Rogue/Ninja Starting Class?

[ZReport]

Ridiculous role play reasoning, that you are using to pick and choose accessibility. If people want rog and nin to be restricted to post 2.4 story, then those same people should be advocating that anything pre 2.4 should be off limits to rog and nin. Because lore demands it yes?

It's more ridiculous for you to believe that Yoshi-P will completely forgo the lore he has already set in place to make a few more people happy. You act as if there are tons of people who haven't at least beaten Ultima Weapon SM yet, which is no longer the case.

Also, I'm not even here to advocate it being restricted to post 2.4 story, if you read my paragraphs correctly you would have seen that my guess is post 2.2. I don't even think that Ninja and Rogue will even bet part of the Main Scenario at all at this point afterwards, only that that specific 2.2 quest being a prerequisite to unlocking them. This isn't anything new to MMOs -- in WoW you have to be 55 just to play Death Knight, in FFXI you need to be 30 to access any of the advanced jobs. Personally, I could care less if it was story locked or not, I just know how FFXIV (and FFXI before it) works.

FFXIV is heavily lore-based, if you think for a minute that the team will deviate or mess with it in any way, you're greatly mistaken.

[Giantbane]

It's more ridiculous for you to believe that Yoshi-P will completely forgo the lore he has already set in place to make a few more people happy. You act as if there are tons of people who haven't at least beaten Ultima Weapon SM yet, which is no longer the case.

FFXIV is also extremely casual friendly and puts a heavy emphasis on helping those who are behind catch up. I would be very surprised if they expect brand new players to level 1 class/job all the way to 50 and play all the way through the main story line. And believe it or not there are brand new players (and I'm sure SE is hoping to attract some more with ninja).

Also, I'm not even here to advocate it being restricted to post 2.4 story, if you read my paragraphs correctly you would have seen that my guess is post 2.2. I don't even think that Ninja and Rogue will even bet part of the Main Scenario at all at this point afterwards, only that that specific 2.2 quest being a prerequisite to unlocking them. This isn't anything new to MMOs -- in WoW you have to be 55 just to play Death Knight, in FFXI you need to be 30 to access any of the advanced jobs. Personally, I could care less if it was story locked or not, I just know how FFXIV (and FFXI before it) works.

FFXIV is heavily lore-based, if you think for a minute that the team will deviate or mess with it in any way, you're greatly mistaken.

Death Knight is a bad example. Sure you had to be 55 to unlock Death Knight, but Death Knight itself started at lvl 55. So you level to 55, create a new character and pick up where you left off and continue to the max level of 70 at the time. So unless you're saying that we should start rouge/nin at 50 after unlocking it (horrible idea), this is a terrible comparison

FFXI is a bad comparison, it's a dated MMO structure with more hardcore and rigid requirements for things. FFXIV is intended to be much more casual and they do much to move away from this sort of thing.

For a game that just handed out i110 gear to hunt participants in order to catch them up with equivalent hard core content that was released 3 months ago, it would be baffling that they choose to require brand new players to attain maximum level in one class just to play another completely separate class.

[ZReport]

FFXIV is also extremely casual friendly and puts a heavy emphasis on helping those who are behind catch up. I would be very surprised if they expect brand new players to level 1 class/job all the way to 50 and play all the way through the main story line. And believe it or not there are brand new players (and I'm sure SE is hoping to attract some more with ninja).



Death Knight is a bad example. Sure you had to be 55 to unlock Death Knight, but Death Knight itself started at lvl 55. So you level to 55, create a new character and pick up where you left off and continue to the max level of 70 at the time. So unless you're saying that we should start rouge/nin at 50 after unlocking it (horrible idea), this is a terrible comparison

FFXI is a bad comparison, it's a dated MMO structure with more hardcore and rigid requirements for things. FFXIV is intended to be much more casual and they do much to move away from this sort of thing.

For a game that just handed out i110 gear to hunt participants in order to catch them up with equivalent hard core content that was released 3 months ago, it would be baffling that they choose to require brand new players to attain maximum level in one class just to play another completely separate class.

Dark Knight isn't as bad an example as you make it seem. You still had to have a job at 55 on a character to create a Death Knight, meaning you still had to put in the time to level up said character. It's essentially the same thing as leveling up to 50 and doing quests up to 2.2. The argument that Death Knight as a job starts at 55 is irrelevant, the simple purpose was to show you that you needed to spend some time leveling up before you could play the class at all (Wrath of Lich King Release, it's obvious that character boosts exist now)-- the job itself was walled by a level up barrier. Now people already had 55+ jobs at the time so it didn't apply to them, but newer players who were interested in the job had to start from level 1 like everyone else. I wasn't saying that we should start from 50, but simply using the example that a barrier existed before being able to play the job.

