Devs, please make job crystals in lv 31+ content mandatory.

[rainichan]

Please upvote this for better visibility if you agree so it has a better chance of the devs seeing this/it being passed on to them!

Hello there! Late last year I received a survey from the dev team for playing for a long time - 8 years! - and within, it asked for feedback regarding what they could do to make the game better. A sentiment I see often in social media platforms is job crystals not being equipped in content after they are available to you and how disliked it is across the board.

A lot of those same people feel, when done purposefully, that it is akin to griefing a party of random people. Those that forget to save it on their gear set usually realize in a dungeon and rectify the issue after they leave/after the dungeon, but if they leave it gives them an unfair 30min leaving penalty if they are not dismissed. Before I continue, I will say I understand there are some that want to do a No Job Stone Challenge and that's fine! However, please go in with a premade party/use party finder to do so, and no, I haven't forgotten you in my suggestion.

Now, something I suggested in my survey, among other things, was a mandatory job stone check to queue for dungeons starting with Brayflox's Longstop - it's the first dungeon you can go to after hitting level 30, and since you can hit lv30 while in Haukke Manor and therefore cannot equip a job stone, Brayflox is the ideal dungeon to begin requiring a job stone. Along with this, make how to get your job stone more obvious - while it does pop up under your MSQ tracker, not everyone looks there or knows to look there if they're a newer player. Putting it in a text box that appears once you hit level 30 and finish your level 30 quest much like it would be once you finish your level 50 job quests and needing to be in HW areas to continue past lv50: "In order to queue for dungeons and trials past level 30, you must have a job stone equipped. To receive your job stone, please talk to (class NPC) to begin the quest to receive your job stone and continue your adventure!" or something similar would make this easier. For when you forget to equip it into a slot and save it to a gear set and try to queue, an error popping up with "Cannot enter (queue). Reason: no job stone equipped." or similar would help in reminding that a stone needs to be equipped in order to continue.

As for those who want to run a No Job Stone Challenge, whether for an entire 1-90 run or "how far can we get in this raid with no job stone" challenges, enable a toggle in the party options, much like enabling an unsynced party or silencing the Echo, and only allow it to be used in a premade party. That way, those who want to see if they can level from 1-90 can still do so with a premade party through PF or friends who want to help out.

I know a lot of people have discussed this, along with the suggestion to auto-equip stones (which is good!) but I feel auto-equipping and having it be a permanent equipped item takes away from those who do want to try to be just a GLD from 1 to 90. If that's the way they want to play, more power to them! However, I do feel that subjecting a group of random people to that sort of challenge is unfair to the 3/7/23 random people in a group who are not expecting it - it is, in fact detrimental to the rest of your group, and you'll likely find yourself on the receiving end of a group dismissal. Hopefully, with this compromise, everyone can be happy and live out their 24 CNJ kills of current raid bosses or becoming a level 90 PGL working with Hamon Holyfist, but also by not making someone feel bad by not having their stone on when queueing for a duty and possibly having to take a 30min penalty if they leave to fix their gear set to have the stone on.

If anyone has any other ideas or a better way to alert players to do this, or any other suggestions, please add them in here!

[Kansene]

I don't get why the job stone isn't automatically equipped when you equip the proper weapon to be honest. It would make more sense if you had to manually remove it if you for some outlandish reason want to play as your base class post-30.

I play RDM, SCH, GNB and SMN, all of which auto-equip the job stone since they have no base class (actually I think smn but not sch defaults to ARC but don't quote me on that) but when I wanna do stuff on my BLM or PLD which I play way less, I routinely forget the stone and accidentally queue into stuff as the pleb base class.

[Jeeqbit]

I think that this is very rare. I've done nearly 10,000 dungeons, trials and raids and not seen it done intentionally.

Even if it happens, it only affects the potency of their attacks. The gear is what really matters for calculating the base damage that this potency uses and the gear should be intact whether a stone is equipped or not. It's going to be akin to someone doing their rotation poorly.

[rainichan]

I don't get why the job stone isn't automatically equipped when you equip the proper weapon to be honest. It would make more sense if you had to manually remove it if you for some outlandish reason want to play as your base class post-30.

I play RDM, SCH, GNB and SMN, all of which auto-equip the job stone since they have no base class (actually I think smn but not sch defaults to ARC but don't quote me on that) but when I wanna do stuff on my BLM or PLD which I play way less, I routinely forget the stone and accidentally queue into stuff as the pleb base class.

Yeah, SCH doesn't have the ACN designation on their weapons like a SMN has, so they have to have a stone on to play, but the rest of the old jobs have the class designations on their gear otherwise at higher levels. I'm not sure why this hasn't been done yet after 8 years of updated game with a lot of other great QoL updates, but between this, no unification on markers (stack, tankbuster, etc. - looking at you, World of Darkness,) and an update to the Hall of Novice and making it mandatory, I feel these things would make the game even better, but this is something I see getting talked about a LOT elsewhere being a problem and an irritation to many people.

