Future of the armory system

[Souljacker]

I think that they have truly limited them self with assigning class/job based upon a weapon. What I mean is that right now, a paladin has a 1H sword... ok so what about red mage? What they should do is just base it all upon the soul crystals (job gems... whatever you want to call them).

I think that eventually they will be forced to do this. I don't understand why they thought this would somehow be MORE flexible than the way things worked in XI. In XI you just arbitrarily chose what job to play, and then you had access to all the abilities and weaponry that class was rated to use. Every job had one or two weapons they excelled with, but they weren't disallowed from using other weapons because of it and it left the door open to easily implement more classes that used those weapons, like Dancer who also uses daggers.

I hope the armory gets a major overhaul because as it stands right now, it's too limiting and it's going to cause them a lot more work. If they keep this system, not only will they have to come up with a brand new weapon for each individual job to switch to, but they will have to create all new weapons from 1-50 for that job to use instead of reusing low level weapons and just designing individual relics weaponry.

The "armory" is good as an inventory management tool. It's a terrible way to approach switching character classes.

[Surian]

I have always greatly resented the Armoury System.

Not just for skills, but weapons. It makes any kind of alternative weapon impossible, especially one for several jobs.

If i were to want to use a staff or a club on my Paladin, it should let me. Not instantly switch me to Conjurer or Thaumaturge. If i want a Great Sword that has PLD and WAR on the jobs, that's impossible with it too. Unique weapons? Nope, forget it. Any kind of ranged weapon in the ranged slot? Nope. Throwing pebbles then? nope. Can i use daggers? Nope. Not even if i ask really nicely? Nope.

On top of ofcourse as mentioned by the OP that any new "job" needs its own "class" or it's stuck with the exact 95% of the skills that the old base Class/Job has. Not to mention that due to it, Classes themselves have no real power and can only be used as prequisits for Jobs due to poor stats and incompatible equipment. This game could have had 17 jobs to play, and it would have been awesome. Now it has realistically has 9.

The Armoury System is old, archaic and limits this game immensely. I strongly feel that without it this game would be a hundredfold times better.

[Surian]

Also, i feel bad for whoever designed Rogue. They put in all this work only to have something that wont ever be used again after the first 30 levels have gone by.

We could have had a cool thief as well as a ninja. Now we have a Ninja and that weak -thing- they need to unlock it.

[Aegis]

Plus ça change...

There have been a whole other changes of this scale in this game's history, this won't be something new to Yoshi-P's team.

There was the abolishment of Physical levels in early Version 1, the change of pretty much every ability in 1.19, the introduction of Jobs, the change of pretty much every ability with the release of Version 2.

They could do it as simply as making equipping a job stone change the effects of class abilities (the way SCH/SMN both have different effects for Summon I/II) eg changing the additional enmity of some GLA's abilities to endrain with a DRK stone equipped, or even change the base ability itself ie equipping a DRK stone changes Flash to Drainga and Provoke to Aspir or whatever.

Whatever they do it will be their own choice and will have aboloutely no relation to any one of the myriad suggestions we make here in the forums, so just relax and try to enjoy it, kiddos.

If i want a Great Sword that has PLD and WAR on the jobs, that's impossible with it too. Unique weapons? Nope, forget it. Any kind of ranged weapon in the ranged slot? Nope. Throwing pebbles then? nope. Can i use daggers? Nope. Not even if i ask really nicely? Nope.

Actually, all these examples are quite possible with the armoury system. Both CNJ and THM have one-handed and two-handed variants of their weapons, so there's no reason GLA couldn't also.

Also, in version 1 we had throwing pebbles, tomahawks, javelins, throwing daggers...

Armory system simply needs more space. With so many jobs and so many pieces the allotted space is quickly becoming insufficient.

You're thinking 'Armoury Chest' rather than Armoury System. The system has been around since 2010, the Chest was only introduced mid-beta for version 2.

[Ransu]

If i were to want to use a staff or a club on my Paladin, it should let me.

No it should not.

