Jobs and job change. FFXI and FFXIV

It's been 2 years since I started FFXIV, time flies.

When I started, it's a game with a battle system that you spam confirm button to attack, and you gain skill up during the fight. You got physical level and class rank instead of just job level, in the course of 2 years, it changed a lot, in many ways.

If I'm going to summarize what I feel about FFXIV after those 2 years, IMO, FFXIV is everything FFXI should have done, and done right..... well, besides shitty AH(not really called AH in 14 though) system.

One thing I feel FFXIV did really well, it's the job system.

One thing I noticed in FFXI, every once a while, on BG, and several other forums, and LS chat, is whenever one person says "X job is loljob" "Y job is useless", there are always ppl stand up and counter with "That's because you never play with ppl good at X job". Then the vicious circle continues and loop endlessly.

The fact is, FFXI has more jobs than majority of other MMO on the market(and they're adding more too), and every content/event bound to have an optimal setup.

When you have an optimal setup and 20 jobs on job list, some jobs bound to sit out of optimal setup, and a few jobs bound to sit out of optimal setup for every event and become "the useless job".

Then next thing is, the job defender will pop and tell you "That's because you don't know how to adapt" "You can clear with other setup/strat too"

So I'm going to clarify the definition of "Optimal setup".

Optimal setup means, the most efficient way to do the content, with more room for error, and easiest to execute.

For example, if one NM has 3 ways to kill it, 1 way is to have an army of PUPs kite nuking spending 30 min, 2nd way is to have 1 PLD tanking it while an army of relic RNG shooting it down spending 15 min, 3rd way is to have properly hasted WARs 2hr zerg it down in 3 min with SMN PD and SCH embrava, then the "Optimal setup/strat" is WAR SMN SCH 2hr zerg, NOT PLD turtle+RNG shoot it down, nor PUP army nuke.

Because killing the NM in 3 min is fastest, thus it's optimal. No matter what event you do, there are always currently discovered most optimal setup with highest chance to succeed and fastest to get it done. And when you get the option to job change to form an optimal setup to do it in easier/faster way, there are little room for jobs that doesn't fit into less optimal setup/strat.

That's just same thing as debate on doing Mul with an army of SMN, or just rely on stun and PDT-.
After doing quite a bit of Mul, I do believe that SMN PD is the safest, easiest way to do it, with less chance to wipe and deathga. Even if no SMN is doable, I still preferred to have SMN.

So why there are always "job defenders" that's against "Optimal setup" and telling everyone else that another setup works too, even though in reality it won't work as well?

One possibility is probably just simple love of the job, that nobody want their beloved job to be left out.

But maybe there's more to that. When you can job change, does it matter?

Funny thing is, I rarely see such problem exist in FFXIV.

In FFXIV, the design mentality is, you NEED several jobs in this game, that's the design mentality in FFXIV. When you're doing A, you use A setup in this game, when you do B, you use B setup. You will need to job change in event/raid depending on which part you're in, and must have several jobs available for raid/event. A lot of things in FFXIV clearly designed for ppl to bring multiple jobs and job change in the middle of raid.

And nobody is really against such mentality. Majority of players have several or all jobs available, made macro for job change so they can job change fast. And anyone without several jobs leveled, they're often working on it without another word.

But it isn't the same in FFXI. In FFXI, if you ask anyone to lv A job for A event, and B job for B event, quite a lot of player will Q.Q T.T all day long. That includes Afania, of course, a player who played for 3 years and still only have 2 jobs and always refuse to lv a new one.

I'm guessing that's probably because lving/gearing a new job in FFXI is 1000x times more of a hassel than 14, and a lot of design in FFXI seems to be against players lving multiple jobs, despite optimal setup still exists in 11. At least that's my personal reason not to bother with 3rd jobs. The reward/effort ratio isn't worth it.

In order to get a job in FFXI usable, it needs to go through the process of having to skill up, drop millions and millions on relic, sacrifice precious merit point WS, make 10 gear sets for your jobs, and have fun spending 30 min doing job change ;)

Many FFXIV players have all jobs lv 50, and pretty equal performance(many players on BG been posting multiple relic already) But I rarely see ppl with all jobs in 11 have equal performance, most of them either leave a few jobs not used, or spend 30 min to job change every time they use a rarely used job and cried and whined every time they job change.

