Extend Classes into full Jobs?

[Bishop81]

Sorry for butting in here but it's been stated multiple times by Yoshida and the dev team that if it doesn't play sufficiently differently they're not adding it, there is literally no point in having two jobs play the same. A lot of jobs fill the same role but PLD doesn't play like WAR, DRG not like MNK, SMN not like BLM, WHM not like SCH, etc, they all perform the same basic function but play sufficiently different to justify being a separate entity.

ACN (the Job) doesn't have to play like SMN.

They could go with what they initially planned for ACN - sort of. Have AoE spells with patterns on the ground with all sort of effects.

ACN lore is all about tactics. SMN lore is all about ... Primal summons.

I can see an ACN Job that uses Carbuncles to lay "magic patterns" on the ground then the ACN exploits those patterns for damage or whatever

or

extend the Carbuncles' abilities to do crowd control (in addition to their current damage) allowing them to move mobs into specific patterns which the ACN's abilities will take advantage of

- i.e. the Carbies do set up, the ACN knocks in the blows.

[Bishop81]

That is why they chose to not add a base class to dark knight because they did not know how to add the class/job in without having to feel obligated expand upon it in the future by adding more jobs to it when it is probably in such a niche role to begin with.

I personally feel the whole class/job system is messy and inelegant - there is little consistency to it.

Yoshi-P doesn't even like the system and finds it cramps the adding of new Jobs - every new Job has been a new class as well ...

I hope they "fix up the system" sometime in the future.

[dday3six]

In WoW every class specialization is viable because they function in a role and play radically different from each other with different mechanics. Players don't build their own class they just choose a tree to specialize in so it makes it easier to put in hybrid and support classes. In order to keep the class system SE has to either add polarity between the Classes or Jobs by further specializing the Job system and Classes or scrap the Class system and simply have Jobs.

Viability is not serious play, I'm not even sure what your talking about either, because it is certainly not World of Warcraft.

The classes are jobs so what do you even mean, besides that you want Summoner split from Arcanist so it can be reworked? And you feel like scraping the class system, leaving only jobs would allow that to happen.

[Noelzzz]

What if they add a new skill set and traits from level 30, when you use the soul crystal?
Im pretty sure there are lot of players that would like to play an actual Thief or Ninja jobs instead of playing an hybrid thief with some ninjutsu. Same with Summoner: it is an Arcanist jobs with some pets that dont feel like a true summons. This is not Final Fantasy IMHO

[Bishop81]

Im pretty sure there are lot of players that would like to play an actual Thief or Ninja jobs instead of playing an hybrid thief with some ninjutsu. Same with Summoner: it is an Arcanist jobs with some pets that dont feel like a true summons. This is not Final Fantasy IMHO

It's not just the abilities and combat mechanics.

Lore-wise ROG and NIN have nothing to do with one another. ROGs effectively work for the thalassocracy as undercover agents. NINs are ... ninjas, mystical fighters that use magic, with a history and tradition of their own.

SMNs aren't advance ACNs. ACNs are about tactics and strategic application of magic. SMNs are about utilizing the dangerous might of the Primals.

Just because you like to be one, doesn't mean you would want to be the other.

It's kind of a waste too. All the Class lore is abandoned once you hit 30. You effectively stop being that Class and become another.

[RiceisNice]

...

All the specs in WoW (differences only when it comes to min/maxing) were feasible in performing their respective roles, at least it was after TBC.

The problem here is that the game treats job advancements as just that, an advancement. Not an actual class change or anything. A ninja is just a rogue with ninja skills in design. A DRG is a Lancer with DRG skills, etc etc. You have the matter of
>The job advancement being well representative of the job. Dragoons fit this perfectly since they get mostly jumps which is a standard for FF dragoons. Ninjas also fit this with the concept of ninjitsu and having different animations from their class (rogue).
>Then you have jobs that do a piss poor job of representing what they are. I feel bards and paladins fall into this; I just feel like an archer who knows how to sing (especially when you learn a song before getting bard...) than being an actual bard.

Aesthetics aside, all the jobs are playing identical to their class counterparts, provided they (trying) to perform the same role. A SCH will do the exact same thing as a SMN when trying to dps, because all of SMN's dps abilities come from being an ACN. You cant particularly say the same for the opposite (SMN doing the exact same thing as a SCH when trying to heal), because SCH's healing abilities come from the job advancement, on top of that they're usually forgoing their dps that they won't use their class abilities anyway.

