The problem with jobs?

[Payadopa]

Imo I'd prefer a less balanced game than a more stale one.

If they were more willing to design encounters in unique ways it's not too hard to imagine a world where different jobs are good at different things, which the "all on one character" system lends itself perfectly too...

Exactly. It's not like you can't switch on the fly anyway. And in my group we all play what we feel like anyway. Nobody cares about the meta.

[kaynide]

It’s all just a vestige of FF11 and 1.0 roots..and to a lesser extent, Dungeons and Dragons.

Such a system requires extensive balancing and robustness to be useful, otherwise people just meta it to choose limited “best” options (see Guildwars 2), which makes it simply illusion of choice.

At the end of the day, simple but elegant is best when development time is limited. No need to make more work for yourself for little profit, right?

[Rymi64]

Exactly. It's not like you can't switch on the fly anyway. And in my group we all play what we feel like anyway. Nobody cares about the meta.

Nobody cares about the meta because 1) there really isnt a meta and 2) playing with friends is a different situation from playing with pugs.

[ForteNightshade]

Exactly. It's not like you can't switch on the fly anyway. And in my group we all play what we feel like anyway. Nobody cares about the meta.

But the community as a whole does. If you made fights favor certain jobs enough it made switches a noticeable damage increase, people will start mandating it. Another problem is gearing secondary or tertiary jobs can be much harder. Case in point, you can't easily swap between the Melee since, for some silly reason, they don't all share gear. Granted, you also have the Casters where only one of them likes Spell Speed.

[Juzjuzz]

But the community as a whole does. If you made fights favor certain jobs enough it made switches a noticeable damage increase, people will start mandating it. Another problem is gearing secondary or tertiary jobs can be much harder. Case in point, you can't easily swap between the Melee since, for some silly reason, they don't all share gear. Granted, you also have the Casters where only one of them likes Spell Speed.

You have to lvl up the job and farm some gear before even thinking about swapping. Not everyone does that or even wants to.

And i think even if we can swap jobs easly, it's cool to have a main job you can play all the time without having to change because others want you to (and even now having secondary job is really cool because you can adapt IF YOU WANT TO). In a group you know it won't cause any problem but with ppl who don't know and don't care it's not the same story.