One of the constants that underpins the speculation that lots of players, including me, have about Final Fantasy XIV’s future expansions – beyond the assumption that there will be further expansions (which seems like a safe assumption) – is that said expansions will have new jobs in them. Today, I want to examine why that might not happen, ranging from the arguments for not adding new jobs to what advantages it would offer to the potential negative consequences.
However, before doing that, I also want to note that from the start this is intentionally highly speculative. As of right now, there’s no reason to assume that this is something that will happen. Exactly one expansion for Final Fantasy XI released with no new jobs, and that was considered such a misfire that the designers functionally promised to never do that ever again. Indeed, the various add-on scenarios that were released without them seem to have gotten a different structure primarily to make sure no one confused that fact. I highly doubt this would ever be the case even if we completely ignore the incoming Beastmaster limited job. But for the sake of intellectual curiosity, let’s examine this one.
So why avoid adding new jobs? To my eyes, there are two very good reasons: lack of motivation and balance differentiation.
Lack of motivation might sound like a way to claim “laziness,” but that’s not it at all. The problem is that as I’ve noted before many a time, we’re pretty low in terms of series jobs that are not represented. I maintain a spreadsheet with the major jobs that we see in multiple titles, and the ones that aren’t represented in FFXIV at this point in some way are usually present in less than half of the titles in the franchise at most. These are jobs that, broadly, are all right if they don’t show up.
That doesn’t mean we can’t get them in the future, but it does mean that we currently exist in a different state of affairs than when Stormblood could add Red Mage and Samurai. Would I be thrilled if we got a new ranged DPS job dubbed Corsair? Absolutely. But I shouldn’t pretend that’s somehow a major series staple because it simply is not. It is a job from one game that people think is very cool. And these remaining bits and pieces are not evenly distributed, either. Can I come up with a list of potential healer jobs? Yes. Can I come up with a list of potential tank jobs? Also yes, but it’s going to involve more reaching, and it’ll look a bit thin.
Balance differentiation, meanwhile, is the pretty simple reality that there are only so many different ways for, say, a melee DPS job to work. There is a contingent that does not seem to internalize the reality of things and grouses about “homogenization” when the reality is that if every job is meant to be able to clear every piece of content (and it is) some tools just need to be universal, but there is a point of diminishing returns. Gunbreaker feels different from Paladin, and if I were getting paid to design another tank, I feel confident I could make one that feels different. Could I make another two? That’s going to be tricky. Another three? I’m going to struggle.
In other words, if there’s no longer a pressing need about how the game doesn’t have playable jobs that are franchise staples and we’re getting to the point that it’s hard to make jobs that feel wholly different, maybe it’s best to stop. Keep what the game already has and focus on refining it. What would that look like?
First and foremost, I don’t think it would lead to any kind of radical design paradigm shift for existing jobs. The people who have been managing balance for the past several years are still the people who would be doing it now, and the goal has consistently been to increase the number of interactions between abilities while cutting out maintenance or unnecessary chores. Wasting your time refreshing a buff or reshuffling your Astrologian draws to get the one good card? Not desirable. Providing other interactions between existing abilities, with a couple of upgrades (conditional or otherwise)? That’s the stuff.
IÂ do think there would be a push to expand the range of “iconic” abilities within each job, since you wouldn’t have two new jobs to serve as the face of the expansion. It might lead to something offering more visual customization options for the jobs like additional potential summon visuals for Summoners, since there’s less need to spend time on new visuals outright, but that’s purely speculative; the priority would just have more space to be placed higher.
There is the faint possibility of something like the Phantom Job system being rolled out as a new form of progression, but I see it as exceedingly faint. Frankly, we’ve had numerous opportunities for this to become a thing, and each time that hasn’t happened. I don’t think that’s something that the designers want to put into the main game but want to keep sectioned off.
Otherwise? Not much changes.
This might seem like an odd presumption, but I’ve thought about this a bunch and I feel at least reasonably confident that if you removed two new jobs per expansion, you wouldn’t actually see wild changes to the game’s existing jobs. Existing jobs already get things added and it’s pretty clear that the developers are fairly happy with how they’ve played since Endwalker with some outliers. Having more time wouldn’t change that fact; it would just mean that the next expansion doesn’t contain new jobs while the developers remain fairly happy with the shape of the game.
I have, on occasion, seen people say “if we stopped getting new jobs the developers would revert X change” or “they’d make Blue Mage into a full job” but these seem wholly unfounded. Blue Mage as a limited job (and Beastmaster as well, soon) is not a limitation of time but a specific element of design philosophy. These are not limited jobs because the designers were crunched for time to bring it to the current level. Moreover, the changes that have been made to existing jobs have been made specifically between expansions much of the time. All of this fits in the existing timeframe.
Truth be told, this is probably one of the main reasons why the idea has never been seriously put forth. Oh, sure, there would be more time to do things with class design if the developers didn’t have new jobs to balance. But a lack of time doesn’t seem like the biggest limiting factor at this point, and when your main options are to either give players less stuff or just add new jobs because it’s still more stuff, it’s hard to really argue that you shouldn’t add more jobs.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, obviously, I’ll be responding to the live letter we have this week. What else would it be?
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
