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

[QiLymePye]

I would rather see them just abandon the classes. Kepp the ones we have now, but I would rather them just keep coming up with and adding new jobs. It would be easier than trying to come up with what combines with what to make what. And the problem is if you link a class to a job, you water down both. What if there were no jobs, and CNJ was just WHM and THM was just BLM, etc. We could have had better and different skills for each job instead of trying to add skills from a class to a job. I mean we already can switch jobs on the fly, why would i need to add a cross skill anyways? Makes the jobs more diverse and different jobs for different people. Instead of just lvling up a class just so you can get a skill from it, I would rather them give you weapons and armor with skills to learn.

[Teslo]

Second, changing the cross-class system into a cross-skill system would require a lot of recoding and rebalancing work that the dev-team may not have time for. It may actually be a bit more beneficial if that'd let them give us more options for bringing skills over to other classes, but when compared to the work it requires...I'd rather have new content, not remade content.

What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that the "Dev Team" isn't just a single entity that works on one thing at a time. You've got the battle systems teams, the design teams (SSSSS... Plural! ;P), the Item/Equipment teams, the lore teams, the content teams, etc etc etc. While there is a group of teams constantly working on updates and keeping current content interesting, there's another whole set of teams working on the next expansion, and with a game as big as WoW (And likely FFXIV if it keeps going...) the expansion after that, too. What you often see is a group working on the expansion, and when that expansion hits they're the "Primary" team that adds content during that expansion while the previous team goes ahead and starts on the next expansion in the queue.

For a big update like the class/job revamp, Yoshi tells the appropriate expansion team, "We want to change the way this feature works in the game. Start working on that for your expansion." In this way the expansion team can add extra manpower to devote to that task so they don't lose progress on things like content, new jobs, new races, new zones, etc.

Sorry for the wall of text, but once I started I just couldn't stop, heh.

Don't apologize for having something to say. :P Gods know I've done the same thing in almost every response I've made. :P

[Fleur]

I kinda figured that battle classes (not including DoH/DoL here) are relics of a past time, that is, 1.0. Many players were not happy with the classes, they wanted more classic FF classes and improved class identity. So the devs just sorta added jobs on top of the existing class system, since I don't think they could have easily renamed everything and changed all the associated quests. I can see why it was a good idea for 1.0, but it does seem needlessly complicated now.

I sort of wish that they'd just done away with the whole classes/jobs distinction for 2.0, when they were re-doing everything anyway. I don't particularly want to see classes removed now, though if they do get around to revamping classes and/or jobs, IMHO they will have to be very careful with cross class abilities. Not gonna lie, I miss my 1.0 "battle mage", but I'm pretty sure the devs don't want anything like that running around the game. xD

[FallenArisen0990]

What SE can do is separate the Classes an Jobs. Make the Classes into "Jobs" while still having the other Jobs. For example, when you get ROG to 30, you need it at lv 30 and a lv 15 PUG. When you do the Quest to unlock NIN, it is now separate rather than using the jewel to change into the job. Ninja starts at lv 1 but learns all the skills from ROG, (it could be a temporary thing til they have time to change the name and animations but not the effect). Since you got your skill from the lv 15 and 30 quest, it gets those as well. They could buff up the Classes to be on par with the Jobs. They could keep their 10 cross abilities slots or if they want, add 5 new abilities as they lv to 50. That way nothing has to be removed and each Class and Job keep their Lore rather than Classes becoming nonexistent past 30. They could add new quests as well so it's not jarring to be lv 1 to 30 / 30 to 50 with no class/job quests.

[DutchRyker]

1.0 had classes then jobs was added. 2.0 is a remake of 1.0 "A Realm Reborn". Heavensward with 3 new jobs with no classes I think its great and tells me that this is SE and Yoshi P. saying we remade the game (2.0) and that Heavensward is the true Final Fantasy XIV Online moving forward.

[Sadana]

I guess I'm okay with the whole 'no base class' thing from a gameplay aspect... It's not like knowing which classes to level and which cross class skills to pick is exactly intuitive.

Lore wise though...if they take away the THM story line, I would cry. ; ;
You can't really merge the THM and BLM story lines (or many of the classes/jobs stories, for that matter) and have it make any sense.

[Limecat]

At this point it would even be easy to lore-ify their removal(and SE lurves it some lore). Originally, unlocking a job was all about the player rediscovering ancient, forgotten arts related to their (relatively)mundane class or becoming privy to ones held only by a select few in the current era. At this point though you've got thousands of players who've figured all this stuff out. Going into 3.X, they could have all the guilds switch directly to the job, with NPCs there remarking how they used to teach a much more basic discipline but thanks to the efforts of adventurers, techniques lost to the sands of time are now recovered for all.

[MageBlack]

Advanced Jobs!

[Nalien]

Removing existing Classes at this point would just be a waste of time, since they'd have to rewrite their entire storyline for Classes/Jobs to accommodate players being Dragoon from Lv1 instead. It's a lot of extra work for no real gain at all.

The only change they should make to Classes is merging them all into a Freelancer style Job, since that can retain all the existing lore and potentially be viable at endgame if they go with the classic "Gets stronger the more you master" trait the Job has always had. I can't even imagine it would be too hard to implement, considering a Freelancer Job would effectively just be 1.0s Physical/Skill level system.