Predictions for job(s) in the next expansion?

[Archwizard]

-snip-

Two things.

First, your estimate still presupposes the addition of at least two more jobs -- if not more dependent on whether they "count" Limited jobs, as jobs that are tuned separately from the remainder as outliers in the overall balance of the game. I know that doesn't defeat your point (you even said as much), but that does mean it won't prevent new jobs after all, which makes the entire argument pointless to the thread topic.

Second, that also means the removal of dozens of gearsets. Assets made by paid artists and modelers, gear that is equipped/glamoured/saved to characters with the affected jobs, stats tuned for specific jobs, drops from loot tables, and so on, all affected. Kind of a big undertaking!

[SpeckledBurd]

Second, that also means the removal of dozens of gearsets. Assets made by paid artists and modelers, gear that is equipped/glamoured/saved to characters with the affected jobs, stats tuned for specific jobs, drops from loot tables, and so on, all affected. Kind of a big undertaking!

They'd probably just do what they've done with old Loot tables in the past when making some sort of change and just do nothing. The old scouting/striking/maiming gear would still exist and the jobs that can currently equip it would continue to be able to do so (and should they add a new job they'd be added on to existing gear as well), but whatever gear they implement going forward as "Slaying" which encompasses Striking/Maiming/Scouting would be the only option. That's what they did with accessories in ARR/HW, all jobs could equip any accessory class, but when they changed it to lock Tanks to Fending accessories and Strength Melee to Slaying accessories they didn't go back and alter that gear, the change was only made for the gear moving forward.

[Archwizard]

They'd probably just do what they've done with old Loot tables in the past when making some sort of change and just do nothing. The old scouting/striking/maiming gear would still exist and the jobs that can currently equip it would continue to be able to do so (and should they add a new job they'd be added on to existing gear as well), but whatever gear they implement going forward as "Slaying" which encompasses Striking/Maiming/Scouting would be the only option. That's what they did with accessories in ARR/HW, all jobs could equip any accessory class, but when they changed it to lock Tanks to Fending accessories and Strength Melee to Slaying accessories they didn't go back and alter that gear, the change was only made for the gear moving forward.

Then doesn't it seem moot to base the assumption of jobs moving forward on the gear sets, if it only affects a handful of sets moving forward anyway?

I mean the way I see it, it seems like the point wereotter is making about armor sets is about designing gear. Now, armor and weapon visual design is different from the balance and design of job mechanics; if the concern about not adding new jobs is about keeping their mechanics from being homogenized and imbalanced, then that doesn't affect armor visual design at all since they're worked on by completely different teams.
Mechanically, even in the example given, the stats themselves dictate whether the jobs actually want to use the shared accessories available to them, and those are generally programmed in based on a static threshold of values for each gear level. The armor itself hardly matters in the question of balance, so long as a job doesn't have a ridiculous attunement to one stat or other, and multiple sets will be available options at higher gear levels anyway.
Visually though, putting a heavy knight-like Dragoon in lighter, mobile Monk/Samurai gear will be jarring, as will putting a stealthy Ninja in flamboyant Bard/Machinist gear with wide-brimmed hats, and vice versa. Considering they elected to give Ninjas, Monks, Bards and Dragoons their own separate armor sets in the first place back in ARR, even when some of them shared primary stats, which do you think impacts their decisions about new armor releases more -- stats or aesthetics?

[wereotter]

Then doesn't it seem moot to base the assumption of jobs moving forward on the gear sets, if it only affects a handful of sets moving forward anyway?

I mean the way I see it, it seems like the point wereotter is making about armor sets is about designing gear. Now, armor and weapon visual design is different from the balance and design of job mechanics; if the concern about not adding new jobs is about keeping their mechanics from being homogenized and imbalanced, then that doesn't affect armor visual design at all since they're worked on by completely different teams.
Mechanically, even in the example given, the stats themselves dictate whether the jobs actually want to use the shared accessories available to them, and those are generally programmed in based on a static threshold of values for each gear level. The armor itself hardly matters in the question of balance, so long as a job doesn't have a ridiculous attunement to one stat or other, and multiple sets will be available options at higher gear levels anyway.
Visually though, putting a heavy knight-like Dragoon in lighter, mobile Monk/Samurai gear will be jarring, as will putting a stealthy Ninja in flamboyant Bard/Machinist gear with wide-brimmed hats, and vice versa. Considering they elected to give Ninjas, Monks, Bards and Dragoons their own separate armor sets in the first place back in ARR, even when some of them shared primary stats, which do you think impacts their decisions about new armor releases more -- stats or aesthetics?

They may have made the point regarding job balance. But they have also said that weapon designs are becoming an issue.

Though if they want to add more jobs, then eliminating armor sets that only have one job using them is sensible to free up some design space. Maiming and scouting sets only have one job using them. Maiming being separate from striking had a purpose in ARR when dragoon’s had higher physical defense and monks had higher magical. But now dragons keep their higher HP and higher physical defense, for no real reason.

My suggestion takes into account folding dragoon gear into striking gear going forward without deleting and sets currently in existence. And similarly it would fold aiming sets into scouting (because bards and machinists being scouts in a military concept still makes sense while ninja gear being called aiming makes less sense) Also I’ll point out that in ARR when ninja was given separate armor from bard, ninja gear had either higher defense or vitality, I can’t remember exactly which this far out, but they weren’t identical as they are now.

