Why did SE decide to make the three new classes not require base classes?

[Teslo]

Bard would be worthlees for anything without the base skills earned from leveling ARCHER. THis gos for the ALL the JOBS. Take way the base ruin, the job. PLD with almost no attacks? Whm without cure?

For some reason you seem to think that Job = The 5 abilities that you quest for over 20 levels. This is the main issue with the problem you're having here. The Job is a culmination of abilities brought to it by the classes and enhanced by the 5 abilities you think are standalone. Note: Enhanced. If you were to remove the "Classes", the "Job" would then include everything you learn up to level 30 as well as everything you learn past level 30. That's it. I'm really beginning to wonder at your ability to ... you know... think.

[FranSeara]

[QUOTE=Teslo;2684822]For some reason you seem to think that Job = The 5 abilities that you quest for over 20 levels. This is the main issue with the problem you're having here. The Job is a culmination of abilities brought to it by the classes and enhanced by the 5 abilities you think are standalone. Note: Enhanced. If you were to remove the "Classes", the "Job" would then include everything you learn up to level 30 as well as everything you learn past level 30.
Nope, Wrong here. Or we may see it differantly. I see as the Classes brings almost all the skills while the job adds special skills and bonus. Take your off soul gem and you still have almost your skills, take away all the classes skills from a job and you have only 6-8 skills. Exmaple I almost never get any gems untill ever late levels maybe lv 40-45. Mainly due to other playes being pushy about it. I have tons of skills without a soul gems. "I feel less flexable with a soul gem"

[RichardButte]

Post2:

Now, if you're going to keep classes around, it would make sense that each class is the root for 2-3 different jobs (maybe more). If THM, at 30, branched out into 5 different flavors of caster, each one unique from the other except for the base THM skills, then I'd say classes make sense because the first 30 levels of a class would effectively be the first 30 points on a "talent tree" of sorts that the player will later branch off on.

But most classes become one job, and most classes are not in any way better off for NOT becoming said job, ergo I can see why they'd want to stop adding classes at this point.

[RichardButte]

Post3:

Do I think they should pull out existing classes? Not really. There's a lot of storyline that would be lost and, as I said, none of my friends seem to mind leveling a 2nd class to 15 to acquire their job class (it does add a certain "multiclass" flavor to the game).

But yeah, I'd hope they ensure that there's some variety to these three new jobs in their playstyles. In a perfect world, every class would be able to perform at least one support role in addition to their DPS role (ala Wildstar's classes).

[Roris]

For some reason you seem to think that Job = The 5 abilities that you quest for over 20 levels.

To be honest and lore aside, that's pretty much what all jobs are now, granted those 5 new skills complement the non job skills in varying degrees from really well to just kinda there. So yeah, they enhance previous abilities in most cases, like Dragon Kick does for example.

On the lore side, I like how they handled the Rogue to Ninja transition, with the Rogues guild keeping in contact with the Ninjas, it's a nice touch that all the other quests didn't really have aside from the SCH keeping in contact with the MRD guild I guess, which isn't even its class' guild. Considering they already threw out all the previous class storylines from 1.0, I wouldn't really mind if they wrote entirely new stories for 3.0 if they did end up abolishing classes and turning the guilds into job guilds, with the job NPCs joining their ranks and making a sort of followup story on them. Especially if it means getting rid of classes, which really and sadly don't serve much of a purpose after level 30.

A lot of those jobs were technically just recently reintroduced into the world, though some are special cases like PLD were they really never went away. In both cases I think it'd be a good chance to introduce more story progression, which granted we'll still have once Heavensward hits with the new level cap, but it'll be just for 10 levels. If they did remove classes I'd still like a way for people to go through the existing class quests because some are just as good as they were in 1.0, though some are just also kinda there and kinda disappointing, like the Marauder quests.

In the end, all this should really have been done since ARR's launch, especially because they both basically remade most abilities and they also wrote new stories. It was the perfect chance to finally turn classes into jobs but it was a missed opportunity I guess, though probably was also because of how the data was carried over or some other reason.