Quote Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse View Post
True, I agree that a massively different take could mitigate player complaints, but look at what we are working with:

a) a team that notoriously adds underdeveloped dead end features like BLU or Deep Dungeon or Chocobo Racing.

b) a pretty rigid role system that every class must be balanced against or players complain.

c) a fanbase that already has expectations of a beast master being implemented ala FF XI.
While I certainly understand the idea that we must make use of the resources available to us, I don't think we can afford to assume that our resources are limited to those failings. We've seen some oddly great executions, too, after all, and if the shortfalls really were the end and crown of development thus far, there's just not really much left to us. Better to push that boundary, in my opinion, than oversell the realist angle.

Even if the devs were able to design such an awesome job, it would still likely need to be toned down to match the rest of the meta, unless they are suddenly willing to completely retool some 20 jobs to match that level of uniqueness at the same time.
Indeed, but I'd suggest the solution then is to build the others up first via small steps. While I don't think the dev team can afford to rush ahead to such drastic changes as I've proposed, I do think small steps in those directions could be, themselves, healthy and immediately gratifying.

Let's take a quick example:

In terms of diversifying roles, a suitable first step wouldn't require any more than perceptibly greater cross-role output and active defensive play. That might sound big, and its necessary corollaries would quickly ramp up, but the initial concrete changes involved are really quite straight-forward, e.g.,
  • Increase the effectiveness of mitigation and self-sustain tools like Third Eye, Fists of Earth, and Life Surge,
  • Increase the effectiveness of curative tools like Everlasting Flight and Vercure (at compensatory increased MP costs or the like),
  • Give Warden's Paean two other versions/modes, based on one's current Song.
  • You offer reduced button bloat where buttons are utter non-decisions (in the vein of Dream Within a Dream -> Assassinate or even just click-on-CD skills like Lucid Dream that may as well be passive) and in their place offer back some CC, such as Tri-bind and Miasma's slow; Tether and a slow on Verstone and interrupt against regular mobs on Verthunder; Freeze, Blizzard, and Blizzard II again having their effects; etc., etc.
  • You free up 2 charges of Enkindle on Summoner to generate a specific ability based on your current elemental Trance. Two of the five would be relatively pure damage and therefore the place where you'd most often use them in role-constrained play, but the other three trances' uses would now have significant utility atop a decent but still inferior bit of damage (e.g., a Reflect if at melee and Gaol if at range for Titan, Charge if at range and Stun at melee for Ifrit, Knockback from melee and draw in at range for Garuda).

Now, how does one follow that up?
  • Since DPS are otherwise now "further stepping on healers' toes" or "left with insignificant bloat skills", you make healing duties more frequent, numerous, and integral; there's now plenty of footwork to be done and any help in that regard is no longer "insignificant" or "bloat".
  • Since you've made healing more than sequencing oGCDs between Glare/Broil/Malefic spam, you might need provide slightly more involved, deep, and in-context instruction for healers. Well, that would already have been important for reducing community tensions; we've merely placed learning opportunities more tightly against the average player experience.
  • Since CC would otherwise seem mere bloat against bosses, you might re-envision its effects or raid/trial encounters slightly, such as by actually having (CC-able, though perhaps at reduced duration) adds appear in raids and trials again and/or having alternate, interesting effects for each CC for when it fails to deal its status effect.
  • Now that CC is back, you might invest a bit further into content types that'd make use of it, or at least needn't quite so constrain new content to the straight-and-narrow.
  • Since other jobs now have versatility available to them that can step into the domains of those for whom MP is (somewhat of) a real mechanic, you might reevaluate the point of MP, rather than leaving it mostly bloat.
  • Now that healers, due to the increased frequency/number/depth of healing tasks/play within a given encounter, actually make use of GCD heals again, you might use that opportunity to further reshuffle the powers in their toolkit towards the healthier.
  • Since DPS will now have further self-sustain skills, we might want to further leverage that in solo content and in group content, such as by having enemies hit for more than a pittance and by having more enemy skills naturally skillshot (hit the first enemy within the given angle), trample (deal decreasing damage with each victim hit, or as if facing cumulative mitigation across each), or split.
  • Since we've already combated bloat on less often used skills, we may as well take that further. Xeno and Foul, Guren and Senei, and The Forbidden Chakra and Enlightenment, for instance, have no reason to be separate buttons so long as you'd never chose in AoE to focus just the one target over dealing greater total damage via the AoE version. That said, we've now got CC back, so our best solution is to make situations where we might want to focus the one over that total damage.

While that may sound like the natural implications of those first few simple, concrete changes (a stronger Third Eye, Life Surge, and Everlasting Flight, for instance) are rapidly spiraling out of control, I'd argue otherwise. They add up quickly, but each is sound, healthy, and still immediately gratifying.


And even if they did, and it fell anywhere close along your proposed idea, players would still complain that it only has X animal companions and that they couldn't collect Y pokemans.
That, I think, is fine. I think what people get sold on most in a new job is neither quite just the practice or just the principle, but the overall vision, which isn't quite divisible to either single side. Simply put, the largest factor here would be the initial presentation, and I do think that could be done in a way that would be broadly and deeply well-received. Both those dimensions are vital, but I think the devs tend too often to overlook the latter in the attempt to be as universally appealing as possible. Heck, if there were absolutely no detractors, I'd almost think that a bad sign.

But again, this would be a 7.0 thing at the earliest. For the time being, this would all be about the small steps, such as a new sort of Exploratory that finally learns from Diadem's, Eureka's, and Bozja's mistakes making the case for this or that coming back or being a tiny bit more powerful, and then the chain of events, each small and even individually understandable, that could flow from there.




Samurai is kinda ice themed (along with BLM and NIN).
Wind, predominantly. All but a some six skills (related to flowers or sight) have to do with the sky or wind. Even the one seemingly ice-type spell, Yukikaze, is still a type of wind (literally: Snow-wind).