[Speculation]Job Systems

[Gergall]

I wonder how SE can keep shit situational without having gear swaps.. worst case we'll have another horizontal endgame except this time with only few pieces of gear you can get... so I'd rather have them approach it the safe way.

You can still have different builds for different situations. Haste set, Evasion set, Magic Defense set, etc.

This actually adds a lot of depth to the game. Instead of "I'll use the same gear I always use, with my macros swapping in all the right pieces for each spell and weaponskill", you would have to plan beforehand. Do you want fast cast for this fight? Or is macc more important?

You would still want ALL the gear - you want your fast cast set for some fights and your macc gear for other fights, and a mix of the best of both for some fights. Now you will (hopefully) just have to decide in advance what you're going to use, instead of mindlessly macroing in the best piece on every action you take.

Sounds awesome, hope it turns out like in my dreams :-p

[Fallyn]

So i've just been playing Grandia again.

Unlock different spells/skills dependant on your level of the weapons, and some combine for others.

Discuss?

[SephYuyX]

Heh.... I still use FF:U summon lines for my SMN.

[deft]

Unlock different spells/skills dependant on your level of the weapons, and some combine for others.

Discuss?

I was just thinking about this somewhat last night. I think the best part of FFXI was the ability to be multiple jobs on one char. I'm hoping they don't gimp that or change it.

Since SE said the system would heavily rely on the weapons I thought maybe the skills you gain would be based on the type of weapon you use.
A WHM leveling a hammer would gain more attack/solo spells and survival stats; a WHM leveling up a wand would gain stronger cures, party buffs and higher MND.
It could work the same way with other classes, like WAR sword/polearm/axe etc..

If it were set up like this it would almost be necessary to allow you to "respec" your char like in wow. The whole system would work similar to talents from wow. Maybe it would be too similar to wow, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

[Ramor]

I was just thinking about this somewhat last night. I think the best part of FFXI was the ability to be multiple jobs on one char. I'm hoping they don't gimp that or change it.

I really can't stress this enough, if they remove this I'm just going to be absolutely crushed.

[Eratosthenes]

I really can't stress this enough, if they remove this I'm just going to be absolutely crushed.

I'm not worried:

If there are no levels, how do characters advance?
Although Final Fantasy XIV will eschew the traditional leveling system in favor of something new, there will be parts of the Job System that make it over. Most importantly, they wish to retain the concept of being able to switch roles and work on one job one time and another job the next time. At this time, the developers are unable to give any specifics.

[SilverBreeze]

I like the idea of subjobs, but I was really disappointed with how they were presented in FFXI. I don't know about you guys, but when I started playing the game and I heard you could have two jobs, my first thought was. "Man I want to be a Ninja that can use Black Magic too, like Edge from FF4." Sadly it didn't work out like that. I think that was my biggest disappointment in the game. Not only were subjobs almost completely worthless for spells unless you were a mage main for the most part, but Ninja wasn't a DD job, it was a tank job.

I think the weapon advancement system would be great, but it would have to be in a way where if you don't exclusively specialize in an area, that you're completely useless in that area. (Kinda like trying to nuke with a BLM or RDM sub). It would be nice if you could customize your character to be good in the areas you want while not gimping yourself, I can honestly say that's what I'm looking for with most.

[SamanosukeShiva]

maybe they're doing Base Level / Job Level like in Ragnarok Online? w/ suikoden weapon system?

[Hyan]

What do the base levels do? I mean, if you changed your job from war to drk would you be left with million hp/999 str still if your base level was high enough?

[SamanosukeShiva]

yea basicly u can PL urself, lol

[brisk]

I'm trying to think of a game that was like that that hasn't been mentioned yet. Unlimited Saga?!

[Komm Suesser Tod]

I was always a little disappointed with the lack of co-mingling with the sub-job system.

More than just having access to the abilities of your sub-job, having like, a black mage sub on a warrior would allow you to give your weapon an elemental damage bonus. Or maybe with like, WHM, your crits could heal you, or that sort of thing. Make the class combination more unique, a bit more customization.

[Cutriss]

I like the idea of subjobs, but I was really disappointed with how they were presented in FFXI. I don't know about you guys, but when I started playing the game and I heard you could have two jobs, my first thought was. "Man I want to be a Ninja that can use Black Magic too, like Edge from FF4." Sadly it didn't work out like that. I think that was my biggest disappointment in the game. Not only were subjobs almost completely worthless for spells unless you were a mage main for the most part, but Ninja wasn't a DD job, it was a tank job.

It was a tank job because people made it a tank job. You can gear it as a DD, and then you basically have Edge. Edge had six spells in the original game, four of which are represented in XI through Ninjutsu (and I've advocated Smokebomb to be added for a while, either as an Escape spell or as a shed-aggro spell).

Re Gear Swaps: I would prefer that they not make it as well. Weapon swaps I'm totally cool with - You could have a secondary weapon stored on your back or whatever that you could switch to during battle, only requiring a few seconds to do. Plus, this way, you have an animation representing when the character does it, so there shouldn't be any redraw.

[Gtype954]

It was a tank job because people made it a tank job. You can gear it as a DD, and then you basically have Edge. Edge had six spells in the original game, four of which are represented in XI through Ninjutsu (and I've advocated Smokebomb to be added for a while, either as an Escape spell or as a shed-aggro spell).

Re Gear Swaps: I would prefer that they not make it as well. Weapon swaps I'm totally cool with - You could have a secondary weapon stored on your back or whatever that you could switch to during battle, only requiring a few seconds to do. Plus, this way, you have an animation representing when the character does it, so there shouldn't be any redraw.

