Classes and Races differentiation

[Silma]

Hi

33 years old French player here. Playing the game for several days only.

As an old Role Playing Game player, starting from table games (not talking about Warhammer), to FF on Famicom, FFXI, and sooo many others, I am very concerned about the differentiation of races and classes.

As it is now, all classes can use any abilities of any other leveled-up class. Worse, there are absolutly no differences between races, should you play a Lalafel, Galka or Hume. In my humble opinion, this is incomprehensible, and i will say it : unacceptable.

Using the own words of Mister Producer Yoshi-P, our characters are adventurers. Well, in any game concepts developped since video-games exist, you adventure the world with your strenght and weakenesses. You choose them, or they are forced to you, but you do always have both. This is the core, the root, of fun and challenge. Leveling 10 totally different classes, just to pick-up a few actions here and there, is not fun nor it is challenging.

The second and last main black point i see to this sytem as it is today is personalization. How are you supposed to personalize your avatar if, when you create your character, it makes no difference at all if you choose Disciple of War or Disciple of Magic ? Hyugorth or Lalafel ? Miqo'te of the Sun or of the Moon ? How are you supposed to identify to it and feel unique ?

Before you start to flame me because i can not understand the inner beauty of this system, i want to add that i didnt have time to read through the 20 Producer's Letters. I wanted to test FFXIV before the end of the F2P period, and your answers here, now, will play an important role in my decision to pay a subscription, or not.

thanks for reading so far

[Brannigan]

They are fleshing out and specializing classes a bit more (and the job system is designed to do this even further), but as for racial differences:

please no just keep it an aesthetic choice

[Volsung]

The armory system has always been advertised as freedom to equip stuff, and it is such. Just like in XI when you leveled a job for a sub job, in this game you level another class for those abilities, its similar but different. An update literally from last friday listed changes on how they want to proceed with the armory system. On top of that specializations known as jobs are coming (in 1.21) . Information on class ability changes will be coming in the future.

As the poster above me said, keep races as an aesthetic choice. There are beginning stat differences at the moment but that is it. Simply stated, because of the freedom of the system, restricting our stats based on a race we choose is a bad move.

As to your other point about feeling different, you lost me. It does make a difference between DoW and DoM. Like DoM's ability to AoE magic. Also cross classed skills suffer a penalty, but this allows you to play different than other players. You can equip aoe weaponskill, single target, weaponskills with debuffs. Whatever you want, and then play that style. With that said, of course there are obvious choices that make your damage higher. But as a melee if you want to be defensive you can equip skills like that, or cures/second wind to be efficient and help your healers.

Also races have differences within them, I'll use miqote as an example:

Keeper of the moon has > fangs, larger bust, longer tail(with colored tip), different color styles available
Seeker of the sun has > no fangs, smaller bust, shorter tail (no colored tip), different color styles available

[Sylvari]

but as for racial differences:

please no just keep it an aesthetic choice

I don't know, I kinda agree with him... Although i don't want the FFXI limits put on a character with Elvaan being the crappy BLM they were... If SE can find a creative way to make each one special in a way without putting a handicap on my stats or abilty to play a class/job then i think it would be great.

[Silma]

The armory system has always been advertised as freedom to equip stuff, and it is such. Just like in XI when you leveled a job for a sub job, in this game you level another class for those abilities, its similar but different. An update literally from last friday listed changes on how they want to proceed with the armory system. On top of that specializations known as jobs are coming (in 1.21) . Information on class ability changes will be coming in the future.

Thanks i'll go read a bit further about Job And armoury system. But i would like Disciples of War be unable to equip Magic skills and vice-versa. Choosing is giving up. But it defines you, and i'd like players and their characters to be more defined.

As to your other point about feeling different, you lost me. It does make a difference between DoW and DoM. Like DoM's ability to AoE magic. Also cross classed skills suffer a penalty, but this allows you to play different than other players.

Ok, these are details unknown to me, i'll take a look into that too. But i'm always thinking in terms of Role Playing (there is Role Playing in MMORPG right?), and to me its difficult to role-play if your abilities always change and classes are blurred.

[Lebannen]

Some differences in traits would be cool, but not actual stats. An example of this is duskwight elezen getting a boost in caves and dungeons, while wildwood elezen gets a boost in forests. This is just an example.

[Volsung]

Thanks i'll go read a bit further about Job And armoury system. But i would like Disciples of War be unable to equip Magic skills and vice-versa. Choosing is giving up. But it defines you, and i'd like players and their characters to be more defined.

Ok I'll explain the jobs thing. (before I get far into this, I want to say more jobs will be coming much further in the future to give different roles of play. At the moment each class will be getting 1 job)

Say you are a person that wants to do nothing but be a classic tank job. Surely you start looking at marauder and gladiator? Well as you said, it is not defined, you get to pick all your abilities and play how you choose, making it a character unique to your own flavor.

Now a step further and you want to do nothing but shield tank like a classic knight in the FF world. The job paladin is coming for gladiator. Paladin will be questable with questable abilities every 5 levels (instead of leveling it) You will switch to gladiator with your sword and shield, then equip paladin on top of your gladiator.

This will give you special tanking abilities that you learned (letting you be a more focused tank) and also prevent you from equipping certain cross class skills. This will pigeonhole you into a spot, which is what I think you are wanting.

Atm these are the jobs that will be coming in 1.21

gladiator > paladin (classic knight in FF world)
Marauder > warrior (no idea how war will play)
Lancer > dragoon (combo crit master)
Archer > bard (support abilities for the party probably)
Pugilist > Monk (perhaps greater DoT)
Thaumaturge > Black mage (focus on nukes and enfeebs)
Conjurer > white mage (backing up the party with heals)

[Silma]

Volsung, i really like what i'm reading. Job and class system makes a whole lot more sense to me now and it eases my concerns.
Thank you.

[Arcell]

The second and last main black point i see to this sytem as it is today is personalization. How are you supposed to personalize your avatar if, when you create your character, it makes no difference at all if you choose Disciple of War or Disciple of Magic ? Hyugorth or Lalafel ? Miqo'te of the Sun or of the Moon ? How are you supposed to identify to it and feel unique ?

Because we don't need the races to feel so unique that people shun others with non-optimal race/class combos. There are stat differences currently, just not enough to make you suck at any given class. Race choice should be an aesthetic one, based on personal preference. Having a system where you can do any class/job on one character needs to give you the same freedom in race choice. There's no point in allowing you to do every class/job if your race is only good at one or two.