Lets think about the class system/Amoury system...

[stanleyyoung]

i don't really mind the armoury/class & job system to be honest, i like changing classes and jobs on the fly. the only improvement/change i would like a to see is multiple weapons per class, thus each class having multiple jobs branching from them using a specific weapon for a specific role. What i see currently wrong now with this system is that either the class is redundant to use or the job. ie: war over mrd, pld over gla etc etc plus i see that this just leads to balancing issues along with the simple annoying answer ppl give is class= solo and job= party when that really isnt the case anymore. i just see too many problems down the road and in the long run with the 1:1 ratio with class then job instead of 1:2 ,1:3 etc etc ratio class then many jobs.

if i remember correctly someone asked (in the 3rd or 4th letter) or yoshi said something about classes eventually (possibly) later down the road having multiple jobs. Now to go along with that hopefully more jobs to each class means more weapons available to that class which to me personally seems pretty bad ass. a class that could use say 3 or 4 weapons altering its play style according to the weapon is pretty neat, plus with the armoury/ class & job system makes it easy to play whatever you see fit, if you desire to play a job or stay that class and use different weapons, seems to me their is more options and freedom for players to do as they want.

some have said all this before as i have now, but to see yoshi and the dev team thinking about it just puts me at ease knowing that their could be a possibly of this and its nice to see other ppl views on this also.

[Rustyhagun]

Having multiple weapons per class/job would be nice to have.

[Myono_Mhigo]

SE needs to seriously do something. Trying to explain to outsiders that you have to level X job to 30 and Y job to 15 just to play Z job, then u essentially level as Z job but it counts as X job. Although X job is pretty much pointless after 30. Everyone I've tired to explain this process to looks at me like I'm stupid. I truely think SE missed a huge chance to have new jobs instead of pretty much "required" upgrades of your current job. All in all its just confusing and a hard sell for new players. Even former XI'ers.

[KamikazeMan]

What worries me most about the class system is how things will turn out in a few years. SE has to create a class and a job for each new addition to the armory system.

One idea would be to allow each class to branch off with no penalty for the player. For example:

Thaumaturgy is the basis of offensive magic. At level 30, you unlock the quests that allow you to switch to a Black Mage, Time Mage, and Blue Mage. You can switch between the jobs via the UI on the fly. Each job uses the same weapon as the class - a staff and wands. Each job has their own exclusive own relic gear and relic weapon. This would work really well especially since we're getting that mannequin system in ARR.

These are just examples. Other examples would be:

Gladiator branches into Paladin, Dark Knight, Heavy Knight (high def, def buffs)
Arcanist branches into Summoner, Beastmaster, Puppetmaster
Archer into Bard, Dancer, Ranger
Conjurer into White Mage, Scholar?, Geomancer?
Pugilist into Monk, Boxer? lol, and Kung Fu Master, obviously.

Yeah, just examples, but you see where I'm going. Each job would play differently enough, but not too different where it becomes completely different from the class it starts off as. Classes should only serve as a starting point to familiarize players with the play style and aren't too focused, while the jobs are more advance and have tighter focus on play style.

The way things are going, it just seems like classes are there just to be there because they didn't want to make things too different for 2.0.

[RathSkybreaker]

I just miss one thing , in particular, about XI. The way jobs where set up in XI it was so that the original classes could still function as extremely viable stand alone jobs. Sure, it's a bit prevalent now with the darnus / thm strats, but aside from that, you never really see gladiators or marauders in parties anymore. In Xi you could do pretty much all end game as any job and have a viable, and sensible role in the party. What's the point in playing gladiator at this point? Paladin trumps it, in every aspect, so it kinda makes it a useless class, though gladiator has tons of potential aside from being a stepping stone, kind of sucks. Dual wielding glads? Yes please.

[Rustyhagun]

Well we really don't want an exact copy of FFXI job system as that what makes FFXI, FFXI. For FFXIV I know Yoshi and the staff could create a long term functional job system that won't have issues down the road.

