Quote Originally Posted by Wintersandman View Post
What is a branch? Does it have to be lore? Does it have to have the same base skills? Or does it build upon the foundation the other one set? SMN and SCH were broken IMO for more reasons than the so called balance. To me leveling just the Class leveled both jobs was broken but I can see why they had to do it. Another reason why I could see them not wanting to do a branching job similar to SCH/SMN is you do the quest and you're immediately X level of the class. Which is why they can do it via lore. You level Archer to 30 and you get to unlock the quest. It is the equivalent of doing MCH/AST but is a continuation of the Archer lore without the repurcussions of class balance.
While I see you're point and think it would work in almost any game, it doesn't work well in this where your job is restricted to what weapon style you have. So if we were to take your idea they would still have to either change it so that this or that job has the ability to use said weapon or use another weapon of the same type and limit to the new job only, the problem with this is that if you take SCH books, they tend to be really confusing on which belongs to which. Then of course which do you bring the BRD or the RNG, the DNC or the MNK, etc. Again this worked for XI because it was an entirely different style game that was way deeper. However the thing that would work would be cross skills again but they don't seem to want to do this.