Community Discussion - Battle Theory

[Rydin]

out of all the changes my biggest prob is with mages. they are way to streamlined now imo. they've made mages really boring to play.

Not to jack my own thread but I've had this discussion many times with my friends.

Yoshi P has stated that classes needed more defined roles and the ability changes plus jobs are here to make that a reality....
1 class - 1 job - 1 role
And while I appreciate how people are indeed accustomed to this, it does constitute a very antiquated paradigm.
his biggest concern was that you didn't know what role another person had in the party
So we need Tank, melee damage dealer, ranged damage dealer, Nuker, enfeebler, DoT specialist, enhancer, healer

thats a lot of roles... I don't see why we can't have each class/job responsible for 2 roles... and there will be no confusion because you'd be expected to fill both roles as one person...

Damage dealing tanks, enfeebling healers (Imagine being able to syphon HP from the MOB and give it to the tank), enhancing magic and ranged damage (Which is what Bard may prove to be). A REAL battle mage that has very usable weaponskills AND DoT's (through spells or weaponskill effects)

The fact that some classes in FFXI were relegated to simplistic roles at times... while others were multifaceted... thats a shame

[Nakiamiie]

Not to jack my own thread but I've had this discussion many times with my friends.

Yoshi P has stated that classes needed more defined roles and the ability changes plus jobs are here to make that a reality....
1 class - 1 job - 1 role
And while I appreciate how people are indeed accustomed to this, it does constitute a very antiquated paradigm.
his biggest concern was that you didn't know what role another person had in the party
So we need Tank, melee damage dealer, ranged damage dealer, Nuker, enfeebler, DoT specialist, enhancer, healer

thats a lot of roles... I don't see why we can't have each class/job responsible for 2 roles... and there will be no confusion because you'd be expected to fill both roles as one person...

Damage dealing tanks, enfeebling healers (Imagine being able to syphon HP from the MOB and give it to the tank), enhancing magic and ranged damage (Which is what Bard may prove to be). A REAL battle mage that has very usable weaponskills AND DoT's (through spells or weaponskill effects)

The fact that some classes in FFXI were relegated to simplistic roles at times... while others were multifaceted... thats a shame

That's actually how I view the classes: multiple roles.
As for jobs, there are the perfection of a single role.
So, classes have multiple roles without being perfect at them, while jobs are the ultimate perfection for that role (but you lack versatility to properly function in smaller groups).
I hope that at one point we'll see multiple jobs for each class, however that requires an huge amount of originality to prevent job overlap. That's where the community comes in, we throw our ideas in and the devs can model something unique.

Most of the time, people just complain "Make this better, change that" without ever going further and give the devs a hint at HOW you want it. Only then can the devs and fellow community members get into your head and understand WHY it's a good idea (and build upon it).

That's it for now.