The "Job System" for DFFT

As stated earlier, A tactics game could barely function if it does not have a job system in one form or another. My initial idea was to have all the characters from throughout the series--a roster of easily over a hundred--all be able to change to various jobs. This idea got kicked around from one variation to another, form one extreme: any character can be any job; to another: no jobs whatsoever.
I settled on something closer to the latter idea. In fact, it just simply is that idea: no characters actually change jobs in and of themselves; they are what they are from the moment they join your team. So where to actual jobs come it?
First of all, when you go into a characters status screen or any menu that lists the character, there should always be a title next to their name that identifies which job they are fixed as, for example: Cloud is a Soldier and Terra is an Esperkin. I had to invent a few to be creative, such as Maria from FFII being an Archer Mage and Lenna being a Royal Mimic. Many of them have job titles that came straight from the games, like Locke being an Adventurer or Balthier being a Sky Pirate. For the characters that came from Dissidia, I used most of their fighting-style titles as their job names (like Terra; Esperkin instead of Magitek Elite), but I changed others within reason (Cloud being a Soldier instead of a Buster Basher). I alter whatever feels within creative license. I'll eventually post the full list of character names with their accompanying class title.
Still, this begs the question of where job-changing comes in. To understand the direction I went, one has to understand the "action" menu in combat. When one chooses "action", there are five choices: the first is a standard melee attack, the second is a unique ability set that is exclusive to the character and cannot be changed or removed, and the fifth is the "items" command. The third and fourth slots are blank until the player decides to assign generic job ability sets to them, which has to be done outside of battle. And that's where job changeability comes into play: any character can equip any two ability sets from a choice of 20+ job-themed ability sets. This allows all the customization options that a job changing system brings with it without being overly complicated with job stats affecting character growth beyond their designated role in battle.
I actually had the idea for this for awhile, but didn't commit to it until recently. I was unsure of this idea because in previous Tactics games (or any Final Fantasy game that featured job changeability), changing jobs was a bit of a mini-event for the player, and my system undercut that little excitement. So, to implement the thrill of job-changing, I did this instead: When the player goes into the status screen to select an ability-set for an empty slot, a rotating carousel of job sprites pops up to represent the ability-sets that the character can equip. This is a direct emulation of the carousel of jobs that can be selected in the Tactics games. Once selected, a little animation flash occurs to mark the choice. In this way, job changing is still present in some form, yet it's simplicity conforms to the size of the roster.
While the player has a wide array of options to customize characters under this system, it should be obvious that some ability-sets are better for certain characters then others. For example, Arts of War (Warrior) wouldn't do nearly as well on a Black Mage like Vivi nor the White Magic ability-set wouldn't be ideal for Auron either. The player will be required to exercise good judgment for their choices.
Each character has to build up each job-ability set themselves by accumulating JP (job points) while acting in battle with that set equipped. Building up the right ability-sets will unlock new abilities in their native set, for example: mastering certain Steal (Thief) abilities for Locke will unlock new abilities for him to learn in his native ability-set Treasure Hunt.
My next post will list off the different ability-sets and the jobs they represent. I hope most fans will appreciate the simplifying of this time-honored system to fit the ambition of this character-rich project.

