It’s amazing to me when I look back at Final Fantasy Tactics, that I never beat it. As a matter of fact, I probably only got about half way through it. Yet I soaked hours into the game. I would run over previously visited spots for days in order to fight enemies just to build up my team members’ experience. It’s the only game in my history I bought a strategy guide for. Not to help with the battles, but to know what it would take to unlock certain jobs in the game. I recently started playing it again, and I’m back to my old tricks. I’ve spent a ton of time going back and forth between a couple hunting grounds just to build up character experience. Then it dawned on me; why hasn’t this type of job system been put in an MMO?

For those who have never played, Final Fantasy Tactics is a turned based strategy RPG. You go into battles with up to 5 playable characters on your side. You fight on a map which is not very large, but there are different levels of elevation, which comes into play tactically. Attacking from above gives long distance classes more range. Striking an enemy from the side or rear with a melee attack will increase your chance to hit, and the amount of damage you do. There are numerous different classes (called Jobs in FFT) that you can assign to your characters, but you only start with a few. In order to unlock more jobs, each character must meet a prerequisite level in certain other jobs. So, for instance, if you want to make one of your people a Knight, you have to reach level 2 as a squire. That’s pretty basic. A more involved example would be if you want to make, say, a Ninja. If you wanted to do that, you’d have to a Squire to level 2, then switch him or her to an Archer and get that class to level 4, and then also get level 3 as a Knight, then become a level 4 Monk, switch to a Geomancer and hit level 2, and THEN you can make a Ninja…with that single character. Remember, if you want to make 2 Ninja’s, you’d have to repeat this with another character. Still with me? This may sound like a boat load of work, but it’s really not all bad. Managing this kind of thing with 4 or 5 characters is where it can be tricky, but it’s fun as hell to me.

I really do think an MMO could adopt this basic idea of a job system. Make certain classes open to anyone when you start the game, and then you must choose various path’s based on the jobs you’ve chosen. Dark Age of Camelot and Aion have both done this in the most basic of ways, by having you choose a base class, getting to a certain level, and then choosing from one of two classes which you probably went into the game knowing you were going to play anyways. Then you’re stuck with it. What if you could change your class at a town? As a Warrior, you realize that your group will be missing its normal healer for tonight’s raid, so you go to the “Hall o’ Healin’” and switch your class. Presto, your raid is back in business.

Think what this could do to a games economy. If the game was craft heavy, there could be ample business for crafters because people will need multiple sets of armor and weapons based on the jobs they want to fulfill. On top of that, people wouldn’t reroll constantly because they want to try a different class. They could keep their name, and most likely play more because they could fill group needs on the fly. The list of positives goes on and on.

Thoughts? Is there already an MMO out there doing this that I’m unaware of? Do you see where this might fail?