Job/Role daydreaming

[kikix12]

Frankly, I think the playerbase is the main culprit on that.

Yoshida literally and openly said that they pursue simplification to make balancing future fights easier. I don't remember now in regards to what he gave that answer (probably as to why there are no gear varieties at the same item level anymore), but the answer was general enough.

That's why the stat distribution was removed, why elemental affinities were removed, why the class/job system was abandoned (and they didn't even have the courage to actually remove it leaving the trashed system behind), why the hunting log was abandoned. They make a lot of systems then abandon or remove them because they turn out to be too much of a pain to develop in the long run. Even leve quests for disciples of war. They abandoned it because it was too much work to give them flavor. Because writing "A rise in humidity increased the marlboro population. Nip the problem at the bud." is apparently too hard.


As for the role skills, I think you missed the point of role skills as stated by the developers. Their purpose was to make sure that every player had every necessary skill at their disposal without having to level other classes. Because things like Swiftcast always were "mandatory" for all related classes. That is large part of why this system was a complete and utter failure. Because of how limited the slots for them in comparison to the skills, people ended up picking four or five per class that everyone and their mother will have leaving the other skills behind. At that point this system is strictly inferior to simply GIVING every class the toolkit that they need to begin with.

It never was made for customization. Cross-class skills were made for that...but the choice of skills in it were simply flawed. Majority of the skills in questions simply had no utility whatsoever outside of classes that already had equivalent skills to begin with. Heck. There was even a warriors combo starter skill if I remember correctly...without any combo compatibility or purpose.

[Reynhart]

If we're using SMN and SCH as a benchmark then you could consider any melee job with two 3-button combos to be a variation of Gladiator, as the similarities are about the same.

Technically, there's not that much difference between ROG and LNC. It doesn't prevent the game from creating two different jobs. If you take the Gladiator above, give it some debuffing spells, a "stance" that spends HP to buff each WS and a skill that deals more damage the less HP you have, you could come close to a real "Dark Knight" DPS that would feel very different from PLD.

Yoshida literally and openly said that they pursue simplification to make balancing future fights easier.

He also said thaty they wouldn't put unique builds for characters and unique effect on items because he thought people would be rejected if they didn't have the mandatory best setup...which is stupid, because ilvl is already a mathematically best setup and yet the world didn't burn when not everyone had a perfect Zeta.

That's why the stat distribution was removed, why elemental affinities were removed

Stat distribution was removed way after they decided that jobs would only use one stat for all. And elemental affinities were removed right from the start because they feared that some jobs might be pushed away...yet they have no issue having physical affinities that effectively pushed jobs away...

As for the role skills, I think you missed the point of role skills as stated by the developers. Their purpose was to make sure that every player had every necessary skill at their disposal without having to level other classes.

But, that's stupid. You want every healer to have Swiftcast ? Make switcast a native skill for all of them. You want every tank to have Provoke ? Make Provoke a native skill to all of them. Removing the actual cross-"role" skills (Like Internal Release for WAR or Stoneskin for PLD) make those actions just bland, and especially because there wasn't even a choice of what you should use.

[Ameela]

Technically, there's not that much difference between ROG and LNC. It doesn't prevent the game from creating two different jobs. If you take the Gladiator above, give it some debuffing spells, a "stance" that spends HP to buff each WS and a skill that deals more damage the less HP you have, you could come close to a real "Dark Knight" DPS that would feel very different from PLD.

My point is there's no real point to tying two jobs to a class when you can just make a completely new job with no restrictions in terms of how it has to interact with parts of a pre-existing kit.

[Reynhart]

My point is there's no real point to tying two jobs to a class when you can just make a completely new job with no restrictions in terms of how it has to interact with parts of a pre-existing kit.

