Triangle bitch

I kind of like your original Melee and Ranged over Power and Agility a little, though I can't really articulate why very well. But I shall try... Like, with Melee and Ranged and Magic you're saying what the person is trained in martial arts type stuff, sword skills, or shooting more soldier stuff, materia trained, etc. It didn't necessarily say what kind of player you were, or restrict what melee and ranged meant. Maybe you could be an agile guy with a rapier-type sword, or a strong lumbering Barret type with a massive chaingun or what have you. Or you could be a nimble Vincent-type shooter, leaping around, or a big bruiser with a huge sword.

I love the idea of lessening the reliance on Materia for the non-Magic domains. Maybe they can use items the Magic guy can't, or Limit Break faster since they're in the 'front row' getting hit more often than the 'back row'?

I love that idea of those slot allocations a lot.

I think it's a perfect way to keep things simple but keep them balanced enough. One of the things I found attractive in the original 3-class setup was how your class specified what kind of slots you had. What do we want as a maximum cap for Materia slots? I like the idea of having progression, but I think we need some kind of maximum cap on the smaller side.

One of the new changes I did like a lot was Materia that did different things based on your level, and the Summons and whatnot for the high level mage, it made being a mage feel like there was meaning to it, and I liked how the Command Materia was bolstered by being Melee or Ranged based on the Materia.

But I think we also need to raise the expense of materia. I don't know how we do that -- maybe make the slots and links harder to buy along with the money reduction? Having Materia should be a big deal. What if we followed exactly the FF7 prices of the different materials (and assumed prices for the found ones like summons)? That way characters like Ranged could rely more on special items, Melees can rely on bolstering and growing their limits, using them more in a thread, and Mages can progress by saving lots of gil and spending it towards Materia?

I don't know. Everyone will like having materia too. I'm just kind of rambling at this point XD

Site I was looking at: finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Final_Fantasy_VII_shops

Also I thought of a good way to boon hybrids slightly since they don't get a bonus from hitting a cap like the purists do.

Full ranged starts with all defensive slots.
Full melee starts with all offensive slots.
Full magic will distribute evenly, the odd slot going to whatever the last point is in.

Anyone without a 3 in an archetype in something can have their 4 starting slots distributed as they please. So if they wanted 4 in melee because they want to buy into added effects/elemental damage on their weapons they could do that and upgrade them to linked slots over time. I think this could potentially help them to grow into competitive characters faster. It also helps them to break the mold a little with their hybrid ideas.

Example. 1 magic/2 gun/1 melee (assigning 4 offense). This assumes x (currently 30) was spent to upgrade a linked slot into a linker.
Offense: Offense+Support |Offense|Offense
Defense: none

Compared to melee who spends there first 30 on a single slot.
Example. 3 Melee/1 Ranged
Offense: Offense+Support| Offense|Offense
Defense: None

Analysis: The hybrid and the purist more or less equal out here but the hybrid could have also went 2 and 2 with his slots or even 3 and 1, and they have a few tricks the melee purist wouldn't like being able to actually cast and such (while the pursit can get more powerful stuff). Another instance where the hybrid might win is with command materia, because if they know if they want to work on offense links or defense links they can throw a single 1 into whichever they aren't focusing and stick a command materia in there and then having 3 single slots to start with in there favored tree (sorta like a mage).