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

[Shurrikhan]

No the class system even as it is restricts the designers. Classes are a relic that need to be torn from the game not expanded upon.

Let's all assume for a moment that classes ought to be simply removed. Would anything replace those aspects? You've gone from near-zero healing on caster classes to truly zero, removed the majority of (extra-rotational) burst options from all but Bard and Dragoon, wasteful but high-enmity add-grabs from melee, taunts from non-tanks, and enmity management from casters. Does any of this help gameplay?

Now, we could go instead we could revamp the jobs to include similar functions in a unique way. BLM might take Umbral Shroud to temporarily release enmity and generate less over the duration and, alternatively, modifying other abilities, like Ley Lines, to pool duration for upcoming burst needs would remove any ostensible need for Raging Strikes. Similarly, Blood for Blood has never especially been that significant over time nor especially interesting outside of its syncing with other abilities; I'd see that as a reason enough for now to keep it, but in the long run would expect such abilities would be among the first trimmed...

But let me present an alternative. You revamp the classes, filling out more of each class's gameplay and identities through mechanical traits, which can then be cross-classed. Each class gets, say, 5 traits. Each job brings in 2 more. Each class at level 60 can take on 8, while having access to the majority of other class's traits cross-class. Each job can take on 7, with fewer cross-class trait options. Now, by combination of gameplay-affecting mechanical passives, you might just have a Gladiator who is both highly customizable and therefore distinct from a PLD.

In my honest opinion, it's not the classes that are holding us back, or even any adherence to a class system. It's the adherance to a specific number of stat-increasing traits, the exact same number of traits and abilities given to each class, the exclusion of job traits, similar arbitrary but stubborn rigidities, and the complacency to scarcly differentiate classes integrally—in their gameplay, in their undermechanics, etc.—that cut short any future development.

[RiceisNice]

Had a thought the other day for Dragoon to change out its MP bar with a Blood of the Dragon bar. Same essential mechanic as BotD, only your bar (much more visible than a small buff icon) represents how much BotD time is left.

That'd be a quaility of life change which honestly puts some use to the UI. As of now, mana is entirely useless on MNK, NIN and DRG but is still there because reasons. If each job had it's own interface to show their respective resources (such as ACN having a better indicator of their aetherflows, or the aforementioned BotD timer). It lends a bit more flavor to the job. But I'd imagine they've shot themselves in the foot with the design of the UI, since classes like LNC, PGL and ROG can use mana, but job crystals take away that ability ,but is still technically the same class.

Let's all assume for a moment that classes ought to be simply removed. Would anything replace those aspects? You've gone from near-zero healing on caster classes to truly zero, removed the majority of (extra-rotational) burst options from all but Bard and Dragoon, wasteful but high-enmity add-grabs from melee, taunts from non-tanks, and enmity management from casters. Does any of this help gameplay?

To chime in, this also goes in line with the cross skill mechanic. Honestly it really adds no depth to the individual jobs other than button bloating. It's literally the same skills sans traits and takes away from the individuality of the job. Especially for "essential" abilities like invigorate, swiftcast, and provoke. Instead of giving each job their own way of managing TP, it's all done in the same manner. Tanks lost a flavor in the taunt department, and swiftcast feels obligatory for healers in almost any content. Not to say remove it completely, but those utilties and dps would be baked into their inherent moveset, if not added as a new skill entirely since you're freeing up 5 skills from cross classing.

But let me present an alternative. You revamp the classes, filling out more of each class's gameplay and identities through mechanical traits, which can then be cross-classed. Each class gets, say, 5 traits. Each job brings in 2 more. Each class at level 60 can take on 8, while having access to the majority of other class's traits cross-class. Each job can take on 7, with fewer cross-class trait options. Now, by combination of gameplay-affecting mechanical passives, you might just have a Gladiator who is both highly customizable and therefore distinct from a PLD.

In general, cross-skilling always comes back to the same problem; there will always be optimal choices and ultimately the ability to select those traits takes away from job identity and homogenizes them. Not to mention something like mechanical traits are designed with the job in mind, whatever works on archer may not nessescarily work on gladiator. For a big change to work, you don't want to take away the idenity of a an existing class, you want to expand on it.

In my honest opinion, it's not the classes that are holding us back, or even any adherence to a class system. It's the adherance to a specific number of stat-increasing traits, the exact same number of traits and abilities given to each class, the exclusion of job traits, similar arbitrary but stubborn rigidities, and the complacency to scarcly differentiate classes integrally—in their gameplay, in their undermechanics, etc.—that cut short any future development.

It's both imo. The way the class/jobs are now, you can't reasonably make branching jobs due to how they share abilities and traits from 1-50. The way cross skills work now, they are essentially required (and this really isn't up for debate when a fight demands tank swaps) and you end up having skills that are exactly the same on multiple jobs, taking away from individuality, fantasy and flavor. Jobs not having traits is also locking it to those soul crystals, and leads to button bloating (which cross skilling also does) while being unable to add depth or identity.

[Jynx]

In my honest opinion.

As the poster above me stated it's really both.

Remove the classes, re balance the jobs to have unique ways to manage the same effect as the old cross class skills while removing a few for abilities that would make the jobs unique upon themselves. But your right they are suborn in making sure that each job gets "X amount of things" and regardless of how that effects how they balance them.

The class system being in play restricts any future development period.

[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

[Alahra]

Honestly speaking, "it's a lot of work" should never be an excuse to not implement something, espesically when we're looking at an expansion.

