Just an idea; removing base "classes", no Job Crystal making you an "Adventurer"

[Terin]

Generally speaking, I would still keep the SOUL of the "Classes" alive, but mix them up a little bit. When you start the game, instead oif the Merchant-brother you interact with (Brendt, Brennan, or Bremont) handing you a Ring, they instead have you your first Job Crystal -- except it appears as just an ordinary piece of stone.

Just add a single line of text (because none of them actually speak), where he says something like "Speaking of <city>, I found this stone outside the <starting job>'s guild on my last visit. I thought it might bring me luck, but I've a feeling you should have it."

In addition, when picking up any of the "Classes", you're given a similar stone, with similar text like "The guildmaster would also instruct you keep this stone close to your heart."

So instead of being GIVEN a Job Crystal, you instead AWAKEN the one you already have! So mechanically, it's the same except you're "your job" the whole time, completing the job quest just gives you the proper title for said job.

Second, I would add "Job Crystals" for your crafters, as well. Really, I'm just not convinced there's a compelling reason NOT to, considering Shadowbringers already added Crystals for them. If anything, they deserve nicer-looking icons, imo.

NOW...

Some people feel like "Job Crystals" should be removed entirely. I'm honestly okay with that, in terms of items that take up inventory space. I still like the concept of them, but that needn't require an armoury chest tab.

HOWEVER...

If you keep Job Crystals, I would personally make one seemingly-minor change. When not wearing ANY Job Crystal, you default to a simple "Adventurer". As this "job", you only have access to general abilities, but can equip any item in which your "level" is high enough. The purpose essentially being, for taking screenshots of otherwise impossible gear combinations.

Your Adventurer "level" would instead being an average of all other jobs, rounded down (jobs not acquired would count as "lvl 0"). Not much point, right?

But borrowing inspiration from the "Onion Knight", maybe once you reach max-level with ALL jobs, maybe it becomes a sort of "Limited Job", skin to the Blue Mage, useful purely for solo'ing old content? Or heck, maybe it's treated as even a sort of "joke class", where it maintains zero abilities, but its basic auto-attack becomes incredibly powerful, again just for non-relevant content?

Is there a lot to gain from this idea? No, not really. But I dunno; something about the idea of this sort of "secret job" that everyone has access to, just sounds kind of fun. Heck, maybe it could even play some kind of role in unlocking some special glamour(s), just having you revisit a bunch of folks you've helped along the way, and maybe some kind-of-dumb "challenges" like, "a special Alliance Raid with only Adventurers, basically auto-attacking and maybe a jump-puzzle DURING a boss fight"?

I dunno. Just the kind of wild ideas that run rampant in my brain!

[seida]

I think most people agree the job and holdover classes system is clunky and needs changing... but doing so would require a huge overhaul of the entire system and isn't something that could be done easily or lightly. I'm hoping they do something with it for 7.0, summoner and scholar need separating properly.

[Ath192]

This is never going to happen. It is hardcore ingrained in the lore. Heck…. Crystals like those are even mentioned all the way to endwalker. It’s just too late.

[Alestorm]

I recall 1.0 not having any jobs and anyone could learn any ability. Sounds nice right?

Now think about balancing any sort content around this anarchy. WHM that can spam flare? sure. PLD with a DRG jump? Go for it! It would be effectively impossible in the long run. I've heard some say this system was one of the big things that hurt 1.0 outside of the terrible story and clunky menus.

[Sarnai]

It would just lead to ppl playing the same most optimized class. Just look at the games with same system, where majority of flexible classes are being overflown with the same 4 "best tank skills" "best healer skills" "best DPS skills" "best party support skills".

[TaleraRistain]

It would just lead to ppl playing the same most optimized class. Just look at the games with same system, where majority of flexible classes are being overflown with the same 4 "best tank skills" "best healer skills" "best DPS skills" "best party support skills".

Heck, it happened here. That's how we got the role skills. When we could cross class stuff there were community-required ones anyway, like healers having to slog through THM for Swiftcast. You caught heck if you didn't have it. There was absolutely no choice in the old system, so I'm glad they got rid of the illusion of it.

[BaconBits]

I recall 1.0 not having any jobs and anyone could learn any ability. Sounds nice right?

Now think about balancing any sort content around this anarchy. WHM that can spam flare? sure. PLD with a DRG jump? Go for it! It would be effectively impossible in the long run. I've heard some say this system was one of the big things that hurt 1.0 outside of the terrible story and clunky menus.

I'd pay good money to see a BLM use Dragonfire Dive.

[MikkoAkure]

I recall 1.0 not having any jobs and anyone could learn any ability. Sounds nice right?

Now think about balancing any sort content around this anarchy. WHM that can spam flare? sure. PLD with a DRG jump? Go for it! It would be effectively impossible in the long run. I've heard some say this system was one of the big things that hurt 1.0 outside of the terrible story and clunky menus.

Not completely true. In 1.0 before and after jobs were introduced, you could mix and match abilities from classes but not jobs. The small handful of abilities learned from jobs were locked to the job itself. And if you equipped a job stone, you were limited to the abilities from one of the two classes required to unlock the job stone.

There was some use in going without a job stone. I remember people doing Ifrit as thaumaturge instead of black mage for some specific reason. Other than access to all class abilities I think it increased your HP? But you would lose access to the 5 or so job abilities.

But yeah, Yoshi-P has already said that he doesn’t like the job system but it’s too late to get rid of it now without a second reboot of the game. It’s also completely ingrained in the lore and you’d need to rewrite a lot of the job quests and redo cutscenes at this point.

[MistakeNot]

Any change to the class/job system which removes the existing class quests gets a big "Nope!" from me.

[Duskane]

adventurer as a limited job that lets you pick and choose a moves from all Dow/m jobs