Again, there is. It cost less money to create a job based on an existing kit, so they could create more jobs. And it could help people try different roles since they'd already be comfortable with the core skills of their job. If you know your LNC rotation, having a spear-tank could feel less frightening that having to learn the MRD rotation.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Rather than remaking and rebalancing Gladiator and Paladin just so could potentially slap a DPS job on it's side... It would be much easier to just create a completely new job.
It's not just a matter of the skills, there's the issue with gear as well. They shouldn't be using gear meant for GLA/PLD or MRD/WAR. They'd have terrible secondary stats and tenacity completely wasting a stat slot. Although I suppose, they could use the slightly higher def DRG gear to go with the shield... But they'd need their own weapons and shields separate from GLA/PLD ones. Which begs the question, if they're gonna make completely new weapons for them, why still base it off of GLA...

And since you can't really have only upsides, so they'd have to kind of be on the lower end of DPS in exchange for more survivability which would likely just end up hurting raids...

[Reynhart]

It would be much easier to just create a completely new job.

I really don't think it would. In my example, the only change to skills I made was separating the enmity bonus to a trait for PLD. Everything else is exactly the same as it is now, just with a different requirement, that doesn't need any "remaking" or "rebalancing".

They shouldn't be using gear meant for GLA/PLD or MRD/WAR.

At low level, no one would care, and at high level, they woul indeed wear different gear. Like you said in that case, probably LCN/DRG.

Which begs the question, if they're gonna make completely new weapons for them, why still base it off of GLA...

SCH, ACN and SMN all share a "book" type weapon, some of those books are simply restricted for each job. Not a big deal...

[Ameela]

SCH, ACN and SMN all share a "book" type weapon, some of those books are simply restricted for each job. Not a big deal...

Literally every weapon after level 49 is restricted because they realised basing two jobs with different roles on the same class was a horrible idea.
SCH has so little to do with ACN nowadays it may as well not even branch off of it.

[Reynhart]

Literally every weapon after level 49 is restricted because they realised basing two jobs with different roles on the same class was a horrible idea.

No, they were restricted because you could't have both INT and MND on a weapon without unbalancing SCH or SMN at that time. Now that those jobs only have one stat, you could put both of them at the same time, and no one would care. That's also why putting MNK and NIN on the same gear wasn't a big deal.
Also, you already have swords and shields that Glad can't equip, even though there's only PLD.

[Legion88]

Again, there is. It cost less money to create a job based on an existing kit, so they could create more jobs. And it could help people try different roles since they'd already be comfortable with the core skills of their job. If you know your LNC rotation, having a spear-tank could feel less frightening that having to learn the MRD rotation.

A spear tank would mostly be spear&shield and can't reuse the animations and weapons from LNC, so it would take more work.

Also for the GLA/PLD ones i would suggest to expand on the idea of a fast fighter with slim swords and fencing weapons like foil, epee and rapiers (to bad RDM already covers this weapon type) and buckler.

The branching can work, but mostly you have to readjust skill names and animations to fit the new style.

[CaptainLagbeard]

I really don't think it would. In my example, the only change to skills I made was separating the enmity bonus to a trait for PLD. Everything else is exactly the same as it is now, just with a different requirement, that doesn't need any "remaking" or "rebalancing".

I know low levels get easily ignored, but GLA still needs to function at below level 30, so you can't just lump every tanking related skill onto PLD. Which would mean that when you unlock the hypothetical DPS class for them, they'd still have those tank skills from GLA, which they wouldn't really have use for... Sure nowadays some of the essential tank skills are on the role skills, but basic enmity building skills are still on the job itself, though one change that would make sense would be making Flash into a role skill, and working one of the current role skills into all the tanks...
The basic enmity combo would have to remain as it is, it would more make sense for the DPS job to have a trait that lowers it's enmity generation instead.

So there would be reworking to be done in order to make GLA support a DPS job.


And even then, bringing up the gear issues again, they wouldn't use GLA/PLD armor, they wouldn't use the same weapons and shields as GLA/PLD, so why base it off of GLA/PLD?