Idea: Class split idea for all jobs

[Reynhart]

Well and I don't see them ever reverting that since they have to support 1.0 players.

I am a 1.0 player, and I liked it back then even if it had a lot of flaws. Personally, I felt a bit left out the moment the game was so much streamlined that it removed any kind of thought behind how you'd "build" your character, wether by its skills or its gear.
At that point, I think the game would be better if it removed every trace of the old system to flourish in its new identity than keep it for the sake of nostalgia and do nothing with it.

[Wintersandman]

I am a 1.0 player, and I liked it back then even if it had a lot of flaws. Personally, I felt a bit left out the moment the game was so much streamlined that it removed any kind of thought behind how you'd "build" your character, wether by its skills or its gear.
At that point, I think the game would be better if it removed every trace of the old system to flourish in its new identity than keep it for the sake of nostalgia and do nothing with it.

From what I have heard is the character transfer feature from 1.0 to 2.0. I technically have a 1.0 character floating in the ether that I could have resurrected but didn't know about it since I was used to 11 deleting my characters and if I brought that character back to life then it would be a 26 gladiator. Would it automatically become a PLD?

[Shurrikhan]

You ignored the rest of the thread where I already discussed not wanting to start off at 1. Also SMN/SCH both use books.

What you're quoting:

A class doesn't have to start at level 1 any more than a job does. It's a moot point. The only rule that must firmly hold is that they are are something more primary than a job. They can start at whatever level. They do not need to share experience between various classes. They can double as a job after the split point. Anything goes. Except that they must be more primary.

This is the only mention of a class starting from level 1 outside of your own, which mine was in reply to:

Except they can't remove the existing classes completely because the classes are fundamentally tied into not only the game's storyline but gameplay, it's not just a simple matter of changing a class's name to a Job from level 1.

Using your GLA example, the GLA's Guild is the Colosseum, which is a fundamental part of Ul'dah's story and lore. Just changing GLA to PLD would require a whole series of new quests would have to be written to 'explain' how a new adventurer is suddenly a 'free PLD' where as the game's storyline currently states outright that the skills of the Sultansworn are a tightly guarded secret and that they're only now passing on their knowledge to a select few veteran (not new) GLAs. Then there are all the enemies that have the class as well have to suddenly have their class name changed to reflect it for consistency, which again does not work when it's a Job that is supposedly rare (half the Jobs are outright stated as being forbidden or forgotten, like WHM). See my point? Pull one loose thread and the whole thing unravels, it's just not worth the effort on SE's part.

Hence, new Jobs added to the game will continue to be classless but the existing classes will have to remain as they're the Armoury System's very foundation (hence you won't see a FFXI-style system of Job and weapon type being separate and being able to equip multiple weapon types to a single Job).

So, how have I neglected your responses to the concept? I've responded directly to the only one you've directly made.

To reiterate, if clarity was the issue -- your not wanting to start off at level 1 is irrelevant to classes/jobs; there's no rule assigning classes to start at level 1, only incidence.

...why?

Branching classes need to share a weapon type as much as jobs need to have different weapon types. Namely not at all. They do that for the sake of diversity, not because of necessity.

Scholars and Summoners both use books. From a certain arbitrary point onward, neither the base class Arcanist, nor Summoners can use Scholar Books and Scholars can't use Arcanist/Summoner Books either. And not just the weapons are separate and can't be used by each other - The entire gear is split, as casters can't use healing gear. Functionally, that is no different than if Scholar was a standalone job without any ties to Arcanist. If they had wanted to, they could have given it basketballs for a weapon instead and restrict books to ACN/SMN, because SCH weapons can be and later are separated from ACN/SMN weapons and thus can be a different type of weapon altogether.

And similarly, they could make a new job, give it a Greatsword and simply restrict the Greatswords intended for that job to that job so that DRK can't use them and vice versa - Just as they already do with ACN/SMN and SCH. They can also copy&paste skills over if they deem it fitting. Or not. They can tie it into a different job's lore or not as well.

IF one removes the entire concept of armory and the armory system, this is true. But otherwise the removal of classes means one thing only -- that every job is its own class, while each class (and therefore job, barring the offending summoner/scholar) remains defined by a unique weapon type. Take that out, and now why can't a Paladin use an axe, and simply mode change by other form between axe-wielding jobs? I'm not saying that'd be worse, by any means, only that it's yet another change, and one around which animations and, where potentially distinct, mechanics and/or damage types have not been worked.

The only real benefit to branches that I see is that you can get two for the price of one. Other than that, there's nothing you cannot do with one that you can do with the other - Adding talents to split skills instead of having them separate from the get-go just seems a bit more cumbersome.

Fair enough.

To me, the advantage might not be functionally significant, but it is significant to maintaining at least a semblance of sense in character progression.

