Quote Originally Posted by Onisake View Post
months of work and half a dozen people. minimum.
You mean like what they most likely have been doing up until now? I doubt the 2.0 battle mechanics team sat around while the sound, art and animation teams worked their asses off to bring us those trailers. I like to think they've been hard at work to bring about whatever system they feel would best allow the multiple jobs to exist in-game.

don't buy it. i believe it was always meant to be defensive. it has some hybrid potential, but every class has that so it's a moot point.
You now sound like the crew that constantly asks why we have such "little" content and not 14 dungeons to support the level climb from 1-50 with varied loot and boss mechanics. The short answer is that it's stuff that's there to hold us over because the real game is coming when 2.0 launches. That they diluted GLA down to the bare bones to fit the tank role easily fits this MO because for a temporary/placeholder system like 1.0's, it's easier to balance and design a one-trick pony. It's cheaper, too.

wait. so you think that having half of your skills be absolutely useless to you is synergy?
So it's written in stone that every class has to use every ability it ever learns all the time in all situations? News to me.

It's standard design for branching classes. You didn't see lv75 Shillien Knights using the dinky dagger strike they learned at lv18 because their skills are all sword and shield stuff. You didn't see lv80 Arms Warriors complaining about not being able to use Shield Wall or Shield Bash because his gameplay was entirely built around two-handers and abilities that involve two-handers. I'm applying that same principle in my suggestion.

why do we want to remove base class abilities from the roster?
Because this is how branching class design generally works. Once you start narrowing down on what your role is, certain abilities are better-used than others. I still don't get why DRK missing out on shield-based, tank-oriented abilities is the end of the world. Mind you, I never dismissed the possibility of more abilities per class being added once 2.0 hits.

All in all, it's true that we don't know what approach Yoshida and his team are going to take to make classes branch into jobs (or if they'll give up on the armoury system and just use jobs instead), just like we don't know whether it'll really be GLA that spawns DRK. Maybe someone should ask him the next time they can catch him in an interview and see if he has anything to share on the matter.