The One True Limited Job

[Mibgestalt]

I'll say this flat out, the Limited Job system as applied to most traditional jobs is missed opportunity, not a benefit. I believe only one job should ever be a Limited Job. I do not think the devs have the ability to support more than one limited job, and whether they can support one at all remains to be seen. Developing something like "The Masked Carnival" for every limited job if they add more would absolutely take resources away from other parts of the game for niche content, or be a barebones implementation such that those jobs would have no longevity. We don't need 3 more Lord of Verminions.

Anyways, let's take a look at the Limited Job system in a positive light. When I think of it, a system that ultimately is designed to keep a job out of higher content because it is impossible to balance and still keep enjoyable but provides a very unique and empowering solo experience, the one Limited Job should be... Onion Knight. It being so overpoweredly broken it shouldn't be allowed near endgame is basically its tradition, anyway.

A Job that draws from all of the learned abilities you've obtained in other jobs, and lets you equip any combination of 20-40 of them. Add all sorts of weird combo effects to these otherwise separated skills. Have it use a polymorphic weapon that changes forms as needed. There's a chain in there somewhere that'll let you Requiescat into Foul. Maybe casting Fire III into Fire IV with Ifrit-Egi out lets it turn Enkindle into a proper massive Hellfire. If you cast Hellfrog Medium with enough Aethergauge, Bahamut comes and drops a Mega Flare. I dunno man, I'm not the creative type, but it's pretty much endless ridiculousness.

In addition, depending on the quantity of job skills you equip for a certain job, you can unlock traditionally more powerful spells that would not fit into most of FFXIV's content. For example, Death if you have a certain amount of Black Mage spells equipped, or Reflect if you have a certain amount of White Mage skills equipped. Every patch they add more weird combos and hidden spells you unlock with certain job combinations. They get their own solo instance like the Masked Carnival that would have way more variety and puzzles than the Masked Carnival or any other limited job could have just solely based on the sheer number of abilities available, and Devs only need to worry about improving ONE limited job end game experience per patch, rather than a multitude. It could take part in all solo/open-world content and do all sorts of whacky bonkers skills, whatever. Make it go collect the stray aether of other jobs from monsters and locations if it really needs some sort of self-progression.

Lore for the job would just be that the Onion Knight soul crystal is a learning soul crystal. Unlike the others that have knowledge inside of them, Onion Knight is a soul crystal that absorbs aether and knowledge from other soul crystals. The reason it can't take part in group content is because it would absorb the aether from any other soul crystal in the area and possibly seriously wound any other soul crystal user. It'd... you know, make sense from every perspective instead of being an arbitrary limitation.

[Seraphor]

Regarding the quote about taking resources for the Masked Carnivale and how multiple limited jobs would affect that, maybe all limited jobs could take part in the same content.
Blue Mage, Beastmaster snd Onion Knight could all participate, then its just the job itself that would take the resources.

Beastmaster could have a kind of circus theme like a lion tamer, which would slot in quite well next to the masquerade of the Blue Mage.

[Mibgestalt]

Regarding the quote about taking resources for the Masked Carnivale and how multiple limited jobs would affect that, maybe all limited jobs could take part in the same content.
Blue Mage, Beastmaster snd Onion Knight could all participate, then its just the job itself that would take the resources.

Beastmaster could have a kind of circus theme like a lion tamer, which would slot in quite well next to the masquerade of the Blue Mage.

I do not think they could provide a meaningful solo experience worth the loss of Blue Mage as a full class if they had to design the end-game around making sure multiple classes could take part in it. The layout and art assets? Sure. The actual mechanical aspects of each encounter and ensuring each job could have a fun, engaging, challenging experience for a single trial? No way. That's probably even more work. At that point you may as well just make them all full jobs.

[jon041065]

I 100% support the idea of limited jobs being shifted to onion knight/freelancer. Give them D2 like skill trees for each job and you unlock higher skills as you rank up in whatever solo content they would have. Give each ability a value and a limit to total value that can be set so people make builds. Add leaderboards that are broken up in tiers depending how many "ability points" you used in your build. That way there would be content for all ranges. Casual players can make crazy builds and just go for completion for the challenge. Hardcore players could push for the fastest time with minimalist builds.

For the open world content part, put unique drops in each zone. Some could have a very low drop rate and then the drop rate increases with your kill chain. We could use these items to customize our gear to better suit our builds. You could even introduce the gear sets that some have asked for but were told it would be too much of a balancing task. Set bonuses could be things like if you had a set out of the Thanalan region. These bonuses could be simple "do X% more damage vs cactuars" style or something like WoW/diablo style bonuses.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Freelancer and Mime from FFV, especially with how OP Freelancer was at endgame, though Spellblade from FFV would also work as a limited job since it would require you to level multiple casters.