Jobs at present, thematically if not wholly, are essentially specialized skillsets only partly relevant to weapon choice. Dragon skills, Paladin arts, the Dark Arts, White Magic, Black Magic, Red Magic -- none of these necessitate their weapon choices, or even surrounding skillsets. They merely synergize better or worse with different types, much like Role Skills and particular encounters. And yet a basic skillset is essential. Even if we were given a more meaningful tools-and-devices Machinist it would still have time to fill between device usage; it would be that part augmenting a pistol-user in another direction. A Bard still needs something to do whilst singing; that could have been hacking, slashing, or stabbing, but to be amid a ranged-capable army, and better protected from the heat of battle, a bow is a more sensible choice. And yet because each is part-and-parcel with the weapon type, one cannot choose variants. There is no between Archer and Bard, nor a variant that extends pure bow mastery itself or other tactics not related to songs, raid auras, and spot-buffs, because it is already eclipsed by Bard.

Now, yes, you can make a Ranger from scratch, starting it at whatever level, from some 49 levels more skilled with a bow when starting as a Ranger as opposed to (what will become) a Bard to having unlearned some 49 levels of bowmanship despite near or wholly identical origins. That does not make sense to me. I honestly do not care what you call the tangential vehicles of our experience, be they classes or jobs or professions or paths or whatever, as long as we do not fully revert within a given primary vehicle for experience (our weapon). Ideally, at least until such time as a class can be viable in its own right, I feel that experience in any class should halt upon reaching any branching point for jobs, and unless a job branches off yet another (i.e advanced jobs), those branches should occur simultaneously. The devices of a Machinist are irrelevant to a Corsair. Both were gunners, and that's where their similarities ended.

[Reynhart]

Would it automatically become a PLD?

Yes, it would. And you would receive a deaspected crystal of whatever classes you had back in the days. You'd still have to do all the job/class quests from level 1.
The only thing they need to do it rewrite some of the quests to explain that you're still not a "fully recognized" PLD.

[Shouko]

Snip

Forgot to read the rest of the post...You either have to add the 2nd job to the weapons already in use or you have to create a separate set of weapon types just for that job, which is a hassle.

It doesn't matter if the toolkit is designed, what matters is the upkeep and balancing act of multiple jobs, which again they don't like to do. Gear and weapons do matter, as they have to update older weapons/armor so the 2nd job can use it or create a new weapon for every so many levels after the initial level. It's all about coding and upkeep, the minute you start having to balance multiple jobs branched off it becomes a lot more of a hassle and one way or another more jobs will be left out of raids/pvp, which already happens but to a lesser degree.

[Reynhart]

Gear and weapons do matter, as they have to update older weapons/armor so the 2nd job can use it or create a new weapon for every so many levels after the initial level.

Armor is tied to roles, most of the time. I really doubt it was that complicated to give DRK access to every 2.0 gear for WAR and PLD, AST all gear for WHM and SCH, etc...

And if you look at SCH's book, they more of less have the same stats than WHM's weapon of the same ilevel, just skinned as books. Not that difficult to create. The itemization is so straightforward in this game, I'm pretty sure you could create dozens of weapon procedurally.

[Sylvain]

This is patently false. WoW's specialization distinction has only increased over the years. The newest expansion will be the first turn away from increased distinction, and only to a minor extent. What has diminished is solely hybridization via talents, and even that isn't true of all specs.

I putted it wrongly.
What i meant was, back in WoW vanilla/bc, every class had plenty of core skill in commons that would the be buffed through the talent tree which would give access to some unique talents.


In Vanilla,BC and Wotlk to some extent, a Fire mage and frost mage had almost exactly the same skills. (add the 2-3 special one you would get from the talent tree). The only thing making them still "mages" are blink, iceblock, cs, polymorph and a few other spells.
My point was that beside the core spell they would spams, class were still pretty much identical until Wotlk.(Spamming 120 frostbolt is roughly the same as spamming 120 fireball in wow vanilla)

Now, spec are a button choice in the talent window. You press what spec you'll be and every single skill not tied to that spec is removed / changed. You specialise further with the new talent system (which I really like). For instance, if you're fire you no longer have access to Blizzard and Arcane Nova.

So what I meant by "destroying" specialisation is that you do not really specialise anymore like you used to. WoW's system took the SMN/SCH root in some sens. You choose your "spec" and then every thing is given to you without you making any choice regarding your core gameplay.

In WoW, a Mage is still a mage because they all have those same useful skills, either baseline or through talents such as Blink, Counterspell, Iceblock, Frostnova, Mirror Image, Teleport.
In DarkSoul, by putting points into specific stats and seeking magic/ other items, I specialise my character over time. But everything he could do at lv 15, I can still do it at 50. I didn't loose any ability. I just expanded what I can do.
In FF14. You specliase nothing, you choose wether you use the SCH or SMN job crystal and that's it. All your spell slowly mutate to a new form until there's nothing in common.

