The problem with WoW-type raid-focused gameplay.

[Duelle]

1.0 somewhat tried this when jobs first came out, they were advertised as only being necessary when doing full party endgame content and that classes were supposed to stay relevant when doing any other activity (low man / solo).

This is because the 1.0 system was incomplete when implemented. Looking at how the armoury system worked pre-Yoshida, chances are jobs were going to enter the picture but in a similar fashion to how the Secret World did it (which uses a system almost identical to 1.0's armoury); by setting certain actions and traits, you became that job. Granted, TSW's meta pretty much laughs at job builds since said builds are not optimal.

The same goes for items like resist sets etc, the question becomes does it help kill the boss faster? if it doesn't then it becomes instantly worthless.

Not necessarily. Old WoW raids were VERY reliant on resistances, and raid survival hinged on resistance auras from certain classes, gear with the appropriate resistance, resistance potions, and any buffs from other parts of the game that would last long enough to get you through that boss. Of course, the issue the became forcing encounters that required resistances, which is why those were eventually phased out.

I'm not sure you are qualified to say what other people wanted or did not want from FFXIV 1.0. From my personal experience, the concepts employed by the classes were interesting, but the rest of the game just sucked. The classes were just unrefined. It was released in alpha state.

There was a poll after Yoshida took over, and the general consensus was that people wanted classic Final Fantasy jobs instead of classes like Gladiator and Marauder and so on.

Well this is simply untrue. The number of people screaming at the Bards who want to be pure dps proves that this is untrue. Many, many people want Bard to be 100% support.

And you're still outnumbered by the people playing tanks, healers and DPS. There's a reason the princess BRD and princess RDM were "things", and why I'd gladly see BRD focus on DPS to prevent that mess from happening again.

[AnnietheCat]

Like I said, I don't /want/ to play a pure support class. I was responding to the notion that those classes are undesirable, when a very large player base wants to see it implemented. Yes, support players would always be outnumbered, but there would be a need for players who choose those jobs. Again, I hate the thought of a pure support class, but being a hybrid class is annoying and I would much rather have a choice of not being a tp/mp battery without giving up my physical ranged dps.

[Duelle]

Again, I hate the thought of a pure support class, but being a hybrid class is annoying and I would much rather have a choice of not being a tp/mp battery without giving up my physical ranged dps.

I agree. The funny thing is that there doesn't need to be this weird spot for classes with utility. The line has been heavily blurred in this expansion (I never counted on them giving group buffs to a healer job, for example) to the point penalties aren't really needed, IMO. Since we're talking BRD now, I'd go back to my Invocation suggestion, where instead of spending their entire MP bar on a song they can activate a song, hit Invocation and "consume" the song effect for a MP/TP replenish buff that lasts something like 24 seconds. This way you still provide TP/MP regen without giving you this DPS downtime, but at a shorter duration than if you'd just let the song effect consume your MP bar.

[Bishop81]

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Open world content as it currently stands doesn't have enough depth to warrant adding considerations for classes,

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If open world has no meaning, and classes aren't going to be used in group content anyway, why add abilities that players will almost never use? That time would be better spent adding more abilities / actions to jobs with the understanding that they will see usage in ALL content and not just a fraction of it.

Sadly that's how it will be viewed, and while i personally love flavor skills as much as the next person i would still rather them flesh out jobs as opposed to trying to go back and retouch classes.

That needs to be fixed. Seriously, not everyone is super hard up on the challenge of raiding.

As I said earlier, I play for the atmosphere and to explore a fantasy world.

This is still dependent on how raids are designed.

Raid encounters are probably designed the same way they are in WoW.

The developers build the encounter around existing Job abilities. They remove anything if it doesn't play well with specific Jobs. Damage and mechanics are designed to be beatable by existing Job abilities and such that each Job is as close as possible performance-wise.

As you can imagine, the more Jobs (and Job variations; which are from their point of view pretty much separate Jobs), the more they have to test the raid encounters against, the more simulations they have to run.

[Sapphic]

Like I said, I don't /want/ to play a pure support class. I was responding to the notion that those classes are undesirable, when a very large player base wants to see it implemented. Yes, support players would always be outnumbered, but there would be a need for players who choose those jobs. Again, I hate the thought of a pure support class, but being a hybrid class is annoying and I would much rather have a choice of not being a tp/mp battery without giving up my physical ranged dps.

Think you are confusing "large player base" with "vocal minority" on the forums. Also the argument is between those who use their support skills when needed and those who don't.