I’ll admit that my concept is a bit dramatic and might not be the ultimate outcome. But if they are only going to add two more and call that final, then this gives the most balance in gear options across all the jobs currently in the game.

[Ultimatecalibur]

They may have made the point regarding job balance. But they have also said that weapon designs are becoming an issue.

Though if they want to add more jobs, then eliminating armor sets that only have one job using them is sensible to free up some design space. Maiming and scouting sets only have one job using them. Maiming being separate from striking had a purpose in ARR when dragoon’s had higher physical defense and monks had higher magical. But now dragons keep their higher HP and higher physical defense, for no real reason.

My suggestion takes into account folding dragoon gear into striking gear going forward without deleting and sets currently in existence. And similarly it would fold aiming sets into scouting (because bards and machinists being scouts in a military concept still makes sense while ninja gear being called aiming makes less sense) Also I’ll point out that in ARR when ninja was given separate armor from bard, ninja gear had either higher defense or vitality, I can’t remember exactly which this far out, but they weren’t identical as they are now.

I’ll admit that my concept is a bit dramatic and might not be the ultimate outcome. But if they are only going to add two more and call that final, then this gives the most balance in gear options across all the jobs currently in the game.

I think it is important to point out that for the most part merging sets will not really free up design space or time. Since as far back as 2.X (outside of the Job specific sets) they have been using shortcuts to turn 3/4/5 sets into 7 sets. They do this by creating about 3 to 5 models per slot and then arranging various different combinations of those models in each set's slots.

The problem as they have stated is not on the armor side but on the weapon side. They can't do the same short cuts they do with armor to make weapon models. Each job pretty much requires a unique model (Summoner and Scholar on occasion share models) for each set of gear.

Compressing the Fending/Maiming/Striking/Scouting/Aiming/Casting/Healing sets down to Fending/Striking/Aiming/Casting/healing isn't going to free up the design space and time you think it will as the designers have mostly already done that compression.

[wereotter]

I think it is important to point out that for the most part merging sets will not really free up design space or time. Since as far back as 2.X (outside of the Job specific sets) they have been using shortcuts to turn 3/4/5 sets into 7 sets. They do this by creating about 3 to 5 models per slot and then arranging various different combinations of those models in each set's slots.

The problem as they have stated is not on the armor side but on the weapon side. They can't do the same short cuts they do with armor to make weapon models. Each job pretty much requires a unique model (Summoner and Scholar on occasion share models) for each set of gear.

Compressing the Fending/Maiming/Striking/Scouting/Aiming/Casting/Healing sets down to Fending/Striking/Aiming/Casting/healing isn't going to free up the design space and time you think it will as the designers have mostly already done that compression.

Largely this is true, though there are sets that have more unique models than others. If I'm not mistaken, the Bonewicca set had additional models... but I might be mistaken.

I have no idea if gear design and weapon design are handled by the same teams, but if even one or two sets are eliminated per major patch, that's more work that can be put toward tomestone, raid, and 8-man trial weapons.

Either way, though, it would fully balance out loot options, which was a bit of a touchy point, especially when it comes to the loot in the 24-man raids. Lots of dragoon and ninja gear falling to the floor while you have 3-4 people fighting over that same aiming gear piece.

[Derio]

Honestly I wouldnt be surprised if the next expansion did only 1 job and it be healer. The real question is how many assets are freed when they dont have to work on new jobs for an expansion? From HW to SB it was mostly QoL.

[Kabooa]

Honestly I wouldnt be surprised if the next expansion did only 1 job and it be healer. The real question is how many assets are freed when they dont have to work on new jobs for an expansion? From HW to SB it was mostly QoL.

One artifact armor, one relic weapon line, 6 or so primal weapons, 3 raid weapons, as of now 3 ultimate weapons, potentially 20+ previous primal weapons, 2-3 basic "leveling" weapons, 3 top end crafted weapons, 2-3 dungeon unique weapon models...

[Shiroe]

1x healer for sure
and maybe 1× dps (that either shares gear with drg or nin??)

[SpeckledBurd]

Honestly I wouldnt be surprised if the next expansion did only 1 job and it be healer. The real question is how many assets are freed when they dont have to work on new jobs for an expansion? From HW to SB it was mostly QoL.

The biggest gain is that the battle team doesn't need to develop 1-3 gimmicks for a new job to distinguish it from the existing jobs and 20-30 new actions for a new job that also get added to the pool of things that needed to be balanced which can be reattributed to designing new jobs. Other stuff they wouldn't have to do like weapon design for around 20 levels of weapons (based on GNB/DNC), 10 levels of job quest writing, and probably some other stuff I'm not thinking of isn't really time gained so much as additional work they have to do on top of what they have to do for existing jobs.

One artifact armor, one relic weapon line, 6 or so primal weapons, 3 raid weapons, as of now 3 ultimate weapons, potentially 20+ previous primal weapons, 2-3 basic "leveling" weapons, 3 top end crafted weapons, 2-3 dungeon unique weapon models...

You can't really guarantee that they'd be even be doing that much moving forward for new jobs either based on what GNB/DNC got this expansion. Gunbreaker and Dancer only got new weapons for the Stormblood leveling dungeons, Alphascape, leveling crafted gear, and for Palace of the dead. They didn't get UCOB or UWU ultimate weapons, weapons for the pre-Shadowbringers Primals, they only got two tiers of Stormblood tomestone weapons, and other than Alphascape none of the previous raid tiers had weapons added.