I really don't understand the use of the word "Warrior" in this world

[Seiori]

I think berserker would fit them better than just Warrior, but it is what it is.

[Waliel]

Though, could this be like the Paladin class fantasy problem (They're just Gladiators with holy-themed abilities)

If I'm not totally mistaken, the the Paladin is called Knight in JP and wasn't internally called Paladin until HW when they finally got their first holy skill in Clemency. Knights have historically had some limited access to White Magic hence the Conjurer sub-class requirement originally.

[MikkoAkure]

Words in a video game world can still have multiple meanings. Just because a group of people call themselves warriors doesn't meant that word is completely blocked from everyone else to use.

There's a dancer job from Thavnair that is specific to that location with combat abilities. If we say that there can only be one Dancer, does that mean that the girls dancing at Costa del Sol and Ul'dah are no longer dancers? Do we need to change the name of our emotes to remove "dance" from them because that's stepping in someone else's territory?

[SineNomine]

Interestingly there was little confusion in the original NES version of FFI between these terms as they were translated slightly differently - the WAR Job was actually known as Fighter in the original NES FFI, and the 'Warriors of Light' were written actually as the 'Light Warriors', so the confusion is more a modern thing, ironically.

In FF1 Warrior is still 戦士 (Well, ok, no, it was せんし but only because it was designed for kids) and Warrior of Light is still 光の戦士, just like they are in FF14. There is no confusion because...why would there be any confusion? I want to give the OP the benefit of the doubt, but I am finding this whole thing a bit weird as I never associated the two. Your bard example seems fine.

[Enkidoh]

In FF1 Warrior is still 戦士 (Well, ok, no, it was せんし but only because it was designed for kids) and Warrior of Light is still 光の戦士, just like they are in FF14. There is no confusion because...why would there be any confusion? I want to give the OP the benefit of the doubt, but I am finding this whole thing a bit weird as I never associated the two. Your bard example seems fine.

I wasn't talking about the original JP version of FFI but the US English language version released 3 years after, where 'Warrior' and 'Warriors of Light' were indeed translated into English as 'Fighter' and 'Light Warriors' respectively (this is why the infamous FFI sprite webcomic 8-Bit Theater used those terms as well, they lifted them straight from the game). And I should know, I had a copy of FFI NES US NTSC version myself in my collection (until it was stolen).

Much of FFI's English translation/localization was.... crude to say the least (besides the 'Fighter'/'Light Warriors' thing, crystals were also translated as 'orbs', and other spell and item names often had odd abbreviations like the infamous mispelling of 'Masamune'), but it was not so much lazy translations as more just a technical limitation with Square having very limited character space to work with when replacing text, so they had to be creative.

[Beytran70]

It's just one of those things. Like many games have an Assassin class. But an assassin is also simply a murderer. But both meanings of the word exist at the same time.

A scholar is a student. But a Scholar is a shiled healer who uses fairy and a long lost art.

A monk is a religious figure who practices a certain lifestyle. But a Monk is a fighter from a precise Ala Mighan order.

There's countless example if we did in it, I'm sure.

This is basically it. Words can have different meanings in context, strangely enough. Language would be pretty limited if not.

Also, how often do we actually hear the straight up Job names mentioned outside of their quests?

[TeemoTeemosson]

Why would Ranger be any better? The archetypal fantasy-Ranger is Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. He never uses a bow.

WRONG. Aragorn uses a bow in Balin's tomb alongside Boromir and Legolas to hold off goblins from breaking down the door and he uses his bow at the Bridge of Khazadum to fend off goblin archers.

[MistakeNot]

WRONG. Aragorn uses a bow in Balin's tomb alongside Boromir and Legolas to hold off goblins from breaking down the door and he uses his bow at the Bridge of Khazadum to fend off goblin archers.

You must be referring to the movies. They are wrong about many things - that is just one of them.
In fact when they are leaving Rivendell it is explicit that "Aragorn had Anduril, but no other weapon"
Legolas was the only one of the Fellowship to carry a bow.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I really don't understand why they didn't just make Archer transition to Ranger and instead made them become Bards. Though, could this be like the Paladin class fantasy problem (They're just Gladiators with holy-themed abilities) where it's simply an issue of Japan not having or understand the concept of a Bard because it's a western thing like Paladin? By that I mean they fundamentally did not understand what constitutes a "Bard" and thought making a bowman who also plays music made sense. Sad that thanks to the way jobs are designed we'll never get a proper bowman class because we can't have two classes who use the same weapon.

It's not an issue of Japan not understanding the difference. For many reasons, but it also is demonstrably not the case when XI clearly knew the difference between a ranger and a bard.

It's an issue of archer being a pretty boring job concept without any additional gimmicks. In a game where every other job has some sort of magical element on top of a weapon style, the "archer job" needed something like songs or an animal companion on top of it so as not to be totally underwhelming. Obviously they went with melding archer with bard rather than beastmaster, probably because it had better overall synergy and didn't trod too much on the companion system's toes. I also suspect a huge justification for it was because XIV is a more dynamic, weapon- and attack-focused game than XI, and they needed to give bard *some* sort of actual weapon. Either way, I think it was the right choice because I consider "harp-bows" to be perhaps one of the most innovative takes on classic FF jobs in the entire game (alongside AST and SGE).

I wouldn't have looked twice at a boring ranger bow job, frankly, and I don't know why people keep pushing for that idea without proposing something more to actually make the concept, yaknow, interesting. Something that exceeds just using a weapon and moves into fantasy heroism. Even warrior, perhaps the most "basic" job design in XIV, has some elements of berserker and geomancer in it to give it some additional magical flavor and better carve out a job fantasy niche. A bow-wielder by itself is not much of a job fantasy.

[Cleretic]

I wouldn't have looked twice at a boring ranger bow job, frankly, and I don't know why people keep pushing for that idea without proposing something more to actually make the concept, yaknow, interesting. Something that exceeds just using a weapon and moves into fantasy heroism. Even warrior, perhaps the most "basic" job design in XIV, has some elements of berserker and geomancer in it to give it some additional magical flavor and better carve out a job fantasy niche. A bow-wielder by itself is not much of a job fantasy.

I get the complaint, because... well, some people's favorite Avenger is Hawkeye or Black Widow. There is genuine appeal to the guy that can keep up with crazy superpowers because he's Just That Good. I have a friend who actually hates the Shadowbringers Machinist rework not because of playstyle, but because it moved so much of Machinist away from 'good at guns' and into 'has Batman's utility belt'. I'm not even sure what I'd want to recommend to someone who wants to play a 'naturally good and that's it' character in this game. Monk, maybe, if you ignore the outright Hadokens? Samurai, but basically only if you love Kurosawa enough to accept the theatrics as theatrics instead of magic?

I think the main problem comes from the fact that, in games like this, it's actually really hard to stretch the concept of 'just that good' into the entire skillset. Samurai only barely gets there, Monk falls short, and those two actually have the easiest job since it's just a melee skillset, and there's been a lot of media that's found ways to stretch those. You go into something like a range toolkit? Every FFXIV job has to have thirty-something powers and animations over its lifetime, how many things can you give someone with just a gun before you run out of ideas? Hell, way back I used to play City of Heroes; they only had nine powers per moveset, no required mechanic gimmicks, and all of comic books to borrow from, and their Archery and Assault Rifle powersets still had to get wacky. (Specifically Archery had to pack some Green Arrow-style trick arrows, and Assault Rifle had to make its default model a 'Frankengun' with multiple barrels, a flamethrower, and a grenade launcher.)