If there is a job that can do anything

[Gemina]

I'm ok with 'Jack of all trades' type classes that can essentially do it all, so long as they are not over powered and don't specialize in anything. There are games out there that fit this kind of class perfectly. In FFXIV, I would say the tank jobs are capable of doing a little bit of everything. They have high HP, defense, ability to mitigate damage, self heal, and deal damage in an offensive stance. What I enjoy is that even though they do have all that, they won't get very far on their own in punishing content without a healer and DPS players sustain their health and damage to the opposition.

In short, I like the concept of roles, and it's a big reason why I play this game. If I wanted to play the 'I can do it all' type of class, I would rather just play a single player console game.

[Kazrah]

In short, I like the concept of roles, and it's a big reason why I play this game. If I wanted to play the 'I can do it all' type of class, I would rather just play a single player console game.

Pretty much my thoughts on the matter. As fun as it is to solo a lot of stuff on my tank jobs, each one of them has their own limits on that, and that just means I'm required to make friends, which is a good thing.

[Shurrikhan]

Pretty much my thoughts on the matter. As fun as it is to solo a lot of stuff on my tank jobs, each one of them has their own limits on that, and that just means I'm required to make friends, which is a good thing.

But let's say you were only capable, by your largely your own choice from among those that make sense for your class, out of categories A-Z, of only A D E J R, while your party members may cover the gist of the remainder as necessary for a style of encounter and to synergize with their surrounding party members. Would that more myriad specialization be inherently be worse than the A-C of the trinity, around which any truly unique class factors are presented as second thoughts or, at best, least common multiples or modular efficiencies?

I like having noticeable specialization towards self-mitigating, cross-mitigating, undoing, or dealing damage, but just not to the point that they blanket the more unique identities of any given class or encourage players to tunnel-vision within their own "role" rather than work as a team, still aware and calculating for all necessary tasks or goals at once even if choosing one to focus upon.

[Kazrah]

Would that more myriad specialization be inherently be worse than the A-C of the trinity, around which any truly unique class factors are presented as second thoughts or, at best, least common multiples or modular efficiencies?

I think it would be worse, and it's definitely important to find that balance between every job in a role looking alike and the class-based cluster#@$& that was FFXI.

Take the shapeshifter job in my forum sig (I know, shameless plug, but needed a crafted example). I knew every tank job in this game followed a template of what skills and abilities they learned at certain levels, and I mapped out that template to make that shapeshifter while trying to provide some sort of deviation through the wild card spots in the tank template to make the job unique. Whether such a concept could work or not is another story, but the skills and abilities listed in it follow the same leveling path as every other tank.

Trying to keep jobs simple yet diversified is tough task, and something I think devs have to grapple with everyday for both current and future jobs.

[Shurrikhan]

I think it would be worse, and it's definitely important to find that balance between every job in a role looking alike and the class-based cluster#@$& that was FFXI.

Take the shapeshifter job in my forum sig (I know, shameless plug, but needed a crafted example). I knew every tank job in this game followed a template of what skills and abilities they learned at certain levels, and I mapped out that template to make that shapeshifter while trying to provide some sort of deviation through the wild card spots in the tank template to make the job unique. Whether such a concept could work or not is another story, but the skills and abilities listed in it follow the same leveling path as every other tank.

Trying to keep jobs simple yet diversified is tough task, and something I think devs have to grapple with everyday for both current and future jobs.

Very true. I'd just wager that the present trajectory will likely fetter the game's potential designs in the long run, sacrificing job identity and the available variety of encounters if it continues as is. "Role" has had a bit too strong a grip on design, to the point that future jobs feel like they're likely just to feel like faint redistributions or outright carbon copies.

