[dev1033] Ideas for a Two-Tier Class System: Jobs on Top of Weapon Specializations

[pilot]

I am very much for the idea that one would choose a role/title to superimpose on thier current class. In this we dont really need role specific weapons. Plenty of room for more classes to be released.

The role is worn like a state of mind... or maybe eventually armor. Something akin to ffxi's artifact sets. With that i would expect limitations governed by class, preventing a Conjurer from running around in Thiefs armor. That is not to say you couldnt be a Thief with a wand. Armor like this would only serve to further boost specialization with whatever role-enhancing qualities it might have.(+3% cure potency WHM hats) Can even throw class specific armor into the mix with its own weapon/spell enhancements. Maybe? (Enhances Steadfast effect shoes)

People seem to be concerned with getting locked into optimized builds but i feel like this will mostly always be in relationship to party size. In a four person party, depending on the task at hand, there is a good chance one wants to play as more of a hybrid. Larger partys afford themselves room for more specialized roles.

[northernsky]

I am very much for the idea that one would choose a role/title to superimpose on thier current class. In this we dont really need role specific weapons. Plenty of room for more classes to be released.

The role is worn like a state of mind... or maybe eventually armor. Something akin to ffxi's artifact sets. With that i would expect limitations governed by class, preventing a Conjurer from running around in Thiefs armor. That is not to say you couldnt be a Thief with a wand. Armor like this would only serve to further boost specialization with whatever role-enhancing qualities it might have.(+3% cure potency WHM hats) Can even throw class specific armor into the mix with its own weapon/spell enhancements. Maybe? (Enhances Steadfast effect shoes)

People seem to be concerned with getting locked into optimized builds but i feel like this will mostly always be in relationship to party size. In a four person party, depending on the task at hand, there is a good chance one wants to play as more of a hybrid. Larger partys afford themselves room for more specialized roles.

Yeah I think there will always be more popular builds, but the fact is that the possible combination are so much more diverse if you choose your weapon/skill proficiency and job/role independently.

The customization is exponential. Now imagine that they add 3 basic classes in an expansion (say, Musketeer, Fencer, Arcanist). This opens the door to a whole new set of builds to use with your paladin or Ranger, for example, plus it adds many possibilities for superimposed jobs.

[Cairdeas]

Yeah I think there will always be more popular builds, but the fact is that the possible combination are so much more diverse if you choose your weapon/skill proficiency and job/role independently.

The customization is exponential. Now imagine that they add 3 basic classes in an expansion (say, Musketeer, Fencer, Arcanist). This opens the door to a whole new set of builds to use with your paladin or Ranger, for example, plus it adds many possibilities for superimposed jobs.

And if they keep the Job Title Level/Rank low (1 Job level per every 10 weapon skill levels or so) then they could introduce classic jobs faster as well.

[Carpe]

Holy wall of text, bat-man!

I read most of it, and I agree with you on almost every level. Though this would require an entire overhaul of the armoury and skill systems to function properly.. I don't think that can be avoided anymore.

I agree they couldn't leave all the abilities as-is they should work some things out of some of the weapon skills and do some re-balancing, but honestly, this seems easier to implement to me than 1)starting over from scratch, or 2)renaming all the current classes to traditional classes, adding the rest of the classes, and then reworking and rebalancing those abilities.

One thing I would want them to really do is focus more on the weapon's themes like:

MRD = Parry, Criticals, AOE
PUG = Evasion, Enfeeble Hits, Low-Stamina/Fast Hits
GLA = Accuracy, Damage Mitigation Buffs, Magic-Imbued Hits
THM = Debuffs, Over-time effects, Light/Dark

I think differentiating these a bit more based on some common themes will make them add a lot more to the play style experience and require you to use more tactics and think about how a certain weapon choice will influence your character design.

[Eremor]

A simple way to implement this kind of system would be to simply change the physical level into a job level.

Your current job/title would be determined by what skills you currently have equipped. For example, if you had certain sword, shield, and healing magic skills equipped then your job would be Paladin. Any EXP you gained would increase your job level and your job level would give you a bonus based on that jobs specialization, ex. Paladin would increase your defense and healing magic. As well as possibly unlocking job specific skills, though there would be fewer of these then Discipline based skills.

