Lets talk Job Systems in RPG's!

I'm having a degreased-cheese-pizza-autism attack right now

Yes, so much. I think the FF5 and Final Fantasy Tactics style of learning and combining classes is possibly my favorite JRPG mechanics. Generally for me most of the fun in that genre comes from my ability to choose what my party can and can't do so the more control over the system I have the better.

I don't dislike this, but I think it's harder to make a game challenging in some ways. I think the more of the game is pre-set the less room there is for strategy. On one hand it's harder to too create a bad strategy, but on the other there's less room to come up with interesting and optimized strategies.

Which, admittedly is the problem with the Job System mechanic is the game turns into "how can I abuse this system to create the most broken effect for the current encounter." That's also very true with FFT. I think that's part of the fun though and those games can still be challenging even so. I mean unless you're going to just abuse the LV Death thing in FF5 or Calculator in FFT, but you can't just pick up the game and figure those out… I think anyway I kind of forget how intuitive Calculators are.

In as much as there tends to be developer intended solutions to more preset games I suppose there are optimal approaches to games that give you more control, but at least in terms of just picking up and playing a game a Job System feels more rewarding and engaging to me.

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I never actually finished it, but I'll one-up you and say that FFX-2 had a better ATB gameplay combat system than CT did or FFs 4-9 did. For the traditional turn-based RPG, the ATB system is fucking shit that actively hinders gameplay, rather than complimenting it.

FFX-2 feels like it's exploring possibilities that XI and XII fleshed out much more thoroughly, though. I'd hesitate to even call their combat systems ATB, because of everything you can do outside of using skills, but I'll still bite. The only other Squeenix property to use the ATB system correctly was Parasite Eve.

ATB was largely a mistake. FF3 may have an inferior job system to FF5, but it's still the best classically-styled FF there is. FFX-2 was a turning point that switched gameplay in a newer, better direction with subsequent games. FFX has the best gameplay of the series, but since I'd rather drink drain cleaner than suffer through that explosive trainwreck of a story again, I cannot respect it at all.

The sphere grid could be used to test people for OCD.

FFX-2 was essentially "What if FFXIII actually worked?" The ATB system was a better Stagger and changing jobs on the grid was far better than the "tank, dps, heals support" paradigms.

The joke is too old for you?
youtube.com/watch?v=olDX_GcycEg

Its sub Alantutorial tier.

The difference is that Ulillillia isn't fake.

ADDENDUM: The best Job System has secret jobs you only unlock after finding some hidden npc or reach some unknown criteria ingame unrelated to the main story quest content.

i think Ogre Battle/ tactics ogre had some of these

You needed to equip certain item to turn a mage into a necromancer, and a necromancer into a lich

Also for creating a princess class

I personally like when non human races have their own exclusive class system, specially if non linear

I'm conflicted. I'm okay with Job System, I'm just stupidly indecisive about what jobs suits each character's personality/archetype, so the job system isn't always for me. Of course, if you can max out every job - then it doesn't matter too much

Now I'm a sucker for set archetypes but it can be a flaw if you have more than 4 characters (like, say, Final Fantasy 4), that certain characters may not get used that often due to lack of firepower or only have a niche use.

You mean like maxing two jobs to unlock/use a new job e.g. Monk + Priest = Paladin? That stuff's alright. I don't know any other better examples that describes what you said.

I forget which jrpg it is but theres one that has an old homeless man who gets bullied all the time and late game if you help him he unlocks the sage job that can uses all schools of magic like a hyper red mage.

I need to play Tactics Ogre.
I was a poorfag kid and it was TO or Vagrant Story and went with the Ivalice universe

Obsolete since the 90s, if not earlier.

I don't think you understand what that word means.

Todd pls.

I have that problem with Star Ocean characters. I normally use them when I just train to max them all out.

Your gonna want a guide on how to get that Princess Class character because she is a bitch and will try anything to "avoid being recruited">that certain characters may not get used that often due to lack of firepower or only have a niche use.

How far are going to extend the term job, since you can't get all the spells at once in persona and Persona's are equipped with different spells?
On top of that the different race attributes also direct you to a sort of role/class/job in the elder scrolls series.

What do you guys have to say about classes like the Red Mage where they are good at the beginning of the game but they can only have the weak spells which make them kinda useless late game? What moves would you add to them if they obtained standard abilities like doublecast.