Now let's try that with something like Rogue to either ninja or thief. They're both going to be dps, and the only way you can differentiate them is through job skills. A thief is still going to use the same class skills as ninja, which serves as the foundation for how the class plays. If you wanted them to play differently, the job advancement would have to overhaul the class skills, or job advancement giving them an entire set of new skills that would outweigh using the class ones.

In the end, I wouldn't mind branching job advancements that would fit different play styles (similar to the talent spec system in WoW), such as an Archer becoming Bard or Ranger, or if they hadn't mentioned dark knight being job only... Marauder being Warrior or dark knight. It's just that in the current design of the game, it really disallows for branching job advancements within the same class that allows for diversely different playstyle.

[dday3six]

...Aesthetics aside, all the jobs are playing identical to their class counterparts, provided they (trying) to perform the same role. A SCH will do the exact same thing as a SMN when trying to dps, because all of SMN's dps abilities come from being an ACN. You cant particularly say the same for the opposite (SMN doing the exact same thing as a SCH when trying to heal), because SCH's healing abilities come from the job advancement, on top of that they're usually forgoing their dps that they won't use their class abilities anyway.

Now let's try that with something like Rogue to either ninja or thief. They're both going to be dps, and the only way you can differentiate them is through job skills. A thief is still going to use the same class skills as ninja, which serves as the foundation for how the class plays. If you wanted them to play differently, the job advancement would have to overhaul the class skills, or job advancement giving them an entire set of new skills that would outweigh using the class ones...

Fester, Spur, Enkindle, differing cross-class skills, and the Pet attacking disagrees with Scholar doing the exact same as Summoner when they DPS. Similar yes, the exact same, no. Note the main Healing Spell a Scholar will use is Physick, they learned as an Arcanist. This is done so Scholar will have a Healing Spell, even when level synced in lower level instances.

The mark of any good Scholar or White Mage for that matter, is being able to Heal and DPS. If totally forgoing any sort of DPS, the player has great room for improvement.

Scholar is a special case. It focuses on proactive damage mitigation, over reactive healing. They have their Pet to heal assist, and branch from a DOT centric class kit, which allows them to better DPS and Heal. They are not a solid example to point to for why a Class can branch into more than one Job however. It was the specifics of changing roles, having a Pet to change as well, and being able to stitch support skills in Arcanist, which facilitated Scholar morphing into a Healer Job from a DPS class.

Once talking about a DPS Class splitting into more than one Job, it's completely different. Classes are all built with their intended Job in mind. Using the example of Rogue and Archer: Rogue has higher potency attacks, less positional requirements, and faster movement speed to make up for the downtime of Ninjutsu. Archer has lower DPS, a pseudo-DOT focus, A Healer LB to trade for the utility Songs and attacking while moving grant. If Rogue or Archer had other jobs attached to them, they would need to be drastically altered because they are designed to feed into and balance the Jobs they later become.

[Deathscythe343]

I honestly don't see anything like this happening. They kind of hinted at going away from the class part of jobs during the last live letter. It honestly would make sense. I'm not sure how many more base classes they could come out with for jobs in the future. It seems like they have already got the ones they will need in the game already.

[Exstal]

I honestly don't see anything like this happening. They kind of hinted at going away from the class part of jobs during the last live letter. It honestly would make sense. I'm not sure how many more base classes they could come out with for jobs in the future. It seems like they have already got the ones they will need in the game already.

I think the reasonable camp would imagine that current classes will remain because it'd be more work to remove them, as well as retconning lore, than to keep them. I fully believe that new jobs will be just that, jobs without base classes. The ones we have now will remain but as time goes on the jobs that split will be more differential from each other because there will be a sizable amount of job skills between them.

[Bishop81]

I honestly don't see anything like this happening. They kind of hinted at going away from the class part of jobs during the last live letter. It honestly would make sense. I'm not sure how many more base classes they could come out with for jobs in the future. It seems like they have already got the ones they will need in the game already.

I'm not asking them to add more Classes. I can totally see them moving away from "Classes" in general.

I'm asking for existing Classes to be made into Jobs.

They don't have to do all of them - some like GLD don't really make sense as an "adventuring Job". But Classes like ACN deserves a life after Lv 30.