Are classes needed? POLL

[XStruckX]

Of which only 4 were trully useful (Ballad, March, Elegy, Madrigal) and everything else was a waste of space until Abyssea procs made them quasi-relevant. It's not that different. In fact, they actually gave Bard something to do when not using songs. That and Bards ARE a subsect of the Rogue archetype, which can use daggers and bows. XIV's Bard is more like the Bard from Bard's Tale or a classic D&D Bard rather than...well, that horrible thing from XI that was stupidly rare that few actually liked playing, to the point it gave birth to the princess BRD.

PS: If you want a more modern example, look up Dragon Age: Origins. Leliana, in specific.

Yeah I played Dragon Age I enjoyed it... The lore and the mystery behind Leliana was great especially the little expansion they had for her. I totally hear you on that! On Bard only having 4 useful songs in FFXI I think it would be fair to say the number is a little higher. I used quite a few but I made the mistake of forgetting the different tiers of strengths for the songs. Fine give it a dagger or some other weapon as well...oh wait we can't use multiple weapons on a class/job. Here is the solution ready for this?

Give bard a flute right? Make it the weapon... you sing songs that do more than just buff. Does damage, debuffs, crowd control, speed enhancement as well us the usual buffs. The possibilities are endless on what a bard can do...

As it is now we are an ARC that can do a couple of extra buffs. BOOM that's the bard. Kinda lame imo...

Think of your Bard as someone that can do a channeling constant damage on the mob while his buffs are up, being able to slow, stun, poison. Being able to use his "ahem" instrument for anything any other mage can do. There is that mage everyone is looking for.

[Duelle]

As it is now we are an ARC that can do a couple of extra buffs. BOOM that's the bard. Kinda lame imo.

Your opinion is noted. I disagree with it, but it is noted nevertheless.

You missed my point, though. The classic bard had the songs as the back up/flavor of the class. That's why D&D Bards were strong as hell and were ridiculously versatile. They were a rogue/archer that could sing and buff their group. That's what we have now. As ranged damage dealer makes sense in this context and may even lure people to playing the job, I'm all for this if it will keep the idiocy of the princess BRD from happening again. I'm not going to support anything that will turn BRD into a class that few are willing to play so that the shrewd can abuse that to hold parties and entire endgame shells hostage.

And people are looking for an additional mage because their minds demand symetry, which doesn't exist at the moment. I don't think most realize that magic is so cut and dry in FF that you'd need to turn Geomancer or Blue Mage into pure casters and build from there. The approach XIV has taken to magic demands that each caster has its own type of magic, so we're kind of limited until the devs can invent something. As I've said elsewhere, I don't care what they come up with as long as I get my magic fencer RDM at the end of the day.

[Kinseykinz]

I really hope they do away with classes...

Answer me this... How are they gonna implement Samurai, Ninja, Musketeer.

Those are gonna have to be new classes with their own set of jobs?
So Dark Knight? Everyone is saying its gonna be a MRD job. A Dark Knight with a great axe? So they are saying that classes are gonna have multiple jobs to choose from right? Whats a samurai gonna have? Whats a musketeer gonna have?

Make this simple on us SE, do away with classes and have each job work off its own weapons and abilities...

NIN > katana
SAM > 2h katana
DRK > scythe
MSK > a freaking gun please...only time you see a gun around here is during Limsa's opening scenes.

Well for starters, not all of these are 'Jobs' some of them, if offered, will probably be Classes.

Lets Look at 'Musketeer' as the guild is already in game.

Musketeer will more than likely be a ranged CLASS one day. (Again, you can go visit the guild in LL right now if you'd like to do so). As a Class, it will gain access to it's own weapons class... probably Pistols and/or Rifles. It is even likely that in order to 'unlock' this class, all you will need to do is buy the appropriate weapon. (no pre-req required like all other classes atm).

Then one day, SE might decide to release a new JOB that also uses Guns...maybe they call it 'Sniper' or 'Hunter' or 'Ranger' who knows... but in order to unlock it, you need to have your Musketeer a certain level and Archer a certain level...maybe even another class, but point is, the Job is a specalization of the class. (A musketeer is just a military man, but a Sniper is a highly-trained specific branch of the military.)

So basically, you can't think of everything as a Job...because it's not. Look for ways in which current classes (and potential future ones) can be molded together to give you new Jobs.

Pugilist Guild already spawned the Monk class...which is a more pure, devout fighter type. But being a Guild that controls finance in Uldah, would it not make sense that Thieves also somehow come from there (btw, the PGL main storyline already deals with counterfitters) it is plausable a Thief class spawns from here...

Another Possibility for Thief is it becomes it's own new class...but if so, I'd probably be a LL/Pirate storyline. This would also Thief to get it's own weapon (dual daggers). It would also allow Thief to potentially be the basis for Jobs like Ninja.

Point is, there are a lot of ways to work it....but it's very hard to see how it will all come together as a mid-rank character pre 2.0. It'll take getting into 2.0 AND seeing a level cap increase before we really get a feel as to what the whole Class/Job Armory System has to offer.

[Fionlagh]

thank you for explaining that , kinsey, saved me the trouble lol..
its not that hard to wrap your brain around , people and if you do a little research you will find interviews with Yoshi P talking about ideas on how to introduce classes and jobs. in one interview he talked about thief and ninja, in another he brought up summoner and beastmaster, its all in the works.

[Ayden]

One thing I did not see anyone talk about is <experience point>.

Now one job can be unlocked from a class. Both class and job share the <same experience point bar>. If more jobs were to branch out from the same base class, where would the <experience point> that you get go to?

Sharing the same 50lvl abilities from the base class with another job is boring and basically make the two jobs the same. And your new job would immediately be lvl50 after just finishing the unlock quest of you have already had the base class leveled to 50, which is something I would not want to have.

