Quote Originally Posted by Alahra View Post

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?)