SECOND Job Stones for base classes of ARR?

[RitsukoSonoda]

I was more thinking a Gladiator/Rogue situation where they swap out all the weapons fitting a specific design and give the swapped out ones to the new class. Hence my reservations on swapping out a relic weapon.

Regarding the rest of the post, Lightning's gunblade is closer to the Paladin sword than what a Gunbreaker uses. In it's transformed sword state it is just a sword. It just can transform into a gun.

You do sortof have me dead to Rights on the Scythe thing though.

Well with people talking about warhammers for a new job as well. I recall the WAR weapon that was a part of that armor set that made you resemble the dwarves actually being a warhammer instead of an axe. I don't recall if there were any others though.

If you look at MCH weapons they don't really stick to 1 style of gun either. I've seen ones that look like rifles, others that look like muskets, some that look like shotguns, and some that look like pistols (a couple of these which are super tiny like the size of a sub compact 9mm).

[Fabbro]

Everyone in this game starts with one of these base classes of "A Realm Reborn": gladiator, lancer, archer, thaumaturge, conjurer, arcanist (lets leave rogue out here, since its not for starters).

All of them develope into one job class by obtaining a specific job stone. Arcanist being the one and only difference, here you can chose between two job stones (scholar / summoner). And if you level the base class you level up both jobs at the same time.

Since the addons introduce complete new jobs everytime, why just not implementing other job stones for these base classes, too?


For example, there have been always people who complained about the archer turning into a bard support / dd while many classic archer players like the idea to become a profession in dealing huge ranged damage. Why not coming up with an alternate job stone so that people can chose between a support bard or a pure archer?
Same for people who played a lot of Final Fantasy XI and enjoy the pet version of the dragoon, why not giving the opportunity to make the player chose in between?

100% agree.

We need more individual identity for every character in a more meaningful and RPG kind of way other than just looks: distribute attributes; select unique skill sets and abilities for each class (being unable to have access to all of them); having multiclasses; having racial characteristics that actually matter and change the play style; having classes that are exclusive to some races according to lore; classes of the same role with actual meaningfull diferences between them (with different streghts and weekness); etc..

Game desperately needs more of those classic RPG mechanics and less care for balancing.
Too much obsession with balancing removes complexity, dumbs things down, and basically ruins MMOs. And, history shows that every single MMO that tried to balance things too much, streamline and dumbdown it's systems fails sooner or later. It's the more complex experiences that keep on going. Seems people should stop min maxing and caring for balance so much, and just enjoy and play in the unique way they prefer (that may include a unique class that is "week", it's fine, not everything needs or should be completely balanced).

Individual character and class identity is way, way, way, much more important than balancing and streamlining.
This is a game for adults after all, game should respect player's intelligence and maturity much more than it currently does.

(PS:love your examples and the games you used for it, FFXIV actually would benefit a lot from being more like FFXI, EQ1 and DAoC in every single way actually, specially FFXI.)

[Fabbro]

I have been hoping they'd make branching versions of classes (Archer -> Bard or Ranger, Marauder -> Warrior or Beastmaster, etc) through the use of traits or new abilities but yeah it really seems like the devs are adamant on not making new jobs grow from classes. And OP you might want to take a chill pill on the people who are saying "the devs said x", they're just stating the reason why we don't have the suggested idea right now and why we might not have it in the foreseeable future.

Yes the devs can change their minds and someday might do so regarding this idea, but right now it's a "no" on all available fronts. It's not fanboyism to say such, honestly. The person may not really have an opinion if its bad or good or feasible or whatever, they just know what the devs' stance is at this moment in time.

That would also be amazing. As long as each class is actually unique, with it's own strengths and weaknesses and very different in play style without caring much for balance over fun and uniqueness / individuality, that could actually be incredible.

[KitKatnip]

I think being a Dragoon with a Wyvern pet would be fun. It seems SE is moving away from jobs with pets so I doubt it will ever happen.

Although reaper appears to have a pet but I don't know if it's an actual pet or just a casting animation.

We could ask for Wyvern Barding for our chocobos and pretend to be a Dragoon with a Wyvern pet.

[Lihtleita]

the only reason to add in more "twin" jobs would be if we run out of weapon types.

[Steelbreaker25]

the only reason to add in more "twin" jobs would be if we run out of weapon types.

Seeing as we got Gundam funnels, and Final Fantasy has famously had wonky weapon types, this is not likely a thing that will happen soon.

[Tonkra]

Edit: and as proven by SCH and SMN, your second point is not valid. The two jobs have nothing in common anymore.

Because one is a healer and one a dps class.. so?

Mustnt be the same for a Dragoon <> Wyvern Master (for example)

Although a beastmaster <> warrior could be completely different, too.
So why not?

[SilverObi]

That would also be amazing. As long as each class is actually unique, with it's own strengths and weaknesses and very different in play style without caring much for balance over fun and uniqueness / individuality, that could actually be incredible.

