Branching jobs / Advancements

[Cetek14]

That would be great, but people are obsessed with meta. If we have 1 job and 2 "specializations", if one is going to have 1 dps more than the other, the other will be locked out of Party Finder. Its better to fix basic jobs first, because there are things to fix.

[Kiurai]

I know why it's near impossible at this point, there's almost 20 classes in this game. No matter how similarly they play to each other right now, there is so many jobs as is, it would be a nightmare to balance due to quantity alone. This is a hypothetical after all I don't think they could ever truly do it due to how the game works but it's more or less food for thought.

[Shurrikhan]

That would be great, but people are obsessed with meta. If we have 1 job and 2 "specializations", if one is going to have 1 dps more than the other, the other will be locked out of Party Finder. Its better to fix basic jobs first, because there are things to fix.

That, too, is largely a consequence of having incredibly few seemingly unique or impactful advantages beyond mere damage-dealable-over-fight-length.

The more we streamline to pander to the shallowest forms of a "only damage matters" perspective--rather than leaving DPS relatively tight but providing more, and more impactful, uptime-saving tools or other indirect forms of possible advantage--the worse it'll get.

Sadly, because we generally push healing no further than a minimization metagame and active mitigation so barebone, there are very few opportunities for anything else.

Do we really want to simplify all that even further, until all we have left are varying forms of either direct-damage or percentile-damage-raid-buff CD whack-a-mole? Because that's what limiting ourselves to solely what is made appealing by easily quantifiable rDPS values will do.

The closer you push different choices' means of capacity, the tighter you have to push those capacities too. Homogenization helps balance for the all of two weeks it takes the community to adjust its standards and demand you perform within 3% of the lead choice's easily-quantifiable-rDPS, down from some 8%.

[Penthea]

To me this sounds a lot like how WoW works with each class having multiple specialisations. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing at all, it's one of the things which makes that game attractive to a lot of people. And it is something I enjoyed while I played that game.

But I don't think FFXIV needs something like this. Every character can play every class and switch when they like. The game is designed so that it does not need classes to branch out into other classes, but instead that the class becomes more advanced when it becomes a job. The only real exception to this is sch/smn but SE have redesigned these jobs to have less overlap than before so their goal is quite clear; jobs are to be distinct instead of being merely different flavours of the same base class. I wager that if SE could turn back time they would not have arcanist be able to branch out to two jobs. They even said they regret this decision.

And personally I would far prefer to get actual new jobs instead of "hey here's another archer type job but instead of having a music theme we made it a sniper". Players already often complain about homogenisation and I think doing this could lead to more. Regardless of how a person feels about combat balance, I think most would agree they would prefer a brand new job with its own fantasy instead of introducing different interpretations of current jobs.

However this does not mean we should entirely throw this idea away. Going back to the archer, instead of having archer being able to branch out into multiple types of archers, SE could instead introduce a sniping job that uses crossbows. If they want to make it look even more different to bard and mch they could have the job dual wield two small crossbows. So we would still get a new type of ranged physical dps that uses projectiles, but it would be a job in its own right instead of just being something that branches out of an already existing job or class.

One of the reasons why multiple specialisations of one class work so well in WoW is because every character can only play one class. If you want to try a new class you have to make a new character. Having specialisations means players can experience different class styles on one character. FFXIV allows every character to play any job and switch between all of them whenever a player wishes. Which then makes the need for multiple specialisations within a job/class unnecessary.

[Shurrikhan]

And personally I would far prefer to get actual new jobs instead of "hey here's another archer type job but instead of having a music theme we made it a sniper".

"I'd really like a Corsair!"
-- "Sorry, RDM and MCH are already in the game."

"Umm, Ranger? Can we ever get a Ranger?"
-- "Sorry, Bard is already in the game."

"Puppeteer?"
-- "Sorry, we already have a pet job and a technician job."

