Why do we have classes AND jobs again?

[Colvin]

So I have had alot of discussion lately with friends and players about the continued use of the armory system and this has come up a few times:

Why do we still have both the Armory AND Jobs?

I really just want to get people's viable opinions about the continued existance of both.

1. I know that they are not going to remove Armory and that it's existance is a forgone conclusion
2. I know that the current opinion is that, for the most part, Armory is solo and Job is party
3. Currently most of the discussion has been about how we can differentiate between them to make them more individual

What I would like to see is if people think it is even smart to keep around.

for posterity:

My Opinion

I think they should get rid of classes. Then they said they were bringing out jobs, I thought they would be a kind of "Job Change" like in FF1 where you were what you were before, but with more. I know people wanted to ability to have situationally specific jobs, but I have never liked the restrictions on selectable abilities. The arguement that it was necessary to make the jobs more play-specific in parties is kind of moot because if you chose to equip the party-specific abilities, those would inherantly take up slots and, therefore, lower the other abilities you could equip. As it stands, I see no reason why you should NEED to make Gladiator a seperate class than Paladin to just give Paladins the option to select different abilities. I found it very limiting in comparison to previous Job-based final fantasy games (XI not withstanding).

I should also note that I realize 2.0 is supposedly totally different and how they will approach abilities really isnt known yet. I just want to see where the discussion will go.

DISCUSS!

[DoctorMog]

They need to make classes distinct enough to warrant using them.

Nothing more, nothing less.

[Wynn]

I personally wish that the classes had just been renamed to traditional FF jobs and the abilities rearranged with stricter cross classing options. I find the armory system to paradoxically be limiting rather than opening up options. Tying what you are to the weapon you carry is disappointing among other things. They could have just given us one "jobless" class and then jobs, or even more like tactics with squire and alchemist to open melee and mage classes, to accomodate solo play instead of what the system actually morphed into.

I do find Gladiator, Thaumaturge, and even Archer useful outside of jobs, but that is about it.

In the end though, this what we have and it isn't going to change so we just need to make due with it.

[Colvin]

They need to make classes distinct enough to warrant using them.

Nothing more, nothing less.

right, but everyone who is thinking about playing asks me about them and I can't really say why they should even exist. they say there are 16 classes but there are really more like 8, so why not just stop pretending, deal with the fact that we have 8 and plan more? What is the benefit to keeping them around other than "because they are there now"?

[EinSoFZ]

I think they were added because people wanted to play as a White Mage and not a Conjurer. Of course, that distinction had to come with some change (albeit a small one) or else it really was just a name change. So in effort to keep what they've done, SE is likely just going to try and play up the jobs end such that there's some significant distinction between classes. Maybe as the level cap increases, it will become more noticeable.

[Recycler]

Personally I've always preferred the switchable superset type of jobs which take considerable time to fully master (each class having 3 job branches, for example), but I'm excited for what they have in store for ARR as well.

[Colvin]

I think they were added because people wanted to play as a White Mage and not a Conjurer. Of course, that distinction had to come with some change (albeit a small one) or else it really was just a name change. So in effort to keep what they've done, SE is likely just going to try and play up the jobs end such that there's some significant distinction between classes. Maybe as the level cap increases, it will become more noticeable.

It seems like alot of the way they are shot in the foot in terms of that is based around there being only 1 type of weapon that you can use for each job/class because of the armory approach. Gladitors for instance, traditionally, could use WAY more than a sword and shield. Seems like if they wanted to branch out the uniqueness of the classes, they should explore being able to equip multiple types of weapons.

[Arkine]

I guess they kept them because its complicated to remove them without reseting levels.

I believe a class's role should end at lv30 when you unlock get to unlock its job, and that job take over the class's place.

You start as a GLA > you play until Lv30 > you have to unlock a job to level any further > you unlock PLD > now you're a PLD.

You know, upgrading from a class to a job as a right of passage for your profession and that's that.

[Colvin]

Personally I've always preferred the switchable superset type of jobs which take considerable time to fully master (each class having 3 job branches, for example), but I'm excited for what they have in store for ARR as well.

I think this is kind of what they ARE going for (but 2 jobs per tree) at the moment. But do you mean 1 class + 3 jobs? such that there are 4 branches to the trunk or that when you move to jobs, the class is a trunk and you don't go back?

[Colvin]

You know, upgrading from a class to a job as a right of passage for your profession and that's that.

This is actually exactly how I see it, but they want to keep them (at least for now) I wonder what kinds of things they could go about doing to make Gladiator and Paladin TRUELY unique...?