Idea: Split Archer into Bard and Ranger

[Aiselia]

If you want variety, why would you ever want branching jobs? If you're really after variety, you'd want a completely new one because that would be... y'know, more varied, rather than being the same thing with a handful of different skills.

Branching jobs stifles variety.

If I put ketchup on one burger and mustard on the other, it doesn't change the fact that I'm still eating a burger. Some of us would rather they give us a rack of ribs and a burger than two burgers with different sauces. Because some of us prefer actual variety.

Red mage DPS branching from Gladiator, for example, is a bad idea in itself. Rampart is a tank skill. Flash would be useless. Convalescence is a tank skill. Provoke would be useless. Shield Swipe would be useless. Awareness is a tank skill. Bulwark is a tank skill. Sentinel is a tank skill. They'd be missing out on a lot of skills that are defensive skills that are useless to them because they're DPS and need offensive skills.

It's faster to list the things that ARE useful from GLD for a DPS. Fast Blade, Fight or Flight, Riot Blade, Shield Bash (assuming they have shields). Everything else is either defensive or has increased enmity.

Not to mention that the extra threat of Savage/Halone would work against them. Because remember, scaling is a thing. A RDM scaled below 30 in a low level roulette would be no different from a PLD. That means they'd need to completely redo how threat works in low level dungeons just to make it work somehow that the RDM wouldn't just be ripping everything off the tank. The only other way would be to literally have your RDM play as "Fast Blade, Riot Blade, Fast Blade, Riot Blade, Fast Blade, Riot Blade" for anything below 30. Which isn't much of a mage, now is it?

Or they could just create new jobs that don't branch, giving more variety and not having to rework the entire game.

[Shaddai]

Negativity

It's true that things would need re-balancing and reworked, however that's easier than having to start from scratch like your suggesting from a technical stand point. SE is generally very lazy so branching seems the better choice. Having to go back to lvl up extra jobs also seem like a waste of time IMO. After investing time in your class After a certain point ppl don't want to go back a re grind. That's insanely boring and repetitive. Base classes can be reworked to support branching. They were originally single jobs so lets be fair here and give some slack. SE already announced that they are willing to rework some things. I thought this idea would be neat because it gives new player options and old player new stuff without going so far back to grind. I understand where your coming from. I just think my idea is more forgiving to all players both new and old.

[Aiselia]

It's true that things would need re-balancing and reworked, however that's easier than having to start from scratch like your suggesting from a technical stand point.

Uh, no it isn't. They'd need to literally recreate their entire low level enmity system to make it so that DPS jobs branching from tanks would be able to use moves which have high enmity as a basic attribute without simply ripping everything off the tank due to that high enmity because as my example showed, a non-tank scaled to below 30 split from a gladiator would literally get to use two attacks and one buff and situationally a stun out of ALL of their moves. And none of those moves would have anything to do with their job as a RDM because none of them are magic.

SE is generally very lazy ... Having to go back to lvl up extra jobs also seem like a waste of time IMO.

I'm pretty sure that your suggestion isn't coming from a standpoint of SE being lazy. Sounds more like you're the lazy one. Because SE created three completely new jobs for HW plus Rogue/Ninja before that while you're the one complaining about how you don't want to put effort into playing the new classes that you say would be so great because of variety.

That's insanely boring and repetitive.

So is only being able to use two skills at anything below level 30 because the class doesn't allow you to play the job.

Base classes can be reworked to support branching.

Which is a lot more work than just creating new ones because they would have to recreate them to fit the theme (GLD uses no magic, so branching them to RDM which kind of needs to use magic to be a mage would make zero sense) and then rebalance absolutely everything.

I just think my idea is more forgiving to all players both new and old.

And your assertion that people wouldn't want to go back and grind doesn't hold up quite so well when you consider that they had to do exactly that to have DRK, AST, and MCH at 60. But I mean, there aren't any of those, right, because people don't want to relevel, right?

So the options are either rework absolutely every class in the game to fit with new branched jobs and rebalance absolutely everything, or just create new jobs which they only have to worry about fitting them into the balance, rather than rebalancing everything else.

Nobody who actually thinks variety is good will agree that branching jobs is the better option because they're less varied by being locked with a majority of the same skills as the other branch. The only people who think branching jobs is the better way to go are people who are just too lazy to actually want to play the "new jobs" that they claim to want so badly. If you REALLY want a new, varied thing to play, having to relevel it shouldn't be an issue because, well, it's something new.