Classes are still very vital in Morrowind and Daggerfall, you can create your own classes though so it seems like it's not a class system, but it is. Minor and Misc skills are harder to level up than major and primary skills. One can be a mage and get skills in swords, but it will take an immense amount of time.

Red mage would be good for endgame if the loot system gave better drops for a character with high stats. Also if he had abilities to double exp for the party.

I still think Bravely Default's Asterisk system is one of my favorites, but where they drop the ball is balancing and boss design.

I've said it many times on this board, but having an entire class dedicated to status spells is neat.. but fucking infuriating when every boss is immune to practically everything except Pow/Def/Speed debuffs, which that class can't even inflict.

Class abilities are meant for boss fights. If you're needing to burn through all your good shit just on piddly random encounters, then the game isn't designed right.. and if random encounters are supposed to require actual strategy, then you don't put in the option to just turn them off or autobattle your way through them.

I think the usefulness of certain classes vary from game to game but I'm possibly wrong. I've always recalled Red Mages being a poor class. Giving it doublecast ability could be a interesting thought. If Red Mage's double Fira can almost match Black Mage's single Firaga, that could be nice.

Given with Red Mage's low MP, maybe give it a Attune Blade that absorbs magic attacks into MP (friend and foe alike) as a method. It could be abused though - maybe limit it to when the spell's target is Red Mage or part of a Multi-target spell, other allies will get damaged, only Red Mage won't.

I don't know, the moment I leveled enough to stop needing to x4 firaga and fairy warding ice golems, and could beat them with just x16 attacks was pretty special.
Being able to beat every enemy and every boss with the exact same moves gets old fast.

Job systems are the shit, but the real downside to them is that typically there are always a handful of niche / generally outclassed / downright stupid jobs that are disappointing if you got excited for them.

I wish more games would do job systems these days, I love me some party building and customization, I'll tell ya hwhat.

That would be the balancing issues, dubsman.

Great system. Great mechanics. Completely ruined by bad enemy design and balance.

Fixed job system like in FF1 is best, FFTs is second best, and FFVs is third best.

FFX-2 is dead in a fire along with all the faggots in here pretending it had any redeeming qualities.

Carpet muncher.

Seriously,intentionally grinding in rpgs to overlevel and make bosses a cake-walk is an admission of defeat.

Not JRPG expert but after playing through Bravely Default it just screamed using easiest tools instead of working with what you have, or even tools you want to use.

I only have to appreciate you get healer class after around 3 bosses in sequel, I don't remember exactly I need to pick it up again and finish it finally but I have to appreciate the fact they learned something.

You are wrong and your taste is refuckulated.

The garment grid was great. You could change jobs mid battle, but it cost you the turn for the character but based on where you put them on the grid this could also buff you as you pass through one node to another. As the grids increased you could put more jobs, but only move once so you had to pick a smart layout and plan your dressphere swap outs in a way that was far better than X's "YOU CAN BE NY CHARACTER, JUST PICK THE ROCK TO THE ENEMIES SCISSORS!"

FF5 is my favorite FF. I played through it 3 times now.

Grinding is ridiculously easy in Bravely Default, I don't know how you could reach chapter 8 and not be lvl 99.

Honestly making this thread makes me want to replay it again. Jobs out the ass, alien worlds, the big bridge, a qt pirate reverse trap princess. Its such a fucking adventure.

I love both Bravely games, they are flawed gems but they are also monumentally casual jrpgs.

Edea is still cute as fuck though.

the ending sequence moves my cold heart every single time.

I hit the desert in 2 and I have no idea how to make my physical attackers do damage. Meanwhile my magic users are doing retarded amounts of damage with magic hammer. Am I missing something?

It was gay, just like you.

This is not a defense of the system because changing mid battle isn't some spectacular thing.

Now you are clearly delusional as X's system is far better to X-2's wannabe job class system. I don't even need to address the "quality" of X-2's system, because even if it was good (which it isn't) the rest of the game isn't and the "job system" quality is meaningless when the game is so fucking easy that switching classes isn't even necessary.

The desert with the mummy women at night? i never had a problem but i think i had ninja or cross jobbed ninja on all melee for the buffs and attack speed, maybe theres an accuracy issue?

FFX is literally rock paper scissors level difficulty Is the enemy a flyer? wakka will one shot it. Is it an elemental, Lulu will one shot it, is it a large high defence creature, aaron will one shot it and so on. It is Final Fantasy combat at its dumbest with no risk or reward or tactics. Dont have wakka against a flyer? doesnt matter you can pick them instantly and swap someone out.

