Save Scholar: Add one last Class to the game.

[Shurrikhan]

Find any video from Wizardy Online talking about cross-classing and Elite classes and it will immediately become obvious why the class-Job system is bad. Final Fantasy I's class-job upgrade was lifted directly from Wizardy's Elite classes, just using different names. Where as in Wizardy the elite classes were 50% one and 50% the other class, in FFI you just got additional skills in the same class, and it wasn't half of anything.

From a design concept, you can pull 10 skills from any/all classes, some of these are useful, many are not. When you upgrade to Job, you get restricted to 5 skills, and only "useful" skills.

Again, this is a fact of implementation, not of Broad/Progressive vs. Focused/Advanced tiered classes.

So the upcoming Role system does away with being able to cross-class anything from another role, but it's ultimately the same thing, just now you can't have Tanks with Healer skills, or DPS with tank skills. To simplify things further they removed skills that overlapped too much to reduce cross-bar creep.

Locking out cross-role skills (e.g. those that would allow a DPS a tank skill or a tank a DPS skill) eases development's ability to keep the relative value of different skills more equal across progression (where these skills would otherwise be traded out in favor originally of survival and latter of damage assuming that the fight isn't built around DPS checks, as per post-Gordias design promises), but it has nothing to do the broad/advanced class tiers concept itself.

Further, trading out one set of actions for an equal number of actions does not reduce cross-bar creep. 5 is 5 is 5. Granted, the total spread of options within these new choices do appear slightly more varied and worthwhile. But that has nothing to do with creep.

To really look at how the Job system in FFXIV really works, you have to go back to FFV. You initially start in "Freelancer" and can switch to any job without changing your base level (that's how FFXIV V 1.0 worked) That base level was stripped out and now you can only switch between jobs you have main hand weapons for. It's an improvement but also screws up the job-progression since you can't fork off a class into two different jobs of a different role, as one of those jobs will be "half and half" (see my wizardy statement above).

Either a particular implementation works in its then-current context or it doesn't. It's history is irrelevant to that. The loss of Physical Level did not necessitate class-based bonus stat allotments nor shared skills, if that's what you mean by "half in half". The decision to base bonus stats ONLY on class, rather than overriding with a new allotment set when swapping to a job branching from said class, and the decision NOT to modify any inherited spells did that. These are not necessary limitations.

So ultimately the intent was something that MMORPG's were trying (or in some cases had tried already and wound up switching to a role system too), but didn't actually do well. Historically even in single-player RPG games, being able to arbitrarily change the class of the character leads to a kind of power creep where one specific configuration leads to nothing but face-roll gameplay.

Examples? The only reason stacked or narrowing class choice would result in power creep is if the game specifically failed to balance the weight or outputs from different roles, classes, or other forms of load-outs. (See EDIT.)

Could you imagine if you could just cast X-zone/Death on every monster and it would be over like in FF5 and FF6?

As above, that would simply be a failure of balance — of implementation. None of this is relevant to a system of having Broad & Focused class tiers. I can understand your thoughts on the subject, but not what relevance your post here has to what you've quoted of mine.

One of FFXIV's worst features is the cross-class system, because it does not enforce picking useful skills for your role, rather it discourages teamwork by having every one pick the BiS skill, and ignoring everything else.

EDIT: This seems to be where we don't see eye to eye. Picking BiS skills and making best use of them through optimal gameplay is teamwork, technically. It might not feel particularly "together we stand", but if that is where design has placed the optimal advantage by which a party, working perfectly in conjunction, most quickly clears a given overall challenge, then that is the best choice for team play. It is simply a failure (or at least, lackluster aspect) of implementation that a skill that has no party synergy or is otherwise unengaging would most contribute to party success, not some fated flaw in concept. Whether is comes through a bank of skills shared between classes, among a role, or unique to a given class is irrelevant to that. One wants what's engaging, but will, FOR THE SAKE OF TEAM PLAY, pick what is optimal, even if dull.