"Beastmaster?"
-- "We'll consider it."

"Viking!!"
-- "Sorry. We already have a shield job and an axe job."

"Geomancer? It's gotta be Geomancer, right."
-- "We were planning on this, but it was impossible to make new hand animations by which to grip the bell, and any other choice of weapon was impossible because we already have two staff-bearers and one-handed blunt weapons were taken by Blue Mage."

"Foebreaker?"
-- "Already have an axe, sword-and-board, single-sword, and technician job... And, c'mon, you know we don't do typal debuffs since Heavensward. That shit's only there to awkwardly hold back Monk and Red Mage a little extra."

[Bright-Flower]

I'd rather just get new jobs. With new interesting weapon types, rather than using existing ones as a base.

In a vacuum, the idea of archer splitting into ranger or bard for example could be interesting, but the game isn't really designed for that. They did it once, didn't like how it worked, have regretted it ever since. And arcanist/smn/sch was DESIGNED TO SPLIT. Retroactively forcing it onto prior classes? I don't think that would go so well.

I do wish the game had more customization, I miss talent trees and specs from WoW, but I don't think forcing them in this far after the fact is a good idea, just as I like subclass systems in other games but don't think it would work forced into FFXIV at this point. I'd rather just get new, self contained jobs than limit new jobs to existing classes aesthetically or mechanically.

[Penthea]

"I'd really like a Corsair!"
-- "Sorry, RDM and MCH are already in the game."

"Umm, Ranger? Can we ever get a Ranger?"
-- "Sorry, Bard is already in the game."

"Puppeteer?"
-- "Sorry, we already have a pet job and a technician job."

"Beastmaster?"
-- "We'll consider it."

"Viking!!"
-- "Sorry. We already have a shield job and an axe job."

"Geomancer? It's gotta be Geomancer, right."
-- "We were planning on this, but it was impossible to make new hand animations by which to grip the bell, and any other choice of weapon was impossible because we already have two staff-bearers and one-handed blunt weapons were taken by Blue Mage."

"Foebreaker?"
-- "Already have an axe, sword-and-board, single-sword, and technician job... And, c'mon, you know we don't do typal debuffs since Heavensward. That shit's only there to awkwardly hold back Monk and Red Mage a little extra."

I really don't know why you're telling me this. Genuinely puzzled.

[Shurrikhan]

I really don't know why you're telling me this. Genuinely puzzled.

You're asking for 100% unique jobs, using weapon/spell-school proficiencies (which is all classes amount to) as reason by which to disallow potential jobs. How many jobs are there left that have no weapons, techniques, or sources of their abilities in common with the existing ones?

[Darus]

I know why it's near impossible at this point, there's almost 20 classes in this game. No matter how similarly they play to each other right now, there is so many jobs as is, it would be a nightmare to balance due to quantity alone. This is a hypothetical after all I don't think they could ever truly do it due to how the game works but it's more or less food for thought.

I don't think this kind of thing would be an actual nightmare though. From a game design standpoint, it would be the most efficient and effective.

Splits would permit for a much more massive amount of classes with less resources, tech demand, and balancing. You'd balanced it based on the core class that the splits are based on and trade less to make a "separate class". A sniper would have more DPS at the loss of bard music benefits and would have some different moves to allow this to be made up. Basically, classes would have so many base skills shared, that there would be very different, but just enough to change the approach to gameplay. Since so little is being altered and it is balanced around a central class, it would not be that much work to balance.

When you consider this from a design standpoint, it's genius, I'm gonna save this little insight for if I ever manage to get a game company going.

[Shurrikhan]

...

While you could save some on art assets here and there over the leveling experience, and any shared quests of course, chances are you're going to have adjust potencies and so forth through job-traits, the same skills will source very different mechanics, and most of the skills will be thematically reskinned from one another by max level. It wouldn't entail any significant increase in design-efficiency by the time we're, as here, a few or more expansions in.