretty simple really.Of course we could press delete on Mrd and put an end to these debates but I am certain new would arise to take their place like "Gawd , why did they took out the classes they were so cool".

And a few more choices they could add , like more weapons per class/job , e.g. gla/pld could get maces and hand axes and do some stuff from Skyrim like , maces could ignore 20 points of defence , swords could have an increased crit rate and hand axes could cause a small + short dot effect called bleeding. And then people could choose a bit more to customize themselves cause thats what it all is about in the end of the day , CUSTOMIZATION , its a video game , video= I see , Its what it looks like and if I like it. But those visuals need to have a meaning don't they?

This isn't too much of a work . I can make a mace in 3ds max in 30 mins with above average texturing a bit more time for a quality looking piece.
What I want to say is this , It's all a matter of SE's volition.

[Shadow_Sama]

"Counter argument".

Kitru pretty much broke it down. Pretty much end of conversation.

[Letzt]

Kitru pretty much broke it down. Pretty much end of conversation.

Nice one! I will write this down :P

How so my friend , Kitru talks about the illusion of choice , right , classes still exist and there isn't much of a choice in how to play , SE limited the weapons from the begining and there just too few viable choices ,
What? FFXI 462 combinations , yeah I know that but how many were viable? those are the combinations most people count. Could you get invite into a pt(or be effective cause thats the point) as whm/war? NO. Whm/thf? NO what about whm/drk? Still NO.

And about the mythos , hey you could be war ,whm , blm , mnk , thf , knt from the begining , of course not paladin or red mage or scholar. So what is the use of the classes? did they really had to be carried over from v1?

Of course stuff from version1.0 like the all powerfull thm spells had to go , "some" classes were one man army and you could make 1 class combinations to tackle the instance dungeon.
You could get any abilities from other classes and pay a small price to counterbalance it.
Now they are restricting the skills you can choose from other classes but that doesn't matter now anyway. But hey , classes are still good for solo.

Thanks.

[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

[Icecylee]

Why people don't accept mrd in a party? Because of the few extra stats from the soul.

I uh... have no idea why you think the 10~30 some odd stat point difference is the reason why people want a WAR over a MRD in a party setting. You want a Warrior because of Defiance (you know, the tank stance that they get as their first ability, that gives them way more HP, and increases their incoming heals).

[OmegaSinX]

Here how I look at it. (WoW reference incoming) Classes feel more like the base class and Jobs are more like talent tree's in FFXIV. In the future, Classes will start branching out to other jobs. Example: ACN is the main class while SCH is the Healing Tree and SMN is the DPS Tree. You are able to switch trees (job crystals) when ever you feel like it.