A plea for 3.0 and beyond: Job Customization

[Anarnee]

Please no. I get the appeal of vast customization, but it would only undo all of the teams hard work in maling everything balanced. I enjoy our current system. It limits discrimination and is flexible as well. Take bard for instance, it can be seen as support with its healing limit break and song. Black mages get access to physicks, which I have seen save fights. Summoners can rez and all healers and tanks can dps well if you know your job. I personally love to keep defense buffs on my dragoon so just in case the tank falls I can take hate until the healer can get the tank up. Its limited but it means that regaurdless of the party build essentially no job is useless. I enjoy that balance.

[Failia]

See, there's something people are failing to understand.

The developers want to make FF14 as unique as it possibly can. Make it their game, their baby. They can't do that by "borrowing" ideas from other games, especially from FF11. If they wanted to do that, they may as well just make a FF11-2 with a new skin. Sure, they have some similarities of course but they can't outright use the same exact system from another game and say it's there's. It would also require an entire rework of the job system as it is now, and expansions are typically used to introduce new content, not a new game entirely.

As much as you may way this game to be like others in the same genre, I don't see them implenting any kind of change to how the job system currently works.

[AlexionSkylark]

- A WHM with Aetherflow / Energy Drain is a WHM with virtually infinite MP. It'd trivialize healing by making MP management unnecessary. I'd just spam Medica 2 and Cure 3 for the entire fight.

[AlexionSkylark]

See, there's something people are failing to understand.

The developers want to make FF14 as unique as it possibly can. Make it their game, their baby. They can't do that by "borrowing" ideas from other games, especially from FF11. If they wanted to do that, they may as well just make a FF11-2 with a new skin. Sure, they have some similarities of course but they can't outright use the same exact system from another game and say it's there's. It would also require an entire rework of the job system as it is now, and expansions are typically used to introduce new content, not a new game entirely.

As much as you may way this game to be like others in the same genre, I don't see them implenting any kind of change to how the job system currently works.

And as for that... There was already a MMO that borrowed many ideas from FFXI. It was called FFXIV 1.0.
I really doubt they wanna go down that route anymore... lol

[Keres]

I'm not a huge fan of the particular system you've proposed, but I am more generally in favor of more ways for players to differentiate themselves from other players of the same job.

[LandricFrey]

A few more ideas:

A combination of FFXI and ARR.
Pick a subjob or a combination of two where you can take most of the lvl 1-30 abilities. (with a 5-10 cross-skill maximum)
Yes it is still going to result in stronger builds and cookie-cutters, though we already have requirements such as Swift Cast for healers, at least you wouldn't need to level nearly every job to be viable.

Borrowing Traits

Talent Trees
(WHM)
+1-5 points to raise all magic healing potency 1-5%
+1-5 points to reduce casting time by 5-25%
+1-3 points to increase Cure 2 potency by 5-15%
+1-2 points to increase max MP by 5-10%... and on and on.
The above would have a "Best allocation" posted somewhere, but at least every decision has some positive effect.

I'm really hoping that DRK not needing a class means that classes will be gone and something will be done for custom builds in Heavensward.

[Zarzak]

The sub job system in XI was nice giving person ability to mix and match the different jobs.

XI's system was 10000000000000000000000000000000000000x better than XIV's system.

Sadly these devs are trying to control things to a fault and hurting the experience because of it.

How the system is now the xclass skill window is nothing more than an illusion of choice. If you don't get X, Y, and Z abilities from it you are screwed because your class is tuned around having them.

It limits discrimination and is flexible as well.

LOL?

There is NO flexibility. Hold on while I remove raging strikes from my BLM's bar and ask people how they feel about that. Read above. They literally tune around you picking specific xclass skills.

[Rubieus]

I'm happy to support this, though what happens when a second job comes out that takes advantage of this and becomes too strong? Not saying it will but, balancing issues to happen.

[Exstal]

How the system is now the xclass skill window is nothing more than an illusion of choice. If you don't get X, Y, and Z abilities from it you are screwed because your class is tuned around having them.

It's less so than FFXI. Oh you're a SMN and don't have /WHM? lol@you

LOL?

There is NO flexibility. Hold on while I remove raging strikes from my BLM's bar and ask people how they feel about that. Read above. They literally tune around you picking specific xclass skills.

It's like you want extra choices just to have them. It'll take all of 20 hours to figure out which is the best and then if you're not using the best, you're being look down on or ostracized. Which is exactly the same as it is now.

[Khyra]

It's less so than FFXI. Oh you're a SMN and don't have /WHM? lol@you

Depended on the job though. For some jobs, subjobs were actually flexible and let you fill different roles (My main was RDM, and I used /WHM, /BLM, /NIN, and /DRK in endgame raids, all for different reasons). But its true that for some other jobs, there was not much variety in subjobs (SMN had basically one, WHM could do /BLM or /SMN but it didnt make much difference, etc).

Of course, FFXIV doesn't have the role flexibility that FFXI did for some jobs.