Thoughts on Viper?

[Cynric]

I feel like the Rogue into Ninja thing ended up a bit like Archer into Bard. The progression makes sense in the context of ffxiv, but for an ff player coming to the game for the first time, it’s just like ‘wait, so I have to be a Ninja to be a Thief?’ or vice-versa. Likewise with Rogue/Thief usually being a sneaky attacker but Ninja being a melee with abilities that simulate magic (ninjutsu). Just like how people come to Bard expecting harps and magic, then get laser arrows. And vice-versa for people who are hyped to play an Archer/Ranger then get turned into musicians against their will lol.

It’s nice that’s they’ve finally (tried to) address the whole issue with players wanting to play a ‘dual swordsman’ style job that isn’t as influence by a previously established identity (i.e ninjas needing ninjutsu stuff)

Yeah the transition to Bard also threw me off. I would've liked to see like a Sniper or something. I feel like Bard has kind of suffered from people wanting to play a DPS archer but it being somewhat support focused. You tend to expect a bard to be support focused but it's hard when there's no alternative.

I feel like maybe the original plan was to have branching jobs like Smn/Sch did, but then they saw how bad that worked out and just scrapped the whole idea.

I think the job system itself has come a long way since back then. As you say it's nice to see them try to address this issue without just using ninja. I'm sure it'll be fun to play. So far they've done pretty good with their more original jobs like Reaper, so I can't wait to see more myself.