[Rustyhagun]

But the Job list from FFXI is welcomed and should be implemented. There is just some much confusion with the armory system and people putting together ways to create/ make new jobs. When dev team just needs to do something similar to what I posted at the top. Make some changes while you can Dev team. cause problems will comes as the years go by.

[Psykotsu]

SE needs to seriously do something. Trying to explain to outsiders that you have to level X job to 30 and Y job to 15 just to play Z job, then u essentially level as Z job but it counts as X job. Although X job is pretty much pointless after 30. Everyone I've tired to explain this process to looks at me like I'm stupid. I truely think SE missed a huge chance to have new jobs instead of pretty much "required" upgrades of your current job. All in all its just confusing and a hard sell for new players. Even former XI'ers.

I explain this to my friends and they get it. It's really not that complicated. Many games require multiple classes to be leveled up to acquire a new class or job. It's not a new concept.

I like the armory system the way it is now. And a lot of the issues previously mentioned seems like something SE would not overlook(multiple weapons for one class, more distinct job variation, i.e WAR, DRK from Marauder) because they are really obvious.

And to Kamikaze, I believe that's the idea that they are planning.

All endgame stuff requires a party and SE has said they wanted jobs to play a more important role in parties. Don't see how people haven't understood that yet.

[Hyude]

Wow so many ideas in here are almost exactly the same as my own, Orophin, Stanleyyoung, and Kamikazeman, the only thing that I would like to see added on top of these 3 ideas is that the 3 paths for ie.

0000000Bard
000000/
Archer---Archer
000000\
0000000Hunter

Level up seperatley somehow, they could make it so you unlock the jobs at 30, and then the jobs start at 30 but level seperatley of each other, that way with a 3 path system, just cause I have a 50 Bard doesn't mean that if I unlocked Hunter it would be 50 aswell, it would be 30. Like orophin said, archer should get his own skills that are his alone post level 30, plus that way the jobs would get more identity from each other. Being that if you kept up the trend that you get a ability/trait every 2 levels, bard would have not only 5 moves but 5 traits aswell. Though i really like have class quests to get certain things. I also like the idea that Stanleyyoung said about each class being able to use multiple weapons, with some jobs getting a unique weapon choice exclusive to that job branch from the original path, but still being able to use the old weapons aswell ie. Samurai coming from lancer? could get the ability to use Katana.

If you wanted to take it one step further you could even rename the original class after 30 like the OP said, so

Archer---> Ranger after 30
or
Gladiator---> Knight (fft style moves, like break armor etc.) after 30

And lastly the only other thing that I thought of was to make the paths stand out even more would be to make it so the cross class skills that the jobs can choose from get enhanced abit. It's hard to explain but pretty much making it so that if your were say a Paladin with your subs being conjurer and maurader for cross class skills so making it so that paladin could get Cura as a cross class skill at say 10 levels higher then it would normally unlock for conjurer so at 40 paladin you could get cura as a cross class skill selection. Obviously not all skills would have this option, just select ones.

Alternatively, they could make some kind of smart system that recognised what crass class skills you equiped so that if a paladin equiped cure as a cross class skill, at a certain level of paladin the system would recognise that he had cure equiped and create the option for him to use cura aswell even though cura isnt cross class, the option would only appear if cure was already equiped, that way as the level cap rises, you could get more access to stronger abilities from your subs, and it would also make it so you would see different play styles of the class.

Just an idea anyhow, what do you guys think of something like that?

[Darkillumina]

I've posted a solution to this insanity before and it's quite simple.

Treat the current classes like normal until they get to 30. At 30 you need to do the job quest to progress further. You cannot get exp until you finish the quest whereupon you get promoted to the Job. This extends leveling a little bit by adding a simple limit break quest and gets rid of the useless classes post 30. Nice and simple and works with the lore.