Class vs job?

[TinyRedLeaf]

I've never looked into the lore backgrounds of the many classes and jobs, so I'm wondering what makes a class a class and a job a job.

If you're familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, especially with 3.5 edition rules, the easiest way to think about this is to equate "jobs" in FFXIV with "prestige classes" in 3.5E D&D. Jobs, as implemented in A Realm Reborn, are essentially "specialisations" of the base class from which they grow.

This is, to a certain extent, supported by the type of roles adopted by normal adventuers in Eorzea: Very few of them perform as "jobs", and most of them are categorised in the far more common adventurer "classes". As Enkidoh said, the classes are martial/arcane disciplines currently taught by guilds, and are therefore more common and accessible to run-of-the-mill adventurers.

Jobs are more exotic in comparison, and far less common. The dragoons, for example, are Ishgard's special forces, and canonically, only about 10 are still alive in the city today. Similarly, paladins are supposed to be part of the Sultansworn, the personal guard of Ul'dah's royal family. Summoners were as good as extinct until A Realm Reborn, until you, the WoL, revived the ancient Allagan art, as was the art of scholarly Nymian magic.

...but this distinction has been blurring since Heavensward. As mentioned, machinists were a completely new "job" and, according to its own lore, it was in no way exclusive, and was in fact meant to be the fastest way to arm as many as commoners as possible in Ishgard, to bolster the city's defences against the Dravanian Horde. And then there are the samurai, for example, who practise a discipline that's across the Far East, and is "exotic" only to everyday Eorzeans.

Are the job crystals just gameplay mechanics to quicken you into a job? In an ideal XIV, would classes like lancer and archer be there own jobs and be as strong as a bard and dragoon? How come jobs like samurai don't start out as, say, a swordsman class... or something?

The thing to remember is that the classes are artefacts from the 1.0 version of FFXIV, the original roles that launched with the game. For better or worse, that is the legacy inherited by today's FFXIV.

I think the original intention was for the classes to be more generalised than the specialised "jobs", and this was reflected in the greater number of "role skills" that classes could carry compared to jobs.

But that concept was never given proper support as development of the game progressed, and there never was any content in which the base classes could still be relevant past level 30. Which is a bit of a pity, but that is how it is.

From a lore perspective, I would think there's nothing to say that a highly experienced lancer can't be as effective a combatant as a dragoon, for example. But the game mechanics, unfortunately, wasn't designed that way.

I suppose one way to think about it is that it distinguishes you, the WoL, from all the other adventuers in Eorzea, who are mere "classes", while you are the master of one or more jobs.

[LineageRazor]

Jobs are more exotic in comparison, and far less common. The dragoons, for example, are Ishgard's special forces, and canonically, only about 10 are still alive in the city today. Similarly, paladins are supposed to be part of the Sultansworn, the personal guard of Ul'dah's royal family. Summoners were as good as extinct until A Realm Reborn, until you, the WoL, revived the ancient Allagan art, as was the art of scholarly Nymian magic.

Whenever I run into another player on a supposedly "rare" job like WHM, my personal rationalization is that they aren't REALLY a WHM, but someone else who's learned the ways of White Magic through some independent means. He may even have a Soulstone, but it isn't E-Towa-Cant's! :P

The thing to remember is that the classes are artefacts from the 1.0 version of FFXIV, the original roles that launched with the game. For better or worse, that is the legacy inherited by today's FFXIV.

I think the original intention was for the classes to be more generalised than the specialised "jobs", and this was reflected in the greater number of "role skills" that classes could carry compared to jobs.

Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the introduction of "Jobs" something that Yoshi P introduced into the game? And that the original classes were intended to be the actual playable roles, not just a stopgap before the "real" jobs?

It was my understanding that Tanaka wanted to go a different route than FFXI (which provided MMO versions of classic FFXI jobs from across many games) and create an entirely (mostly) new assortment of classes. Yoshi, in order to create appeal for the failing game, brought back the classic jobs to attract the Final Fantasy fans.

Speaking as someone who never actually played 1.0, for all the problems the game had, the original class system was INTERESTING, if nothing else. Now it is just a vestige. There were some half-hearted efforts to make it relevant in the early days of ARR (the cross-class flexibility) but nowadays serves only as something to get away from at the earliest possible.

[Gwaeron]

Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the introduction of "Jobs" something that Yoshi P introduced into the game? And that the original classes were intended to be the actual playable roles, not just a stopgap before the "real" jobs?

Also worth mentioning, that even after Yoshida took over, while they did add some gear with the job listed as "Required", they also added gear with classes listed as "Required". For example, look up Astrolabe, Avengers or Rampager on http://ffxiv.mozk-tabetai.com/
So the idea seems to have been for them to exist in parallel even after the introduction of jobs.