Poll: Which of these FF jobs would you like to see added to XIV next? (Post ShB)

[Shurrikhan]

The desire for a Spell blade and Mystic Knight, in my opinion, is more due to the lack of a actual Magic Melee DPS Job.

DRK fills that Magic Melee Tank job because edgy darkness magic but we still lack a DPS job that is pure Magic Melee DPS.

Red Mage is just another Range Magic job that has some melee mechanics added that extends back into Range Magic again.

That's kind of my point, though. Why did DRK do nothing interesting with its magic? The difference between "Dark Magic" and "Pure Magic" is nothing but the color of its explosions.

Likewise, why give a caster a sword and then make nothing but a glorified, more uptime-dependent (4-step) Foul out of it? Just feels like a failure to employ Chekhov's Gun.

[EdwinLi]

That's kind of my point, though. Why did DRK do nothing interesting with its magic? The difference between "Dark Magic" and "Pure Magic" is nothing but the color of its explosions.

Likewise, why give a caster a sword and then make nothing but a glorified, more uptime-dependent (4-step) Foul out of it? Just feels like a failure to employ Chekhov's Gun.

I believe the issue lies with the role DRK is given being a Tank.

Being a Tank the focus will be more on defense rather than offense. Usually the massive explosion stuff circles around a job that does DPS because it heavily emphasis on it showing heavy damage visually. As a Tank the visuals will be better fit into using Darkness to shroud the DRK for protection which can still be visually effective if they put visuals more into how Darkness protects through shrouding the Tank so it will not be visually explosive on attacks that does massive damage but more on the lighter animation for attacks to emphasis that they are more done to attract the attention of enemies rather than dealing massive damage on enemies. They still kill but not to a point the animations is explosive.


As for Red Mage, well I think it is more of the identity crisis of Red Mage being either Range or Melee compared to a Spellsword and Mystic Knight which are heavily focused on being melee Magic attackers or tanks compared to Red Mage that always struggle being both a Melee and Range Magic attacker in FF games. Not to mention most incarnations of Red Mage in FF series is that Range Magic is the main focus of attacking and double casting it while the melee aspect is secondary or never used.

You got both Range and Melee attacks but the job can only focus on one path as the main attack focus. If they go melee the player base will still just use all the range attacks for melee range because they will just build the energy to cast the Range magic then unload it in melee range. Then if they go Range as basic attack focus and Melee second we have what we have now being Range Attack then only go melee if we need to unload the 3 hit melee attacks.

By job identity design, a Spellsword and Mystic Knight will be better suited to be a Melee Range DPS Job anyways since they have a more linked identity to be more focused on Melee Magic attacks compared to Red Mage which most incarnations focus on just using Range Magic attackers and double casting them.

[Shurrikhan]

By job identity design, a Spellsword and Mystic Knight will be better suited to be a Melee Range DPS Job anyways since they have a more linked identity to be more focused on Melee Magic attacks compared to Red Mage which most incarnations focus on just using Range Magic attackers and double casting them.

That's, again, what I consider the failing, though.

I honestly believe job design would be better suited by allowing for a greater breadth of playstyles, rather than setting just the one rigid manner in which the job ought be played. Sure, that'd make them far more complex and thereby difficult to master, but at least then no thematic component would go to waste. You don't give a caster a sword and then expect him to only ever be almost entirely standard caster. Instead, you make his niche that of someone without downtime, never without a trick to pull off--for when the sword fails, there's magic, and when magic would be disrupted, there's the sword--with optimal play cycling between the two with great flexibility (both 30/70 and 70/30 being equally competitive, for instance) as to truly allow the RDM to play, in terms of raid positioning, as Melee or Ranged.

Instead, we've just decided upon a template, Ranged a la Caster, and given him mobility every even consecutive cast GCD and a 4-step uptime-dependent burst ability on a Kenki-but-for-casters-as-to-enforce-arbitrary-magic-"types"-bloat system and called it a day.

That, to me, seems a symptom of designing for Roles at the expense of Jobs.

Edit: Spare me any history lesson here. I'm quite aware of all RDM has been in former iterations. They are they. This is XIV.

[EdwinLi]

That, to me, seems a symptom of designing for Roles at the expense of Jobs.

Edit: Spare me any history lesson here. I'm quite aware of all RDM has been in former iterations. They are they. This is XIV.

Can't really ignore past iteration designs when they inspire half of what the Job is in FF14. The other half is the Job role given to them of course.

Red Mage is designed to follow more to how past version of itself which is well known for being the Double Cast of range Magic spells attacker using both Black and White Magic that are also used by Black Mage and White Mage that rarely or never use their sword.

Gunbreaker, as another example, follow a lot to Squall/Seifer and Squall was more often used as a Tank character in FF8.

Mystic Knight/Spellblades are more iconic to the Magic Blade Melee attacks as it is this job that introduced the Magic Blade attacks and inconic to being the Job that is always melee range for their Magic Blades.