Sometimes, though, fundamental reworks don't provide a lot of actual benefit, as would largely be the case with any reworks of Extra Jobs to include base classes or for SCH to receive its own base class. They all function fine as is within the framework as provided, with SCH perhaps only needing the decoupling of its stat points from ACN now. That's ultimately why I don't see them doing anything in this regard: they would need to create new quest content for all of the jobs from 1-30, which includes a lot of content (cutscenes, dialogue, instanced battles, and so on)—again, all for very little benefit for the majority of players (and provides for logistical issues like whether or not existing level-capped characters need to do the new quests and the like, though there is some precedent for this with Legacy players I think).

If SCH or one of the other jobs had a bit of an identity crisis, something more drastic might have been appropriate. SMN/SCH did have some identity issues prior to HW, but instead of reworking one of them from the ground up, they elected to make the necessary changes post-50—which achieves the same end goal but without need for fundamental modifications.

[RiceisNice]

If SCH or one of the other jobs had a bit of an identity crisis, something more drastic might have been appropriate. SMN/SCH did have some identity issues prior to HW, but instead of reworking one of them from the ground up, they elected to make the necessary changes post-50—which achieves the same end goal but without need for fundamental modifications.

This comes at it's limit when you're looking at skill bloating though. And in the case of summoner, they've become less pet oriented in favor of being more of a caster. How do you think they'll expand upon it with an increased level cap now? It's still not very much room to work with when their base rotation, and it hasn't been very exasperated since SMN and SCH fufill different roles by definition... and this isn't getting into the balance of SCH compared to the other healers, and while that's a discussion for another time, it;s still the consequence of SCH drawing from the same ability pools as SMN since they are inherently much more capable of doing dps than their peers.

The ranged dps are also in somewhat of a similar scenario since they're essentially all casters, and MCH/BRD sharing a lot of parallels to each other. Something like WM is making a change without addressing the foundation, and the result is that you have a very poor interaction between oGCDs and cast times. The way it is right now, it really doesn't feel like there's an approach to what they want the jobs to feel like. There's currently no focus on pet jobs and there's no ranged-dps in the traditional sense, both something they've actually moved away from.

[Alahra]

This comes at it's limit when you're looking at skill bloating though.

Well, yes, they can only add so many skills before they'll need to begin condensing things. But there are avenues they can use to tackle skill bloat, not all of which would require fundamental redesigns of classes. Abilities past level 60 could instead take the form of traits, modifying existing abilities, rather than adding new buttons, or future abilities might instead be choices, some of which might replace older ones or the like (which is something Black Mage and White Mage already have to a degree, though it's a bit clunky in execution due to level syncs).

While I want to see some general restructuring of the classes in general, I suspect we won't see anything like that until 5.0 at the earliest, as Yoshi's mentioned that they're aware of skill bloat, but he seemed to think they'll tackle it at the top end of things rather than the bottom, at least for now. (He specifically mentioned having options for abilities as one thing they're considering, which suggests that their thought right now is to curb further growth, rather than chop away at what's already there.)

SE's MMO teams have a long history of making very conservative adjustments, and even the largest adjustments always tend to be built on what has come before. Even the transition from 1.0 to 2.0 was done incrementally, and despite Classes being relegated to the dustbin in terms of game and content balance, the Job system is still in many ways tacked on top of the older system from 1.0, with some adjustments. Even when they were rebuilding the game arguably from the ground up, they maintained many of the core elements from it. I wouldn't be surprised if they're apprehensive about large-scale, foundational, changes, as a big part of the reason this game exists at all the way it does is to say thank you to their Legacy players—a crowd they probably wouldn't want to alienate by straying too far from the original system.

Is that best for the game in the longterm? I'm no soothsayer—but I'd say they will have to make changes eventually to some things, as the system is a little unwieldy and counterintuitive at this point, and runs the risk of only becoming moreso with time. I think we'll have a better idea of where they're planning to go with classes and jobs after we find out more about 4.0's new jobs—will they continue with the "Extra Jobs" label of DRK/MCH/AST? Will we see any new base classes (I think this is unlikely, but not completely out of the question)? Will there be yet another category of jobs instead? It's pretty hard to say right now.

[Savagelf]

seem whenever we deal with redesignment of game machinic they more radical as they go

[RiceisNice]

Is that best for the game in the longterm? I'm no soothsayer—but I'd say they will have to make changes eventually to some things, as the system is a little unwieldy and counterintuitive at this point, and runs the risk of only becoming moreso with time. I think we'll have a better idea of where they're planning to go with classes and jobs after we find out more about 4.0's new jobs—will they continue with the "Extra Jobs" label of DRK/MCH/AST? Will we see any new base classes (I think this is unlikely, but not completely out of the question)? Will there be yet another category of jobs instead? It's pretty hard to say right now.

Let's be honest though, I doubt legacy players at this point of the game make up a good amount of player demographics, it's mostly new and casuals at this point. Dilute that even more to those players who actually like the cross-skill gimmick or think it adds depth to each job. Extra jobs (starting at level 30) in design is really no different than how ninja/rogue was handled, the problem really roots back to the cross classing when you see that rogue has no cross-skills for any of the current jobs, not even the new ones. And consequently, because the 3.x jobs don't have a class, they by default have no abilties that can be crossed either. In a broad view, they're specifically moving away from the cross-skilling (which stems from classing) rather than classes as a whole, and likewise with branching jobs due to how SMN/SCH turned out with how it limits their design.

There's a lot more room for creativity if they had gotten rid of cross-skills altogether; it's five extra slots for each job and another way of giving them mechanics to handle their resources (specifically physical dps in regards to tp) or flavor (since they're entirely fine with making abilities functionally the same, like WM/GB, why not do the same for provoke and protect among the tanks and healers?)