I am wondering how they are going to implement this [one class -> multiple jobs] system, if that's what they intend to do.

My guess is every new job would require a new base class to be added.

[Vaymathias]

One thing I did not see anyone talk about is <experience point>.

Now one job can be unlocked from a class. Both class and job share the <same experience point bar>. If more jobs were to branch out from the same base class, where would the <experience point> that you get go to?

Sharing the same 50lvl abilities from the base class with another job is boring and basically make the two jobs the same. And your new job would immediately be lvl50 after just finishing the unlock quest of you have already had the base class leveled to 50, which is something I would not want to have.

I am wondering how they are going to implement this [one class -> multiple jobs] system, if that's what they intend to do.

My guess is every new job would require a new base class to be added.

Well they could increase the exp from 51-75 to be higher than they would of had previously.

As long as a class branches out to multiple jobs that fulfill different roles from one another, it can only be a good thing. If I'm a LNC, and LNCs get Dragoon (DD) and also a Tank job, even though I might be (knowing me, definitely) focusing on DRG, as long as I have the gear and the willingness to play a tank, I can play the tank job and STILL progress in my DRG job, thus filling an extra slot in a party if one or the other is LFP. Something like this across multiple classes would be grand, and make partying easier to set up.

[Wicka]

I am all for dropping classes. Freedom is nice sure, but with as much freedom as the armory system gives us, we end up with a muddled sense of purpose. I doubt that this will change, but I do feel that the game would be better if it did.

I mean, lets look at what happens when you add different jobs to the same classes we have now; PGL becomes Monk as well as (I dunno, Dancer I guess). Well I already spent all that time leveling PGL to get Monk and I leveled from 30 to 50 as Monk to finish all my monk stuff. Now when dancer (or whatever) is released, it starts as a lvl 50 job, all i have to do is go do a few quests and boom I'm done with dancer. Also, dancer is only marginally different from Monk, because there are only 5 abilities (keep in mind that I haven't touched the level cap issue) that change the way PGL functions.

Another thing we can look at is the introduction of new classes and jobs. jobs like Puppetmaster and Summoner could be finagled as Jobs on existing classes, but lets assume that they come with a new class. First of all, unless the class is a pet class, from level 1 to 30 you have no pet. Unlocking the job grants you your pet, but you only get 5 abilities that are complimentary to said pet, making you very similar to the class you just came from. And if the class that becomes Puppetmaster or Summoner IS a pet class, will it be a 3rd type of pet (neither a Puppet or a Summon)? In that case you still don't get your desired pet until level 30.

Again, I doubt that the current armory system will be changed, but I do think it would benefit greatly from the removal of classes. Keep the requirements for job quests, (eg. lvl 30 Monk and Lvl 15 Drg) to be able to to your quests that grant abilities. As far as the argument that classes are needed for soloing is concerned; I say meh. I play an MMO to play with others, if I wanted a solo experience I'd pop in my copy of Skyrim. And really, I have done most of this game's content just duo-ing with my Pally-playing friend. Of course that hasn't inhibited my ability to solo most of the Path of the 12 quests or any levequest, as Monk mind you. For now the system is OK. But when more jobs are added, they would be best added with their own class to avoid the shared level situation. And if each class has only one job, then whats the point? Of course if they just kept the class/job ratio at 1/1, that would be fine with me.

PS. People don't hate the Armory system because it's different. People hate the armory system (especially now that there are jobs) for many other reasons. Just because some people crave a system that is similar to other MMOs, that does not mean they want cookie cutter games. If you play FPSs on console, would you be happy if the developer made the trigger button be that weird Thumbstick-click instead of a shoulder button? Certain aspects of certain games are simply proven to work within that genre. Being different is a good thing. But simply being great is better.

[Mizuharu]

I honestly like how the class/job system works compared to just a job system. There are plenty of mixes for two classes to make an advance job.

GLD30/THM15 : Red Mage (Melee job with access to a mix of white and black magic?)
GLD30/CON15 : Paladin
GLD30/MRD15 : Fighter (Monkey Grip trait?)
GLD30/ARC15 : Hunter or Sniper from Final Fantasy Tactics
GLD30/LNC15 : ??? ...I'm not sure about this one D:

But yeah, that's just me thinking up possibilities. As long as Yoshida is in charge and Tanaka never sets foot anywhere near the FFXIV dev discussion room, I'm cool with whatever they do with this game~<3

[Temos]

Mizuharu

I honestly like how the class/job system works compared to just a job system. There are plenty of mixes for two classes to make an advance job.

GLD30/THM15 : Red Mage (Melee job with access to a mix of white and black magic?)
GLD30/CON15 : Paladin
GLD30/MRD15 : Fighter (Monkey Grip trait?)
GLD30/ARC15 : Hunter or Sniper from Final Fantasy Tactics
GLD30/LNC15 : ??? ...I'm not sure about this one D:

But yeah, that's just me thinking up possibilities. As long as Yoshida is in charge and Tanaka never sets foot anywhere near the FFXIV dev discussion room, I'm cool with whatever they do with this game~<3

The only problem with this is that gladiator Uses shield abilities and would be the base class for those jobs which would also us shield abilities as well as defensive abilities and traits. So all we would be getting is many tanks with only very little differences. Ask your self would a Red Mage ever need to or want to use flash or war drum. It just doesn't work. With out having 1 class per 1 job it creates to many clones. if gladiator gets any other jobs besides PLD there are going to be tanks. And if you think the WAR PLD threads were bad......

Same can be said for the other classes and jobs as well.

[Eliseus]

FFXI job system, yes please! I want to be able to equip other weps on my drg right meow!