[Themis]

Just shows they never think things through the first time.
The moment they planned for smn/sch, they should be aware and plan for the future.
This game keeps changing methods, philosophies; it's so annoying for a player to have to keep changing the way the game is played when everything is already set in stone.

Or, it's an MMO, and nothing is set in stone? The game can change how and when it wants to. 1.0 did that quite often, especially from around patch 1.18 onwards. And that was for the better.

And not thinking things through the first time? Nothing ever goes quite to plan the first time. But unlike the days of the past, where it was very hard to update a game once it was released, you can now try out a lot of different ideas and fix/change them after the initial release. MMOs do this a lot more often than other games, and is both a good thing and a point of contention when it comes to Alpha/Beta releases of MMOs.

Personally, I think it's a good sign that a game like this one has an open minded and flexible development direction that allows for big changes if they are needed. FFXI suffers a lot because it cannot do this any more. It tries to (like with the iLvl system it put in place), but it's not quite the same when the rest of the game doesn't really have that designed in mind.

Stuff here

I can't help but interpret this as "This isn't XI. It should be XI because that was better".

Even in that game, a PLD wielding a staff as a primary weapon? The only time I saw a PLD use a staff was when they used an Earth Staff because they were using a kiting strategy, and a Sword/Shield would be useless. It wasn't because their skills were awesome with a staff.

Really, the Armoury System is fine in some regards, but not in others.

Being able to use skills from other classes is definitely a bonus - it's better than XI in that you can access more than 1 "sub job"; where it differs/struggles is that you are very limited to what skills you can use due to balancing.
Being able to switch weapons and change class/job immediately, and not need to go to a Moogle first, is definitely a pro (yes, this is actually defined as part of the Armoury System).

Where is does have problems is in the Class and Job aspect of it. What it should do is:

Class Name to level 30 > Job Name beyond Level 30, or once you unlock it. In this regard, it is like FF1. You reach a certain point in your class levelling experience, and it then becomes the Job name. So for 30 levels you are a Gladiator. You can keep levelling as a Gladiator until you do the first Job quest. At that point, Gladiator becomes Paladin and you keep growing then as a Paladin.

Or...

They go the FFXI-style route where you begin as a Paladin and remove the Classes segment of it. You can still use X-class skills from Warrior (which assimilates all of the Marauder skills as if they were simply Warrior's) and from White Mage. It just removes the current Class based system, but keeps the benefits of the Armoury System.

Either way, it becomes a system that works just fine and doesn't really change the way it "works" already. By "works", I mean as the players use it. The only big change that would be needed is with ACN and SCH/SMN. Of course, that could lead to the SMN changes that players often complain about and make SMN a more appealing job to the masses (those of us who are fine with current SMN might have to change our outlooks).

[kiraan]

Its kind of a problem to solve, because either new jobs come from class and you have an instant max level when you have the class already leveled, or you unlock a new job and start at level1 meaning if a new player want to play for example a red mage (unlocked by WHM/BLM 50), it can't start as one right away. They wanted to move away from that at first, not sure about the future.

I'm really interested in what they will come up with, and hopefully the fan fests will cover this part a bit!

[ChriZirhC]

No thanks. One of the reasons I like this game is because there are no skill trees.

haha which is why I explicitly said maybe or maybe not. I know its not for everyone. Im even 50/50 on it myself

[16bitBounty]

I'd also like to see the Jobs become the standard and just have classes removed. The quest lines would be a little different though and I really enjoy the silliness of some of the class quests compared to the more serious job quests. I say we remove it all and just let everyone be gentlemen. Hildibrand quest line is hilarious.

[NinjaTaru72]

Also, i feel bad for whoever designed Rogue. They put in all this work only to have something that wont ever be used again after the first 30 levels have gone by.

We could have had a cool thief as well as a ninja. Now we have a Ninja and that weak -thing- they need to unlock it.

Rouge is thf. Exact same abilities a thf would end up having, it's literally just a different name. How can people be so dense? Get over it. Lol.