I think that this is very rare. I've done nearly 10,000 dungeons, trials and raids and not seen it done intentionally.

Even if it happens, it only affects the potency of their attacks. The gear is what really matters for calculating the base damage that this potency uses and the gear should be intact whether a stone is equipped or not. It's going to be akin to someone doing their rotation poorly.

I've seen it a few times, and the few times I've seen it myself it was "oh s[kupo]t i forgot my stone i'm so sorry" or "i didn't realize, i'm new", but others have had problems with it that I have seen of it being on purpose as well as accidental - and not just on That One Subreddit! It would at least address the problem of forgetting if an error pops up to remind you to equip it, but it would also help new players who may not realize they can get their job stone at 30 to continue on with bigger and better booms.

[Raikai]

Is this a normal occurance though? I've been playing for years now and I've - never - seen anyone being a class instead of a job outside of being sprouts in an early dungeon.

TBH it's pretty minor, but I'm more bothered by the lack of a defined purpose for Classes nowadays, it being only relevant for a tiny fraction of the game. They lost their purpose as soon as SB came in with role action consolidation.

[sharknado]

Is this a normal occurance though? I've been playing for years now and I've - never - seen anyone being a class instead of a job outside of being sprouts in an early dungeon.

TBH it's pretty minor, but I'm more bothered by the lack of a defined purpose for Classes nowadays, it being only relevant for a tiny fraction of the game. They lost their purpose as soon as SB came in with role action consolidation.

There are people that don't bother with job quests so either they don't have the stone or don't have abilities that come with them. On top of that ilvl requirement for dungeons is low so you can get a perfect "problem" when things combine. Part of the blame is on the game as it doesn't really state about new poetics set unlocked or that you are missing abilities from job quests...

[Saraide]

Not having a job crystal has no place in duty finder (past haukke), locking people out of higher level duties until they equip their jobstone will remind the people who forgot and lock out people who are doing it intentionally. Both are good. I'm fine with having it as option for party finder for people who want to do the no job stone challenge. That challenge is only a legit challenge if no one has a job stone, otherwise it's not a challenge you are facing but one that your forcing on your teammates.

[Kolsykol]

I've seen new players who are story skippers at lvl 50+ who have no clue what the Jobs are lol, had someone as a Rogue in a late ARR dungeon before.

[xxmiamorecadenza]

I just experienced a Gladiator in a Stormblood lvl 70 trial so this would help prevent that kind of meme from happening again.

[Johners]

It's about time they just retired the job stone system altogether to be honest. It's inventory space that can be allocated elsewhere in the same vain they did when waists were retired with the release of Endwalker. Job stones should then become passive actions that replace/upgrade abilities much like we already have during the levelling the experience. That way the action just disables itself when you queue into content that's below level 30.

Now, this does have a few ramifications to consider. Firstly, some people may simply skip doing the job quest that unlocks this action but they're soon going to run up short due to certain MSQ stages requiring the completion of job quests. However, I think it's time class/job actions were simply given to the player as they levelled up rather than expecting them to do job quests. The MSQ is a very long process for first players and I personally think it's jarring to leave that process every so often to unlock actions. It's a needless distraction from an era of the game that no longer exists.

Secondly, some players may simply opt to use class-only abilities, where possible, to emulate the jobless play style. This is just griefing and should be kicked/reported by other players in the group much like you're probably already doing with players that choose to queue high level content without their job stone equipped.

Thirdly, Arcanist becomes before Scholar and Summoner. The solution here is to simply breakout Scholar into its own job that both starts and unlocks at level 30. This then leaves Arcanist to just become Summoner. I think is fair and while it does mean both jobs don't level alongside each other, this is solved by having better/faster ways to level your alt jobs after completing the MSQ with your first/main one.

I do appreciate that there's a niche community which does jobless runs of content in their own bubble but ultimately it's one set of design choices for every and all things considered, I don't really think the game loses anything overall by removing job stones but rather there's a lot to gain in terms of streamlining the process. Job stones are a legacy of a design approach that simply doesn't exist anymore and as of right now, absolutely no content beyond ARR is designed to be run without your job stone equipped. For what it's worth, you might as well start as a Level 1 Paladin instead of Gladiator evolving into it with the job stone.

In an ideal world, I'd like to see all jobs playable at level 1 as a new player. It's a bit jarring that a new player might see Xenos or Asmongold streaming the game as Dark Knight but to play that yourself, you play all of ARR, unlock the class and then level that from 30 to 50 before continuing. You can level sync into an early ARR dungeon as any class/job, so why can't I just play them from level 1?