It is babbys first jrpg battle system for retarded people.

I'm at the start of the game, though I did get as far as the japanese ship city before I lost my file. So you're saying I have to wait until ninja before I can unfuck my physical classes?

The biggest problem with job systems IMO is lack of any real progression. A guy who spends his entire life as a knight can change into a wizard and be almost as good at casting magic as someone who dedicated his entire life mastering magic and vice versa. Usually this is made up for by having access to more skills but all characters still feel exactly the same for the most part. FFV is easily the worst offender of this due to how easily you can change a character's role without any real consequences. Some people like this level of freedom but I think it just ruins the identity of a character making them feel all exactly the same.

i dont know, i just know i used ninja and never had any problems, but maybe the sand blinds you and i had auto blind defence on my melee? it was a fair few months ago for me.

I'm a sucker for job systems, as they allow flexibility in your group without making it overpowered by letting them access to every skillset at the same time (with the exception of FFV, even though it's debatable that it gave you a reason to level all those classes).

I also like the Tactics idea at unlocking certain classes after having learned some skills from other classes.

X-2 was really fun to play, especially with the HD re-releases giving access to nearly every monster and lots of characters as playable if you don't like the fanservice. And Brother is amazing in itself.

Even though it's very Pokemon-like, it has its part of worth.

Definitely. I gave a try at XIII months ago and only saw the system as a subpar mishmash of X and X-2, taking the worst aspects of them to make something.

Well the idea in most is you are not just becoming a wizard but being gifted the talent by a long dead wizard to aid the warriors of light in their quest.
Even in FFXIV when you unlock a job you equip a stone thats "inscribed with the memories of all that came before you".

I understand it, but I still don't like it.

For weak grinding enemies he will one shot it, sure.

This may be true, but none of what you have said defends X-2 at all. X-2 has absolutely no challenge whatsoever. X-2 can be beaten your first time in 10 hours with practically no grinding or character growth. This renders the "job system" worthless.

FFX may be easy rock-paper-scissors switching, but it has many challenging fights (at least the first time you encounter them.) X-2 has none. X-2s "depth" is completely worthless. I would say the same of FFV if it was in an easy game too. Having a "good" job class system doesn't mean anything if the game surrounding it is shit, and X-2 is completely shit.

You like shit.

5 does have consequences for poor job choices. A fully trained knight has almost no use for the knight skills when he changes to a mage.

For starters mages can easily make use of Equip Armor. Anyways to address your point you don't necessarily have any real penalties for "poor job choices" except for lack of a useful second skill slot and even then it's not really a big deal and doesn't "break" a character, it just means that they are slightly less useful than someone with say Rapid-Fire for example. It's nothing a bit of grinding can't fix.

So what's your solution?

part of the difficulty of rpgs is being able to make shit characters. If you can't adapt to the conditions of the game, you don't deserve to win.

Tactics pulled it off well I feel. You WILL get fucked over if you waste job points on worthless skills and you have a massive variety of how to build your character unlike in FFV where certain skills make everything else redundant (Rapid-Fire and Dual Wield for example). The balance is not perfect of course but still. Only thing that would make it even better is that if job growths was more prevalent so your characters would truly feel different and individual so for example I can make a character that switches back and forth between Knight and White Mage and doesn't excel at either fighting or magic but can still use both competently or just keep a character a Monk the entire time and have retarded amounts of strength. In the vanilla game there was absolutely no reason to make more than 4 generics for two reasons. One is that you have limited deploy slots and you're better off using your four mains instead of grinding separate characters because you can always just give the job points to your mains instead. Secondly it has one of the same problems as FFV and that your stats are determined by your job and not by the growths so it wouldn't matter if I wanted to make hybrid builds for example.

I guess in short a perfect job system for me would be Tactic's but with job growths similar to Final Fantasy 3.

When did I deny this? It's very hard to make shit characters in FFV when the game hands out fuck-loads of job points like candy and you can always just switch your characters to certain jobs to curb-stomp everything if you're having a bit of trouble.

I guess I just wanted to point it out.

What would be very interesting is if FFV mixed with FFVIII. Imagine maxing out every job on every character, only to realize the enemies were level scaling with you.

