Giving each job a second spec: would it work?

[Akiza]

Specs would work in this game if they add another spell line to your job.

[elemental10]

They would have to rework how each jobs handle each role.

An easy solution is to abolish the holy trinity, therefore making way for all kinds of classes and jobs. This would require the game to lean more towards mechanics rather than checkpoints. This would also mean freeing up gears (like what Cabal did) into gears that need certain amount of attribute points to be worn or some other system. But it cannot be connected to tank, healer, and DPS specs. This solution will offer personalization but not for long until people figure out the best optimal builds.

A more difficult approach is to keep the holy trinity and implement skill trees and playstyle. You would have differing skill sets for each tree and different playstyle, including tank DPS, healer Tanks, DPS tanks, even DPS healers. This would really open up for a lot of combination of parties. But it requires extensive amount of time to design and implement, and testing. Then, the balance of each class has to be done as well as changing raids and content and set them to another difficulty.

Implementation of sub-classes are viable only if contents would also revolve around possibilities of sub-classes. People are already running things with 2 PLDs, 2 WAR because of the use of Clemency and Equilibrium. There are already Tank Healers. Or healtanks. As they are already Healer DPS. Savage counts Healer DPS as contributing DPS, that's why DPS checks in Savage are a lot higher. As for DPS sub-classes? You can possibly tank with LAN but to a lesser degree.

In conclusion, job personalization would require time and commitment, as well as mountains of testing. It's hard to cater towards everyone at the same time.

[Black_Rose]

i think the current build of the game will never allow for different class specs.
since we're pretty much being pushed into our roles by the strict holy trinity system and the job skills/equipment there is almost no room for customization.

in 1.0 before jobs like paladin etc. came out there were only classes.the good thing was not only could those classes cross-equip every equipment (that was only possible during the very early stages of the game) besides their designated weapons, they also had way different skills and also could share those skills with other classes.
Take Thaumaturge for example.instead of being a fire/ice/thunder mage, he used to be a Umral/Astral mage (or in other words, a mage using dark and light elemental magic) while the conjurer was the one handling the elemental work.
thaumaturge had a big amount of drain/absord skills, aswell as healing magic and various buffs/debuffs.

there has been alot of things that have been simplified over the course of development from 1.0 alpha to 1.23 to 2.0, making the game easier to adopt by new players, but also harder to give players a feel of costumization.
things like elemental weakness, cross class skilling and the huge amount amount of stat choice also often led to the result that some groups have been forced to overuse a class or job in favor of the easy win.
like multiple monks to zerg down the aurum vale boss, multiple black mages or archers for king mog, or lancer in favor of bigger distance to bosses like ifrit.
jobs now have defined roles and all play alike, making none of them better or worse than others so noone will be excluded from specific content.

as much as i loved the freedom 1.0 gave its players i also sometimes really hated it because most players usually want to go the easy route and therefor missuse the system that was given to them.

if you want to find out more about the old skill system, you can check it out here - http://www.final-fantasy-14.org/abilities/main

[ShaneDawn]

DPS WARs, DRKs and SCHs are already a thing.

[Hix]

No point to specs in a game where you can level every class/job on the same character. Instead of trying to make a sword using DPS, they could just make a Samurai or Duelist job or something. If they wanted to give BLM a melee spec, they could just make a Red Mage or a Magic Fencer job instead. I would rather have 2 completely different flavored jobs than 1 job that can do 2 things.

[Shurrikhan]

No point to specs in a game where you can level every class/job on the same character. Instead of trying to make a sword using DPS, they could just make a Samurai or Duelist job or something. If they wanted to give BLM a melee spec, they could just make a Red Mage or a Magic Fencer job instead. I would rather have 2 completely different flavored jobs than 1 job that can do 2 things.

True, but there are some much closer variations that may still be worth pursuing. For instance, what about a DRG who can hold multiple combos' progress simultaneously, allowing for more rotational variance, and where instead of using WT and F&C as combo 4ths they'd simply get Fang, and (separately) Claw, which duplicate damage/effects or spread/enhance them, respectively;
A Monk whose abilities aren't limited to stance, and each stance grants additional effects to and modifies the animations of each;
A Summoner who has closer to half its damage coming from its pet, with increased speed of micro management, and ways to spend Aether to buff/activate abilities from its pet;
Or a BLM who isn't just about getting as much Fire spells off as possible and then returning to Fire as quickly as possible - still the same abilities, same weapons, same range, same role, but very, very different.

[Gilthas]

FFXIV allows you to change jobs very easily. If you're a DPS that wants to tank, then change to WAR/PLD/DRK.

Specs are only needed in games that lock you into a single class, not here where we can easily swap to another job.

[Duelle]

The problem is classes were supposed to follow this design paradigm (look at SMN and SCH) but the devs gave up on that idea. I still say it could work, but it would require the job crystals doing more than just give you extra stats and 5/10 abilities.

In an "infinite money and time" scenario, the devs could change classes so that they level only up to lv30 (in other words, classes would be capped at lv30) and make the jobs take over post-30. This negates the problem they cited for jobs branching off classes (since the devs said that currently buffing SMN would buff SCH in some way).

[Dererk]

The problem is classes were supposed to follow this design paradigm (look at SMN and SCH) but the devs gave up on that idea. I still say it could work, but it would require the job crystals doing more than just give you extra stats and 5/10 abilities.

In an "infinite money and time" scenario, the devs could change classes so that they level only up to lv30 (in other words, classes would be capped at lv30) and make the jobs take over post-30. This negates the problem they cited for jobs branching off classes (since the devs said that currently buffing SMN would buff SCH in some way).

That actually could have worked. Its probly too late now but who knows sadly they'd have to rework everything and it would take a lot of time to rework over 10 jobs.

this person has the only reasonable idea from what iv seen.

[TessaJalloh]

We already have specs, we're adventurers, and we can play any class or role we want. the ultimate tree system.

In all seriousness though, they experimented with this very idea, Summoner and Scholar were their attempt at a specialisation within a class and it turned out to be a terrible decision that they've chosen never to do again, instead introducing a single role for each new weapon type instead.

The game just isn't designed around multi tiered classes. forcing change to shoehorn it in would cause a lot of problems too.