Anyone else miss the game before jobs?

[Zojha]

I would miss it if this wasn't a multiplayer game.

Build variety is something single-player games excel at because the only consequences for a good or bad build are an easier or harder time clearing content. Your build only affects yourself and consequently, you are free to do ANY build (And in case of doubt, you can go into the options to tune down the difficulty). You can even make builds that are purposely gimping you and then tie achievements to beating the game with them as a challenge! Alternately, you can do Failure fusion a couple times and one-shot everything with an OP weapon while laughing maniacally. Completely broken in an MMO, but in a single-player game, it works and is great! In general, I think many RPG concepts simply work better in single-player games - lasting consequences, permadeath of NPCs, razing or shutting down locations etc.

In a multiplayer game, if you purposely gimp yourself, don't expect to find groups, achievement or not. Your actual build variety gets massively reduced by the demand for group performance. As such, I don't really mind not having much to pick at all and am fine just having the different builds (jobs) delivered and balanced as a complete package. It makes it easier for me, too, since I don't need to do as much research. And in the case of FFXIV in particular...I do like not having to level ALL jobs on all my alts AGAIN just because one might have a crucial skill I need. The current cross-class is already quite annoying and I'm somewhat looking forward to having it replaced with the role based system, because by now I've leveled lancer to 34 a total of 4 times and I never liked the class to begin with.

[Iromi]

I loved 1.23 patch battle system and would prefer it over what we've now.

[Jandor]

Why not just make all jobs available at start up?

That would involve changing quite a bit of lore. & I suppose unlocking a job also provides a nice early progress marker.

[ErryK]

Why not just make all jobs available at start up?

Yoshi said that if it were ever to happen, it would be 5.0. However, that doesn't guarantee it will happen, he just said if they were to do it, it would be by then.

[stardrifter]

Should have just kept FFXI system with job/sub-job

[Serilda]

I don't miss it, in fact, the class system was one of the things a lot of people who didn't play in 1.0 found alienating about everything. I found it confusing to deal with the new classes and the way the abilities were split between them; even more so because I was originally playing in Japanese and it was two new sets of names for everything to deal with. After being a powerful WHM or BLM in FFXI, moving on to being a less prestigious class felt like a step down.

In theory, I like the idea of being able to customise your playstyle. In practice it always leads to the same old nonsense about optimal builds and everyone would end up playing the same way anyway in groups, and even with the current system it feels more like a trap to look down on newer players ('ugh, this tank doesn't even have Provoke unlocked yet!') who don't realise they need to play different jobs, rather than a flexible gameplay system. I'm very interested in the new battle system updates with 3.0.

[Istaru]

I loved 1.23 patch battle system and would prefer it over what we've now.

I agree, there are a few things I liked better by the time we reached 1.23.

[Leigaon]

I had very little time to play before 1.20, I did have people who played before me and left due to how limited they were at being able to do what they wanted with the fatigue system.

But looking at the system itself I was hooked. I really liked how I could make almost anything. I love enfeebling and party buffing, I liked how I could see myself buffing or enfeebling a mob with lancer while doing damage. Which is different than the OP doing the tank route, which is great. From what I remember you could take anything and equip them together as long as you could sustain it.

The problem has and will always be balance. YoshiP has a real hard-on for absolute balance where you could play whatever you want and still achieve stuff.

Though to be honest, I don' think the modern gaming audience has much patience for the 2nd school of design anymore. They just want some kind of progression and illusion of power, they don't generally want to adapt to the content in order to clear it.

That's a very good point, balance in such a system that lets you do anything with..so many combinations is very difficult. They would have to do something to either limit in some way to help either restrict abilities or make something in terms of stances. I'm not a game designer, so this is why I play games rather than make them. Personally I think FFXIV 1.0 and a 2.0 mid-ground would be perfect.

Then again, I guess you make another good point that I will admit, I have a very hard time coming to terms with. People do not want but so much to worry about and like things sooner.

I do miss some of the abilities, like being able to AoE everything, even Stoneskin.

I wouldn't mind the Contagion from 1.0 either...accidentally step into bad breath "here..take it back."

[Malzian]

Seriously!? Another "remember the good ol' 1.0 days" thread?? 1.0 was terrible. It died because it was terrible. It should stay dead... BECAUSE IT WAS TERRIBLE.

[Claire_Pendragon]

The reason jobs were implimented was because everyone had the same cross class abilities (and you could cross class anything)
So they picked the best abilities from each class, they all jumped on ARC for the range, and later all jumped on LNC when ARC was nerfed. (LNC had more range and could avoid AoEs other melee couldnt.)
Everyone had Sentinel for the mitigation on Ifrits Hell Fire., Everyone took up (i believe it was Berserk) w/e was the best offensive CDs at the time, and some took up Defender2. Also for mitigation.
The only difference between your class and another, was how much range u could reach with your class.
They nerfed armor, to make ranged classes stop trying to wear plate, even though it had already not been that great for ranged characters.
They nerfed ARC to stop full parties of ARC.
They nerfed DoH/DoL classes, to stop stun locking bosses with DoL/DoH classes.
They added Lv15, 30, and 45 abilities that were class speciffic, to try and give each class something unique(I honestly LOVED this system, was my favorite of them all)
but people argued the core abilities are the cross class abilities, and they were still too similar.
(Not like any of that changed by adding jobs really. Just the illusion of difference)