Isn't "Artist" a better name?

[Iscah]

I guess if you wanna be coy about it you could call it a xerox, or just a printer mage if you want to stay with form.. lol

To be fair, Yoshida dedicated a few minutes to specifically explaining that they were changing the German name from "duplicator" to "pictomancer" and that this iteration of the job would be doing more than just copying.

But still, no reason to object to having the distinct concept of pictomancer over generic artist.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

You wanna argue.

Nobody in the history of the universe ever confused DNC for a little ladies' day dancer. Or a SCH for any other kind of scholar.

That's my entire argument - semantics don't matter. So you can just call it Artist. Nobody will be confused.

To be fair, in-universe the terms aren't going to be confused as much as 'Artist' would.
the term of Scholar as it relates to the SCH job comes from a civilization long collapsed (Nym). Very few people in-universe are going to confuse the terms simply because outside of the WoL, the job of SCH is basically extinct. To the infinitely vast majority in-universe, the only term Scholar applies to is the traditionally defined Academic Scholar. Sharlayan even has their own form of healer based on similar principles of the ancient Scholars - except its called Academician (Alphinaud is one).

The DNC troup involved in the DNC job questline is an interesting thing because for all intents and purposes, they want to simply have people believe they're just ordinary dancers, since their whole goal is to attract crowds to draw our the negative energy. In-universe, they don't want their skills to have a unique name, because they want to be incognito. So having people not be confused on what they are vs actual normal dancers is their point.

Contrast that to Artist, which is a very widely used term in-universe already.

All of them are easy to remember and imagine what they do.

Because anyone not intimately familiar with FF lore is totally gonna know that Black Mages are mages who use various types of elemental magics and not some kind of darkness-element themed caster.
Or that Red Mage is all about doing spells from both black & white mages with a bit of swordplay mixed in, instead of some mage specializing in something that thematically makes sense with its name like Fire.
Or that Blue Mage is about learning enemy skills rather than being a mage that specializes in something thematically to its name like water.

Pictomancer straight up tells you exactly what it does given that its the combination of the words 'Pictography', or basically the essence of utilization of pictures for communication, and mancer, a user of a specific type of magic. Combined, you have 'mage who utilizes pictures'. If anything, it tells more about its job than 90% of the jobs in FF14 do with just its name.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Artist is someone that makes art.

Pictomancer is someone who attacks with art.

I however am a neckwearmancer...

[Fyrebrand]

"Artist" would have probably been fine in a vacuum, but Final Fantasy likes to make callbacks to its history and roster of "jobs," and Pictomancer is already right there in FFVI for an artist character. It would arguably be a little weird if they didn't call it Pictomancer, sort of like if they put a pervy octopus monster in FFXIV and didn't name him Ultros.

I love how simple most of the job names are in this game. All of them are easy to remember and imagine what they do.

That's true for some, not true at all for others. Imagine you've never played a Final Fantasy game before. What would you think of a "White Mage," "Black Mage," "Red Mage," and "Blue Mage"? There's no making sense of that just by the name. The only reason anyone would easily imagine what these jobs do, is if they have knowledge of the series traditions. Which is why they went with Pictomancer, it is an established term in Final Fantasy and known to be a battle job. "Artist" I don't have any particular problem with fundamentally, but without context it doesn't mean anything in particular gameplay-wise. It could easily be a new crafting job where you create housing decorations, wall art, etc.

[Turtledeluxe]

Yeah Astrologian, Black Mage, etc just roll off the tongue. Man you guys must be bored.

[Eisi]

Yeah Astrologian, Black Mage, etc just roll off the tongue. Man you guys must be bored.

Put an etc. here to suggest more jobs when there aren't any.

Astrologian is at least a real word and Black Mage is as simple as you can get. Black magic, everybody knows that. Other colors derive from that. At the very least everybody knows what a Mage is.

or you can just stop being a diva and call it a pictomancer just like the people whom made it decided..

SE is being the diva by calling it a fancy schmanzy Pictomancer instead of an earnest down-to-earth bread and butter Artist!

[Mostly_Raxus]

its not an artist, an artist creates, it only copies, your inherent argument is flawed and incorrect

[Turtledeluxe]

Put an etc. here to suggest more jobs when there aren't any.

Astrologian is at least a real word and Black Mage is as simple as

Whether you're talking about the spelling or concept, XIV has several jobs that are just like..what? Viper? Reaper? Sage? Even Blue Mage...Those are not classes you can just tell someone by name and they can just guess what it is in this game. You are implying there is some kind of consistency here when there really isn't. What is consistent is that most of them are former FF jobs and that's where the understanding comes from.

Also as others have pointed out, Pictomancer may be artistic but that doesn't make it an artist.

[Fawkes]

Get ready to be mad about the names of their moves, too.

[Fyrebrand]

Get ready to be mad about the names of their moves, too.

A lot of those are amazing, but I think "Indefensible Teal" is my favourite. Imagine a teal so repulsive, there is no justification for it.

I was actually thinking earlier today that "brush with death" needs to be some kind of Pictomancer spell or trait.