Why did SE decide to make the three new classes not require base classes?

[ECHOxLegend]

I thought it was weird to have a single class and job because that would imply that you pick one, then sprout into multiple jobs, I'm personally i'm ok with that system.
but in the this current system the point is to lvl, interact with the world and NPCs of your archetype and if you want something different, you pick a new archetype

personally I would make it so a job 1-60s but you have access to multiple skills which all don't need to be used, rather can't be, and this would differentiate your character between others of your job in interesting ways, maybe even break the trinity and let you be any role, the job just plays that role differently than any other job with differences in balance and stats. I appreciate I can level any weapon style I want anytime but Id rather be any trinity type I want in the style I like, though that might be too greedy.

I don't know how these new jobs are, or if they will be standard, but they seem alright without removing classes. wait and see.

[Kio]

I really wish they would have removed classes from the game completely when they had the chance during the 1.0-2.0 transition. It just makes the game needlessly complicated and difficult to play and adjust to the real job and skill set you're expected to actually play with. It's just awful game design and waste of resources to create and balance something no one wants to play nor does play.
I'm really glad to see the new jobs will not involve this nonsense.

[magdahmhara]

But I use my arcanist when doing dailies cause I love my carbuncle. Please don't take that away from me.

[Valmar]

To be more accurate, the armoury system was dumbed down back in version 1.20-1.21. It just took the devs 2 years to fully understand their own doing and remove what had become useless.

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Now they better remove classes for every job, to keep things simple. Imagine describing the game system to a new player :
"There are 9 classes, and you get a job when they reach lvl 30, which is essentially the same as the class for most of them, and there is one class which gives two jobs, and you also have 3 jobs that start right at level 1 without class."
... when we could just have :
"There are 13 jobs."

More that Likely the Classes will be, like some other people have stated in this thread, the Starting Classes, and respectivly Starting Jobs.

As the betting man that I am, I have a strong feeling that the New Jobs that don't have Base Classes (Lets call them Advanced Jobs) will not start at Level one, and infact will start at level 30 or maybe even Higher, and will require you to have atleast one Base Class leveled to 30 to unlock it.

[Kuwagami]

More that Likely the Classes will be, like some other people have stated in this thread, the Starting Classes, and respectivly Starting Jobs.

As the betting man that I am, I have a strong feeling that the New Jobs that don't have Base Classes (Lets call them Advanced Jobs) will not start at Level one, and infact will start at level 30 or maybe even Higher, and will require you to have atleast one Base Class leveled to 30 to unlock it.

no. Devs stated you'll be able to start fresh as a DRK when expansion comes.

[Teslo]

But I use my arcanist when doing dailies cause I love my carbuncle. Please don't take that away from me.

One of the best arguments for Class removal is the fact that Arcanist is the only class that splits in to two jobs. This is problematic for a number of different reasons which have all been discussed at length in different threads, so I won't bother to detail it here. Changing all the classes into the jobs that they eventually become will mean that SCH and SMN will finally be their own standalone Jobs, meaning they won't be tragically tied together as they are now. The reason your Carbuncle goes away as a SMN is because of the way the Summon spell has to work between the two current Jobs tied to Arcanist, since a Scholar isn't really a Summoner, but an Arcanist actually is. By removing the Classes, Summoner should have more summoning options. The only thing I see happening here that you wouldn't like is either Carbuncle or Garuda being redesigned or removed (To be added again later), since they're pretty much the same pet.

[Valmar]

no. Devs stated you'll be able to start fresh as a DRK when expansion comes.

So without having any classes leveled, IE; a brand new player, first day in the game, can pick Drk from Character Selection? what about MCH or AST?

[Kuwagami]

So without having any classes leveled, IE; a brand new player, first day in the game, can pick Drk from Character Selection? what about MCH or AST?

no words on them but I would assume they'll be the same. and yes

[QiLymePye]

no words on them but I would assume they'll be the same. and yes

I wonder if they are gonna make it like rogue, where you had to have at least 1 class at lvl 10 before you could select rogue.

[Mysteltain]

I've always been a proponent of keeping classes in as I appreciate the added flexibility of them (although the transition to 2.0 really nerfed the heck out of it from what I understand), but I also realize just how much of a... hindrance, I guess, that they are to progression in both a gameplay and lore sense. That being said, it really wouldn't be too hard to change the lore. That would, in my opinion, be by far the easiest thing to do if they removed classes. It's the change in the game system that would be exceptionally difficult to change. But looking at lore first...

Come 3.0, would it really be that hard to add in something along the lines of "After having granted certain adventurers Soul Crystals, we were able to find ways to return the lost arts of *insert job here* and they are now available to all to master." The 1-30 class quests can stay the same in storyline, and once completing the first level 30 quest you're told to go visit so-and-so as they're able to teach you a way to gain greater power, which is pretty much what happens anyway. Then, from 30-50 the job quests would change to be something else that fits more with the lore. Unfortunately, this would mean that the old quests could no longer be done, and people who are already at 50 couldn't see these new ones (unless, y'know, SE could have them make sense retroactively), but it's a give and take. The 50-60 quests would take this into account and maybe have the NPCs react to whether or not you reached 50 pre-Heavensward or post-Heavensward. Overall, it could be explained away easily how jobs are now available to all.

Then we have the change in the game system...oh boy. First off, to accommodate any changes in lore, the actual content of the quests from 30-50 would have to be changed, which means remaking around 50 quests from scratch. Second, changing the cross-class system into a cross-skill system would require a lot of recoding and rebalancing work that the dev-team may not have time for. It may actually be a bit more beneficial if that'd let them give us more options for bringing skills over to other classes, but when compared to the work it requires...I'd rather have new content, not remade content. Third, fixing gear so that it applies to jobs and not classes--more recoding of every single piece. Of course, we also have the ACN/SMN/SCH problem of how the heck that'd work, as some people don't want to lose their Carbuncles or Egis (I want to keep my Carbuncles, too, by the way), but also want to be able to separate their stats. Also, tying in with both lore and game systems, would they still require us to have a secondary job leveled to access the level 30+ quests? If not, I could see a bunch of WARs without Provoke because "lol I want to play WAR not PLD" or a bunch of SCHs without Stoneskin or even Protect. If so, players would be complaining about how other players aren't coming into dungeons or trials prepared because SE didn't require them to experience other classes and gain abilities from them.

Feel free to correct me if I'm making too big a deal of something, am missing something, or have misrepresented something--I'm certainly not a game developer or programmer in any capacity, but these just some things that came to mind reading through this topic. Sorry for the wall of text, but once I started I just couldn't stop, heh.