I think of class as a good starting point for a character - we can think of what kinds of stereotypes might lay at the feet of such a class. We'll see rogue, and we can think of Zidane from FF9, or Locke from FF6: they're thief-y type characters, but one is driven by a desire to do good all the time because he's bored and it sounds like fun, the other is driven to find progressively more fancy treasures to save his beloved from a coma-sleep.
We see a lot of traits and ideas in them, we see how characters react to them, and can kind of gauge in our heads how we want our characters to present. Then, we get to FFXIV, where we can be everything with just a swap of a gear set. This is a little trickier to figure out what's "canon" for our character - maybe right now I see Nivie as the scholarly detective kind of character. In a year, maybe we have Red Mages, maybe we have Samurai. And, maybe I like playing them better!
I like to think in the span of a year I'll have a basis for what I want my character to be, and I'll have an idea of what story point could happen to explain going from point A to point B.
But, I think we're in a neat position where we don't particularly need to let the class define what our characters are: we can have our "canon" idea of what each character is, we can set out to dress them in this fashion.
To bring this back around: I think classes give us a good backbone to figure out who our characters are. But, I don't think they define our characters unless we decide they do in a manner beyond "Hey this is hella fun to play, I'm gonna stick with this and build its relic weapon or raid Coil or it's next expac equivalent" or what have you.
We see a lot of traits and ideas in them, we see how characters react to them, and can kind of gauge in our heads how we want our characters to present. Then, we get to FFXIV, where we can be everything with just a swap of a gear set. This is a little trickier to figure out what's "canon" for our character - maybe right now I see Nivie as the scholarly detective kind of character. In a year, maybe we have Red Mages, maybe we have Samurai. And, maybe I like playing them better!
I like to think in the span of a year I'll have a basis for what I want my character to be, and I'll have an idea of what story point could happen to explain going from point A to point B.
But, I think we're in a neat position where we don't particularly need to let the class define what our characters are: we can have our "canon" idea of what each character is, we can set out to dress them in this fashion.
To bring this back around: I think classes give us a good backbone to figure out who our characters are. But, I don't think they define our characters unless we decide they do in a manner beyond "Hey this is hella fun to play, I'm gonna stick with this and build its relic weapon or raid Coil or it's next expac equivalent" or what have you.
