Possible removal of Classes

[Wilan]

Classes are so strictly woven into the world's lore that it'd be hard to just pretend they never existed. But what they can do is just remove them from the game's system. One of the things people ask about the most in the Novice Network is jobs, where is the Black Mage guild, how can they unlock a Dragoon and so on. It would really be such a stretch to have the game call you a Dragoon from level one but have the quests send you to the lancer's guild to learn the ropes? It's just another level of complexity that nobody really needs, and I'm glad to see Yoshi and the team are considering removing it.

The same goes for a job like Bard. Because it comes from the Archer class, it can't have its own unique identity as a 'Bard'. And personally I think they squished these two jobs together just because they couldn't think of a way to balance a Ranger job that was full-on dd.

Classes/jobs aside, many of the FF classic jobs come from simpler systems, where most times they were carbon copies of each other but with different stat allocation, different equips and a gimmick command. FFXIV often rolls various similar iterations of the same concept into a single Job, and this is how we have a bard that's also a ranger, a warrior that's also a berserker, a rogue that's also a ninja, a white mage that's also a geomancer and so on. I feel like a Thief and a Ninja would be too similar to each other to need two different jobs, or that a bard's songs alone wouldn't have been enough to make it its own job, even though they were back in SNES era. I'm not going to be surprised if RDM will turn out to have Rune Fencer elements in its mechanics too.

[Ama_Hamada]

If you'd rather play ESO with its trivial and meaningless class design perhaps you should leave and play that. Instead of trying to dumb down the game and homogenize it into something its not.

Get quite tired of reading the 'change the game entirely to suit me' threads and im essentially new to the community. So heaven knows how long term players, who like FF for what it is already would feel.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/f...ral-Discussion
Its precisely because this game is nothing like that Zenimax progressive turd that I play it. Change it into Tamriel Mediocrity mode and I'll be gone in 2 seconds flat. Can imagine 90% of other people will be too when they see how hollow and trite a no classes/job system really is. More diversity and uniqueness, not less. Ty.

This is not a " 'change the game entirely to suit me' threads" this is get rid of a 1.0 system in 2.0+ because it does fit the game!

The reason cross classing existed in 1.0 was basically there for flexibility so players can make their own classes. With 2.0, this went out the window, and the cross class system should went with it. it does not fit 2.0+ it should not be in the game, it is just leftovers from 1.0.

[Lirion]

If they did remove classes they would have to change the classes you pick when creating a character to the jobs and in that case the job unlock quests would need some reworking since you're now already the job. Another way is to have the classes as starting classes and once you reach 30 you need to unlock the job for that class to continue leveling. Past 30 there would not be anymore classes and you have the role abilitets from here on. Just a thought.

Edit: As someone who's been playing since 1.0 launch I couldn't care less if the classes were indeed removed, I haven't touched a class since jobs were introduced in 1.0.

[Brannigan]

Start as a gladiator
Hit level 30
You gain a big flashing message in the middle of the screen that says you can't level to 31 until you complete this one promotion quest
You complete it and now whenever you equip a sword you're a paladin, not a gladiator. You have no way to return to being a gladiator.

[Jandor]

I like classes. Me & some FC members sometimes run current content as them as a challenge.

Removing them is a lot of work, there are other things to focus on. That said, streamlining how you acquire your job would be a good change.

[Zhamkyong]

Start as a gladiator
Hit level 30
You gain a big flashing message in the middle of the screen that says you can't level to 31 until you complete this one promotion quest
You complete it and now whenever you equip a sword you're a paladin, not a gladiator. You have no way to return to being a gladiator.

This would be the easiest way.

[Aylis]

If I had a say, the jobs would be the ones to be removed, but even for that it's too late.

The 1.0 lover in me totally agrees. A lot of the magic and fun for me and what originally drew me to 1.0 was how open booked roles in the game originally were. A lot of the fun came from working a role from the mix of possibilities that worked and fit the player.

Signed, a former Lancer Thaumaturge Dark Dragoon hybrid.

[Zhamkyong]

The 1.0 lover in me totally agrees. A lot of the magic and fun for me and what originally drew me to 1.0 was how open booked roles in the game originally were. A lot of the fun came from working a role from the mix of possibilities that worked and fit the player.

Signed, a former Lancer Thaumaturge Dark Dragoon hybrid.

Never got a chance to try that system sadly, how was it exactly?

[bass9020]

Never got a chance to try that system sadly, how was it exactly?

The classes in 1.0 were an open book more than set classes. Like 2.0 the weapon determined the class you were playing but in 1.0 everything was more related to that than the character. Levels even used to be called ranks because you were ranking up the weapon type of that class. Also all abilities and spells were free to be used on any class, so you could be a gladiator who used magic. The downside was all crossed abilities had lower potency and I think longer cool downs?(don't quote me on that one though)

The guilds played a much more important role as well because you were able to spend guild tokens to buy other abilities or traits that you could use to help with the cross class abilities. This was the general twist of it (I'm not very good at explaining things sorry)

[Aylis]

Never got a chance to try that system sadly, how was it exactly?

It might be more easier to show you then explain ^.^ here's a very old video I made from those days that shows roughly how it worked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUR-lPpEbsU Basically nearly every skill for every class was up for grabs as a cross class action. Want to be a mage with tank skills? It could be done, want to be an archer healer? It could be done. Players had 10 cross class abilities they could take at max level and each skill had a set number of allocation points. The more higher level the skill, the more points it costed to put it in your cross class ability bar. When you leveled up, you got a number of points you could use to spend on whatever cross class skill you wanted from all the classes you unlocked.

The downside was all crossed abilities had lower potency and I think longer cool downs?(don't quote me on that one though)

Lower potency definitely, the cool down timer was the same. Plus the other risks (taking magic on a melee class which didn't have the MP pools of magic classes, etc)