Possible removal of Classes

[MistakeNot]

It might be more easier to show you then explain ^.^ here's a very old video I made from those days that shows roughly how it worked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUR-lPpEbsU Basically nearly every skill for every class was up for grabs as a cross class action. Want to be a mage with tank skills? It could be done, want to be an archer healer? It could be done. Players had 10 cross class abilities they could take at max level and each skill had a set number of allocation points. The more higher level the skill, the more points it costed to put it in your cross class ability bar. When you leveled up, you got a number of points you could use to spend on whatever cross class skill you wanted from all the classes you unlocked.

That actually sounds far more fun than the current system.
One of my pet peeves with the current system is how disconnected from each other the classes/jobs are. By this I mean that when you switch from one class/job to another EVERYTHING changes - your levels in one have no effect at all on your abilities in another. (Except for cross-class skills. IMO they should do more cross-class stuff instead of less.)

Add to this the lack of meaningful choices when developing a character: For each class/way there is only one good way of distributing the bonus points; At any given level there is a certain set of Best-in-Slot items, meaning that there is only one "right" way of equipping your character, and any other choice is making the character worse.
The only real exception to this is the cross-class system - which they are supposedly moving away from.
Result will be that characters will be (and already mostly are) just generic, interchangable "Class/Job" characters - everything about them can be described by just their Class/Job, level, and item level.

The current Class/Job system design is one of the least good parts of this game, and they are moving in the wrong direction with it.

[JunseiKei]

Classes honestly just feel like a relic from 1.0 while providing a [lore] reason why every NPC isn't a WHM. For the most part, jobs are only accessed by special/gifted individuals. I don't think they'll really ever get rid of classes because of this, only that no new classes will ever be made.

It's literally just a name. A name that isn't being honored, even; I sure wish that summoner actually got to summon stuff, that scholars had black magic beyond Blizzard II and that bards were singers first instead of arrow flingers.

It's been stated before that every FF game as their own take/ iteration of these occupations. A summoner in FFXIV is just as much as Yuna is a summoner in FFX.

[BigRed5392]

me and my g/f have no issue with this. if you want to start @ lvl 1, potd does just that. imo they should let ppl unlock potd @ lvl 1 since you can go in there @ lvl 1 after you do the lvl 17 quest.

[Felis]

me and my g/f have no issue with this. if you want to start @ lvl 1, potd does just that. imo they should let ppl unlock potd @ lvl 1 since you can go in there @ lvl 1 after you do the lvl 17 quest.

You can't go to the Black Shroud as level 1 if you start in Limsa

Also keep the DoH and DoL classes, don't remove them

[Duelle]

There's two ways of doing this.

1) Set a strict Class => Job progression: This would require level capping Classes to lv30. Meaning you cannot level a class past the lv30 cap, and can only continue leveling to 50 by unlocking the job. Once you unlock the job, that class ceases to exist and instead becomes the job (example: If you level Pugilist to 30 and do the quest to unlock Monk, swapping weapons will not make you a Pugilist, but a Monk instead; the job stones would be moved from the Armoury tabs to the Key Items tab, and would no longer need to be equipped).

2) Remove classes entirely: This would require removing all class quests and changing the involved locations. So the Gladiator's Guild would cease to exist, and become something like a training academy for prospective Brass Blades and Sultansworn. The Marauder Guild would crease to exist and become a Warrior training school. And so on. You'd also have to change the current job quests to reflect this. it's considerably more work.

[NaesakiAshwell]

1) Set a strict Class => Job progression: This would require level capping Classes to lv30. Meaning you cannot level a class past the lv30 cap, and can only continue leveling to 50 by unlocking the job. Once you unlock the job, that class ceases to exist and instead becomes the job (example: If you level Pugilist to 30 and do the quest to unlock Monk, swapping weapons will not make you a Pugilist, but a Monk instead; the job stones would be moved from the Armoury tabs to the Key Items tab, and would no longer need to be equipped).

This sounds like the ideal solution to me, and then when you look at the class page on your character info. When you get the job of the class, its name will change accordingly. It wouldn't discount the storyline you've done as that class, since it can still happily exist, but once you unlock the job, the class is gone from a game play perspective as you have advanced beyond it.

[Berethos]

There's two ways of doing this.

1) Set a strict Class => Job progression: This would require level capping Classes to lv30. Meaning you cannot level a class past the lv30 cap, and can only continue leveling to 50 by unlocking the job. Once you unlock the job, that class ceases to exist and instead becomes the job (example: If you level Pugilist to 30 and do the quest to unlock Monk, swapping weapons will not make you a Pugilist, but a Monk instead; the job stones would be moved from the Armoury tabs to the Key Items tab, and would no longer need to be equipped).

With the upcoming removal of requiring a second class at 15 to unlock jobs, they are arguably well on their way to this kind of solution.

[Cabalabob]

I want to see classes gone because they give a false first impression of the game. They're a relic from 1.0 when the game was more about freedom to build your own job. That vision doesn't sit well with the game's new direction of linear progression. There is only one right way to power up your character, 1 stat, 1 job, 0 customisation. There's no reason to have stat allocation points or the ability to mix and match cross class skills, everything about classes is pointless.

They kept them around for the relaunch because initially they wanted to make them work. (They wanted to have classes with branching jobs like smn and sch off arcanist, drk was originally going to branch off gladiator with a 2 handed gladiators arm). But then they realised the balancing nightmare this entailed. The only reason they keep them around still is because it's easier than reworking the entire game up to level 30.

[Ama_Hamada]

the classes do not fit with the current game. I would like to see them fixed in some way where it be like "Oh i need be on cnj for this and not whm"

The turn to level 30 then forget is not something I like seeing. I also do not like seeing how classes get weaker and weaker as the level cap raises. This is a big issue with deep dungeon. I wish they do something about the class issue and split SCH from SMN.

I am tried of not having leeches when I level sync!!!!!

[loreleidiangelo]

From a storyline standpoint, I liked the classes and how they showcased an evolution of your character when you finally graduated from "adventurer preschool" to full-fledged job status. From a game design perspective though they're pretty nightmarish and it's clear that the original intention of their existence (branching jobs like SCH/SMN) led to so many balance issues that the devs have decided it's better to scrap the whole thing outright rather than continue down that rabbit hole. it still honestly makes me a little salty that so many SCH balance issues stem from sharing ACN as a base with SMN, so I'll be happy if the devs actually decide to rework those two at some point to make individual tuning easier.