Job Specific Traits?

[BigRed5392]

FFXI had elemental resistances and even general damage type resistances as well as an MMO which would effect party compositions depending on end game activity and even preferred exp locations for lvling up or earning merits. However it still didn't completely exclude jobs from content. .

umm so..... loldrg /kick was never a thing you saw? or lolpup? lolmnk? bst never got parties due to the exp reduction, I recall rdm who melee get kicked. I saw ppl vilified smn for not healing and doing their summons. what about blm that couldn't get pt during the colibri meripo?

ppl excluded jobs in ff11 i had first hand experience when i used to main mnk when "lolmnk" was a thing. it took me 8 hrs to get an exp party on a good day.

[Talraen]

I get what you all are saying, but it just eats at me. For all of that, why even allow us to change classes/jobs on the go? Or for that matter allow us to level multiple classes/jobs on one character? It might as well be and play like every other theme-park MMO out there. It takes away the special parts of what Final Fantasy jobs are about. Forgive me if I'm stuck too much on the old days of Final Fantasy, but at times it just feels like a normal theme park mmo with a final fantasy skin and name slapped onto it.

I'm curious what you think "Final Fantasy jobs are about." The example you gave, where Dragoons could have an advantage over dragons, isn't particularly universal. It's in FFXI, but I don't remember it appearing anywhere else.

The thing that defines the Final Fantasy series is that each game makes its own rules, particularly when it comes to the combat and leveling systems. I think FFXIV has done a good job of keeping the essence of each job. Dragoon, for instance, has always been about using spears and Jump. Well, except FF2, where they were introduced, where they did neither, but did have a wyvern... which is something only seen one other time, in FFXI. Which is kind of the point.

Also even if FF jobs really were so specific and consistent that they "should" have the types of abilities that make a specific job favored in an MMO context, FFXIV is smart not to have those things, because they're not good game design in an MMO.

[Felis]

Maybe if the devs allow job change during dungeons again.

Enter dungeon -> DPS players change to BLM to cast away the pulls -> first boss -> DPS players change to a single target job to hit the boss hard

[Talraen]

Maybe if the devs allow job change during dungeons again.

Enter dungeon -> DPS players change to BLM to cast away the pulls -> first boss -> DPS players change to a single target job to hit the boss hard

Then instead of needing one specific job, you'd need to level multiple specific jobs. Not an improvement.

[Evogolist]

If implemented right, job specific traits should only provide a slight boost to the job and not be a complete game changer. Given how XIV's formulas work, it would probably be barely noticeable. Say for example, the use of "insert said action here" would have certain percentage chance of procing that job trait. Many classes/jobs already work like that.

To be honest though, it depends on the person behind that job build. A drg with dragon killer could still be outclassed by someone on any of the other dps classes if the person playing that drg is bad and/or not performing well. The same goes for any other job.

[Lewtskie]

As people have pointed out, if its not something that noticeable or a game changer in combat, why take the time to make it; would seem like a waste. Now, more aesthetic differences or things not pertaining to combat sounds like a good thing. Things like the Ninja having a unique jump animation, and come 4.15 we'll see if the musical feature requires you to play a BRD or have BRD leveled. Such little things like that would be cool. I wouldn't be adverse to certain jobs getting this or that, WHM got a mount way back when for a side quest, maybe DRGs could have a side quest unlocked to only them where maybe they do get a Wyvern they can summon as a pet with actions, just no actual combat function.

[RitsukoSonoda]

*snip*

That again had nothing to do with job specific traits. It had to do with either the job kit or the type of damage the job excelled at. 5x DRG + BRD merit party on colibri was popular because DRG dealt high amounts of piercing damage which most bird enemies like Colibri had horrible resistance against. RNG also did huge amounts of damage to birds with bows however DRG was favored because they could sub WHM and self sustain easily thanks to their pet. Also a majority of your examples apply to only exp/merit parties. In actual endgame nothing was completely excluded or unviable. However like FFXIV some jobs saw infrequent use either because something else just did it better or in the case of BST it was viewed as a primarily solo content job by the community and only used in rare instances where disposable pets made things easier.

As for the wait on EXP parties. That was pretty much the DF of FFXI and the DPS queue sucked as bad or worse than it did in FFXI even when people finally figured out DPS cannon parties work. However if you were a RDM or BRD you had to go /anon if you wanted to do something on that job otherwise you were spammed non stop by /tells asking if you'll join their exp/merit party.

[Gemina]

Which always confused me because it's still there in the character creation screen when you pick your god.

I was never sure why this confounded some people. It was never meant to give you any kind of advantage. The God you choose and the element associated with him/her is meant to be the one you feel represents you the most. However, it is weird that elemental resistances are even in the game. I'm guessing it was something that was implemented in 1.0 that didn't get scrapped as the idea was to have an elemental wheel in 2.0, but later discarded.

I do miss the wheel, but whoo-boy it's a lot of tiresome coding that I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to skip entirely.

[Gemina]

umm so..... loldrg /kick was never a thing you saw? or lolpup? lolmnk? bst never got parties due to the exp reduction, I recall rdm who melee get kicked. I saw ppl vilified smn for not healing and doing their summons. what about blm that couldn't get pt during the colibri meripo?

ppl excluded jobs in ff11 i had first hand experience when i used to main mnk when "lolmnk" was a thing. it took me 8 hrs to get an exp party on a good day.

In FFXI, I remember when leveling MNK, I used my 2-hour ability on a slime-type mob. If you recall, this ability had MNK throw an endless barrage of punches for the duration of the ability. Sounds awesome, right? Except MNKs punches were of the 'blunt' type, and slimes were resistant to that type. So despite being around level 15 and using my ultimate ability, this level 10 mob still wasted me. Now imagine the same thing in XIV, and the player who mains only a MNK, puts tons of hours in to get themselves a good spot in a raid, only to find out that the mobs are resistant to blunt damage?

This in itself shows how square has grown and learned from previous mistakes. Resistances creates constraints that limits possible job compositions, and a 2-hour ability is just dumb, dumb, so freakinggggggg DUMB! Things like this SE can fix. A skewed meta however, well that's on the community.

[Nora_of_Mira]

I get what you all are saying, but it just eats at me. For all of that, why even allow us to change classes/jobs on the go? Or for that matter allow us to level multiple classes/jobs on one character? It might as well be and play like every other theme-park MMO out there. It takes away the special parts of what Final Fantasy jobs are about. Forgive me if I'm stuck too much on the old days of Final Fantasy, but at times it just feels like a normal theme park mmo with a final fantasy skin and name slapped onto it.

I think you missed the point on why we can "change classes/jobs on the go". THAT is in fact SE's view of customization, you can be w/e job you want at anytime. And that is WHY FFxiv is not like every other theme park MMO as older MMOs lock your character to one class/job.

edit: I'd also like to add Japanese developers generally stick to a "restaurant" philosophy when making games. Think of a fancy restaurant that prepares meals in a very particular way. They have a 100% complete idea of what they are serving, and what they think the customer is going to enjoy and they very rarely deviate from their design. Some restaurants will even deny you sugar or sauce after a certain time, depending on your meal because that's how important they take it. Generally, they think "we know what the player will enjoy more than the player". Western MMOs (and even Korean MMOs) favor the player a bit more and offer typically more customization.

Having played a ton of different MMOs, I've learned to really like FFxiv's direction overall because playerbases rarely know whats best (and to extend the analogy, customers too.)