Possible removal of Classes

[Xlantaa]

I prefer not. I like the syste as it. THe classes should be removed when ARR launched, now is too late. Just keep them.

[Talraen]

Wait... What?!

The first version of the game had that depth of customization in the class system?? Why the hell did they change that? It sounds awesome! We have no choice right now in the way we want to build our own character. Yes, we have materia/gear with diferent stats and we can allocate those by level, but it's an "ilussion" of choice because there is only one viable path to work with. Every class is the same as the other except of the looks of glamour...

They removed it because "customization" is a myth. You could do whatever you wanted for low-end content, but when it came to anything remotely demanding, you had to level almost every job and have the precise set of abilities everyone had determined was the best. Combine that with how many people think leveling (the only time customization was interesting) should go away, and the fate of classes is pretty inevitable. You can change a game, but you can't change the players.

[Wildsprite]

my 2 cents on this matter is this
1. don't remove the classes, make it so the DoW&DoM classes cannot level beyond somewhere around level 34(this is the max sync level for the final class quest and the first job quest)
2. put in clearer instructions how to get your job at the class NPC when you turn in your final class quest(even if this involves having the Job NPC appear)
3. make the job stones consumables, once they are consumed the job can nolonger be reverted to the class(make it so the SMN and SCH stones can be consumed by either the ACN or the other job)

to me having it changed in this way would help in lots of ways

[Wilan]

The nostalgia is strong in this thread.

Customization and all of its possibilities looks cool on paper, but it was terrible in execution. The system wasn't simply "dumbed down" as it was suggested, it was reworked into something actually reliable. Maybe it changed direction, but this new direction went somewhere rather than being all over the place.

Customization in games with any seriously demanding content is often times a myth. What usually happens is somebody figures out the "best" kind of customization and everyone has to conform to that (remember how every tank was expected to wear STR gear?). FFXIV 2.0's approach is to give definite tools in your hands and a challenge in front of you, and call it lazy or dumbed down or whatever you will, but this is more fun than anything you could ever do in 1.0.

Is it too much to ask everyone to consider the matter objectively and not judge based on the embellished idea they have in their memory?

[bass9020]

The nostalgia is strong in this thread.

Im just looking at it from a story, lore, and beginning standpoint. I made the thread to see what other people thought the solution to this would be since classes are pretty rooted in the whole of XIV. I like classes and I like the jobs, I think graduating to a job at 30 is pretty cool. 1.0 had a great class system but it also wasn't built on a trinity system so thats why it worked back then, and if it was it wasn't a strict system like now. The job system now is pretty streamlined, its not perfect and can be a bit boring but I still enjoy it for what it is.

Im trying to understand what getting rid of the foundation of the beginning is really so important to some people. Its not like classes are forced upon us after level 30.

[Kallera]

Is it too much to ask everyone to consider the matter objectively and not judge based on the embellished idea they have in their memory?

Yes.

Because I am not playing an objective game when it and ita fans try to go out of its way to say I, despite playing and enjoying some parts of the game, am still an unwanted relic in the end.

I feel like I cannot win, despite liking both games It feels like I'm forced to either say the devs are always right or that I should unsub. I'm not going to hate the former game to like this one.

[Zhamkyong]

It's not nostalgia (I didn't play it), I just find the actual system a bit boring and straightforward.

Sure, there is always the 'best' build in any kind of customization involved but that doesn't mean any kind or personal preference won't work. If a community comes up with the best option aviable that is an entirely another matter (let's not forget the devs usually make the content with the minimum aviable in mind).

On topic:
Classes should stay as they are, just remove the secondary class required for the job and make a big pop-up on the screen saying "you can now take the [insert job name] quest"... It just makes me sad a dev has to spend time with those messages instead of a player involved with the search of the information, but that is just my opinion. About scholar and summoner... It's a tricky situation.

[Aylis]

Maybe it changed direction

It did..Based on Tanaka's old statements he wanted FFXIV to be different from FFXI. Not so much as to replace XI, but live side by side with it. FFXIV 1.0 launching in basically Alpha stages aside. It was clear he wanted FFXIV to do its own thing. From the start we could tell it wasn't meant to be a standard dungeon crawl MMO game like all the others on the market. That's what made it special and unique. I don't know what would have happened under Tanaka's vision if he had a few more years to let the game cook a little longer. Maybe he was really aiming for a Final Fantasy sandbox type of game. Who knows for certain now. People didn't want different, people wanted FFXI 2.0 and such. Majority rules, so here we are today.

[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.

[NaesakiAshwell]

-snip-

The biggest issue are the other things he put in place like the stamina system, the limited slow regening currency for teleporting, the obtuse crafting system, the market wards were also not very ideal before YoshiP brought in some QoL changes, the way over the top high res textures on everything so the average person could not run the game at all, the maps may have been large and seamless as well but they were a massive cop-out of copy-pasted landscapes, the original blackshroud... *shudder*. Some of these things would have been perfectly fine 10-15 years ago but what 1.0 wanted to be, it was never gonna hold true ground in this day and age.