Ever since I began this project I've grown to have a great deal more respect for how troublesome the design process could be. Granted, I am one fan and not a team of experienced developers, but I still feel the strain of keeping things within the purview of fellow fan expectations given that I plan on publishing this in one form or another. That being said, I have felt the need to make a number of questionable compromises that would give FF veterans pause, but rest assured I have not taken these liberties without a considerable amount of thought.
Liberty #1: The story takes place during the 1st cycle of the Dissidia war story-line. When the first Dissidia came out, the story implied that the war had cycled many times and that there were more heroes in previous cycles. Duodecim cemented this notion by adding more characters that were in the previous cycle of the conflict. It can be implied then that there was a large number of characters, maybe not even necessarily all combatants, the earlier you go. The problem with this is that the reports in the official games said that some of the characters were summoned more recently, so they weren't there in the earliest cycles? Well, whatever. The point of this game is to get EVERY character in there so that no one's favorite is left out. I figure this retcon will be forgiven once everyone is given what they really want.
Liberty #2: There's no exploratory world map. What I mean by "exploratory" is that there will be no wandering as JRPG gamers know it. I know that even Tactics games had a map that the player could at least point and click their destination too, but I'm simplifying it even further. I figure the game will have so much content that a map to roam would be just that much more cumbersome. In its place, there WILL be a map, but it will be more like a status screen to document the players progress: shaded areas is enemy territory and lightened areas is allied territory. Further more, when selecting a mission, a little indicating light will blink on the map for the players reference, but once the mission is accepted, the game immediately swooshes into the battle prep screen (along with a little airship diving in implying that the heroes traveled there that way). Once players get into the complexities of managing 100+ party members, they're likely to forget about the missing JRPG staple of map crawling.
Liberty #3: Characters from spin-offs and sequels will be added at the authors discretion. While I promise to include every character that was fully playable from the main series, that promise does not necessarily extend to certain NPCs (like the Turks in FFVII) sequel characters (Kytes, Filo, and Llyud from FFXII: Revenant Wings) or spin-offs (no Kingdom Hearts today). I will include a couple of specific characters in FFIV: the After Years and Paine from FFX-2. I even plan on having Benjamin from Mystic Quest as a New Game + unlockable joke. At best, there will be references to characters that are left out, but that will have to be addressed when the game is more fully written out.
Liberty #4: Revamped and simplified job system to accommodate the roster size. This is going to be the trickiest to do to every ones satisfaction. Once I embarked on this project, I knew that it needed to include a job system: what Tactics game doesn't? But it could not stay the way it was, not with a game of this ambitious scale. I will discuss this more in my next posting extensively, so let me hear comments from anywhere to let me know if these changes fall within acceptable parameters or if I've crossed some arbitrary line.

Wow. 13 Months seems like this project was indefinitely shelved, but I promise this is absolutely not the case, DFFT is still in the works and is constantly going from one drastic redesign after another. While I am just one man with limited resources and even more limited experience in the broad field of game design, others have accomplished more with little more than what I have, but there comes a time when a guy has got to acknowledge his limits.
That being said: Project DFFT will be shifted into an entirely new direction. Instead of making a full-blown, fully functional game in any respect, I will instead turn the entirety of the project into a fully planned out, designed, printed-and-bound strategy guide.
Before scoffing out the disappointment of this apparent downgrade, hear me out! One with my education and resources was meant to do a project like this: book arts and illustrative design were apart of my Studio Arts bachelor's degree, so this is something squarely in my purview. Also, I cannot escape the beautiful irony of publishing a game that may very well never exist in an art form that has slowly but surely been dying off over the last couple of decades (despite how short-lived said art form has been thusly, but the point stands).
Besides, far be it for me to take this plan of action just because it's easier (though there certainly is that), but I also have an end game to this process. When the final product is complete in PDF form--which will freely be published over the world wide web as an act of love that it has always been--the next step will be to print and professionally bind two copies in full-on glorious physical form: one for myself as a keepsake and one to be sent as a final endeavor to Square-Enix itself as an earnest and heartfelt appeal to make this game in house where it truly belongs. Perhaps I'm being a little too optimistic on that last one (I'm more likely to receive a cease-and-desist if the gaming industry is consistent), but like many things in life, its the journey rather than the destination that makes this all the more interesting.
Sometime soon I'll be posting updates on some of the more extreme game-play tweaks I have suggested and also a link to the Google Docs file where all my research and ideas have so far coalesced. Once I've gotten to where I'm comfortable that my ideas can bear the scrutiny of the often cruel internet critique, I shall share my results with fellow series fans that would like to add their input as well.