The long forgotten cross-class system of Final Fantasy XIV
Did you think you will escape my Final Fantasy lecture? :D
There are so many things I could tell you about in this game, took me a while to decide which topic to go for, but I think this one might be helpful for those, who are new to the game and are wondering why for certain jobs there is a base class as well, while others don't have this?
You will start the game as one of the base classes:
Tanks: Marauder, Gladiator
Melee dps: Lancer, Rouge, Pugilist
Physical ranged dps: Archer
Caster dps: Arcanist, Thaumaturge
Healer: Conjurer
These were already present in A Realm Reborn (ARR), and once you get to lvl30, you will get a quest to change into a job, which builds on these base classes and brings in new story and new skills for them. Now if you are not familiar with how the game looked like 10 years ago, you will rightfully ask but why can't you start as Reaper which is one of the newest jobs? Or why does Sage, the newest healer on the block not have a base class, but if you want to be a White Mage, you will have to start as Conjurer and work your way up?
This is because the game 10 years ago was very, very different. Every job which was present in the game at the time had a starting class, and on lvl30 you didn't just get to switch to a job. For example in order to become Black Mage from Thaumaturge, you had to level up Archer to lvl30, do a quest, and then you could become Black Mage. Arcanist to this day is a very special class, the only one which can select from two jobs on lvl30, and if you level one, you will level the other as well. Back in the days as an Arcanist if you took up Thaumaturge you could become a Summoner (caster), and if you took up Conjurer, you could become a Scholar (healer).
Now don't even get me started on the complexity of Arcanist back then, because we would be sitting here for days.
Getting these other classes level up was not purely for getting that job quest done. You could also take skills from these other classes. Some of these skills don't exist anymore as they don't fit into the current game structure, the remnants of them you will find under 'Role Actions'. So tanks, look at all those defensive skills you have there! They used to be unique to the different tank jobs, and in order to get them all, you had to level up the other tanks as well. The skill which recharges mana for the casters and healers? Only White Mage had it. Same for Resurrection. If you were a Paladin (tank), and you levelled up White Mage, you could use Resurrection as a cross-class skill. Yes, you heard me right, tank which could raise a KOd party member.
As a Scholar you could get powerful damage-over-time (DoT) skills from Summoner, Black Mage and White Mage, making you into a true green-dps (a healer who focuses on dealing damage instead of healing)
These were really fun times, and of course there were some very strong builds and skills you had to get if you wanted to engage in high-end content and be useful, they also gave an option for a very unique gameplay as two characters on the same job didn't necessarily had the same skillset.
When the next expansion, Heavensward (HW) came out, there were two new jobs introduced, Dark Knight (tank) and Astrologian (healer). The max level in the game during ARR was lvl50 and in HW it got increased to lvl60. The new jobs started on lvl30 which would be the level in ARR you used to get your quest to change from your base class to a job, so these would have fit in with this system very well.... but I don't quite know why, they didn't get a base class assigned to them. I think it would have fit in well to add these to an existing base class and make all base classes lead into multiple jobs, the same way as Arcanist is. Probably this is a question I would ask the developers if I had a chance, because I believe this was a huge missed opportunity.
And this pretty much meant the slow decline and eventual death of the cross-class system. Skills which you could learn from other jobs slowly got removed or converted into the Role Actions, making everything more streamlined which is probably good for a modern game, but it took away a lot of uniqueness we once had. Now basically every tank has the same type of core skills, just they are called differently and have different effects. While they have some difference between them, in reality if you can play one tank, you can play all.
In the later expansions when they added new jobs they started 20 lvls below the new maximum level and now we are so far from the base classes that they feel useless and out of ordinary, not really having a purpose anymore. Probably they are only keeping them for the class quest stories and don't really know about a good way to get rid of them, but I imagine for new players their existence is very confusing.
So if you hear veteran players complaining that the game is easy or boring, while you might not agree with them, I hope this little history lesson will help you understand why they think so. I do love the current game, I think it changed in a good direction and kept up with demands of current games very well, but I do miss the old times too. One of the reasons why I love the lvl70 and lvl80 edgame content areas where you get to use some extra abilities alongside your own skills, is because some of them are straight from the old ARR era, and bring back good memories of the game from when I started to play. I hope we will get another area like these in Dawntrail so us "boomers" will have our playground with some old-time favourite abilities. (I can't possibly tell you how frustrating it is when I see a boss cast a spell which I used to have on my Summoner, but not anymore.... XD)
Well I hope you have enjoyed today's Final Fantasy history lesson, and let me know if you want to hear more!
