Shared Classes Are Not Failures (ie SCH/SMN)

[Mhaeric]

I only started playing in 4.4, but I thought back in 1.0 and 2.0 the purpose was so to use skills from the other classes you levelled a la FF5.

Yup, it was. It was a "build-a-class" MMO for the first half of 1.0. They realized it didn't work, so they streamlined the classes into coherent and distinct entities followed very shortly by the job system once they were happy that the new base classes were working okay. This original job system was supposed to have 2 jobs for every class, but it was never realized in 1.x nor did they ever once state what the job combinations would be. They did keep the spirit of the mix-n-match idea with cross-class skills, however. In 2.0 they kept this mostly status quo aside from making new rotations and releasing ACN/SCH/SMN as the initial foray into the 2 job idea. Both the devs and player based quickly realized it wasn't as good as a concept as they thought it was, however, due to balancing issues from skills and needing to invest stats into one class over another which went against the philosophy of the armoury system. By the time 3.0 came around they explicitly said they would no longer be doing that style of development and started gradually separating SCH/SMN as much as they could. I suspect they would have divorced them completely, but for all the cutscenes and quests and progression that they share. Far easier to just make SCH be different when the job stone is equipped then go back and fix story and unlinking their progression.

Oh, and you're not the troll according to him, I am. Not that I care one way or the other if he wants to think that bluntly telling him his idea is bad makes me a troll.