FFXIV Doubles Subscribers since switching to Monthly Biling

[Niiro]

So we shouldn't borrow good ideas from older games but instead implement horrible ones for the sake of originality.

Brilliant.

I would have preferred them never introducing classic FF jobs period, but they did, and since they're here and here to stay I'd rather not have to deal with a shitty design to boot.

[Lucavi]

What horrible ones are you talking about?

[Alkar]

Why would locking a class into a specific job be better than being able to choose which path you want to take with multiple jobs per class?
Seriously... why? Or are we just complaining for the sake of complaining?

[Sup3rB4d]

Why would locking a class into a specific job be better than being able to choose which path you want to take with multiple jobs per class?
Seriously... why? Or are we just complaining for the sake of complaining?

I like the current job system.

[Therin]

Why the hell is there maintenance on Saturday morning...?

Really SE? Couldn't you think of a better time?

[vadre]

I've said it before but I think they should've just removed classes and made all jobs fairly self-sustainable in a way that would reflect a modern MMO, so that everyone can solo pretty effectively. Give everyone a self-heal of some kind that reflects the job's personality and they're set to solo.

I think once we've got new jobs for each class, the current system won't be bad at all though. It means that you can level the class who's background you find most interesting whilst not being too limited in the tank/DD/healer archetypes.

[Insanecyclone]

For newer jobs I'm hoping DRK or something similar is WAR30/BLM30 to unlock the quest for it.

[Therin]

For newer jobs I'm hoping DRK or something similar is WAR30/BLM30 to unlock the quest for it.

Agreed. They can make requirements whatever they want so I so no reason to follow the 30/15 standard.

[Niiro]

What horrible ones are you talking about?

Adding useless base classes we need to lvl so we can unlock the useful jobs and never use the classes again.

Adding class specific gear for no good reason other than to suck up inventory and try and make classes relevant.

The differences between classes and jobs is not significant enough to warrant keeping both and definitely not worth carrying around gear for both, jobs are superior in almost all situations (even solo, with few exceptions) so it would be much more convenient to consolidate them and simply rework how cross-class abilities can be utilized.

[Corrderio]

Why would locking a class into a specific job be better than being able to choose which path you want to take with multiple jobs per class?
Seriously... why? Or are we just complaining for the sake of complaining?

If done right it could work, but I'm more concerned how some classes will have multiple branches. Take Lancer for example, was there any other class that specialized in spears other than Dragoon? Only thing that really comes to mind to me is Templar from FFTA/TA2, but that's kind of a stretch I think. Gladiator is also kind of on the fence since quite a few of the standard FF jobs use swords when you compare it to other weapons.

Either way, I really hope to god they're doing a massive rehaul of the class/job system for 2.0 to counter this.

[Psion]

Samurai also used spears actually. naginatas i think they're called?

[Corrderio]

True I suppose. Guess they could make katanas a job exclusive weapon to.

[Lucavi]

Adding useless base classes we need to lvl so we can unlock the useful jobs and never use the classes again.

Adding class specific gear for no good reason other than to suck up inventory and try and make classes relevant.

The differences between classes and jobs is not significant enough to warrant keeping both and definitely not worth carrying around gear for both, jobs are superior in almost all situations (even solo, with few exceptions) so it would be much more convenient to consolidate them and simply rework how cross-class abilities can be utilized.

Had they have treated the game like FFV, this wouldn't have been a problem. Classes were different without being shoehorned into having a certain playstyle and that one alone (except for Berserker, who was always... well... berserk). I could have Master-summoning (Summon Lvl. 6) Dragoon that evaded 75% of physical attacks (Blade Grasp), or a dual-wielding Dragoon that used blue magic, or a crit-hit-tanking (True Knight), heavy counter-attacking Dragoon with absurdly high health (+HP 75%), or a 4-attack-swinging (S-Shot) singing (Sing) Dragoon that brought the pain and buffed the party at the same time.

XIV tried to rip from the wrong FF games with this job system. They gave you the ability to mix and match skills, but not the power that goes along with them. In FFV, you actually gain a good bit of the stats associated with certain job abilities, especially when you went back to the "bare" class, that could use multiple abilities and every form of armor in the game. If SE is serious about going back to their roots, they should look at the games with the best job systems and take from those, not simply throw out a chimera artwork here and there and include a crystal tower to pander to the easily-excited majority.

