I’m drawn more to grinding random encounters than to story encounters as I play Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles. The game breaks down into four components for me; the jobs system, the tactics, the narrative and the graphics. The tactics fall flat for me. They lack dynamics and combinations thus far, although that may change with arithmeticks. I find the story, despite excellent voice acting, solid politics and strong prose, tedious. The pacing is ruined by the solve-a-puzzle-to-turn-a-page structure and by an unsurprising plot. I quite like the pixel art but it’s not really important to this article. The jobs system is the highlight of the game and so when I play, I grind random encounters as that’s the most efficient way for me to play with it.

Firstly, the job system provides strong long-term goals. I want to try out the ninja’s dual wielding and the powerful arithmeticks and to do so, I need to hit level goals across a range of jobs. Ticking these requirements off one by one by, for instance, hitting level 4 as an archer or a mystic, is very satisfying. This is both because of the structure of a multi-part goal and because I believe that the rewards are going to be very meaningful.

Switching jobs has a large impact on the gameplay. As I trained Ramza to become a ninja, he spent time as a knight, a monk, an archer, a thief and a geomancer. All of these jobs use different weapons and equipment and all have key nuances to how they are played and so the game pushes the player to varied gameplay.

Additionally, switching Ramza to an archer was quite tricky as my team compositions were very reliant on Ramza in the front line and because archers are just not very good. This adds a risk / reward tension to the system. To take on a weaker job for a while, I make the bet that I’ll be able to manage the game’s challenge even with the handicap. This leads to situations like me keeping Ramza as a geomancer longer than I wanted as I would not have been able to progress otherwise.

This is made even more interesting by the rotating cast of party members. I’m more able to shift Ramza to an archer when I have a holy knight supporting the party than when I have a machinist. It’s also interesting to see party members give each other job experience. Ramza spent enough time as a geomancer to get some party members to level 2 thus satisfying one of their ninja requirements and bypassing the need for me to take them through knight and monk far enough to unlock geomancer themselves.

The most interesting part of this is the flexibility afforded by allowing the player to equip one set of off-class abilities to each character. By limiting it to one set, the classes remain sharp constraints but this flexibility opens up a lot of possibility space for interesting combos, like brawler + dual wield or arithmeticks + black magick, and for managing team power. My black mage spent time as a white mage, mystic and summoner, but through it all still spent most of his time doing black magick. My chemist started working her way through the white magick tree but still relies on her ability to throw potions. It even lets me train Agrias as a knight to unlock the ability to always use swords so that she can continue to use her strong sword-based powers even as she grinds through classes that would normally proscribe them.

This reinforces the dynamics earlier described. I now have my black mage doing reps as an arithmetician even though he would be more powerful as a black mage just so that he can unlock abilities that he will use once I flip the class back, thus reinforcing the risk / reward. This also holds for the jobs that you use to unlock other jobs. I considered keeping Ramza as a geomancer for a while longer and then just making that his second ability instead of Mettle but sadly it felt too weak. It even gives you something to do when you’ve exhausted a job. Both Mustadio and Agrias have learnt all that they can at their base jobs and so now I have them training as an archer and knight for extra abilities.

Fast FFT Transformation

From here, let me sketch out the contours of what a game would look like that champions the job system. I would start by trimming the tactics into an auto-battler. The competitive auto-battler shell would work well here, as in Super Auto Pets or Backpack Battles but the standard pattern of the dungeon roguelike could also work if multiplayer is out of scope. This gives us a structure something like this:

  • Start at a store page.
    • Each turn starts the player with some cash
      • Some party member abilities can change this
    • The player can buy and sell equipment and party members here.
      • It contains randomly chosen equipment and party members.
      • Set purchasable party members at the same level as the current party
      • These have set prices.
      • Have one object be half-price, chosen randomly.
      • Some party member abilities can change these.
    • On first entry always be able to buy at least one party member and some equipment for them
    • The player can choose battle order, jobs and equipment here.
      • There is a limit to party size, probably 5.
    • The player can pay to shuffle the store inventory.
      • The player can also freeze items to purchase on the next round.
      • Once all money has been spent, move to battle phase.
  • Party members:
    • Have a main job
      • This defines primary ability - normally attack with equipped weapon
      • This defines equipment restrictions
    • Have a secondary ability
      • This is the primary ability of a different job
      • The party member must have some experience with the other job
    • Have a wildcard ability
      • The party member can choose from all unlocked wildcard abilities across all jobs
    • (Optional) Movement ability, counter ability
      • The party member can choose from all unlocked abilities of the set type across all jobs
    • Hold equipment:
      • A weapon
      • Armor
      • Trinket
  • Battle:
    • The player’s party fights the party of a random player on the same turn
    • Every unit in turn uses all possible abilities.
      • Abilities willl have prerequisites, like range, and so sometimes will be unable to trigger
    • After all abilities have been used, clear all units with zero or less health
    • If the win or loss threshold has been passed, end the run.
  • Post-game:
    • Every unit gets one job xp in their primary job for each time they used an ability in the battle.
    • Every unit also gets one job xp in each of their teammates jobs
    • This xp automatically levels them up in their jobs
    • This xp can also be used to purchase job abilities
      • Job abilities have varying prices

This has to be understood as a first pass. Every piece here would be iterated on.

Hypothetical gameplay

For the sake of simplicity, I’m using the FFT job system here. This is a thought experiment not a presription.

  • Shop 1: Purchase squire S and sword.
  • Battle 1: Draw against chemist with knife. Gain 3xp
  • Shop 2: Unlock xp gain with squire. Buy chemist C and a potion.
  • Battle 2: Win against two squires. S gains 4xp, C gains 5xp
  • …
  • Shop 5: S can choose a new job so I make him an archer as I have two squires in the front line and I want to eventually get him to ninja.
  • …
  • Shop 8: I turn both chemists into black mages to make a glass cannon suicide party. Then, when S hits the level threshold, I can turn him into a thief without needing to reconfigure the party.
  • …
  • Shop 16: S hits the ninja requirement as a thief but I want to level up the black mages a little more and making him a knight doesn’t fit the party. I do it anyway, but keep his thief skill.
  • …
  • Shop 20: The mages have hit their level goal but the party is very dependent on their quick damage + potion combo and changing them to white mages would ruin that and S isn’t powerful enough to make up the difference. I keep the party largely unchanged as a result.
  • …
  • Shop 22: Some armor for sale greatly increases S’s health. I can convert one of the black mages into a white mage and focus on keeping S alive as a front-liner.

I think that it’s possible to use this to generate the interesting decisions that I enjoy from the jobs system of FFT in a stripped down game.