Class uniqueness [dev1032]

[Shikyo]

I feel a drastic class re-haul is needed. Few of the classes have a particular focus or concept.

In FFXI a thief was a thief, you stole things and used skills with an emphasis on the concept of 'trickery'. In FFXIV the main difference between melee jobs is the weapon you use, which quickly becomes a trivial issue. Besides that, originally on the official websites (prior to release) there was an emphasis on range, each job had a range it was meant to stand at; pugilists the closest, archers the furthest. While this isn't exactly the foundation for a class system with highly unique classes it at least separated them somewhat. However, due to lack of crowd control, your class's ideal 'range' doesn't amount to an awful lot.

Often there's the argument that you 'make your own class' by using the skill system, with paladin (glad+conj) being the cited example. This doesn't exactly stand up either, you can make a paladin but 'subjob' abilities have longer recasts and only conj/thau can restore their mp (though I think they announced introduction of natural mp regen recently?). However, what class can I make with Archer? I don't, I just tack on healing abilities so that I can solo. I'm a paladin with a bow I suppose?

To summarise on classes, I think the classes just need their 'concept' rethinking. "Wields a spear" doesn't strike me as a concept, which is probably why the current idea of a 'unique' skill for a DD class is the same ability 10 times with either a different aoe shape (archer) or a different status effect tacked on (all melee classes).

As for general combat mechanics, FFXIV sits in a weird place. It's like it can't make its mind up if it wants to be a button masher or an final fantasy rpg game. We mash 1 until we can hit maybe a 2 or 3, possibly hitting 9 or 0 before the 2 or 3 if we're feeling fancy. If it wants to be a button masher then we need controls to reflect that, make dodging easier, get rid of the nervous twitching that is active and passive mode. If they want to be more tactical we need to look at less commands per second but each command having more emphasis/importance. Possibly look at a variation on the ATB system. At the moment we have a button basher with tactical rpg style controls and it's not a good combination.

Agreed nuff a over haul of the class system is needed make this game worthy of being called final fantasy wtf are the classes...and the combat system should be a variation on XI's and for god sake after you do the leves for the day all you can do is craft bring freaking party machanics in so ppl can have fun in exp partys ...

[ESAR]

Agreed nuff a over haul of the class system is needed make this game worthy of being called final fantasy wtf are the classes...and the combat system should be a variation on XI's and for god sake after you do the leves for the day all you can do is craft bring freaking party machanics in so ppl can have fun in exp partys ...

There's a thread I posted here about action based skill point distribution. It's each attack but the idea behind it was to open anything as a valid target thus bringing back rewarding SP parties.

Rather then having us determine enemies based on hp/def which results in the highest sp per hour. Sp would only be effected by fighting tougher battles. It's similar to the original system scratch the randomness. If you have any questions I'll answer them on that thread. I'll post a link later but I'm on my phone, it's too sloppy.

This would give you exactly what youre looking for though cause I'm looking for thy same thing and this is the best solution I can come up with.

The current system of sp is too hard to balance which is causing this problem.

The system they created sought to eliminate this but a major change to the game unbalanced the attack based sp.

Heres the link:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...bution-dev1021