I would like to see Classes treated as proper, separate "Jobs"

[Enkidoh]

Except classes are more deeply connected to the game than simply gameplay functions - remember the classes and their guilds are actually connected directly to the game's storyline and the citystates (like, CNJs are Gridania's leaders and overseers and the CNJ's Guild functions as the city's magocratic government, ACNs are used as Limsa Lominisa's customs agents with the ACN Guild the city's customs house, MRD is the class of choice of pirates and in an effort to clean up the class the Guild was absorbed into the Coral Tower, the HQ of the Knights of the Barracuda who are Limsa's police-and-military-rolled-into-one, etc etc). To say nothing that one of the first things a player is made to do as part of the story when first starting out as a new adventurer, they are told to go to the Guild for their class and register with them.

All that (and more) would have to be scrapped, changed and replaced simply to accommodate removing the base classes from the game, a massive undertaking that would upheave the game's fundamental structure so much, I don't think SE would ever even consider doing such a thing. It would just end up wrecking the game too much to even bother with - the old 'pull one loose thread and end up unraveling the whole thing' sort of situation.

[RiceisNice]

Except classes are more deeply connected to the game than simply gameplay functions - remember the classes and their guilds are actually connected directly to the game's storyline and the citystates (like, CNJs are Gridania's leaders and overseers and the CNJ's Guild functions as the city's magocratic government...

Which is why they opted out with the new jobs being a job-only deal. I mean, the class >job thing wouldn't be a problem of its own, it'd just be a "promotion" in theming only. Trying to make it go beyond that in regards to branching jobs is going to cause problems. I mentioned it eariler, the only purpose the class->job promotion that can be reasonably done is for lore reasons. This is the limit of how high a class>job promotion can do in it's current state, unless they have abilities and trait retroactively change in relation to the job crystal you're wearing