It feels like there are just too many unnecessary design constraints assumed necessary. A lot of them have since shed their weight in precedent, such as by classes/jobs no longer necessarily having an equal amount of skill keys or skills, but the way we acquire skills are unchanged, or the fact that skills are always given in an assigned order or solely through quests or levels. Take your Blue Mage ideas, for instance. You've clearly put effort into matching its previously unique form of skill acquisition into XIV's system by giving them a assigned order and timings, but why should that be necessary? It will almost certainly be a "hero class", one impossible to level without having first reached the level at which one starts its expansion on another class. It can afford inefficiencies or overefficiencies over particular levels. (And it's not as if the current classes aren't already imbalanced over various level spreads before reaching level cap.) Why should it be limited to only x abilities ever learnable, rather than x usable at a time from a more traditionally (i.e. larger) sized bank of abilities? Such would necessarily disallow a would-be hybrid from ever having a satisfyingly full and cohesive toolkit for any role or mix thereof, whatever it may be.

[Kazrah]

Take your Blue Mage ideas, for instance. You've clearly put effort into matching its previously unique form of skill acquisition into XIV's system by giving them a assigned order and timings, but why should that be necessary?

First off, thanks for reading it! As for the ordering of the skills there, that job concept was designed during HW, so it was designed to roughly match trends at that time and even had the same amount of skills as most (if not all) other jobs from HW as well. The goal of the concept was to show that a Blue Mage was doable in the game (at least at that time), but it would require following the same rules that were in place for every other job and every other melee DPS.

Now if I were to remake it with the new mechanics changes (like I was intentionally, but kept getting sidetracked), it would have a fancy blue gauge to work with and a few more spells to play around with, but it would still have to follow the same rules as every other job to keep it balanceable and manageable. Basically, it'd need to be the opposite of its XI incarnation in order to be sensible in XIV, and a lot of people don't like that.

[Shurrikhan]

Now if I were to remake it with the new mechanics changes (like I was intentionally, but kept getting sidetracked), it would have a fancy blue gauge to work with and a few more spells to play around with, but it would still have to follow the same rules as every other job to keep it balanceable and manageable. Basically, it'd need to be the opposite of its XI incarnation in order to be sensible in XIV, and a lot of people don't like that.

Which I find understandable, even if largely irrelevant, since this isn't XI. Likewise, I have zero loyalty towards XI and am certainly not willing to break cohesion on a job for XIV in order to make it more like something from an entirely different game. That said, toolkits and the thematics they suggest can stand contrary to what XIV currently supports, at which point I'd favor that XIV itself change somewhat, through allowing for the job to remain cohesive with itself and all it could be, rather than the job end up feeling unfinished, lackluster, or contradictory through being pigeonholed into the existing system.

In my case, for instance, Blue Mage seems ripe fruit for new allowances, and while that might sometimes seems like I'm trying to force change upon the existing system (as if just for kicks) in suggesting such a different job concept be allowed for without being cut into a peg square enough for its hole, what I'm really intending is for all the various ways a job could exist to make more thematic, lore-appropriate, and player-visible sense by breaking off some of the guides pretending to be necessary rules.

Why can't we have mob-acquired abilities? Because it would be a system appropriate to or necessary for only one class? But there are multiple popular job concepts that would make use of it: Blue Mages and Beastmasters (or your Shapeshifter/Morpher) are just the tip of the iceberg, potentially. In turn that break from rigid guidelines to what is or is not permissible in ability acquisition, rather than targeting simply overall balance and a satisfying experience to each job in context, could add up vast new possibilities for post-cap or horizontally progressed abilities, whatever the developers are ambitious enough to include later.

And that's why I don't like placing so much effort on fitting things into the current system in my own ideas, and why so many of my own stuff ends up going unwritten here. It chops worlds of potential improvements and future-proofing for later ambitions down to add yet more precedent and suction to what's mundane, giving ever more excuse not to do anything truly new.

:: If interested, though, I can give you the rough notes on what I imagine would be a favorable compromise within a future expansion. Emphasis on rough, since, as I said, I like for things to be contextually vested. Blue Mage and the like are to me the perfect segway into new content and content types through new themes, mechanics, and modes, which taken altogether, can become the basis for a new expansion. Sadly no one part wholly works when on its own.