Quote Originally Posted by Enkidoh View Post
I can only speculate the reason for MSK's long history of 'no shows' in FFXIV is simply that both development teams (firstly the original 1.0 team under Tanaka and Yoshi's team that took over) just couldn't make the class separate from ARC - both are ranged Disciples of War, the only real difference is the choice of weapon, one uses bows and the other guns.
I'm not sure why it's so difficult to separate one from the other. There's several gimmicks and mechanics that could be used. A unique resource would be one (troppers in SWTOR had an ammo resource). A different approach to ranged damage would be another (archers being mobile sustained damage, whereas musketeers would be a little more stationary due to their attacks having "cast times" to simulate them aiming at their target). The option of heavy artillery would also help differentiate the two (grenades and other things MSK would have access to that the tree-huggers wouldn't). It's not like there aren't options available without having to go off the deep end for stuff like gunmages and whatnot.