So we may call it specialisation or wathever. But I find WoW's or FF14's current system very different from any game where you can actively specialise yourself such as Path of Exil, even Diablo, WoW's vanilla,Rift etc.


Anyway, in the end I don't really see the point. It's just much more work from SE to end up with the exact same thing as it if was a regular job you unlock.

and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they actually split SCH and SMN and make SCH a stand alone job that you unlock at lv 30 at some point.

I am a 1.0 player, and I liked it back then even if it had a lot of flaws. Personally, I felt a bit left out the moment the game was so much streamlined that it removed any kind of thought behind how you'd "build" your character, wether by its skills or its gear.
At that point, I think the game would be better if it removed every trace of the old system to flourish in its new identity than keep it for the sake of nostalgia and do nothing with it.

This is exactly why I say there is no point requesting the class splitting. Before it could make sens when you could actively build your character.
Now you can't. The only choice you have are the lame cross action skills and what job crystal you use for a single class.
Making new job split from class would require a lot of work to end up with the exact same result as if you had unlocked a stand alone job.

They also said they will remove the class system at some point. My guess is that you'll start as the class that will simply evolve once you've completed the quest lv 30.
And SCH could very easily be turned into its own unique job without a base class.

[Shurrikhan]

I putted it wrongly.
What i meant was, back in WoW vanilla/bc, every class had plenty of core skill in commons that would the be buffed through the talent tree which would give access to some unique talents.

Ahh, gotcha. I was just confused in that in WoW, cross-talents are precisely the opposite of what the game calls "specialization", and thus distinction between specializations has only increased even as the detail permitted in player choice as to how -- or, to what extent -- they are specialized (this much of this, this bit of that, etc.) has decreased.

There are no longer Mages in WoW, for instance. There are only Frost Mages, Fire Mages, and Arcane Mages. By the time you reach even level 30, the parts shared between specializations are absolutely minimal. If you take Fire, you lose access to Frost and Arcane, and vice versa. There is no generalist option. And thus Fire, Frost, and Arcane as a bank of spells cannot well differentiate themselves since they all need access at least to a benchmark amount of ST and AoE burst, sustain, and CC. Instead, they are differed through buttonflow or pacing. And yet by WoW's definition, that is increased specialization, even if it has less player choice than previously to actually choose this over that, because the specializations are... more specialized, with less shared territory. You simply get three flavors of the same thing, making each more competitive across a given spread of content, but largely out of the player's hand. (The new talent systems do at least give back a bit of buttonflow adjustment, though, especially now that BFA is no longer forcing you to specialize between AoE, cleave, or ST with each mutually exclusive set of talent choices but instead your choice of AoE in one row, choice of cleave in another, and of ST in yet another -- each their own -- etc.)

This is exactly why I say there is no point requesting the class splitting. Before it could make sens when you could actively build your character.
Now you can't. The only choice you have are the lame cross action skills and what job crystal you use for a single class.

While I, too, wish we'd gone the route of building your own character, I don't think the fact that that possibility has come and gone means that classes will never have a place in design, nor certainly that they'll never make sense. Lore-wise, starting at level 1 as a member of an, essentially, secret order to which you've never been introduced doesn't make sense. Nor does tailoring a weapon to a job for whom the weapon is merely tangential. Dragon skills don't inherently synergize much if at all stronger with a lance than, say, a sword. A Paladin's toolkit will desire a shield, undoubtedly, but what of its main hand? Their sense is closer to that of Tactics Advanced Jobs than any of the FFXI ones, especially given the deeply dug-in lore already in XIV.

It'd be sad if that means that classes are simply a pre-title of their respective jobs, and never granted any further core gameplay-affecting, synergetic mechanics to be possibly shared in a build-your-own sort of experience, but sensible enough given the game's current design philosophy.

[Reynhart]

This is exactly why I say there is no point requesting the class splitting. Before it could make sens when you could actively build your character.
Now you can't. The only choice you have are the lame cross action skills and what job crystal you use for a single class.

I wouldn't say there's "no point". I see the extreme streamlining as a detriment to the game so I give my advice on what could bring a little more depth to it. Wether or not they will do it is of no relevance.

If we don't express our concerns because they're convinced they're on the right path...well, FFXIV would have died back in 1.0.

Making new job split from class would require a lot of work

I'm still convinced that building upon an existing backbone is easier to balance than creating a whole new job from scratch

to end up with the exact same result as if you had unlocked a stand alone job.

As I said earlier, if leveling a DPS would give you access to a tank or a healer, you might give a shot to a role you wouldn't have leveled otherwise, so no, the overall impact on the playerbase might not be the same.

[Wintersandman]

This is the only mention of a class starting from level 1 outside of your own, which mine was in reply to:

This is what I was responding to on Page 5 if you followed the thread.

Would it be very different than starting DRK immediately at 30 or RDM at level 50 ?

I'd rather start each future new classes at level 1 while gaining branching jobs directly at the previous level cap than starting all future jobs at fairly high level.