The problem with jobs?

[Juzjuzz]

But the community as a whole does. If you made fights favor certain jobs enough it made switches a noticeable damage increase, people will start mandating it. Another problem is gearing secondary or tertiary jobs can be much harder. Case in point, you can't easily swap between the Melee since, for some silly reason, they don't all share gear. Granted, you also have the Casters where only one of them likes Spell Speed.

You have to lvl up the job and farm some gear before even thinking about swapping. Not everyone does that or even wants to.

And i think even if we can swap jobs easly, it's cool to have a main job you can play all the time without having to change because others want you to (and even now having secondary job is really cool because you can adapt IF YOU WANT TO). In a group you know it won't cause any problem but with ppl who don't know and don't care it's not the same story.

[Asari5]

i dont really get why you think its bad to habe the same raiddmg from every job. isnt that the maingoal in balamcimg jobs? differences in playstyle? yes an absolute must.... but differences in overall raiddmg? its a no go

[Payadopa]

otherwise people just meta it to choose limited “best” options (see Guildwars 2), which makes it simply illusion of choice.

I really dislike that argument. Every game follows a certain rule set, therefore if I game the system I can speed run the win state. The illusion can be a powerful tool if done right and your argument just assumes that every single player will do either number crunching or look up a guide and therefore nobody else is allowed (the illusion of) freedom. That's a very reductive way of playing, to say the least.

[Wavaryen]

I hated the game when it was like this.

[Derio]

Glad they got rid of that bs. Remember when people would exclude jobs like PLD in 3.0? Devs learned that lesson.

[Titania40]

To the OP, yeah that is a nice system to have in an RPG... when it's a single player or the non-casters can just casually pull out a different weapon. When I'm playing Final Fantasy X it's perfectly fine that Tidus can barely scratch a flan but Lulu can easily one shot it. It gives you reasons for each character in the party, times where you might prefer Waka but perhaps you need to use Auron instead. When I'm playing DDO it's acceptable that some enemies barely take any damage from my monk's unarmed attacks. It only takes a second or two (at most) to switch from unarmed attacks to using kama after all, or to switch from a steel sword to one made out of magical silver to bypass that enemy's damage reduction.

On the other hand, here in FFXIV my pugilist can only use her fists as weapons. If an enemy is all but immune to bludgeoning damage but can be hurt by slashing weapons, I can't actually change weapons after the fight is started. Doing so would require also changing my class. Do I have that class unlocked? And if so, what level is it? Does it even let you change classes while in a dungeon? No, seriously. Does it let you do that? I honestly don't know, because I've never tried.