They did, it's called Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light, and you can break the game over your knee just like FF8

I never got into the DS library, I'll have to check it out

I prefer a job system over a class system and I prefer a classless system over a class system.

Usually as long as the gameplay is good I tend to like it though.

I fairly 99.99%'d the game and I can go into detail about all the game's problems if you want me to.

But the music is on point, I like the style they went with, the plot is alright for an NES game, and the jobs are generally pretty neat or odd (my favorite kind). Definitely worth a pirate, just don't try to 100% it please.

Have you played TO: Knights of Lodis?
There is basically an achievement system that, depending on the actions you've done it gives you emblems which gives you more attack, accuracy, debuffs enemies, allows you to be a certain class, etc. it is possible to get them all but it would take you forever so characters do branch out very differently.

Also int TO:PoLC and TO:MoTBQ
the alliance of your character can lock off classes completely

I do like the multitude of classes and abilities they had, but I can't deny it was made where you could go without them. That's sort of the name of the game with the mainline sequels where they were collect-a-thons of content, enemies, and quests instead of focus on stories.

Since we've all been jerking ourselves over FF and TO, how come we like those job systems the best and what are other games with their own array of job systems?

I'd say it's only a serious problem if there the choices don't have consequences. Character building is central to RPGs, so being able to switch class without much consequence undermines that, as there's no real challenge in maintaining a character to overcome the challenge presented in the game.

However, a stringent class system can also trivialize the character building - if the most important part of making and maintaining your character is picking their class at the start of the game, then your decision-making becomes incredibly skewed where you're most important choice happens before you've even really started the game and every choice in the rest of the game becomes almost meaningless.

I think the biggest advantage class switching has is that it's impossible to fuck yourself over. You might have to grind up some non shit classes, but there's no problem with sinking a few levels into something like dancer to see if it's good.

From my experience with Dragon Quest 9, the DQ games seem to have a problem where you can switch your character to another class, but the class is your level it seems. Basically it amounts to grinding, which while DQ fans will be familiar and fine with doing (despite the main story not needing grinding since the SNES days more or less) everyone else doesn't like.

Nope. Maybe some day though.

Some people actually LIKE DQ9's class system. I have no clue why though. It does literally everything wrong.

I want to say it's not too bad, but then you get into the whole "restart the class from level 1" thing that you only "need" to do once if you want to upgrade all your skills, but then the game has you doing it again and again for better treasure maps and it just gets fucking stupid and you're better off doing the proto-streetpass thing for maps if you live in Japan.

and you don't even lose the turn. FFX was a joke.

Its leveling system was also cute but end game/post game it was just ANYONE CAN BE ANYTHING. I liked the turn based system, but it was too easy.

It's grind-friendly.

You keep perks for grinding another job. That's why they like it

Actually I had a problem with Dragon Quest 8, I actually underleveled and couldn't beat the Rhapthorne jester guy fight at all because he kept 2 shotting my characters and the healer couldn't keep up.

I tried again later when I was older and it was a cakewalk. turns out I ran from battles too much.

You pick the counter for random encounter enemy types. That counter shit barely mattered in any of the boss fights. The entire team mattered in boss fights.

You are seriously trying to deflect criticism off of X-2 which was nothing more than a cash grab by Square that they put minimal effort into, by crying about FFX encouraging using characters (and thus giving them growth) because they kill certain enemies better than the others. That's fucking retarded. You are retarded.

I really disliked FF3 because the bosses are incredibly dull.

As I grow older and experience more and more JRPG, I have come to the startling revelation that they are better when the mechanics are strictly limited and limiting. Typically this means jobs and/or class specialization.

JRPG's where every character can do everything tend to not only be incredibly easy, but also outrageously boring. Each character ends up being godly and feels samey. This cheapens not only the story but the gameplay and your enjoyment of it, which is already a pretty weak point in the genre.

On the inverse, games that harshly and irrevocably specializes each character into a unique niche they must fulfill are superb. Not only does this force you to strategize with your limited resources, but it also demands you (attempt) to cover your characters weaknesses with synergy of whatever limited abilities you possess. These games are superb and more of them need to be made.

I just want more games like FF1, or all the various Wizardry offshoots ;_;

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if you've got a non-generic, pre-made character that's part of a storyline, they better have a unique skill-set that matches their character.

job/class/skill systems should only be for faceless mooks in tactical rpgs, or pcs in mmo/tes style games(who are also faceless mooks to be quite honest)