The fact that FFXI is slightly slower paced than FFXIV, and the fact that there's gear swap, plus the fact that you're limited to 3 merit WS and 1 mission reward augment, pretty much all against the idea of having multiple job leveled and use optimal setup for each situation, that's almost like anti-job change in FFXI.

When 11 been released for this long time, I can't help but feel FFXI needs a complete overhaul, a Realm Reborn like FFXIV(despite I don't like overhaul at all, felt effort to get gear is wasted when everything changed)

Gear swap is one of the most shit system ever exist in 11, it makes the game 100 times less enjoyable to carry this many gears. As the game item count gets bigger and bigger, and more JA/enhance JA pieces are added every update, plus extremely situational, but not completely useless pieces added, you get the result of having to spend 30 min to job change every time. Or else your job gonna gimp. Not to mention macro system is not gear swapping friendly at all either.

I mean, as a DD, how can you not to carry your PDT/MDT- set, embrava up/embrava down TP set, high acc/low acc TP set, X JA up/down TP/WS set, and JA macro for every JA, and possibility multiple weapons for proc????

Not to mention the time/effort of getting one job ready to use starting from lv 0. There's quest to unlock it, then lv it to lv 99, skill up necessary weapon/magic, some of the jobs even require multiple skills to be usable, such as WAR. And some skill up is total shit or expensive to do, such as COR on Marksmanship. If you're a mage, you need to buy/quest quite a large amount of spells too. Then you need to grind necessary basic gears, some cost quite a lot, such as BB for MNK.

The process of getting 1 job ready to use for event in 14, removed a lot of hassle in the process though.

And I feel this is how a FF MMORPG should have been.

FFXIV streamlined alot of unnecessary shit in FFXI, so players can jump right into the game and enjoy the core element of FF game in an MMORPG, that is job change, and finding out a most optimal strat with most optimal setup to beat the content, instead of complained about having to job change because it takes 30 min, or having to use auto script and hide somewhere to skill up your enhancing/summoning magic after your job ding lv 99.

Although there's also gear grind, do quest for additional abilities like 11, but in general, it's much faster to do it due to faster pace of the game. You also need slightly less gears to perform properly due to 11 just have way too many "situational" gears that you probably have to carry regardless.

I feel FFXI is a 100 year old machine, that is old, clumsy, and a lot of unnecessary shit that should have been deleted and rewrite. What's up with such long list of spells? With quite a large number of spells are unused most of the time. What's up with items like Sheltered Ring, that everyone idle with, DO YOU REALLY THINK IDLE IN SHELTERED RING IS SO PRO SO ELITE CUZ IT'S SO FUN TO CARRY 200 GEARS PER JOB D; D; D; And what's up with lol 2hr reset every Nyzul/legion run D;

In other words, FFXI shouldn't have this many jobs, this many gears, this many spells.....it got clumsy with those.

FFXIV streamlined everything, little JA/spells on the list, but most of them are fairly effective. BRD in 14 only has an acc song, a MP recover song, TP+, movement speed+, and a 15 min JA(much like 2hr in FFXI) to enhance potency. It's fairly simple and effective,  In FFXI BRD has over 50 songs before lv 50, a lot of songs has multiple tier, and you will never use lower tier at higher level. In FFXI you pop 2hr on BRD at the start in legion, and lock it entire run, so which just screams BS every way when one person in ally does nothing except sing songs for a few times entire event. And of course after event everyone go reset 2hr, because currently event is undoable without 2hr, and 2hr recast just way too long that you have to reset....see, another clumsy design. The fact that BRD has DD ability and WHM has more offensive ability is also, IMO, better design than how FF11 is, when every role is highly specialized(that's how we ended up having BRD in 11 or SCH in 11 do nothing except 2hr in legion/nyzul )

I guess that's just the way it goes, 14 dev team probably learned a lot from 11, and probably learned a lot from WoW too. IMO, this is what a good MMO should focus on, that anyone can dive in, relax, but still require quite a bit of skill and good planning on setup to beat the content, and quite content/event focused instead of old mentality of "create a MMO for you to live in the world" like old 14 or 11.

Certainly a long way for 14, starting from a MMORPG that everyone laughed at, and slowly walking on the right track to do everything correctly.

But really, I can't wait for 2.0.