4.0 Ideas

[KrenianKandos]

Final Fantasy Tactics was one of the best strategy games every made, so it doesn't surprise me. It laid the ground work for so many other games that followed it in so many different ways that it's just ridiculous.

As for jobs that can do every role, the problem would be the technical aspect of it in a game like this. Queues require a 4-8 man party composition. The only way to fill this requirement as a red mage would be to establish what role you would want to play in advance of queuing, which means locking several of your skills before even entering the instance. Another problem would be that a multi-purpose job runs the risk of making certain jobs less desirable. Similar to the way WAR completely destroyed off-tanking for Pld and Drk post-3.1. If Red Mage were to be too self-sufficient or too flexible in it's utility, then no one would have a need to play anything else. Party compositions would be fixed with Red Mages.

I don't think it would help the tanking deficiency either. People don't play tanks because they're scared of the role, not the jobs. Proof in the pudding was the introduction of Dark Knight in 3.0. EVERYONE jumped that band wagon, and, for the first time since 2.0, Tank queue times actually exceeded 5 minutes ... for about 1 or 2 weeks. These people weren't real tanks. They just liked the moniker of "Dark Knight." Once they realized that they actually had to dawn the responsibility of a tank by taking up that role, they dropped it like a bad habit.

That's exactly the issue I was struggling with while I was writing up the Red Mage class: How exactly do you do it so that a Red Mage could not feasibly do all of the content. Do it make it they're just powerful enough to do the stuff but still at a weakened state?

The only argument I can surmise is you remove the tanking aspect of the class. Period. You make it plausible for them to play either a healer role or a DPS role, and that would be activated when you, say, used your stance of sorts in order to make the game think "You're x or y". And I don't even know if that's even possible in the current coding to allow a player to choose a role. The roles are preset with the jobs you choose to be. I'm not sure how much rewiring you can do.

That's the biggest conundrum in regards to the Red Mage class: How do you keep the lore and the core of the class and allow him to be a jack-of-all-trades type? I honestly don't see it possible unless you decide that you allow to open up all three paths and the game is allowing you to choose the role you want to be. And then, you have to ask yourself: If there is one class that can do it all, why not play that raid?

The only answer is this: You don't see an all druid raid in World of Warcraft, and they can do all three roles. As such, you would think that all three roles to the Red Mage can be balanced enough not to exactly allow you to go all RDMs and do well. I mean, you can do it (Hell, you can do anything) but you would benefit from other classes being there. Class synergies would also come into play too. All Red Mage parties would make you miss out on important debuffs other classes bring to bring up your DPS to par. And if you make it that the Red Mage could 'just' do their role and not exactly 'excel' at it, you're asking to become suboptimal for fun which won't help progression.

I can see how they can fix the whole "Just bring 8 RDMs" easily enough. I cannot see if the coding allows this to be.

[Yuni_Queen]

I cannot see if the coding allows this to be.

The coding is pretty simple here. Job is based on job crystal that you equip. It changes your flag from, say, 1 to 10 (since there are 9 classes) or from 4 to 14. Each number is obviousely marked under correct "box" and triggers correct methods. Boxes are three- healer, dps, tank. In other words, as you do it with Arcanist, job stone gives you the "ability" to become anything, as long as the weapon (weapon always HAS TO be equipped, that's becuase there is no non-class box nor flag, you have to have a class. weapon declares class. That's why partially we cannot have ninjas with Greatsowrds fancy moveset lol) remains same or is marked as multiple flag, like for arcanist, lets say, 9 and 19,20 (9th flag for ACN, 19th and 20th flags for SCH & SMN).

While coding is not a problem, there is a problem you mentioned.
Who needs a class that can be all 3 roles anytime? Like Arcanist, you either play SMN or SCH. Do you use Physick or Ressurection as SMN? in perfect situation, you shoudnt. that's 2 skills less.
And now RDM who can become anything he wants, just by changing job stone? Let's say that gear and weapon are staying same. As Februs said, you will enter instance as RDM-healer, RDM-dps or RDM-tank.
And that kill the fun or multi-aspected cystal or Red Mage.

A digression!
There is that famous quote:
"Am i Black Mage? Am i White Mage? WRONG! I am plain damn useless!" ~1st Red Mage

So, getting back to the topic. Changing the whole role system would be like letting DRG do a Jump during massive AoE. I doubt that the maintenance would be shorter than 2 weeks to fix the mess that players would make after 3 days of gameplay. Literally. Game would break. Instantly.

Small, Regular changes to Role system or Role funcionality, however, would fix our problems, their problems, and probably future problems;

Because, as i said, i already see Order 66 execution, when Devs give us a hybrid of Innovation and Deadline, in any aspect of the game.