Gearswaps are dead - long live the Jobswaps!

[danny52844]

i dont wanna level every job just to not be gimp in a dungeon

[Scape]

but you are not gimp in a dungeon because you don't have multiple 50s. Multiple 50s on one person can have its advantages though.

[danny52844]

but you are not gimp in a dungeon because you don't have multiple 50s. Multiple 50s on one person can have its advantages though.

i don twanna lv a mage so i dont have cure im not gimp?
i only lved lancer and going to 50 with that before anything else thats not gimp?

[Tsukino]

but you are not gimp in a dungeon because you don't have multiple 50s. Multiple 50s on one person can have its advantages though.

That's how it is now, sure, with just the two dungeons we've had for a little over a week. But what about when it becomes apparent that the most efficient way to clear dungeons is to use certain classes/jobs for clearing out trash and certain ones for bosses? What is to stop people from requesting that before you join their pickup group or their endgame LS, you have not just one in-demand class/job at 50 (or higher once the cap is finally raised) but two (or three or four or...) so that they can run dungeons with the least effort possible? What happens when after that becomes the norm, the developers are forced to make endgame content that's challenging enough for the groups that change classes/jobs multiple times, and people who don't change their entire configurations can't run them at all?

This isn't really a problem for what's in the game now, but a question of what will happen in the future due to it.

[Tezz_Xivectro]

i dont wanna level every job just to not be gimp in a dungeon

^ this completely, but i'd like to know if the job system will level this out better. If not, then this game will not draw people in unless they make leveling really fast.

Also, being able to class swap in dungeons pretty much means you don't need to rely as much on other people/strategies for the dungeon. It's good & bad.

[Tsukino]

Sorry for posting two times so quickly, but I realized I could respond to this and didn't want to make a late edit.

I haven't done any instances yet but will soon... Can someone please explain how class-swapping benefits a party if there are people in the party that fulfill each necessary role? Are there fights that require 2 tanks? 4 healers? Everyone DPS?

I can give a few hypothetical situations.

Say there are parts of a dungeon where a large number of mobs in a party are all huddled together. Maybe running the entire thing with five thaumaturges or later on black mages isn't very efficient, but having everyone switch to that class/job for just those sections is a great way to kill them all in five seconds and move past.

If a dungeon has a lot of "trash" that's all spread out, it might be best for people to bring melee DD classes/jobs for those parts because they don't need AoE and won't have to manage their MP. But when it comes time for a boss, maybe it's one that spams AoE and melee DD will be too much of a risk, so everyone switches to ARC, CON, THM, and whatever jobs will work well from range.

In a general sense, it may not be efficient at all to have a tank for "trash" mobs at all. GLA is one thing but paladin will be highly specialized into tanking, and parties would probably prefer to have them play a more useful role for mobs that take only a few seconds to defeat, before switching to the brick wall job for a boss.

This could also be extended to the possibilities of different types of tanking and damage dealing for bosses in general. If a dungeon has multiple sub-bosses, some of which are weaker against magic or physical damage, some of which have nasty AoE attacks and some which don't, or some of which are better tanked by an evasive job than a brick wall one, then people would switch for those as well. There's no sense in trying to take two tanks to all the bosses when only one needs the evasion tank, for instance.


It's actually not a bad game mechanic in some ways. Past FF games like III and V used it quite a bit, where the most efficient ways to defeat a boss might have been to make everyone a dragoon or everyone a white mage. The problem is with requiring so much of individual players in a game where reaching the cap for one might take months once the cap is finally raised a bit. If it takes a day to gain a rank, so 50 days to hit the current cap, that's five months before you can get one mage, one melee DD, and one tank all to 50 to swap. Even if you get two ranks a day it's two and a half months, and that's before they introduce jobs and increase the cap.

[Verecund]

Please like this post if you think job swaps during a dungeon run are an innovative combat mechanic that should stay.

Innovative? Hah.........

[kukurumei]

Yea the 2 obvious problems that makes this parallel not so parallel is the level requirement 1 and the Ui requrement 2.

Job swapping is 1:Not accessible without huge requirements 2: No easy built in interface like Rifts.

So in summary, totally not feasible.

Smells like if no one is buying your car, you put a tail and racing stripes in it and call it a sports model, and if that doesn't work, add wings to it and call it a jet.

[Murugan]

Well gear swaps were simply awesome, and revolutionary in terms of having great itemization in an MMO. It is very unfortunate they have gone away.

Job swaps is not done in battle, so it is not really the same thing. Still the ability to change jobs without a mog house is very good, and does make leveling alt jobs much more useful. I would much much rather have this system than Rift's terrible system of talent tree idiocy.

[kukurumei]

Well gear swaps were simply awesome, and revolutionary in terms of having great itemization in an MMO. It is very unfortunate they have gone away.

Job swaps is not done in battle, so it is not really the same thing. Still the ability to change jobs without a mog house is very good, and does make leveling alt jobs much more useful. I would much much rather have this system than Rift's terrible system of talent tree idiocy.

The lack of restriction though is what cause FF14 to dive into the "worse game of the year" though. Rift at least had the foresight to balance it right from the get go