Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Atelier-Bagur]

Cross-class skills didn't even do anything good in the glory days of HW. They were just there.

You could go on and on about "fake choice" and "balance issues," but the truth is that they were an inconsequential extra button press even at their best.

And they would be now were they re-added.

So what, you WOULDNT want some black mage or Summoner spells to fit into your dps toolkit as a healer. My fault for not specifying, I meant the "spirit" of cross-class skills not the limited version they once had. If this class system played a bit like FFV where you have a primary job with a secondary job that would be the best thing ever in an MMO.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

If this class system played a bit like FFV where you have a primary job with a secondary job that would be the best thing ever in an MMO.

That's FF11. FF11 did that, and it's one of the high points of the game. Part of why I still play FF11 to this day.

However, it works in FF11 because 11 is a toolkit game, and not overly concerned with all jobs being balanced roughly equal in all content. FF14 is a rotation game balanced around every job being able to clear every piece of content with (ideally to the devs) a minimum of difference in performance between them (which, imo, ironically makes it easier for some jobs to become strictly superior to others - there's no lateral qualitative differences). BLU would be the closest thing to trying to drop a kit-MMO-esque design into 14, and it's a limited job precisely because that doesn't work well with the rest of FF14's design paradigm.

Trying to drop a subclass system into FF14 would likely just produce highly ossified specs a-la WoW. Even FF11 has meta job/subjob combos for anything remotely relevant at endgame. For a game like 14, I'd rather see every job be made innately fun, rather than leaning on those that are to prop up those that aren't. It's not hard to do. BLU in a healer role basically has ARR-WHM's healing kit, only somehow WORSE (Med-2 equivalent is on a 2 minute cooldown, NO oGCDs, etc.), and yet I find it to be the most fun healer in any sub-savage content even when I have to cut most of the Moonflute burst subkit. Just 1-2 buttons with a frequent upkeep beyond Sonic Boom and Song of Torment makes a ton of difference.