Thief>Ninja/Dancer Class/Job

[Kitru]

Someone who has become a thief has learned over a period of time how to operate as a thief, learning the skills, knowing when to strike, the art of stealth, etc... In regards to this game a level 1 character is an inexperienced noob who knows nothing, so it wouldn't make much sense for a level 1 character to be a thief. They could be a "thug" or whatever (highwayman, cutpurse, Scout, etc...) and at level 30 they get a calling card from the Thieves Guild, which then trains them on the iconic abilities.

Your do realize that none of jobs have Guilds, right? Guilds are the sole providence of classes, not jobs, not to mention that Guilds exist as a training ground. The only organizations that any of the jobs tie you to are the Swordsworn (as PLD). Job quests are basically your Guildmaster admitting that you have eclipsed their own skills and have nothing left to teach you and, as such, you need to go in search of great legendary powers. The only *organization* that any job actually joins is the Swordsworn, for the PLD, and that's an explicit organization of "we're the best of the best".

Unless you see a Thieves' Guild as some super secret elite organization that encompasses all of Eorzea and only allows the most famous/infamous thieves into its august ranks (which doesn't really make much sense since a successful thief is one that *isn't* famous) as opposed to a group of experienced thieves who decided that they'd rather not run around the streets anymore and instead decided that it would be better for them to grab up street urchins, teach them the basics of thievery (which, seriously, not as hard as you think), and take a cut off of the top for their own purposes.

Also, you've got a pretty glamorous idea of what a thief is, especially compared to every other class out there. People become thieves and train themselves in what to do all the time. People don't tend to become thieves because they elected to join the brotherhood; people become thieves because they *have* to, mainly because the ratio of risk to reward is skewed heavily towards the risk category unless you've got a lot of experience.

Not to bring it up again, but FFXI did a pretty good job in differentiating between two jobs even though they essentially do the same thing.

FFXI is, quite possibly, the worst example you could ever come up with when discussing good game/class design. It's even *more* redundantly stupid given that it ignores how the combat and ability systems in ARR work which is the primary problem that gets brought up when trying to compare the two.

The point is that you *can* differentiate the two, if you're willing to take one or both of them operate in completely different directions than what people actually expect/want out of them, but the simpler and more elegant solution is to just have THF lead into NIN and design them such that NIN is basically THF with kewl ninja magic (they're both stealthy backstabby types that use dirty tricks) tacked onto it, which is what jobs are: the base class with some kewl lore and abilities tacked on top.

[Nahara]

FFXI is, quite possibly, the worst example you could ever come up with when discussing good game/class design. It's even *more* redundantly stupid given that it ignores how the combat and ability systems in ARR work which is the primary problem that gets brought up when trying to compare the two.

As I've said before, regardless of what someone's opinion of FFXI is, it still exists as a proof of concept that THF and NIN can be thematically and functionally different from each other; THF doesn't have to be an inferior NIN, and NIN doesn't have to be a superior THF. Obviously, it would be foolish to say that the abilites of those classes from XI should be carried over into XIV, because the combat systems are so vastly different from each other; ergo, the task of differentiating the two would go to the people who actually get paid to do this kind of thing and are probably a lot more creative about it than you or I.

The point is that you *can* differentiate the two, if you're willing to take one or both of them operate in completely different directions than what people actually expect/want out of them

Let's be fair, here. BRD comes out of ARC, which is something I doubt anyone saw coming, and SMN comes from a DoT-focused class (SCH I can't use as an example, since SCH really doesn't have an identity like BRD or SMN). It's very reasonable to have jobs that don't quite function as they've always done, and still have it work.