Some possibly controversial thoughts about a dancer addition

[kikix12]

Why have jobs whose abilities are dependent on what you play as?

1) The 'dances' we are talking about here have an effect. The effect is the same regardless of race or gender of who uses it. It should use the same dance regardless of who uses it. Or are you telling me that teachers in school where I live always teach to add acid to water, not water to acid, because we have the culture that we have, and in Asia for example it is the other way around?! Stupid, right?! Want the same effect, use the same method.
2) Making race-based dances for the class would mean six or twelve animations for the job. That's six or twelve full sets of animations! And every player could use only ONE out of all those animation sets, meaning that every spent dime is worth LESS than what is spent on other animations. That is absurd, and unless it would have a VERY important story factor to it (which it does not), it's just plain illogical.
3) Why limit au ra ritual dances to the actual Au Ra? Can Elezen not try them? What, are Elezen, Hyur etc. mentally handicapped to not be able to understand the moves, or physically crippled to not be able to repeat them? Surprisingly we could easily learn Moogle or Vanu dances...so yeah, that's not the case. I am 100% in support of adding culture-based dances to the game...but do so as EMOTES (or as a part of perform for a dancer that will not have mechanical effects) that can be learned through quests like harvest dance. This will also let developers add actual lore to those dances, instead of just having them slapped onto the characters set and "guess what it means" games would begin...That would mean that the only change needed would be a bit of quest text where a Miqo'te gets "Did you forget how to do it? Here, I'm sure your body will remember once I'll show you!" when learning her own racial dance, while others would "Here, pay attention to how I dance and get the sense for it, then repeat it yourself!"...or some such. Though that's not even necessary, since the character doesn't necessarily even have to know their own cultures dances. This way ALL characters will be able to use ALL the emotes, and a lot more lore will be included alongside them.


Ultimately, those that vote for race-specific dances talk about LIMITING players options AND less lore...

Realistically - and lets assume that Dancer is greenlit - it would have to be another AST clone as a WHM + dances or a SCH + dances would make those jobs obsolete.

Nonsense. Samurai and Red Mage did not make any other DPS obsolete, while their job is ONLY about dealing damage. For healers, as many people wanting a dancer want (not all though, but it's what you talk about too), there is damage AND healing to boot. Two things each of which could be made differently (or both) to make a fresh class. It's also a constant balancing act...but that is regardless of everything. It is constant whether you add a class or not, and it is the same amount of work regardless of how different or similar the game styles of classes are.