Why the class system isn't bad, feat. Ranger

[Raggnar_Rokk]

Oh I didn't know you could bypass the limit, thanks for pointing that out. Happy reading ^^

[AquaU]

It's me


I couldn't figure out how to message you soooooo imma just leech off this thread

[Raggnar_Rokk]

My final words
I love the Final Fantasy series, I love Final Fantasy XIV, and because I do I can't stay silent anymore. 'Cause when you love something, or someone, you want it to become the very best it could be. I've said my final word on this topic, and should I have any factual errors about this, feel free to point it out to me. And if you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Hopefully we can have a word from Square Enix in response to this!

So long, friend, and see you at Moogle

[dragonseth07]

The playerbase has shown it's too stupid to handle a system as complicated as what we have now. The number of times I see a level 50 Lancer or a DRK without Provoke make me agree with the dev team on this.

[Raggnar_Rokk]

The playerbase has shown it's too stupid to handle a system as complicated as what we have now. The number of times I see a level 50 Lancer or a DRK without Provoke make me agree with the dev team on this.

Interesting. From my own experience I've never seen any base class at lv50, or seen a DRK without provoke etc. Maybe I'm just lucky.
In any case I don't want the game to suffer just so that a selected few players get carried without actually learning the game. For all I know the community in this game is more than willing to help newcomers git gud.

[Myrian]

While I'm not strictly opposed to the idea of branching jobs, I don't think keeping the current system does more good than harm. Apart from the stats issue of Arcanist and misconceptions on jobs, the team seems hesitant to add jobs that will feel too similar to each other. While Bard still uses a bow, Ranger is likely not an option. Balancing is also an issue, as a change to anything *but* the shared class skills risks an imbalance.

Conceptually, some of these things may seem like easy fixes, but keep in mind that the current game is using a bedrock of spaghetti code inherited from 1.0 that causes oddities and issues that linger to this day. This makes everything the programmers do more of a hassle than it otherwise might be.

[Shurrikhan]

The playerbase has shown it's too stupid to handle a system as complicated as what we have now. The number of times I see a level 50 Lancer or a DRK without Provoke make me agree with the dev team on this.

There's a difference, though, between being "stupid" and being expectant that when an entire system has been purposely made obsolete, that it would be stated as such and its bypass be facilitated. Let's say from an initial road there's a straight path and an off-shoot. The straight is flooded, washed out, and eventually scarcely paved, but by all appearances at its start appears to be the main highway. The off-shoot is newer, but, being an off-shoot, doesn't necessarily seem to be going in the same route as the road you've been taking for the whole first half of your journey. Would anyone who stays to the same road automatically be an idiot?

This is no Monty Hall issue, nor is it necessarily an issue of laziness. Whereas most MMOs already show in greyed out tooltips nonetheless able to be expanded on mouseover every ability to come, and will frequently highlight later stages upon unlocking a dependency (e.g. a job skill for you level, to be gained from its quest), or puts ability acquisition into the hands of the players alongside supportive strategies for prioritization, this game does little to reveal what a player stands to gain. One would normally also suppose that if a class is given as an option, rather than being stuck at level 30 until acquiring X job, that the class itself is a balanced and viable option, even if niche. Even in the Yoshi era of 1.x, I could main-tank Ifrit Ex as a Pugilist, trading dps for added evasion and enmity, while Monk capped out at approximately Darkhold tanking. But now? The last time there was any reason to use a class in ARR+ was Garuda Ex farms, to handle the spiny plume. It makes little sense to leave something so inviable. So why would one intuit that?

Uncommunicative? Certainly. Misinformed? Absolutely. But stupid?

While I'm not strictly opposed to the idea of branching jobs, I don't think keeping the current system does more good than harm. Apart from the stats issue of Arcanist and misconceptions on jobs, the team seems hesitant to add jobs that will feel too similar to each other. While Bard still uses a bow, Ranger is likely not an option. Balancing is also an issue, as a change to anything *but* the shared class skills risks an imbalance.

And yet we already have ways of varying effects based on whether the character is PvPing. Why would it then be so impossible to vary a class skill based on its job? Maybe, somehow, the code is an issue—maybe even enough to explain why we still don't have job bonus stats to override class stat bonuses, to SMN and SCH's detriment even today—but the design philosophy cannot be the reason.

And wouldn't the shared class skills, unless adjusted differently per branch job, be the worst culprit? By adjusting the utilities of effectiveness of one Arcanist skill to balance SCH generally or among heals, they may in turn create a new imbalance in favor of SMN among dps. Even if the effectiveness remains the same, one job may utilize the shared skills differently, leading to a higher effective output.

Conceptually, some of these things may seem like easy fixes, but keep in mind that the current game is using a bedrock of spaghetti code inherited from 1.0 that causes oddities and issues that linger to this day. This makes everything the programmers do more of a hassle than it otherwise might be.

It isn't, though. Yoshida already consumed that excuse in explaining why ARR had to be as barebone as it was — they were rewriting all that "spaghetti" code. The only debilitating or antiquated code to remain was what he introduced in 1.2, when adding combos.

[SyzzleSpark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOHZBr4u7yk - look at these morons. Go do your lvl 30 quest scrubs. /s

[Neela]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOHZBr4u7yk - look at these morons. Go do your lvl 30 quest scrubs. /s

u know that this is just a challenge?... we also do it on our server time by time farming stuff as first cls just to give the bordemness a little spin... have you ever tried it yourself - using all the xskills is just a lot of fun though? .____.

[Acidblood]

The Bard is a relatively easy example (and would Ranger really feel that different to a Bard?), but there are plenty of harder ones... Monk and Black Mage for example both have their primary mechanics built into their class (Stances / Greased Lightning and Astral Fire / Umbra Ice respectively), and as such it would be very hard to create new jobs from these classes and make them feel different without outright breaking these mechanics (or stripping the mechanics out of the classes and giving them only to the Jobs, which would make the classes painfully boring.. like Lancer).

And then there is the issue of balance; it is one thing to create 22 abilities, it is another to create 22 abilities that are well balanced and designed for 2 (or more) jobs to build on them... Summoner and Scholar being a good example of some issues; e.g. you can't just increase a Summoner’s basic DoT damage (even though they may need it as a pure DPS class) without also giving that increase to Scholar (who, being a healer, probably doesn’t), and Scholar has to wait a long time for their basic healing utilities, like an AoE heal (lvl35) and debuff remover (lv40), so that Summoner doesn't also get them (White Mage and Astro get similar abilities at level 10 and 18 for comparison).

So yes, while the class / job system is a nice romantic notion, practically it is just easier, more flexible, and allows for better design (from level 1 to cap) if each job stands alone without the shackles of a shared base class (which may have been designed years earlier) dictating what it can and cannot possibly be.

All that said, could FFXIV use more roles than just Tank, Healer and DPS? Possibly, but that is a design decision separate from classes / jobs and a whole other discussion.