Making a game into a classic takes work. It feels like somewhere along the line, SE became focused more on production values and less on concepts and gameplay ideas. The split between classes and jobs seems a bit odd, but has potential somewhere within it, but the approach that they've taken thus far is just lazy. They've put up too many penalties, they haven't focused on powering up the character when taking other abilities, which leaves many of them that aren't straight % boosts or skills with a damage modifier feeling underpowered, and they've failed to address the issue of job and class overlap. They might as well merged Warrior, Lancer and the other base weapon melee jobs into "Fighter", allowed them to use tons of weapons proficiently, slapped some attack and defensive abilities on there, and left it as is. That would have freed them to design jobs that specialize with individual weapons, like a Knight being far better with one-handed swords and shields than a Fighter, or a Berserker being far better with one or two-handed axes than a Fighter, plus bonus crits to different mob types. Throw on a massive counter ability from another class and you've got a real juggernaut, especially with some +HP % skills. Instead, you've got a Dragoon and a Lancer that not only use the same weapons, but are only separated by jumps and ability positioning, which is silly. Oh, and Dragoons have purty armor. Cool.

SE needs to go back to what made FF truly FF. Here's a hint: It wasn't an over-obsession with airships, crystals and guys named Cid. It wasn't Crystal Towers and Behemoth concept art. It was job systems and gameplay systems that simply did not exist in other RPGs at the time. Think about what made FFII different from Dragon Quest II; about what made FFV different from Breath of Fire II; about what made FFVII different from Tales of Destiny; about what made FFIX different from Legend of Legaia. It wasn't chocobos (ground-based mounts that many games had); it wasn't airships (air-based travel that many games had), and it wasn't fucking guys named Cid, as badass as some of the Cid's have been.

Know your past, SE, or your future is going to continue to look pretty shady.

[Niiro]

The 1 weapon 1 class thing is one of the basic issues, you either have to add a ton of base classes or severely limit the number of weapons implemented.

If they decide to add more jobs that are off-shoots of base classes with their own weapons it just brings up the issue of "why the hell do we need classes again?" when SAM/DRK/whatever doesn't have the option of playing as a "base" class and having access to all the cross-class abilities like the current jobs do because GKT are SAM only. It also raises the issue of why my SAM is using "Vorpal Thrust" and "Doomspike" with a katana and doesn't get any unique skills until lvl 30.

Either they have to add a new base classes with their own ability sets with every new weapon/job, or new jobs that are off-shoots of the current base classes are using the same weapon as the base class (ie. SAMs using spears, DRKs using 1h swords, THFs using H2H, NINs using.....H2H?) which nobody wants.

If the devs realizes the existing issues with how the system works currently it begs the question of why they're talking about new classes/jobs before reworking the system when it just means even more stuff to retrofit when it comes to changing it all. If they don't realize the limitations and don't plan to change how it works we're looking forward to not a lot of new weapons/jobs and/or a seriously convoluted system.

edit: Lucavi's post: that would have been a great way to do it as well, basic jack-of-all-trades classes with weapon/gear flexibility but no significant specializations/bonuses reserved for jobs (at least I think that's what you were getting at), would have been a nice idea if they worked with it from the start but at this point it would be nightmarish to balance

[Corrderio]

Hopefully you're right about they have the foresight to see problems with the class/job problems further down the road. Though I still have no faith in Yoshida and the dev team.

@Luca: That is a pretty interesting concept about the fighter thing.

[miokomioko]

I just hope they pull daggers from the game at 2.0... and clean up the whole wands/staves situation.

[Lucavi]

Hopefully you're right about they have the foresight to see problems with the class/job problems further down the road. Though I still have no faith in Yoshida and the dev team.

@Luca: That is a pretty interesting concept about the fighter thing.

Earlier in the MMO scene you had a few games that used a basic system like that, but for some reason it seems to have fallen by the wayside. Games nowadays don't like to have "basic" classes (outside of XI and, I suppose, XIV), but instead like to have every class either look like a special butterfly with their own stuff that rarely crosses over, having every class completely homogenized, or a mix of the two. Games like Warhammer fell on one side, GW2 on the other, and WoW somewhere in the middle.