This would effectively allow you to be a Paladin with any weapon as long as you kept those required skills equipped (Though in the case of Paladin it would make those shield skills wasted slots). Ideally the skills required to qualify for any job would not use up all 30 action slots, allowing you to be a specific job with a specific role but still allowing for customization with the remaining slots.

Finally, for new players and for anyone who does not want to be a specific job. There would be a default job for when you don't have the skills to qualify for any other job. This could be Squire or maybe Onion Knight, and it could give a simple stat bonus or maybe a general bonus to all of your skills. That way people who choose not to be a specialist won't feel gimped or that they are wasting EXP.

[Carpe]

A simple way to implement this kind of system would be to simply change the physical level into a job level.

Your current job/title would be determined by what skills you currently have equipped. For example, if you had certain sword, shield, and healing magic skills equipped then your job would be Paladin. Any EXP you gained would increase your job level and your job level would give you a bonus based on that jobs specialization, ex. Paladin would increase your defense and healing magic. As well as possibly unlocking job specific skills, though there would be fewer of these then Discipline based skills.

This would effectively allow you to be a Paladin with any weapon as long as you kept those required skills equipped (Though in the case of Paladin it would make those shield skills wasted slots). Ideally the skills required to qualify for any job would not use up all 30 action slots, allowing you to be a specific job with a specific role but still allowing for customization with the remaining slots.

Finally, for new players and for anyone who does not want to be a specific job. There would be a default job for when you don't have the skills to qualify for any other job. This could be Squire or maybe Onion Knight, and it could give a simple stat bonus or maybe a general bonus to all of your skills. That way people who choose not to be a specialist won't feel gimped or that they are wasting EXP.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have a few concerns/questions for you.

If you change physical level into job level does that mean that your stats (STR/VIT/DEX/...) are going to be determined by your Job level? What happens if I change jobs? These physical stats become increased/decreased according to my other job levels?

-my problem with this is that there isn't going to be enough Job-specific abilities to learn to take me from 1-50 in a Job AND in a Weapon Class (unless you want to throw a ton of abilities/spells onto jobs and leave weapons closer to what they were in FFXI just learning some TP attacks). You need physical development to take quite a long time so as to have a nice stat progression. If you are going to remove physical levels I personally think it would be better to then have your physical stats be determined by your Weapon Class rank since it already goes from 1-50. But, then you get a problem like having a maxed out DRK change weapons from r50 LNC to r30 MRD and have all his stats reduced because of this just because he changed his weapon class. I think this puts too much limitations on people.

Also, you're saying that the skills/weapons you equip will determine your job. So for example, if I equip a sword, shield, and some abilities like rampart, heal, protect, etc. The game determines (FOR ME?) that I am a paladin?

-This is way more restrictive than what I am suggesting. In my proposal I choose to be a paladin (this gives me some specific traits/abilities) and then I pick from the weapon skills that I've learned what (non-class-specific) abilities I want to use with my paladin. With the extended favoring system I'm talking about, certain "paladin builds" are going to be way more effective than others, but this system doesn't constrain you as much as what I think you are suggesting, it allows you to go against the grain or more specifically adapt to a very specific situation.

[Eremor]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have a few concerns/questions for you.

If you change physical level into job level does that mean that your stats (STR/VIT/DEX/...) are going to be determined by your Job level? What happens if I change jobs? These physical stats become increased/decreased according to my other job levels?

-my problem with this is that there isn't going to be enough Job-specific abilities to learn to take me from 1-50 in a Job AND in a Weapon Class (unless you want to throw a ton of abilities/spells onto jobs and leave weapons closer to what they were in FFXI just learning some TP attacks). You need physical development to take quite a long time so as to have a nice stat progression. If you are going to remove physical levels I personally think it would be better to then have your physical stats be determined by your Weapon Class rank since it already goes from 1-50. But, then you get a problem like having a maxed out DRK change weapons from r50 LNC to r30 MRD and have all his stats reduced because of this just because he changed his weapon class. I think this puts too much limitations on people.

Also, you're saying that the skills/weapons you equip will determine your job. So for example, if I equip a sword, shield, and some abilities like rampart, heal, protect, etc. The game determines (FOR ME?) that I am a paladin?

