Are classes needed? POLL

[Viritess]

Or place some Class only abilities. I think the main problem may be that despite the smalled pool of skills a job can use, they can claim all from the base class.

That or make Classes using a skill add a different or second effect.

Could also give classes more possible combo trees then jobs. Or allow more skills to combo off other skills. Could even allow classes to inter class combo and disallow that from jobs.

Lots of possible options

[bobbygunz]

classes aren't holding the jobs back. the dev staff is holding both class and jobs back with the way they changed classes and added jobs in. there's many other ways they could have done them that would have worked better than they do now, but they took an unimaginative and safe route.

They should have just done what mabinogi did and made Jobs like Destinies, or in other words give a focus to the class.

But that debate's been done to death already.

[rwyan]

I would rather abolish the notion of "class" all together. Right now classes are skills but they're also classes.... and then there are jobs which are "independent" of classes but aren't. The whole concept/metaphor is ambiguous. Don't get me wrong, I love the revamped combat mechanics and the addition of iconic FF jobs - but the root of the problem is still the underlying armory system.

What they should do... collapse the current class system into jobs. Allow players to change their job via the stones as we do now. Each job would learn abilities that fit within its theme and role. However, weapons would enhance aspects of those abilities. For example, a paladin could equip a lance for more dps, an axe for aoe, or sword/shield for even better tanking. Weapon skills and abilities would be completely independent of class.

[Hyrist]

Jobs and classes will be further explored as the level caps rise. Right now they're good where they are. People just choose not to explore Classes anymore because Jobs are the hot thing.

I should note: I'm not in support of such a voting system, even though the votes are in favor of my opinion. Square Enix issued surveys do a far more adequate jobs of these like these - even if they can occasionally be used to try to add weight to a point.

It's simply not an accurate representation of the population of the game. We're tiny compared to the population we should have been maintaining at this juncture. And even if the population was higher, only a fraction of those would visit these forums.

[Gennosuke]

I agree, down with classes.. and focus on jobs.. bring the best of jobs. class system is a relic of the past struggling to survive through the more fascinating FF iconic job era. I think SE can do something great, if they just spend their efforts and time on just jobs.

my thoughts/post from other thread regarding this:

yea, i loved the FFT system. Was the most interesting, enjoyable system i've come across and it was sensible. I think this system can be easily tweaked to be similar to FFT and that could easily solve many of these issues.

One of the main problems with this concept of jobs stemming from classes is the fact that jobs will be severely restricted & limited due to the nature of the corresponding class. The definition & intention behind jobs in this system is to serve as a more specialized version of the existing class counterpart. In this case, it's impossible for many of the suggestions to come true. Drk for eg simply can not stem from gladiator which is a defensive/shield/tank based role. Not only does it not make sense, but the abilities will work against the nature of a drk role.

Another issue with multiple jobs stemming from one class is SE going back to square one by reintroducing one of their fundamental original issues that they alleviated with the job system, where now.. instead of duplicate classes, we are moving towards duplicate jobs, which may look different but executing abilities - the majority of which are the same (from the base class) with the exception of a few specialized abilities. That to me sounds like they're taking a step backwards if they do decide to go down that path. Back to Job abominations & lack of identity, which was the whole purpose behind introducing jobs in the first place.

Classes may offer more diversity than jobs and they have their uses currently due to limitation imposed on jobs, but they introduce a whole lot more issues in the long run when trying to expand on this multifaceted system, especially so with the apparent stronger interest & focus in jobs (from both devs and playerbase).

I would rather abolish the notion of "class" all together. Right now classes are skills but they're also classes.... and then there are jobs which are "independent" of classes but aren't. The whole concept/metaphor is ambiguous. Don't get me wrong, I love the revamped combat mechanics and the addition of iconic FF jobs - but the root of the problem is still the underlying armory system.

What they should do... collapse the current class system into jobs. Allow players to change their job via the stones as we do now. Each job would learn abilities that fit within its theme and role. However, weapons would enhance aspects of those abilities. For example, a paladin could equip a lance for more dps, an axe for aoe, or sword/shield for even better tanking. Weapon skills and abilities would be completely independent of class.

Agreed. There are many ways to make up for the lack of classes. I like the idea of equipping other weapons and their added effects. That is introducing variety and diversity to the job system through weapons instead of classes. as per your eg. DD Pld with lance or axe for crowd control. Perhaps new weapon skills introduced for second-class jobs for any weapon. Good ideas.. Jobs with diversity. less clutter, more focus, one system with multi-layers instead of two separate opposing systems requiring 2 different mindsets from a development perspective.

In the end, it's all about time and effort on the devs' end, i'd rather see them be more creative with the job system than keep working and wasting time on an apparently less desired and utilized older class system that is potentially introducing more issues in the long run.