Possible removal of Classes

[Ama_Hamada]

It was simply this, most things could be used by anything, like I can play SCH while having fire III.

THM and CNJ used to be able to use shield abilities. It would be like if you leveled PLD now, and unlock sentinel, you could use sentinel on THM and CNJ just as long you had a wand/shield combo. There was a move called phalanx I think, it did not last long but if you took a hit, no matter how strong it was, it healed you not damage you.

Then there was the broken spike spell for THM, shock spikes or something. So say you had a leve to do while noticing it is not possible to clear because level 10 for one leve was not the same difficulty as a level 10 for another, so you really did not know how hard leves where unless you memorized them by name. So you have this leve with the cactus things that are not possible to kill for your level while the special move oneshots you. So what do you do? Use the spikes spell and hope it uses the needle move before the ability wears off. If it works, you just made the monster literally kill itself killing you. It was sooo broken it was hilarious .

[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.

[Zhamkyong]

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.

It was simply this, most things could be used by anything, like I can play SCH while having fire III.

THM and CNJ used to be able to use shield abilities. It would be like if you leveled PLD now, and unlock sentinel, you could use sentinel on THM and CNJ just as long you had a wand/shield combo. There was a move called phalanx I think, it did not last long but if you took a hit, no matter how strong it was, it healed you not damage you.

Then there was the broken spike spell for THM, shock spikes or something. So say you had a leve to do while noticing it is not possible to clear because level 10 for one leve was not the same difficulty as a level 10 for another, so you really did not know how hard leves where unless you memorized them by name. So you have this leve with the cactus things that are not possible to kill for your level while the special move oneshots you. So what do you do? Use the spikes spell and hope it uses the needle move before the ability wears off. If it works, you just made the monster literally kill itself killing you. It was sooo broken it was hilarious .

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...

[Brannigan]

The old class system was trash. On a purely conceptual level, sure, it might have been fun if they had put like two more years into developing it. In practice, you could just equip every overpowered ability and only a couple skills were class locked. Basically the shield skills were pretty good and Thaumaturgy was completely broken overpowered. I'm talking nearly immune to damage while also dealing the most DPS overpowered.

They might have been able to save the system with some heavy reworking of it (starting with stat requirements for equipping skills/traits so you could't just equip all the best stuff), but it wasn't really worth saving.

[Kallera]

Yes I played 1.0

And yes, I would be very disappointed in the removal of classes.

I've always had seen classes as the tie to what we are in the world. The we were an adventurer, a person, and that the whole "Warrior of Light" ordeal was something given to us, we weren't born with this, we had lives before this.

I would have liked to have seen classes reworked into jobs, I know that isn't the vision the devs have had in mind, but then again, I wanted THF in as well.

I'm not sure what I'm expecting with this, just, It feels petty, like nothing we did should have a place anymore. We are not adventurers, we were always special. I don't think I'll ever appreciate it, to hell with it being not final fantasy enough. If they have time to make me feel a little more out of place in their rewriting of lore they can rework the ridiculous mess that is Praetorium.

[Fluffernuff]

If nothing else, I would not mind the removal of secondary class requirements for jobs...

bit of a killjoy to go 30 levels on the class you enjoy for the job you want and getting told you have to play that other job you hate to "progress"..

especially when that second class is a completely different role that adds little to nothing to actually improving that class. Looking at you, PLD. You don't even heal. Stop pretending like that half of a WHM degree means something.

but for removing entirely and starting everything at 30? I feel classes are a necessary evil. Let us start... somewhere. I don't feel the issue with classes is that they are necessarily bad, it's moreso JOBS arent exactly presented to you on a platter, and afaik, they don't explicitly mention them, or their secondary requirments. Certainly not front and center like they made hall of novice... That could certainly be improved on

[Kemonologist]

If nothing else, I would not mind the removal of secondary class requirements for jobs...

Yoshida already said he will remove secondary class requirements form job quests.

[Aylis]

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...

To put it bluntly. Yoshida wanted to dumb the game down to make it popular considering 1.0 in the eyes of making money was a flop. In contrast here is the same fight I did in the last video I linked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQOgtbwZ0-I on the 1.20 update when Yoshida took over and removed all the fun abilities and took away Tanaka's original identity to make FFXIV "mainstream"

[Silverquick]

Removal of classes would give them the opportunity to fix SMN and I think that's the only reason why they would do it. Since if they only have jobs, then it gives them an excuse to re-evaluate and recreate the SMN job with skillsets that focus more on the pet and less of an DoT with pets on the side.

Also think it comes with the mentality that while lv 60 as a class might of be semi viable in a handful of situation, 70+ it's going to become a lot less viable since with each level cap that's another -10 levels of missing said abilities, and no amount of cross-class abilities is going to help you overcome that hurdle.

What do you mean?

I love Summoner as it currently stands, its a great class to play. And I enjoy that side of the SMN a great deal.

That said... if you look at where this system REALLY comes from... you would have to check out a game called Final Fantasy Tactics.... this is where the Class system, and advancement really comes from. You started out with basic classes... then once you had attained the levels in certain classes you unlocked other jobs. So by taking the Whm and Blm to certain levels you unlocked SMN, and had the spells from the lower classes but just added the SMN abilities. And Summoning didn't have any Pets... the actual Summons were just extremely powerful and Flashy Nukes that affected all enemies on the board.

So you'd go with two leaping Dragoons, a white mage, and then a couple SMNs and you could wipe out the whole gameboard fairly quickly and the only things left standing would be the stronger mobs that you finish off with your Dragoons. Or perhaps your crusader.

Summoner was the extension of the Black Mage and White Mage, and there were no Pets, just massive flashy extremely powerful Nukes.

[Zhamkyong]

Yoshida wanted to dumb the game down to make it popular considering 1.0 in the eyes of making money was a flop.

Then I hope they don't dumb it too much than it has been dumbed down. Talking about a Final Fantasy side on with classes in mind I have to admit each has his own identity based on the previous games. Sure, there had been some changes and adaptation in classes and we have (sadly) a linear progression on each class.

Wanting to have 1.0 back it's unlikely to happen, so I just hope they know what they are doing. They can't please everyone, they should just find and apply their own identity.