The job system

[Fynn]

Hi, I'm your White Wizard, and I love job systems.

This one, however, I don't find particularly impressive.

I mean, for its time, it was great - changing jobs to adjust your strategy to the situation was a brilliant idea. But this system lacks what the later ones did have - mix-n-match customization. I personally think the best aspect of job system is how they give you the freedom to essentially build your own job from those given to you. I think the Tactics titles did this the best.

Ok, enough blabbering, here's the topic. I know there are some people who prefer III's system to V's and I cannot understand why. Give me reasons why this particular game's job system is awesome.

[Gamblet]

I agree with you on that one, but I still enjoy FF III.

[VeloZer0]

I'm also in this boat. I don't see what FF3 offers over FF5 or FFT above that.

The only thing I can think of is that the game's itemization makes job stacking virtually impossible for most of the game whereas in FF5 I can remember numerous cases of just having everyone as the same job to make a boss significantly easier.

[Dragonfire]

I tend to look at each game for what it was in it's time. They didn't really have ability to do what 5 and Tactics did back then, which maybe isn't such a bad thing as it's pretty difficult to abuse the system like you can in the others (though solo dragoon is pretty broken). Also, 3 isn't extremely dependent on the system for your success. When 3 originally came out it was a pretty impressive job system. It had extremely specialized fighting classes, special abilities, new types of magic (time, terrain, etc.) and the introduction of summons. The ability to change classes at will wasn't something anyone had ever really seen before. While I do agree 5 and Tactics have better systems by todays standards, 3 was very awesome and groundbreaking for its time.

just my 2 cents

[DownDiagonalLeftA]

Who needs mix and match customization when you have Sages and Ninjas?

...nah, while Sages were AWESOME, I can't see why anyone would think this game's job system is superior to V's or Tactics.

[Gamblet]

though solo dragoon is pretty broken

I know right? I basically killed CoD with a dragoon only because my party pretty much got wiped from the start in the NES version. The remake broke it even more by doing over 9999 damage. I did not even hit close to the damage cap with my dragoon on NES version if I remember correctly.

[VeloZer0]

In which remake can you do over 9999 damage?

[Gamblet]

I played it on my Android phone (same as DS remake). The thing is that it displays 9999 damage, but actually it does more than that, I have tested it on some monsters and there is a moogle on Invicible that says your maximum damage inflicted. Mine was around 40000 and to do that, I did that by jumping on a dragon type monster with my Dragoon with two Wind Spears.

The dragon had more than 9999 hitpoints for sure, because other party members needed to inflict more damage than that to defeat the beast and my dragoon killed it one hit.

[VeloZer0]

Interesting.

[Venom65437]

I, too, would love to hear why someone thinks 3's job system is better than 5's.

[Fynn]

I guess the people on this forum are all sane

[Elpizo]

I could understand why someone would like III's more than V's (but even I, as a FF III fan, prefer V's over III's). I suppose the lack of combining job abilities could in fact be appealing to some people, who prefer characters or jobs that are set and unchangeable (like characters in IV and IX, or the jobs in I and III) instead of the jack-of-all-trades-can-do-everything characters and jobs as in pretty much every FF game from VI and onwards.

That in itself isn't a bad idea. Being limited to a job and only that job, without armour-wearing white mages or meteor-casting knights, can make for interesting gameplay. It makes the choice of a job and the composition of a party's jobs more important, and can offer more variety in the endgame, unlike V, where pretty much everyone went for 4 mimes or 4 freelancers pumped up with two dozen of mastered jobs and their abilities. The problem is that III's jobs are too limited to really exploit this kind of gameplay. The jobs need more abilities and more beyond their equipment to make them different from each other. A while back I posted a revision of III's job system that would lend itself more to this idea. If III's job system were more like that, I honestly think the lack of crossing job abilities wouldn't bother me.

[Fynn]

I could understand why someone would like III's more than V's (but even I, as a FF III fan, prefer V's over III's). I suppose the lack of combining job abilities could in fact be appealing to some people, who prefer characters or jobs that are set and unchangeable (like characters in IV and IX, or the jobs in I and III) instead of the jack-of-all-trades-can-do-everything characters and jobs as in pretty much every FF game from VI and onwards.

That in itself isn't a bad idea. Being limited to a job and only that job, without armour-wearing white mages or meteor-casting knights, can make for interesting gameplay. It makes the choice of a job and the composition of a party's jobs more important, and can offer more variety in the endgame, unlike V, where pretty much everyone went for 4 mimes or 4 freelancers pumped up with two dozen of mastered jobs and their abilities. The problem is that III's jobs are too limited to really exploit this kind of gameplay. The jobs need more abilities and more beyond their equipment to make them different from each other. A while back I posted a revision of III's job system that would lend itself more to this idea. If III's job system were more like that, I honestly think the lack of crossing job abilities wouldn't bother me.

I kind of agree with this. Tactics Ohre gives us a job system that does not allow for ability transfer, but the jobs are just so robust with abilities to learn by the dozen, that I consider it on par with the FFT system.

[Vincent, Thunder God]

When i first got into 5, i managed a party of monks sailing through the river area with like one white mage and one black, and holy trout it worked well, really tough but both job systems leveled up (of the mages) after the boss!

The job system is epic, haven't played enough 3 to check out that version much though. Lupin or whatever his name was was kinda cool.