Would A Rifle Job Ever Be Possible?

[Ghastly]

The idea of adding a tank, healer, and still adding a dps job is very possible since turning mch into musketeer wouldn't take much work. Musketeer would use the same shooting skills and none of the turret stuff, the turret stuff gets turned into dual wield shots or other things like that. The most work in classes probably comes from animations and having to create level 1 to level 70 weapons in every dungeon/primal. But all that's been created for mch already so the ONLY work they have to do is add some 5-7 musketeer skills to replace the turret ones. I'd love for Yoshida/devs to do an official forum poll asking us if we want mch to stay mch or to evolve as a new job into musketeer, from that they can justify it even more.

I mean they've done everything they could to mch and no one plays that outside of the 1%-3% of the population that clears savage content.

Why leave something at the bottom when you can put real work into it and turn it into something would really work better.
I know they wanted to give us a Cid-like job but no, we wanted a Maelstrom/Limsa job.

[RitsukoSonoda]

*snip*

The changes you are proposing wouldn't make MCH more viable. The reason its doesn't appear used as much is because the other job class it normally has to "compete" against in a party composition (BRD) has a much higher degree of support utility while offering similar damage output. The endgame meta isn't chosen by visual appeal or whether or not a job uses a "Pet" or not. Its chosen based on a value comparison from skills on a utility vs damage output stance to assign values to jobs. Additionally SE cant just boost MCH damage without taking consideration that it will cause players to not want to use caster jobs due to having an extremely high damage output that isn't limited by cast bars.

[Ghastly]

The changes you are proposing wouldn't make MCH more viable. The reason its doesn't appear used as much is because the other job class it normally has to "compete" against in a party composition (BRD) has a much higher degree of support utility while offering similar damage output. The endgame meta isn't chosen by visual appeal or whether or not a job uses a "Pet" or not. Its chosen based on a value comparison from skills on a utility vs damage output stance to assign values to jobs. Additionally SE cant just boost MCH damage without taking consideration that it will cause players to not want to use caster jobs due to having an extremely high damage output that isn't limited by cast bars.

Oh but that's where all your raid utility argument goes out the window....
Really, mch was better than bard in most of HW and yet it was still less popular than bard

So the argument of aesthetics, class theme, and fun to play actually matters more than raid utility. Raid utility only matters to those doing savage content, which in all the data shown is barely up to 3% of the population.
Raid utility can be added to any class on the basis of just adding it for the sake of it

Look at warrior, its shake it off skill was changed to a raid utility skill just because and it's not a hard thing to add to any class. Losing turrets and its support when you make it a musketeer job doesn't mean that the musketeer can't have raid skill. It could summon barrels just like the last boss of Hullbreaker isle HM and when those barrels explode they could give enemies vulnerability. It could also have a treasure chest skill from the same boss which gives damage bonuses to whoever opens the chests

The things are there for musketeer.........it's just a matter of going for it.

[RitsukoSonoda]

*snip*

You can keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night since you've convinced yourself this is why MCH isn't used as much as BRD and essentially refuse to listen to anything saying otherwise. MCH already have utility through their turret to inflict vulnerability however doesn't offer much beyond that outside of role skills that BRD has access to as well. MCH on its own is a fun job to play. However its outshined by other jobs which is something that generally happens on any game online or offline that utilize different characters or classes that occupy the same role or niche. Additionally if you are going to attempt claiming "data shows X%" how about posting us a source because despite being outshined I see MCH quite frequently even in end game/savage content. I've lvled both BRD and MCH. I find MCH more fun to play. However I end up using BRD more because it just does more.

Also using an NPC or boss in game to say the things are already there isn't an argument. The chests and the barrels are battle mechanics. Also NPCs frequently have access to skills a player will not which is evidenced frequently in the MSQ and job quests. Additionally some instances of NPC's having a weapon setup not available to players such as the dual guns pointed out earlier. Also rauhban dual wielded swords before and the ex pirate in the MCH quests that uses a 1 handed hatchet and a pistol.

