How can they add more classes and make them unique and have their own flavor?

[Saccharin]

EDIT: I remember Warhammer Online having a melee healer, basicly the more dps the healer does, the more heals the group gets.

And what healer would every raid take...

[LadyVal]

What SE needs to do is make those classes unique, but not so unique that makes players dump their own class and only play the new ones.

And on the opposite side of the coin, they have to make all classes simple enough that nobody is going to go "That is too obscure/complicated, I'm not going to touch it."

I would love to see a chemist-style healer, where your "moves" are basic ingredients or tools, and you mix and match them for different effects. I think along the lines of, your basic heal would be "Salve" and shortly after you get "Salve II." You also get a basic AoE, "Healing Rain," and an esuna, "Remedy." So you get the option to mix every 15s. You use mix, and you mix your "Salve" and "Remedy," and then you have an esuna that also heals a slight amount. Likewise, you use "Healing Rain" with "Remedy" and your AoE heal might not be as strong, but it esunas everybody in range. And then obviously as you level up you learn different recipes, effectively unlocking new moves, but keeps the amount of combinations specific enough that you don't have to memorize a huge list of abilities.

I also like the idea of a dancer controlling the positions on a battlefield somewhat. They could have styles, so that everyone within range of them gets a tp or mp regen. The range would be smaller than normal but more effective than most buffs we have. They could even create static AoEs, so make a bubble that lasts 20 sec and everyone inside of it gets a spell speed/skill speed boost. I also would like them to make a system where, if a dancer successfully dodges an attack, they get strength boost for 10 sec. Or even thinking along the lines of an AST, if they got a move that required them to become stationary but while in that stance, all heals on them spread to those around them, at a lowered potency. Just a class that can do DPS but is overall involved with other party members more, not so much like the design we have now where everyone is essentially a lone wolf in design, partied with other lone wolves. (And I mean this in a way where a dancer would be optimized and flourish in a party but would not struggle with solo quests and content.)

I think we can all agree on one thing though: I hope they never add more jobs based off of current classes, because they just won't diversify the jobs enough, and I worry that more jobs will become like SCH and SMN were in 2.x.

[Yasuhiro]

I'd like to see jobs like Blue Mage and Time Mage but knowing this game follows the holy trinity down to a T then they'd either have make them watered down versions of their other game counterparts wouldn't it be nice to have a raid like this?
- hmmm this boss attacks pretty fast, let's bring a Time Mage so they can cast haste on the healers so they can keep up.
- This boss is vulnerable to status effects maybe a Blue Mage can cast bad breath on it
Then again XIV is a special snowflake game can't have interesting things.

[Shurrikhan]

How?

Honestly, by not being so stingy about putting in truly new mechanics, and by building the job as they feel it should be first, and balancing it after. Identity, fun, and balance, in that order. Well, the first two interchangeably, I suppose. Whatever feels like the job, in a fun way. Then finally balance.

Mechanically-speaking all we got with 3.0 were literally proc guarantee, RNG combo-finishers, RNG buffs, sacrifice-able RNG buffs, buffable RNG buffs, duration-consuming abilities, and a player-created doom state. That's mechanically all it had to offer. Which is why I have to assume a quizzical face briefly when people call DRK and MCH "different" from their lineup. They have their differences, and after mastery may come to feel very different, but on paper (and almost certainly in code) they are really quite similar to their precedent jobs... and the same, precedent design philosophy that would rather copy-paste their way to parity than focus on balancing after having fully developed more original identities. It's also why I can't understand why the coding of all things would be an issue, despite that being the alleged reason tossed about on these forums. The art resources seem costly enough, or perhaps even the (often none too well received) job quests, but to say that the coding itself would take up that much time, when almost every bit of it already exists in game... I can't really fathom the idea.

[Veerne]

The question is, does every job have to be unique? Is it not enough to just have different flavors of the same idea so each player can pick the one they like? You could have to extremely similar classes but by tweaking the animations and overall look of the jobs you can make two completely different flavors. Player A may prefer the one that casts fire spells and wields a mace while Player B may prefer the other flavor with ice spells and an axe.

[Alahra]

The current class design framework suggests a certain theoretical design space in which they can create new classes that are unique even before you get into particularly unique mechanics (like Mudra for instance).

• We don't have a melee casting class, which is a role that could be filled by Red Mage, Rune Fencer/Knight, or Blue Mage.
• We don't have a ranged physical class in the same "DPS tier" as Black Mage and Summoner. Something like this could work for Ranger or Gunner—these two may be unlikely given the existence of Bard and Machinist though).
• On the flip side, we also don't have a caster in the BRD/MCH "support DPS" role, though one could argue that the two of them now do themselves since they have cast times of their own. Geomancer might fill this role following their FFXI implementation, which was mostly about party buffs.
• Something like Dancer might work as a melee "support DPS," too.
• We don't have a Weaponskill class whose combos are completely freeform, by which I mean they can do their basic combo abilities in any order, producing different effects (think something like Mudra but with Weaponskills instead). This would be a way to differentiate Samurai from the other three melee.
• As others have mentioned, there's currently no class that manipulates TP the way that Black Mage manipulates MP (it wouldn't need to be an exact replica, of course, and shouldn't be, but the idea of a physical class with unlimited resources would still be somewhat unique). This might also be something for Samurai, given their focus on TP manipulation in FFXI.

Now, those are just ideas that fill some basic concepts that should be theoretically possible given the present design space. Some of them could be seen as reshuffling existing concepts (melee+caster, for instance) but that's generally what class design in RPGs is anyway. I would honestly say that they've covered a lot of mechanical ground in the present classes, though so in terms of innovative mechanics, I'm not sure where they might go.

