[Theory] ACN removed, SMN remade

[BigPapaSmurf]

This guy did.

Expansions are the time you redesign systems of this kind though.

Many expansions rework entire portions of games or mechanics/systems.

It's not uncommon practice to do such a thing as what I theorized.

[Enkidoh]

Except it's not going to happen - FFXI never had it's fundamental systems altered throughout any of it's five expansion packs other than the addition of new content. Patches usually tweaked and altered things though.

The fact is, SE are not going to completely scrap the Armoury System - it would result in too much of the game having to be changed as well (it would render the Guilds redundant, the quest lines that are connected to them - hell, the whole beginning of the game for a new player would have to be changed as well, seeing as one of the first things you have to do is to visit the Guild of your starting class and sign up with them).

Accept it, they're not scrapping the existing classes, they're not changing SMN to be like FFXI's version, they're not changing the egis to be full size Primals. Just accept that and move on, or leave the game and go play FFXI, because what you want SMN to be, will never occur in this game.

[Terrini]

I would prefer classes being made viable to doing away with them. I mean, we don't know if the new no class jobs will have ten sub class skills or only five. I also expect level 30 to still have a job crystal or token to mark a certain progression in training. It would be cool if they revealed new post 30 quests for the classes...

However, it really doesn't work to just split SCH and SMN because you Cannot just split the Arcanist quest. It's distinctive and it would be unfair to people who have leveled Sch to not be able to do the new quests. the only way that those two jobs work is by the class they start from. Every thing would have to be changed, new stories would have to be written and I'm sure they have better things to do than redundancy changing and recoding old content.

[Duelle]

Nope, lore wise you can't get rid of the classes, keep dreaming.

The implications are there, though. Something is going to happen to classes, and I wish the devs would actually talk about it instead of brush it off every time it's asked. When developers do that it's usually a sign the information withheld has the potential to be either really awesome or piss off a lot of people.

[BigPapaSmurf]

Except it's not going to happen - FFXI never had it's fundamental systems altered...

FFXI != FFXIV.

[Hiruke]

Is there a reason why people think classes should be viable, other than "just because"? Dev team has hard enough time balancing the jobs; what overwhelming benefit is there to trying to balance all the classes, too? Because I'm pretty sure none, nothing, zero. As others have mentioned, the class system is even impacting their ability to balance SMN and SCH effectively. SCH is fine, but SMN is currently garbage, and any changes they would make would presumably either be more work than it should be, or affect how powerful SCH is, as well. Do you think they want like 10+ traits for SMN to make their abilities completely different from SCH so they are more effective dps?

The best course of action, long term, would be to abolish classes and work out some other system for "cross class" skills. Classes present far more cons than pros.

[Sub-Xero]

ACN, SMN and SCH aside, removing classes could be fairly easy. The original classes could all stay but they wouldn't be separate from the job they turn into. So you spend 1-30 as your class then you're unable to progress further (cannot gain experience) until you complete your quest that turns you into your job. This would cause a bit of an issue for people that may have progressed past the job quest without completing it but it would effectively "remove" classes from the game without actually removing them and it would be lore friendly. That took me all of 10 seconds to come up with and I'm sure SE could easily fill in the blanks and make it work if they tried.

On another note, I believe the reason the new jobs do not have a base class is because instead of a Class > Job system we're going to get some kind of a Job > Spec system. That's just pure speculation on my part though.

[Hiruke]

Except it's not going to happen - FFXI never had it's fundamental systems altered throughout any of it's five expansion packs other than the addition of new content. Patches usually tweaked and altered things though.

Yeah ok. And FFXIV has never had a fundamental system altered, right? Right...? RIGHT!? Oh wait. They've altered fundamental systems MULTIPLE TIMES. They completely rewrote item data just to add the materia system, completely rewrote THE ENTIRE GAME, etc. etc.

[Brianmj]

Classes are being done away with in Heavensward, I believe. None of the new Jobs have base Classes, neither would it make sense to keep them for past Jobs anymore.

This presents a circumstance where SCH/SMN would need splitting up. It doesn't look like we're receiving a new offensive DoM Job either (unless they surprise us with RDM but that seems doubtful at this point).

Perhaps we're finally getting the SMN we always wanted?!

And SCH can have Glamour-able Carbuncles!!!

Please, no. I love Summoner and that's because of Arcanist.

[Ryans]

I dissagree that they're getting rid of classes, but I am a little curious about one thing. And it may seem combative, but I assure you, I am asking out of pure curiousity.

Why do I keep hearing the idea of Arcanist/Scholar, and Summoner getting it's own new set of skills? Is arcanist so mich closer to how the Scholar plays than to the Summoner? I always saw Scholar as the odd duck of the pair, arcanist training you how to play Summoner.

You keep hearing it because Summoner is far from being a Final Fantasy Summoner. It is a WoW Warlock. It needs to be reworked to become an actual pet class. Scholar being a healer/dot class is much more appealing than Summoner being a dot/pet class. At least that is the impression I get from most people who I've talked to/read posts from.