FFXI also isn't a bad comparison -- the MMO being dated or not is irrelevant. It simply had a level up requirement and the jobs itself were walled by quests as well, similar to how FFXIV works (but of course far harder to achieve). And again, leveling your first job to 50 and doing missions up to Ultima Weapon IS casual content. There's absolutely nothing hard about leveling your first job to 50; you're given quests along the way as well as rest exp bonus, new player dungeon completion exp bonuses, bonus dungeon exp, guildhests, leves, FATEs, and now the Challenge Log. They've made it very well known that leveling up is casual content and the real game doesn't start until post Ultima Weapon SM.

i110 gear being given away easily is entirely a new subject that will correct itself with the next patch. If you've been watching, they have been doing this since 2.0 release -- they have seemingly difficult content that give great rewards -- they make this content partially easy (or give reasonable alternatives) by the next major patch, and then outdate the gear completely by the patch after that. This is a 3 and 6 month process (so far). i110 is simply on a patch where they made it easy to obtain. The hardcore players who got it first have since gotten the gear and now they are making it more accessible for semi-hardcore and causal players. Patch 2.4 will have higher iLevel rewards, which in turn outdate the current gear. Barring this, iLvl really doesn't have anything to do with playing a new job to 50.

[Giantbane]

Dark Knight isn't as bad an example as you make it seem. You still had to have a job at 55 on a character to create a Death Knight, meaning you still had to put in the time to level up said character. It's essentially the same thing as leveling up to 50 and doing quests up to 2.2.

There is a major difference between leveling part way to max rank, switching classes then continuing to max rank (WoW) and leveling to max rank with 1 class, completing content, to unlock a separate class that you then have to start over with and level up to max content. There's a reason you didn't have to start completely over with the dark knight, and it's because it was deemed too tedious a requirement. If it's too tedious for WoTLK, I have a very hard time imagining that it won't be too tedious for ARR.

FFXI also isn't a bad comparison -- the MMO being dated or not is irrelevant. It simply had a level up requirement and the jobs itself were walled by quests as well, similar to how FFXIV works (but of course far harder to achieve). And again, leveling your first job to 50 and doing missions up to Ultima Weapon IS casual content. There's absolutely nothing hard about leveling your first job to 50; you're given quests along the way as well as rest exp bonus, new player dungeon completion exp bonuses, bonus dungeon exp, guildhests, leves, FATEs, and now the Challenge Log. They've made it very well known that leveling up is casual content and the real game doesn't start until post Ultima Weapon SM.

Being dated and ARR shying away from the more tedious aspects of it is exactly why you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for ARR to take inspiration from FFXI. Especially in terms of leveling requirements. Although to further the argument against it being an appropriate comparison, leveling a base class to 30 in FFXI was more appropriate to the job/subjob system than leveling another class to 50 is to FFXIV's cross class system. With the job/subjob system, your advanced job was going to probably want 1-2 of the base classes to be leveled up to 30 just so you could use it as the sub job. Having a sub job was almost mandatory after a certain point, because it represented an extremely strong part of any character's power. It provided extra stats and skills that could have a lot of impact on the main class.

On the other hand, ARR cross class system does not provide any incentive for you to level multiple classes to 50. All the cross class abilities are offered way before level 50, with the majority being under level 15. Which fits with the requirement to level another class to 15 to unlock the job specialization. It's also less important than FFXI's subjob. Cross class skills provide no extra stats, and are relatively weak in comparison to the main classes base skills with only a few exceptions. The only really mandatory ability is Provoke for the WAR from the PLD, and that's only for very high end content. Every other job can function with 90-95% efficiency even if you didn't have any cross class skills at all. So while I fully expect NIN to have a 2nd job requirement (probably MNK) to 15 before you can unlock the Job Stone, I don't see taking a full other class to 50 as part of that requirement. It's not that the other class is hard. It's just tedious. Because it's not that leveling the first job is all that bad, but you run out of all the story and everything that makes leveling occur naturally, so leveling a second class becomes more of a grind. I just don't see making new players grind out the second class that they wanted to start with as something SE is going to require from brand new players.

i110 gear being given away easily is entirely a new subject that will correct itself with the next patch. If you've been watching, they have been doing this since 2.0 release -- they have seemingly difficult content that give great rewards -- they make this content partially easy (or give reasonable alternatives) by the next major patch, and then outdate the gear completely by the patch after that. This is a 3 and 6 month process (so far). i110 is simply on a patch where they made it easy to obtain. The hardcore players who got it first have since gotten the gear and now they are making it more accessible for semi-hardcore and causal players. Patch 2.4 will have higher iLevel rewards, which in turn outdate the current gear. Barring this, iLvl really doesn't have anything to do with playing a new job to 50.

As you pointed out, it's not a new subject. The game is established with a very conscious mindset that helps players that are behind (or new) catch up to their friends relatively easily. They don't make them jump through all the same hoops on old/dated content. Content either gets skipped (garuda, titan, ifrit no longer required for levi or mog) and/or made easier (echo). And gear becomes easier to obtain. The i110 gear from hunts was just the latest example of this.

It's just really hard to imagine a game that has such a big focus on ensuring players can *catch up* quickly will require brand new players to go through the leveling process twice in order to play the class they wish.