I sort of wish players could only choose one job.

[Orophin]

This is your personal opinion though, how you chose to see these characters. The battle system in VI and IX is very flexable and regardless of the weapon you can form the character to any job you wish. Same with VII, Its more about the visual and when you break it down everyone is some form of hybrid DD/mage. FF games with more set characters shouldnt be fit into jobs, you can make connections but thats where it ends.
You can call Zell a monk but what is Squall? you can call Quistis a Blue mage but what is Rinoa? a ranger?

My wife thinks Ash in XII is a healer, how did you use her? she was a melee for me.

Point being, a lot of this comes down to opinion and how you played each title.

Well actually...pretty much every FF game that didn't have a job system or something similar, like the sphere grid or license board, the characters pretty much had a set role. Cecil was a physical powerhouse with good defense and some white magic. Rosa was a white magic user that could use a bow and arrows or staves. The list goes on. You can fit each character from those games into a specific role even though they had multiple angles to them. Like, you're not going to use Cecil as your main healer, even though he has white magic, because Cure 2 just isn't powerful enough.

My take on this is the FF MMOs wanted to use the job system featured in many of its games so that people could experience every role on one character. If they wanted you to only be a Warrior or a Thief for the entirety of the game, it would have originally been designed that way. And I'm sure many people still would have played it, but this was one of the unique things FF brought to the genre.

[Lexin]

Going to have to say no to this. I enjoy using 1 character for everything rather then 10+. I more then likely wont play all classes on ARR but if I get bored I know I still have a few classes/jobs I can level without having to logout and create a new character then spend 15+ minutes figuring out a new name. Also the sound of going through the same quests/story just does not appeal to me I wish all MMO's would allow using 1 character to level everything.

[Mythicangel]

I enjoy switching classes in FFXI and FFXIV and it should not be taken out and I will give you a good example of why not with a real life situation. You go to school for 6 years to become a Computer technician and you decide that you do not want to be a computer technician 1 year after your 6 years of school and decided to be an english professor. Well, now you have to go through 6 more years of school. I am not sure about you, but i would not want to go through all the low level courses again. Just imagine that times 15 now.

Now this would not take as long but the concept is the same. The way they have it setup is perfectly fine and really enjoyable as you would just need to level up the class and I think you would also have to do some quests related to the class. If you really enjoy that model though, you could do it that way. No one is saying that you have to level up all the classes on your one character. You can get away with just leveling up one class and then make a new character. Although the way they are doing it, you may not have all the useful skills/spells needed for the class to be super successful, just successful.

[Tinks]

So besides what I'm seeing commonly cited as reasons to have one character instead of alts, I'd like to also contribute to the reputation argument. In most MMOs you can create alts, and its extremely easy to level up to cap. In FFXI the idea of leveling another character to cap was almost unthinkable because it took most people close to a year (or longer) to hit cap on their first job. (The fact that in FFXIV it's really easy to level is a problem in and of itself that should be addressed.)

As a result of it being so difficult to level and get through all of the quests (khazam keys, airship passes, limit breaks, AF etc) you needed to do before you ever got to 75, you had to rely on other people's help to get there. You couldn't be an ass to anyone because otherwise you'd just get no where. Because almost everyone just had one character, you couldn't be an ass on one character and then get help on another. Reputations were long lasting things in FFXI, and news of asshattery traveled fast on a server. It was a great way to ensure people didn't succomb to the lure of internet anonymity and do whatever they want because there were no consequences. In FFXI there were long lasting consequences, and thats why I prefer the FF MMO community. Its inherent in the single character paradigm. People get more attached to their single character and are also much less likely to jeopardize their community reputation with it. In short, it helps keep good people good, even when its a bad day.

[Ricky]

I totally think of Sabin when it comes to Monk.. Tifa makes me think of something else entirely, but let's not go there

[Jacien]

Well, I'd like to hear why other player do, or don't like the multiple job mechanic. While I appreciate it's functionality toward online dynamics, it's the novelty that I feel takes away from the Final Fantasy atmosphere.

[ZakarnRosewood]

Personaly, that was something i hated about WoW. Having to create a whole new chr just to experience another job? Even if they made it so i had to go to a specific person to change my job, i would be ok with that. Just dont lock us into our job/class. I would rather give people more options instead of take them away.

But seriously Why would you even consider going back to that? Your appeal to tradition fails to account for FF3,11,12,13, and all the tactic's games just off the top of my head. All they have to do it make it more time consuming to get more than your first job to cap.

[TrystWildkey]

If you want to be defined for something in an MMO, make it a winning personality!

Kindness multiplies and it costs nothing~♪

Have a great night everyone!

We need more of this. Thank you!

*does the happy Lala dance*

[Nix]

We need more of this. Thank you!

*does the happy Lala dance*

Haha !! So true!

/cheer ^^

[JillyBean]

This is one of the things that sets XI and XIV apart from all the other games. I don't even comprehend how or why you would want to level tons of characters just to try out different jobs. I don't know what's to come for XIV, but when I think about the content you have to clear in XI, from fame, to CoP, to city rank, my god....