So... 2 Jobs one Class?

[Garlyle]

I don't believe they've said flat out that they will get rid of it.

However, they've made it pretty clear at this point that they're not much of a fan of it at this point. And as nifty as split classes are, I can also see it being something that can drag down a lot of creativity and variety in jobs if they adhered to it.

[KisaiTenshi]

I hope not. Summoner and Scholar shows how much of a disaster it can be.

This was likely because the assumption was that players would play one or the other, not both. The problem is that the SCH doesn't really belong on ACN, because if you look at how the stats change with SCH, the SCH job stone brings the stats only up to the level of CNJ.

Everyone focuses on this, but incorrectly ignores that ALL the Jobs required leveling half of another class first. This is a throwback mechanic first seen in Wizardy a CRPG, that predates Final Fantasy and is in fact was more popular in Japan than in North America.

The correct way of fixing it would have been to simply use the FFI style jobs like they were originally designed (eg inspired from Wizardry) where you start as a class and you upgrade to a more powerful Job. Some of those jobs are a direct descendant of their class (eg White Wizard has White Mage.) Where as in Wizardy, there were 4 starting classes (Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief) that upgraded to Elite classes (Wizard (Cleric+Mage), Samurai (Mage+Fighter), Lord (Fighter+Cleric), Ninja (Can use all gear, but best ungeared, basically a Thief that can use all gear and no magic)) and this is what the cross-class skill mechanic was for.

I think they are trying to move away from the class/job system because it was a relic from 1.0. Which is why the 3 new jobs don't have classes.

Nah, if they move away from it, it's too much like "every MMORPG" and less like Final Fantasy. The jobs give you those extra skills and stats, they aren't just a continuation of the base class.

They are probably making the three new Jobs something more like "Elite Jobs" in the Wizardry sense, where you need to have at least one class at level 30 and simply having any class at level 30 unlocks them using new gear that starts at level 1 (30.) eg You enter the "Astrologian" guild in the V3 area and the NPC will go "I see you are a healer, would you like to join the ASTROLOGIAN guild?" , which would then unlock new gear that you as a SCH or WHM can equip. At that point at level 30+ would also unlock a quest somewhere else for the job stone.

For DRK, it seems pretty logical to follow the same rule, new gear that they can equip and a new level 30 stone quest somewhere else. For the DPS to unlock the machinist... seems more like one would just wander into some "machinist garage" as a DPS and have a conversation like "Hey, I see you like to break things too, want to learn how to fix stuff you break?"

All in all, Final Fantasy is strongly story-based. It would not be fun to simply be handed new content and not have to work for it. If the dev's say you can't create new characters in these new jobs, then there must be a storyline reason for it.

[Kotemon]

I doubt it, like others said Summoner and Scholar was a good example. Even the base class had int boosts and if you wanted to be a healer you had to change everything into mind and vice versa. In-fact it looks like it was to be the base class for Summoner instead. However on a side note scholar sounds like it sould have been the base class for Astrologian or vice versa. In my opinion the Sch/Smn thing would have been fixed if they had a skill that swapped mind and int stats directly. Then you could go full int for summoner then activate that shared ability to swap int totals with mind when you change to Sch and vise-versa. For example; 515 int and 375 Mnd would become; 375 int 515 Mnd. Sch would have all the healing effect boosts and summoner would have all the mage DD boosts. While Arcanist would be have the shared middle of the road stats and abilities. That would make the current setup more functional to change between the two. Otherwise it would have been more of a base class for red mage with that 50/50 stat split.

[Averax]

SMN and SCH reminds me of two people who are super-glued together, and have to try to achieve things despite being glued together..

[aerialrave]

They messed up big time with SMN/SCH. These are my least favorite combat classes and I've been putting off leveling them.

At first look, it seems like it would be a shame to do away with a fork/tree system that branches out, because it would seem like you miss out on opportunities of having similar but different jobs with a base class to tie them together.
But in reality when you think about it, you can just have similar jobs exist without having to tie them together with a base class at all, and just keep them completely separate. There would be nothing wrong with that.

An example would be the upcoming Machinist. At first glance It would make sense to perhaps tie it together with possible future classes such as Musketeer and Corsair. But really if you had all 3 of those as completely seperate jobs without anything tying them together no matter how similar they are... I don't see anything wrong with that at all. Some people might complain that it would be useless to have them exist if they're too similar, but I don't think I would actually mind it.