In a world full of magic, swords, and axes, imagine just having a gun.
No, literally, the Machinist in FFXIV is a class primarily characterized by the gun and all the other doohickeys that you unlock as you go through the game.
But that does beg the question, right? Why a gun? Were the lances and all the other magic weapons not good enough?
So the Machinist, unlike the others, sees you actually developing the techniques as one of the pioneers of the class itself.
Originally, the Machinist was created by the Skysteel Manufactory led by the House of Haillenarte. The rise of the use of technology came as a byproduct of the Dravanian War amongst Ishgard and the dragons, as a means to protect the citizens and to lessen the number of martyrs by using the longer ranges of firearms and the Aetherotransformer.
The Aetherotransformer essentially is a one-size-fits-all weapon that not only powers up the machinist’s arsenal with the body’s aether, including their firearm. That is what makes them different from other forms of marksmanship.
The special role of the Machinist in FFXIV lore
Apart from that, a machinist also relies heavily on the different types of weaponry at their disposal: the rook autoturret, the detonator, drill, flamethrower, and whatnot.
Being one of the three classes unlocked in Heavensward, the Machinist class represents a new era of warfare, where the soldiers are equipped for all situations they might face, lowering the chance of them actually losing their lives on the battlefield
Funnily enough, among the ranks of Ishgardians, the machinists were pretty much looked down on in the beginning. Even if the head of the skysteel manufactory was Stephanivien Haillenarte, the son of Count Haillenarte.
Even the count himself had his fair share of doubts regarding this, thinking of machinists as nothing but a thing of the lower class.
But to Stephanivien, the machinists were different. To him, the existence of machinists meant that in the fight with dragons, even with lesser manpower, a machinist’s overwhelming firepower could help turn the tide of the battle.
In his words, “Equipped with a firearm, however, even the scrawniest commoner could engage those same scaled demons from afar. Think of it, Father! If the masses were trained in the machinist profession, the casualties of fang and claw would be considerably diminished. “