Its too late for my concept in terms of 1.0, and, realistically, I'm 100% sure that its too late for my concept for 2.0 as well. I know this isn't the route they've taken because Yoshi-P has stated that he's drawn influence from games like WoW that have a system that is completely different. XIV had a pretty good shot at getting a similar system right: all they had to do was merge FFV and FFXI's job systems together, which would have ended up as a far better 1.0 system: basic jobs with rudimentary standard abilities that, while largely will be passed up for advanced job skills, still offer a firm backbone to a specialized eventual build. Using Monk, for example, as a "standard" class, even in terms of looking at FFV's actual job system, a player could have ended up with abilities such as potentially massive +hp% buffs (good, but not mandatory for anything from tanking classes to specialized DPS builds that want to burn mobs down without stopping to control hate - could be mages or melee), increasingly high counter rates when attacked (counters still have a place in MMO games; dunno why SE is so loathe to make counter useful, especially when you can include stuns and other interrupts/debuffs in with counters like other games do) defensive or evasion % bonuses, the ability to eventually use H2H weapons without penalty (exclude, perhaps, the highest "legendary" versions of that game's H2H weapons, like Spharai, for example in XI, to Monk), and even the old fan-favorite "Kick", which could serve as a wide-ranged physical (or magical, fuck it) attack that generates additional TP for each target hit, but splits the damage equally between each mob.

Those skills could be taken from Monk and given to other classes, especially with advanced classes that have more specialized and narrow-reaching skills. Naturally, you could also take skills from advanced jobs and use them on basic classes. In this way, you keep all classes relevant, even if they aren't exactly the most powerful in a particular fight, because all of them would presumably have some sort of skill worth grabbing. Put the highest modifier skills at high levels to ensure that people max the class if they want the skill, and design your later content in expansions around the expectation of not only players becoming increasingly powerful through gear and levels, but also through discovering extremely powerful builds through the use of the wide range of skills that they can affix to classes. Suddenly you have an incredibly deep job system that can make for some pretty interesting battle strategies (provided the lag was fixed and the combat system was improved; think the responsiveness and fluidity of TERA or GW2), like every single member of a party/alliance equipping a Dragoon's Jump (whichever one would allow for the character to remain airborne for a goodly amount of time) to evade certain annoying or outright murderous abilities, just like in the classic FF's, instead of just Dragoon getting to do it in XI and it not really being terribly useful, no matter how many times they tried to buff it with this or that (although something about a prohibitively LONG recast comes to mind...)

They could follow the same style of progress that they have now, drawing from either FFV or FFT in terms of how you gain access to other classes. Either grant them through a level threshold, through a certain point in the storylines, through mastering a number of abilities/levels from previous jobs that correspond to the advanced job, ect. Monk and Thief would have a number of attributes leading to Ninjas, Fighters and White Mages would lead to Paladins, Fighters and Black mages would lead to Sorcerers or Dark Knights or whatever, and so on and so forth.

Hell, I'd still kill to see an awesome primal youtube video where everyone dodged a megaflare attack in some massive Bahamut Primal fight by all jumping at once when the countdown hit 1. It would be the biggest nostalgia bomb ever.

[Therin]

Class stuff

You have some great points and some great ideas but I'm not sure they'd work in an MMO. The main reason is because of the shear time involved. It would work great for those of us who level all the jobs to 50 or whatever, but most players want to pick a job and take it to 50 and stick with it. Now, of course, the main draw of XI and XIV were that you could switch classes, so everyone will end up doing that - but most players aren't going to level everything. Instead, they'll have end up with PLD and BLM, or DRG and WHM, MNK and BRD or something.

I'd love to see a system like the one you described but I'm not sure it'd work. It would require a bit too much preparation work for the average player before you can really be optimal at a given job at level cap.

[Churchill]

Problem is, having multiple useful jobs is a requirement to clear content in 14.

Saying you have only one job is like saying I don't want to do anything but wear my AF

[Therin]

Problem is, having multiple useful jobs is a requirement to clear content in 14.

Saying you have only one job is like saying I don't want to do anything but wear my AF

I'm pretty sure most jobs can find their way into groups for anything. Maybe there's an exception for DDs in 17 minute dungeon runs, but that's the only thing I can really think of. So, to clear the best and hardest content you may need multiple jobs, but not everyone does that. Am I wrong?

Anyway, I said most people WILL level multiple jobs, but probably not EVERY job. They'll find 2-3 they like and stick with them.