It would for sure, and I understand some of OP's seeming frustration when people say "well the devs said no" cause yeah it may seem like a weak answer but it is THE answer. It's definitely something they could do but it always comes down to does the dev team want to and then do they see it as being worth the time and resources. I can't see them making essentially specs though due to how tightly balanced they like the jobs to be, versus say FFXI where unbalance was expected.

[Mikey_R]

I have skimmed through this topic, however, lets go through some logical steps.

1. If you make one class split into 2 different roles, you have to take into consideration the actions the class already has. Take Gladiator/ Marauder for example. On the Gladiator side, you have Iron Will, which increases Enmity and Sentinel, a powerful mitigation tool, with Marauder you have Defiance, which increases enmity, Vengeance, Sentinel equivalent and Holmgang, which is Warrior's 'I can't die' button. There is zero reason for any other role to have these. Go to Conjury and you have; Cure, Medica, Raise and Medica II. Doing this with DPS is a bit tougher, however, you can make the claim that, if you go from a DPS to Tank/Healer, you do not have the normal tools that the tank/healer would normally have.

You can say, just add them to the job quests, but to that I can counter, the Job quests would start at level 30, you will then have a tank, who could potentially be synced to below 30 (the earliest they could give a tank stance) and not be able to hold aggro as a tank, or they don't have a basic healing skill etc. If you do it like Scholar/Summoner, where they share nothing except Resurrection, then are you really still just having a different spec or are you basically a new job that just happens to share a weapon? Summoner gets both Bio and Miasma as DoTs currently, both of which are Arcanist spells, however, once you go to Scholar, you only keep Bio. For no reason, you lost Miasma. Even for the spells that they do share, the can be different. Ruin 1 on Scholar is 160 potency compared to Summoner's 180 potency, which leads into the next point.

2. Potency. It is no secret that Scholar and Summoner did properly share Arcanist spells. They both shared Ruin, they both had Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II etc. If Summoner was a bit underpowered, they change the potency of one DoT to bring Summoner back in line, but now Scholar is really strong on the DPS side. This is why the 'shared' spells are split between Arcanist and Scholar. All of Scholar's action, have been made Scholar Specific (except Resurrection) as opposed to keeping them Arcanist. The reason is so that they could balance each one separately. Changing the potency on one does nothing to the potency of the other. SE have already stated that balancing Summoner/Scholar has been a nightmare when they were linked, which has lead them to all but splitting them from each other. I would bet that, if they could go back in time, they would not have bothered with the Summoner/Scholar pair and instead given Scholar the current Job treatment. All unique spells, a unique weapon etc. Even if it was very early on in the games life, they might have made the effort to give Scholar a new look, however, at this point, it is too late. By having Summoner/Scholar split early, Scholar might have had it's initial DoT as Biolysis, it's single target spam as Broil all from early levels rather than just being Bio/Ruin upgrades, Summoner wouldn't have a useless Res and Scholar might have had a different resource than Aetherflow, which isn't even the same between the 2 now, with Summoner getting 2 stacks and Scholar getting 3, Summoner doesn't even have Aetherflow as an ability anymore, instead getting it from Energy Drain/Energy Syphon, however, Energy Drain on Scholar is something that uses up and Aetherflow stack. As you can see, it is a mess which would have been better if it had been sorted out earlier.

3. Balancing between the roles. This one should be a quick one. I can see Gladiator/Marauder having a DPS counterpart, I can see Pugilist/Lancer having tank counterparts, but, who would make a good healer? You could say Arcanist, but that has already been done, out of Thaumaturge and Archer, who would it be? You don't want to make roles too lopsided as it won't be fair to people who play the roles with less added. You can tell this by from the lack of Healer added in Shadowbringers and the joys that a new healer is coming in Endwalker (I am fully expecting a Physical Ranged and Caster in the next expansion). Trying to fit something into the healer role is probably the hardest one to do, but you cannot neglect them.

4. Feel of the job. Do you really want to play Gladiator but DPS? or Pugilist but Tank? Your basic rotation is going to be the same for both so at the early levels, there is going to be no difference in how they play/feel. Would that really feel good? Going into the higher levels, sure, you could add traits to make the animations look different, but at that point, you are playing a different job that just happens to share a weapon. At this point, rather than having a trait change the weapon skill, have the weapon skill be the base and make a new job from the ground up. By making a new job, you can also alter the weapon, make it slightly different, give your character a different battle stance to make it look and feel different.

At the end of the day, you are basically making a new Job, they have said it can take about a year to develop one job, so, if you were to add more jobs to the existing 8, that is 4 expansions worth of jobs to add (assuming the rate stays the same) and I am sure the vast majority of people would prefer a unique job that looks and feels unique to play rather than just Gladiator but DPS.

[Fellgon]

if final fantasy 14 have double stone per job it will be more of the same like many games in the market, wont be unique as it is. 14 wont bring anything new, many games are like OP is suggesting. Its so complicated create this thing, that would be better keep the way it is and brings new jobs with future expansion. with 2 stones many weapons will be deleted and probably dev team will need create something that fits roles, is so much work and wont gonna work. Many games have spec, there's nothing new in that. Balance will be a mess! in my opinion would be better create a new final fantasy to do this, than change what's is already successful.