Since the game is heavily focused on weapons and not the armor portion, this would be hot as hell. Having the person draw his gun from his back or his axe and putting away the other weapon on his back in real-time so he would not "blink-out" is cool.

Speaking of gear swaps. I think they should do away with them also.
Why not just permanently learn a trait off the armor like in FF9 and then set the job traits like in ff9. (think of setting blue magic spells in ff11, but with job traits instead of magic spells). Once you learn the spell or job trait from the armor/weapon, you can sell the weapon or toss it and get a new weapon.

Every peice of armor and weapon in the game will let you "learn"
- A job ability
- A job trait.
- A magic spell white, black, red magic.

Then once you learn it, you get an item that goes into your job ability inventory box(Like a key item box but with key items you can toss and will have limited space) and you set the spells. (think of materia from FF7 is what I am also thinking of).

For example, you get a body peice with 60 defense and +5 attack. Then a box which says (flee 0/10). Each time you kill a certain number of monsters that flee will go up 1/10, 2/10, 3/10 etc. It goes up faster if you kill mobs of equal or higher "level" then you. (since their is no levels or exp, using ff11 as an example, a monster that cons even match or higher)
Once you get to (flee 10/10) you Learn the ability flee.

The bodies Base stats are 60 defense and +5 attack. You can keep the body pece if you need a body with those base stats. But once you learn the Flee 10/10. You get to keep the ability flee forever, even after you sell the body or toss it. You would just have to set the job ability with a certain number of job ability points to equip it like ff9 job traits/ff11 blue mage spells.

If you sell that body peice to someone else or give it to them but they have never used that body peice before. The flee would still be 0/10 on their stats not 10/10 and they would have to "grind monsters" to learn that job ability.

This could prove interesting for some HNMs. Like a grand wyrm that drops a weapon that has 1 DMG, 800 delay but has a job ability "Auto-haste 0/10"
or "Flare II 0/10" or even "Meteor 0/80" (which would most likely be a rare/ex peice of course.

As you can see, the weapons damage and delay are horrible, but you would want the weapon anyway to learn the spell or job trait which is very powerful.
Notice how it takes longer to learn the spell Meteor and it would also use up more "set points" to set the spell as well once you learn it.

Lets say you can set only 20 points worth of spells. Something like Meteor would take up 10 points while a fire 1 would take up 1 point.

So you can set fire 1, fire 2, fire 3, and fire 4 for a total of lets say 10 points
and you can set thunder 1, thunder 2, thunder 3, thunder 4 for 10 points.

Or you can remove your fire 1,fire 2, fire 3, and fire 4 and replace it with meteor which takes up a whooping 10 points.

You have to "learn" the move from a weapon or armor, then you have to "set it" Thats how I would like ff14 to be like. It kind of eliminates gear swapping.
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Also some weapons would have permanent traits on them that you would not have to set at all.

Say you just started the game and only have 40 HP. Your onion sword has 5 dmg 300 delay. then has an " Max HP +10, 0/1" When you grind enough mobs for that 1/1, you will gain +10 HP. You can keep that forever and now have 50 HP max on your character. This is kind of like you leveled up to lvl 2, but without the game having levels.
Once again if you sell the weapon assuming its not r/ex, the buyer does not have the trait automatically learned, they will have to "skill-up, or grind" the weapon to learn it like you did.



Yea I typed alot I know. Thats the system I was thinking of though. So to get 1200 HP in the game, you would have to search for all the + Max HP weapons you can in the game and grind off them like crazy to have 1200 HP (Equal to a lvl 75 character in terms of "level").

[deft]

@above poster:

Sounds like a neat idea all around, do you have any thoughts on how the jobs would work into that system? Or would a character simply be able to equip, say, both provoke and cure 3 if their points allowed? Also with all these ideas I'm beginning to wonder how other players will be able to recognize the strengths (i guess not "lvl") of another player.
I don't mean to contradict your post, but I just like to speculate and enjoyed your wall of text. If you have any thoughts I'd like to hear them.

[Ramor]

Didn't play FF9, but sounds quite a bit like FFTA/FFTA2 which is fine with me, I loved that particular job system with the exception that all of the 'advanced' jobs were way way better than the basic jobs and once you unlocked the advanced you didn't really ever look at the basic jobs again.

[Kenai]

Maybe they will do it a bit like how DQ9 is. You level said job to earn "boosts" and those boosts become interchangeable, you can equip them (slots permitting) on any job. Problem in DQ9 from what I see though is that quite a few of them are totally useless on a lot of the other jobs (you can equip Cure+ boosts from your Cleric to put on your Fighter for example, but your Fighter will never have spells anyway). There's quite a few different leveling designs they could go with that would work if they tweaked it right, I'm hoping for the best.

[Faithe]

I just hope there will be a lot of customization. I have yet to play any MMORPG that is more customizable than Ragnarok Online. And RO is ... pretty old. I don't mean customizable by the way how characters look, I mean customizable by their stats - all stats. Make a 99 STR Black mage, sure you can do that. 99 VIT White mage, why not?

Something like that would be awesome.

[Maguspk]

I just hope there will be a lot of customization. I have yet to play any MMORPG that is more customizable than Ragnarok Online. And RO is ... pretty old. I don't mean customizable by the way how characters look, I mean customizable by their stats - all stats. Make a 99 STR Black mage, sure you can do that. 99 VIT White mage, why not?

Something like that would be awesome.

No thanks, I hate knowing I already fucked up by level two. Stat distribution metagames can stay in the F2P and Micro-transaction games, please.

[Null]

Exactly, that would be the worst mistake they could make.