Please DON'T remove the Armoury system

[Maea]

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So at this point you have two choices:

Settle for a convoluted class/job system with a lot of meaningless complexity and inconveniences, or

Ask for the abolishment of the class system so you can exist as a more well-rounded character in the game world free of fetters.

Personally I think that the class/job system is much more "well-rounded" and "free of fetters" than things would be if we only had jobs (at least, the way jobs have been envisioned so far). Rather than being meaninglessly complex, I feel like having both classes and jobs adds a level of interesting depth to the ways we can use our characters. Since jobs can sort of be considered advanced versions of current classes, I'm not sure what about it would be confusing once we see the whole picture. Whether or not it's confusingly complex is probably something best left to be determined once jobs actually come out, though.

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The job system on the other hand is just giving up cross-classing skills to make your current class more effective....which makes me think that they're going to completely override the armory system anyways (since 8 people highly effective at their role > 4 jack-of-all-trades...8-job parties are going to be more popular than 8 persons using the armory system).

What about the times when players want to solo or low-man something? Not every role is well-equipped to stand alone or in a small group, so in these settings classes will really shine.

That's one of the two things about it that I didn't like, that and being able to use any WS regardless of weapon.

I always felt they should redefine class from "Sword user" or "Spear user" or whatever, and choose independently what classes can use what weapons (a long with linking WS's/combos to each weapon), such as in FFXI, while giving each class abilities exclusive to them and abilities that can be cross classed.

But here's what I don't understand. Jobs are supposed to be more defined roles, but classes are VERY defined as it is. Gladiators most damaging attack doesn't let them deal much damage as they would need to, in order for them to ever be anything but a tank. LNC and THM are in the same situation as a Damage Dealers. There is currently no way that Lnc could really do anything other than deal damage. They can't be a primary healer or be a primary tank, all they can do is deal damage, and THM crush the enemies with nukes. How are jobs supposed to be more defined than that?

In order to have classes and jobs coexist in this game, they'd have to make all classes excel at nothing, and be the jack-of-all-trades, while having jobs the specialists. Or possibly have classes as being base templates for jobs, but there would be no point for that unless each class has multiple jobs tied to it.

I agree that having classes defined by their weapons may not have been the ideal way to go about things, though it was an interesting concept. This fact may be part of the reason why Conjurer is a fairly poor melee fighter while FFXI's White Mage was relatively competent; White Mage could use hammers, which were good for smacking things, while Conjurers can only use canes and wands.

I think it's very likely that classes will eventually branch off into multiple jobs. It worked really well in games like Ragnarok Online (old MMO, I know, but still a job system people love) and Final Fantasy Tactics. They might instead go the route of adding new classes to become new jobs, but even in that case the path from generalized class to more specific job becomes an interesting measure of character progression, at least to me.

Because a system which is suppose to give you absolute freedom can not coexist with a system that restricts you, both are mutually exclusive and should be common sense to you. What we have today isn't even the original concept of the armoury system, it's a shell of its former self, so the new development team proved me right by their slow destruction of it in preparation for the new Job System.

Once again I disagree, and I think Jennestia put it well. Even in your own post you hinted to it: they can coexist nicely because they ARE mutually exclusive, so the fact that they differ so much doesn't mean they have to work against each other. Each one has its appropriate time and place. The Armoury system has been drastically altered from its original beginnings, but I think it's evolving rather than being destroyed. I agree that trying to saddle the job system on top of the old class system would've been chaos, but I think recent class changes have made it so that the two can work together quite nicely. Like the guy above you said, maybe by the time jobs are released, current restrictions on classes can be eased somewhat, since jobs will present a clear direction for those who desire it.

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Might be too late to mention this here, but what I had envisioned was an unlockable class tree.
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This system sounds really awesome to me It would be great if they considered something like that!

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Personally I hope the jobs do such a good job at defining our roles as players that the class system eventually dissapears and the developers focus on keeping us unique but usefull. Jack of all trades for all jobs ends up with everyone doing the same thing only slighty different way and ends up a boring homogonized mess as we seen at XIV launch.

As I said earlier in this post, what about cases where you need more flexibility? I'm happy to see jobs being added, but I don't think classes need to be removed just to make room for them. I agree with the people below you who are saying that flexibility doesn't have to lead to homogeneity. However, I think I'll take the middle ground in this argument, since I feel that classes were in need of reform, but those reforms seem a bit too stringent for my tastes. Perhaps as more classes/jobs are added to the Armoury, the need for cross-classing will decline, since players will have more options as to the roles they can assume. However, such additions will be a long time coming, and until then being able to build our own skill-set from the five DoW and two DoM is the best shot we have.

[SuzakuCMX]

What about the times when players want to solo or low-man something? Not every role is well-equipped to stand alone or in a small group, so in these settings classes will really shine.

You can hardly solo as it is. Can't kill more than 1-2 monsters your level before sitting to regen HP/MP, at least in my (low-level) experience. Party grinding is already the most efficient way to get XP, and if Job-parties will work as well as they're supposed to, only sub-30 and solo players are going to actually use classes.

[Vaymathias]

You can hardly solo as it is. Can't kill more than 1-2 monsters your level before sitting to regen HP/MP, at least in my (low-level) experience. Party grinding is already the most efficient way to get XP, and if Job-parties will work as well as they're supposed to, only sub-30 and solo players are going to actually use classes.

I kinda hope thats how end up. Though it would be cool if there was an area or place where you can't use jobs.