We've seen defensive reactionary procs (Shield Swipe, Low Blow/Reprisal), offensive reactionary procs (Bloodletter, Firestarter/Thundercloud), resource manipulation (BLM and DRK), elemental cycling (Black Mage again), pets (SMN/SCH), limited "stack" resources (Aetherflow/Ammunition), slow-stack build to unleash something powerful (Wrath/Abandon), multiple "maintenance buffs" (Greased Lightning, Huton, Blood of the Dragon), high output healing (WHM) vs. barrier healing (SCH), and so on. Most of these sorts of things have analogues in other GCD-based themepark MMOs.

There are a few things we haven't really seen, such as a healer more focused on HoTs (such as WoW's restoration druid) or a healer focused on "spreads" (such as WoW's mistweaver monk). We've also not seen a healer that has "healing combos," though we have seen some healing procs.

So I would say that, in general, we're probably going to see most new classes be made unique through flavor and novel combinations of various party roles more than anything else. But the developers are also surely creative (I never would have predicted something like the Mudra system, for instance), so they could surprise us.

[dinnertime]

NIN was probably the best of the 4, but from my perspective as someone who generally dislikes melee classes, I don't see a huge difference between DRG MNK and NIN.

Well, they do have some differences between each other.

MNK does highest damage out of the 3 melees. They have 3 utilities I think but One Ilm Punch it is not that useful and a couple more could be done by another job. MNK is notable for having a lot of specific positions for their weaponskills and that the skills depend on the form you are on and not what weaponskill you used previously that chains to another to make a combo. The weaponskill would be blacked out if you aren't on the correct form, so there's less chance of messing up your rotation from having your hands slip and pressing the wrong button.

DRG has seen relevance in challenging content with Battle Litany and Disembowel, it's arguably the 2nd highest melee DPS. Jumps are also powerful ranged damage.

NIN is pretty unique out of the three because of Mudras. It has the most useful utilities out of the other melees as well. I don't see the enmity-controlling abilities useful, but still handy. I'd say NIN does the weakest damage though.

[Kaurie]

Well, they do have some differences between each other.

MNK does highest damage out of the 3 melees. They have 3 utilities I think but One Ilm Punch it is not that useful and a couple more could be done by another job. MNK is notable for having a lot of specific positions for their weaponskills and that the skills depend on the form you are on and not what weaponskill you used previously. The weaponskill would be blacked out if you aren't on the correct form, so there's less chance of messing up your rotation from having your hands slip and pressing the wrong button.

DRG has seen relevance in challenging content with Battle Litany and Disembowel, it's arguably the 2nd highest melee DPS. Jumps are also powerful ranged damage.

NIN is pretty unique out of the three because of Mudras. It has the most useful utilities out of the other melees as well. I don't see the enmity-controlling abilities useful, but still handy. I'd say NIN does the weakest damage though.

Yeah, I mean I know they have a few differences, but they are ultimately the same in my eyes. Like NIN to MNK to DRG is more similar than WAR to PLD, SCH to WHM or BLM to SMN - at least from my perspective.

[dinnertime]

Yeah, I mean I know they have a few differences, but they are ultimately the same in my eyes. Like NIN to MNK to DRG is more similar than WAR to PLD, SCH to WHM or BLM to SMN - at least from my perspective.

Yeah, I can see how they seem similar to you since the other pairs you've mentioned have entirely different gameplay when compared, but pretty much the differences between the melee DPS are what kind of damage they do (NIN is slashing, MNK is blunt and DRG is piercing) and the ones I've pointed out. That at least makes them pretty different to my eyes though.

[Alahra]

Yeah, I mean I know they have a few differences, but they are ultimately the same in my eyes. Like NIN to MNK to DRG is more similar than WAR to PLD, SCH to WHM or BLM to SMN - at least from my perspective.

Since you don't like (and I assume don't play) melee, the differences probably aren't as apparent "from the outside."

In addition to their damage types and their position on the DPS "totem pole," each class's combo systems are different, and their priority chains are of vastly different lengths (MNK's is the shortest, NIN's is in the middle, and DRG's is the longest). Each one has a varying level of utility, as well (with NIN being the highest, with proportionately lower personal DPS to accommodate that, and MNK having the least, and the highest personal DPS). Each one handles its maintenance buff (GL, Huton, BotD) differently as well, with DRG even have random/proc elements in their rotations, which NIN and MNK don't have. They also emphasize different approaches to DPS—MNK is all about long periods of sustained DPS growth, DRG is about punctuated burst, and NIN is more about increasing raid DPS for specific moments. The way they generally interact with positionals is also fairly different, with MNK requiring far more movement than either NIN or DRG, and NIN requiring less than DRG.

They play fairly differently in practice. That makes it harder to transfer the muscle memory from one melee to another, which is part of why you don't see a lot of players that play more than one melee seriously, but players who can play multiple healers or multiple tanks well, for instance—using whichever is better for a given encounter—are more common. Of course, that the roles share gear for the others helps, but if you couldn't transfer your basic knowledge from one to the other, it wouldn't be as easy to switch for the others, either—after all, DRG and MNK share accessories, which reduces the barrier for entry, but the classes are distinct enough that players who play both of them equally are fairly rare.

That isn't to say that, for instance, WHM and SCH are overly similar, either, only that they share a core set of abilities in common (with Cure/Physick pairing, Cure II and Adloquium pairing, and so on). The melee don't really have much that's like that, with the only real overlap being a gap closer and a stun, but the differences between their comparable abilities here are generally greater than those between the shared abilities that the tanks and healers have.