Why do we have classes AND jobs again?

[Rhomagus]

To Colvin's OP:

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?
So that we have a balance between solo play and choice vs. party play and tradition
I really just want to get people's viable opinions about the continued existance of both.
To start. I love classes. I love being able to set abilities freely that I've already learned. I love mixing and matching abilities. I loved the subjob system in XI but I like the class system more. Those are my opinions which are viable enough for me.

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.
I think it's in their best interest to keep them around. I think they could provide more incentives in some instances for both systems, i.e. higher stat bonuses / penalties for equipping a job stone, make GLA a bit more effective solo and make BLM a bit more effective party wise, create more class specific gear that focuses on stat boost, create more job specific gear that focuses on ability enhancement / cooldown. I personally think they should open up job weapons though. Classes should be defined by their weapon while Jobs are specialized by their role.
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 actually agree with you here. I'll post reasoning below.

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!

I actually was hoping when Jobs were first announced that it wouldn't be a completely different system but an ad hoc to the Armory.

You could make the equivalent of a Red Mage in the original XIV. Gladiator with Cure, Protect, Poison, Fire, Sacrifice, Thunder, Red Lotus Blade, and Siphon MP would've been a RDM equivalent.

What would make it better though?

Say you had all of the above abilities on your action bar. If you had a system that recognized what Job you were setting yourself up for by analyzing the abilities you had on your bar and recommended certain bonuses by equipping a Job stone that you had unlocked.

Or a system like BLU from XI where you had different stats attached to certain abilities. Putting together certain abilities in conjunction would improve upon other abilities. Even better, equipping a certain combination of abilities and Job stones could unlock more abilities.

Let's say you wanted to play a more caster centric Red Mage. That's fine, just equip the same abilities again but instead of being Gladiator equip a wand or staff and be a CNJ or THM. The system could recognize you were still trying to be a Red Mage just with a different weapon now. This way you can still level your Red Mage but gain proficiency in your staff/wand skill.

I'd always wanted the system to play out like that. If you decided to play a job you would knowingly sacrifice certain aspects in relation to the current set up you had available to you. You'd still level your weapon's efficiency as you did in XI and you could have a separate Job level that would unlock new abilities when you combined certain class abilities. This way you could still level your proficiency in your weapons while leveling the Job you wanted and vice versa.

That was how I was hoping it would play out, or something similar to that effect but it didn't. Instead we got the system that we have and I'm okay with it. I certainly wouldn't want to lose the ability to set abilities that I had already learned. I don't want a strict system like XI or other caste skill trees.

I genuinely like the openness of the class system even though I feel to this day that it could have been handled differently, I still enjoy it for it's intended purpose.