The levelling system

[TheKojukinator]

From what I understand about how the jobs are designed, as well as how the lore for them is handled, is thus... Jobs are long forgotten arts that are being re-discovered, thus they are incomplete. The rediscovering of these jobs is done through the study of several disciplines (primary and secondary class) and fusing the knowledge from both in order to take advantage of the lost arts. However, jobs are not true classes, they are more like specializations of the primary class. Someplace I read that the balancing of the job abilities is geared towards group play, where as the balancing of the classes is geared towards solo play. This balance is struck by the fact that the max cross skills you can have is 10 with a class, but only 5 with a job, because the job already comes with a special purpose in mind, and usually that is to be more capable in a party/raid setting.

Personally I understand people wanting the jobs to just be more classes instead, but to be special and require unlocking (like at level 30 as you've suggested). However, due the the lack of true core differences in the base class vs job at the moment, and how the lore is constructed, I don't think this would honestly yield any more "fun" for the game. You would just get more work to do.

I think it's great that leveling Archer also levels Bard, and vice versa. Archer is great solo, and Bard is great in parties. If I spend a weekend gaining a few levels through dungeons as a Bard, it would be rather disappointing switching to Archer and being behind.

That's my two cents, of course further discussion is welcome.

p.s. character limit is really fail for lengthy and thoughtful posts