Re-envisioning the concept of a "Thief" job...

[Terin]

Look; the Ninja is cool, but doesn't quite capture the fantasy of being a "Thief". Which, Theives aren't necessarily great combat-classes, so I put some thought into how one might re-imagine the Thief...

My thinking is, you're introduced to an entirely new culture. Over hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, the art of thievery has been elevated to an art form itself; to the point that simply stealing coins or trinkets is no longer considered valuable.

Instead, this culture gives reverence to those who can "steal" things are not or should not be possible. The more abstract, the more they are revered. The greatest of these Thieves are able to steal one's *voice*, or even *memories* and secrets.

In gameplay terms, this new Thief would be able to "steal" buffs from enemies, perhaps even steal certain spells outright (albeit temporarily). Perhaps they could "steal" their opponents' weaponry, temporarily lowering their Phys. damage while raising their own (and of course, using the visual of the "stolen" weapon).

Just to shake things up, they could learn abilities to "reveal" weapons and supplies left by others in their trade. So you might temporarily see a Thief walking around, looking for a chest that wasn't there a moment ago, and upon opening it, suddenly getting several charges of different skills, like a high-mobility grappling hook, throwing knives, or even small bombs!

I would round them out by making their weapon either a "Jeweled Dagger", or perhaps even a Scimitar. I honestly like the idea of a Job that has an overtly Middle Eastern flair anyways! But most importantly; I would have their weapon use only ONE hand; the other being open and used for all their different tactical abilities.

Again, just a thought!

[Psytic]

Look; the Ninja is cool, but doesn't quite capture the fantasy of being a "Thief". Which, Theives aren't necessarily great combat-classes, so I put some thought into how one might re-imagine the Thief...

My thinking is, you're introduced to an entirely new culture. Over hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, the art of thievery has been elevated to an art form itself; to the point that simply stealing coins or trinkets is no longer considered valuable.

Instead, this culture gives reverence to those who can "steal" things are not or should not be possible. The more abstract, the more they are revered. The greatest of these Thieves are able to steal one's *voice*, or even *memories* and secrets.

In gameplay terms, this new Thief would be able to "steal" buffs from enemies, perhaps even steal certain spells outright (albeit temporarily). Perhaps they could "steal" their opponents' weaponry, temporarily lowering their Phys. damage while raising their own (and of course, using the visual of the "stolen" weapon).

Just to shake things up, they could learn abilities to "reveal" weapons and supplies left by others in their trade. So you might temporarily see a Thief walking around, looking for a chest that wasn't there a moment ago, and upon opening it, suddenly getting several charges of different skills, like a high-mobility grappling hook, throwing knives, or even small bombs!

I would round them out by making their weapon either a "Jeweled Dagger", or perhaps even a Scimitar. I honestly like the idea of a Job that has an overtly Middle Eastern flair anyways! But most importantly; I would have their weapon use only ONE hand; the other being open and used for all their different tactical abilities.

Again, just a thought!

Sounds like Guild Wars 2 Thief they have a spell stealing mechanic. Wonder if they could get away with it considering its pretty similar. Ive also wanted monk to have something like a channeled fists of fury attack like WoW. Not sure if outright taking similar mechanics is fair game or not though.

Edit: I guess Sabin Had a Pummel Blitz in FF6 way before WoW so thats probably fair game.

[GrizzlyTank]

I just want my running animation back.

Not fond of running around looking like a airplane, it can't be good for my back.

[Xia_Thas]

The concept of stealing a buff / debuff from an enemy is a developer balancing nightmare. You can see it with examples from a lot of games that tried it, the most solid example being WoW and it's history with the mechanic. (Mages just soloing content ect) One could argue most of what you are describing is just BLU with a different coat of paint on it.

I agree with the fantasy of the Rogue class getting messed up for some players. I myself was loving the Rogue, the robinhood style story, and the flashy dual dagger gameplay only to become the Hokage seemingly out of nowhere. The idea of becoming this Arsene Lupin style thief would have been cool but we got what we got. You can see the expecations of a classes' job advancement being remedied by SE by having future jobs just come out as the job with no base / starter job.

[MikkoAkure]

The devs purposefully didn't have rogue be the classic "thief" job because they didn't want the Warrior of Light to be associated with thievery or other dark connotations. That's also why the Rogues' Guild isn't a Thieves' Guild. Also why it turns out that dark knights are actually powered by love. I wouldn't be surprised if the new reaper class ends up having some other type of similar nonsense.

[Seraphor]

It's called Rogue.

[Seraphor]

The devs purposefully didn't have rogue be the classic "thief" job because they didn't want the Warrior of Light to be associated with thievery or other dark connotations. That's also why the Rogues' Guild isn't a Thieves' Guild. Also why it turns out that dark knights are actually powered by love. I wouldn't be surprised if the new reaper class ends up having some other type of similar nonsense.

The Voidsent Avatar is actually our shard from the 13th and we're best friends just like Ardbert.

[Enkidoh]

The Voidsent Avatar is actually our shard from the 13th and we're best friends just like Ardbert.

Is this actually true though or just someone's headcanon that players have run with? As I seen players stating with such comments "I think", making it seem it's just theorizing. Basically, citation please.

[Theodric]

The devs purposefully didn't have rogue be the classic "thief" job because they didn't want the Warrior of Light to be associated with thievery or other dark connotations. That's also why the Rogues' Guild isn't a Thieves' Guild. Also why it turns out that dark knights are actually powered by love. I wouldn't be surprised if the new reaper class ends up having some other type of similar nonsense.

I'm inclined to think that things have changed since those days as the game itself has come to revolve more around shades of grey than black or white morality. There's already a lot of examples of the player character and his allies engaging in acts of theft and sabotage. The quote in question is taken from an interview from almost a decade ago, anyway - right around the same time we were told that we wouldn't get male Viera 'but some other playable race' and that didn't work out well.

There's clearly demand for more controversial jobs (not that I'd consider a thief job to be controversial when it's a JRPG staple and present in...many FF titles in some form...)

[KizuyaKatogami]

I'm inclined to think that things have changed since those days as the game itself has come to revolve more around shades of grey than black or white morality. There's already a lot of examples of the player character and his allies engaging in acts of theft and sabotage. The quote in question is taken from an interview from almost a decade ago, anyway - right around the same time we were told that we wouldn't get male Viera 'but some other playable race' and that didn't work out well.

There's clearly demand for more controversial jobs (not that I'd consider a thief job to be controversial when it's a JRPG staple and present in...many FF titles in some form...)

I’m inclined to believe this as well, since they classified the avatar as drawing upon power from voidsent which has always been classified as a not exactly right thing to do, so clearly they’re changing their stance on things like this. In the end i don’t think it really goes against much because, we’re the warrior of light. who’s going to tell us what we’re doing is wrong? Lol