-This is way more restrictive than what I am suggesting. In my proposal I choose to be a paladin (this gives me some specific traits/abilities) and then I pick from the weapon skills that I've learned what (non-class-specific) abilities I want to use with my paladin. With the extended favoring system I'm talking about, certain "paladin builds" are going to be way more effective than others, but this system doesn't constrain you as much as what I think you are suggesting, it allows you to go against the grain or more specifically adapt to a very specific situation.

First off, I was under the impression that SE was planning to do away with physical levels entirely anyway. But with this double class system that does raise the question of which would give you stat points. Perhaps it could be both, you get a few points when you rank up your discipline and then a few more points when you level up your job.

Second, I wasn't considering making jobs into whole new classes in their own right, each with as many skills as the disciplines. Jobs would grant mostly passive benefits that would help to specialize a character for a certain role, with the possibility of giving them a handful of job exclusive skills to make them a little more interesting.

Finally, as far as choosing your own job, I see it as basically the same as the current system. Do you actually choose your discipline from a list? No, you choose your weapon and then the game sets your discipline automatically. In this case you would choose your skills and then the game would set your job automatically. Admittedly this may cause some unexpected job changes if you don't already know what skill sets go with what jobs, but that could be interesting itself, SE could introduce an unspecified number of jobs and leave it to us to figure out how to unlock them. Ultimately, there should be enough skills and combinations that you would have to know exactly what skills went with a certain job in order to choose that job. This could get annoying if you have to swap out 15-20 skills in order to change jobs, but skill swaps can be accomplished fairly quickly through macros. Ideally the required skills for a job would not include the basic weapon attacks, thereby allowing you to use any weapon in combination with any job so long as you keep the other required skills equipped.

It is true that this would be more restricting then a completely free job selection, but isn't that the whole point of having a specific job with it's own style and identity. But I would still like to see some customization, as I mentioned, there shouldn't be more then 15-20 required skills (possibly even less) for any one job, leaving the remaining 10-15 slots free for skills of your own choice. And as I mentioned, there would be a catch-all job for people who wanted to completely customize their skill set (assuming their desired skill set didn't match any of the requirements for another job, and if it does then it could be assumed that that job fills the role that person wants to play anyway. ex. if you fill up your skills with offensive actions and wind up being a DRK without realizing it, then DRK is probably a good job for you)

[Cairdeas]

Eremor I think the Job should be something you set yourself, even if its just an extra box by itself in the skill assignment screen that lets you click it then pick from the jobs you already have.

Then once the job is equipped any skills you chose to equip that the job is proficient in you get a stat bonus and potency bonus for. And any skills you are not proficient in or are not native to your already chosen weapon class you have to pay extra for to equip and they are not as powerful (75%ish)

And as other and myself have said it doesn't need to have more then 5 levels to start (1 Job level for every 10 possible Weapon Class Levels)

[Carpe]

A simple way to implement this kind of system would be to simply change the physical level into a job level.

So if they get rid of the physical levels, is this essentially what happens?

First off, I was under the impression that SE was planning to do away with physical levels entirely anyway. But with this double class system that does raise the question of which would give you stat points. Perhaps it could be both, you get a few points when you rank up your discipline and then a few more points when you level up your job.

So that's a good question: should your stat points be based on your weapon class rank or on your job class rank?

If we want to differentiate the jobs, then they should be based on the job rank I think because stats help you to perform your role.

But, we want to have people unlocking jobs after a certain level, like ~20. Since in that case you wouldn't have a job at the beginning of the game to determine your stats.

Alternatively we could have a player start the game with a couple basic job options immediately available, but then you would have to rework so many more things in the game like the character selection, opening tutorials/quests, etc.

Another alternative is to have, like Cairdeas suggested earlier, all of these things (Job Title, Weapon Class, Rank, and Gear) contribute to your stats (although not all equally).

I could see this being similar to the Subjob system again where you started off as a single job (here it would be just a weapon class) which determined your stats, but when you learned to equip a subjob, applying that subjob boosted your stats. This gives players an incentive to unlock a title asap so they can essentially become more powerful.

Would you be able to customize/allocate some "bonus" stats in this kind of set up? Which of these sources should give you the option to play around with your stats, if any?

[Cairdeas]

I'd still want to propose that we do not limit classes to only certain titles just so we can keep the ability to do anything available.

A Redmage being able to use Fist weapons, swords, conj, thaum, etc.