Yes if SE wanted to they could have just combined Mystic Knight/Spellblades Magic Blade attacks to Red Mage for it to be Pure Magic Melee and then have it only use the Black and White Magic as off-cooldown skills. However, then it will not really be a Red Mage but a Mystic Knight/Spellblade and only Red Mage by name since Red Mage has mostly only been known to have a Sword because it is their iconic image to cast Range Attack Spells with the Sword being mostly just their for looks or designed as a focus for their range magic attacks while some would use a wand/staff which is also why FF14 Red Mage weapon is a combination of their iconic Rapier and staff weapon.

In the end the sword was designed as mostly just a vanity thing for a Red Mage that gave it the iconic image of a Sword Mage but never really utilized the sword as the focus was most of the time Double Casting Range Black/White Magic attacks until the Mystic Knight was introduced to be a melee counterpart of Red Mage as the Sword Mage that actually utilized the sword by infusing the Magic spells into the blade for Pure Magic Melee attacks.

In my opinion they could have done better for Red Mage but they also follow through what Red Mage really is being a Range Double Cast Magic attacker/side-healer Sword Mage. If anything, I personally thought the Sword attacks would be mostly range magical slashes considering Red Mage's nature as a Range Magic attacker/side-healer even in past games.

[Shurrikhan]

Can't really ignore past iteration designs when they inspire half of what the Job is in FF14. The other half is the Job role given to them of course.

Have you met DRK -- whose tank aspects, we should note, have only diminished with the increased "role" design (homogeneity)?

And you can include all aspects of a traditional RDM without relegating Black and White Magic to a purely nominal difference, forming nothing but a bloated Ninki/Kenki-but-with-only-one-real-means-of-expense system.

It's not a matter of MYK or RDM for "Magic Melee". By the time a job can be summed up almost entirely by its sub-role, for instance, I will have already lost interest.

It's a matter of letting jobs take their obvious themes and run with them, rather than dismembering any part that doesn't fit neatly into a role or sub-role (DPS>Ranged>Caster) toolkit.

[Claire_Pendragon]

It's a matter of letting jobs take their obvious themes and run with them, rather than dismembering any part that doesn't fit neatly into a role or sub-role (DPS>Ranged>Caster) toolkit.

We can all want it, but we know thats just not what SE is going to do unfortunately ^^; Its reasonable to assume every new job will fit into the sub role system.
But as a side note, there is some fun to be had, trying to theorycraft ways to allow hybrids to fit within that sub role system. Similar to how they put RDM into the game. Its 95% ranged, 5% melee, but is just enough hybrid, that some people still see its hybrid nature, but of course, some also dont. (id have favored a tiny bit more melee to casting ratio myself) Personally, I feel the best spot to fit hybrids, like that, is onto tanks, due to core gameplay designs in most MMO tanks, including FF14 tanks. But who knows, maybe in the distant future they will change the ways things are designed, maybe the current team moves on to a different game, and new ppl take over, and drastically change the game, like how FF11 drastically changed with new people.

[Shurrikhan]

But who knows, maybe in the distant future they will change the ways things are designed, maybe the current team moves on to a different game, and new ppl take over, and drastically change the game, like how FF11 drastically changed with new people.

Don't... give me hope...

Especially of a sort that would clearly take so long to see vindication.

[EdwinLi]

We can all want it, but we know thats just not what SE is going to do unfortunately ^^; Its reasonable to assume every new job will fit into the sub role system.
But as a side note, there is some fun to be had, trying to theorycraft ways to allow hybrids to fit within that sub role system. Similar to how they put RDM into the game. Its 95% ranged, 5% melee, but is just enough hybrid, that some people still see its hybrid nature, but of course, some also dont. (id have favored a tiny bit more melee to casting ratio myself) Personally, I feel the best spot to fit hybrids, like that, is onto tanks, due to core gameplay designs in most MMO tanks, including FF14 tanks. But who knows, maybe in the distant future they will change the ways things are designed, maybe the current team moves on to a different game, and new ppl take over, and drastically change the game, like how FF11 drastically changed with new people.

There are a lot of things I would personally like to be changed in the game for Jobs but as of things are they are going for the simpler design path to avoid complications that combusted when they tried going for a unique route with Summoner/Scholar.

In honesty, they still could have made the jobs more open to optional gameplay style without needing to worry too much on what gear they can equip and stuff through the use of introducing passives that change how the gear/stats they already have works.

For example, a Tank Job can change their role to DPS job by introducing a DPS Role Stance which activates a DPS Passive to replace the Tank Passive that increase their attack damage, change the effect of tenacity to focus on boosting Crit and raw damage but sacrifice Defense thus lowing the amount of Defense they get from their armor and Tenacity to a level of DPS Job's gears but boost their damage to fit into a DPS Job due to the changes the DPS Stance has on Tenacity. Certain skills can be modified or completely changes to new skills that represent their new Role as a DPS as well.

However, players cannot switch from their chosen Role during instances and dungeons thus they must always pick which Job Role they want to use before entering the Instances/Dungeons.

Don't get me started on Red Mage as that Job had basically 5 different ways or more it can go with the Hybrid design I would have love seeing with the Sword and Double Cast Magic combo. It could have been the first job that gave players options to choose if they want to main Melee Magic attackers with Magic secondary or Range Magic attacker with Melee secondary through probably a Stance to switch how the Black/White energy are used thus giving the player a choice how they wanted to play a Red Mage but they chosen the basic Red Mage Caster.