If you want to focus on aesthetics far more players were asking for engineer from the FFT games as a gun user than there were for a musketeer or gun wielding pirate. So instead of crying they scrap a job because its not the one you wanted, figure out a way to work in the one you want without it just being a turret-less carbon copy of MCH.

[Zojha]

MCH on its own is a fun job to play.

That is subjective. Objectively, you can only measure whether something is "fun" or not by looking at how popular it is relative to its power (or more generally, relative to its reward, because the principle applies to content as well). If something is unpopular in spite of being powerful (or having lots of rewards), chances are it's not very fun. On the flipside, if something is popular in spite of not being powerful, it's safe to say it's fairly fun. And if something is popular and powerful, or unpopular and weak, it's not possible to tell whether the effect is caused by the power or the enjoyability.

As for musketeers or rifle jobs in general, I feel that MCH is pretty much intended to cover that. The guns tend to be on the longer side and the new sprint animation is specifically meant for longer guns (it looks VERY awkward with the Makai Mortar or even the gunblade series). I doubt they'd make a new one.

[RitsukoSonoda]

*snip*

It is subjective though its a shared opinion of a majority of players I've spoken with in game that have actually played and lvled MCH to 70. There are a lot of thoughts on what could be tweaked slightly to make it better and more fluid but its not being abandoned by almost the entire player base because of playstyle and aesthetics like the other person is claiming it is.

Maybe this person just doesn't encounter many of them. Maybe this person's server just doesn't have many. However this person's claims to the causes of MCH being viewed as unpopular come off as fabricated data to cover up that they wanted a pirate themed gun user instead of an engineer based one.

As far as guns go there could easily be another gun user later that causes a split in guns to be rifles and pistols. 1handed swords and knives were both GLA/PLD weapons until SE added ROG/NIN and pulled all the knives from the GLA/PLD weapon list and replaced them with equivalent 1 handed swords. Something that might be warranted as the animations and gauss barrel have issues with the smaller guns currently in game. IMO I think MCH would be the pistol user in this case as the skill animations and attacks utilize the gun 1 handed which makes the run animation seem more out of place.

[Ghastly]

It is subjective though its a shared opinion of a majority of players I've spoken with in game that have actually played and lvled MCH to 70. There are a lot of thoughts on what could be tweaked slightly to make it better and more fluid but its not being abandoned by almost the entire player base because of playstyle and aesthetics like the other person is claiming it is.

Maybe this person just doesn't encounter many of them. Maybe this person's server just doesn't have many. However this person's claims to the causes of MCH being viewed as unpopular come off as fabricated data to cover up that they wanted a pirate themed gun user instead of an engineer based one.

As far as guns go there could easily be another gun user later that causes a split in guns to be rifles and pistols. 1handed swords and knives were both GLA/PLD weapons until SE added ROG/NIN and pulled all the knives from the GLA/PLD weapon list and replaced them with equivalent 1 handed swords. Something that might be warranted as the animations and gauss barrel have issues with the smaller guns currently in game. IMO I think MCH would be the pistol user in this case as the skill animations and attacks utilize the gun 1 handed which makes the run animation seem more out of place.

At least I'm providing solutions


All you're doing is providing personal encounters instead of real data. Real data like the census the dev team conducts every year which shows machinist as the least popular class every year.

If it's not playstyle and aesthetics that is holding machinist down then what is it? It's not raid utility and class effectiveness. In HW they were better than bard and were used for some of their utility as well in the savage content. But outside of savage it wasn't used (according to the dev's official census). In general it's not even something to be disputed, logically it's visible that machinists are rare. Go into any alliance raid, raid, and hunts. You barely will see 1 here and there and could go days without seeing one completely.

But I put the question to you now, if it's not aesthetics and how fun it is to play to then what is it that keeps machinist unpopular? Again, mch was better than bard in HW yet more people played bard so your raid utility excuse holds no water.
Just because you think you're right and like mch doesn't mean that you're right.