BLU Balance

[Afania]

Of course blu can call trusts like every other job. The whole point of trusts is that they can make up for abilities and spells your own job lacks. People playing solo with trusts shouldn't even care about blu, especially since hey, you're solo, it's not like you have to compete against a blu for your trusts to invite you to a party.

Because I do have the suspicion that all this hate against blu really is about other melee jobs feeling inferior. They can try to justify themselves with "but...BALANCE!", but the game has never been balanced, and there have always been jobs that outperformed others. They can argue that MG is too strong, but it's not like no other jobs can cast haste II. They can complain that the PUG leader might pick a blu over their own melee job, but you can always just start a shout yourself.

Sure, you can pretend the balance/design issue doesn't exist by playing with ls/friends, make your own party, job change to BLU, deal with lack of haste, whatever.

But it's like an ugly looking person that breaks all the mirrors in his house so he doesn't have to see his own face, thus able to pretend he looks beautiful.

Or a Chocobo buries his head in the sand and ignoring what happens to the outside world.

Or pre-lockstyle era that players do .dat mods so they can pretend their gear combination visually looks appealing.

Asking people to play with ls/friends, make their own pt, job change to BLU doesn't change the fact that there's an issue with design, it only solves individual player's personal problems.

They can try to justify themselves with "but...BALANCE!", but the game has never been balanced, and there have always been jobs that outperformed others. They can argue that MG is too strong, but it's not like no other jobs can cast haste II. They can complain that the PUG leader might pick a blu over their own melee job, but you can always just start a shout yourself.

My question is why can't people express opinions about design adjustments?

Back in the past people asked for BST nerf, SAM nerf, THF rudra nerf, WAR MNK nerf, all the time.

In fact there's one very, very vocal BLU in FFXI community(not naming names) that always run around asking BST nerf, and went "SAM needs nerf ASAP" in SAM discussion when he thinks those jobs had advantage over other jobs.

And now that BLU has slight advantage over other jobs, this same BLU suddenly jump into every single BLU discussion and essentially attack anyone that asked for BLU job adjustment.

This is double standard. Back when people ask for BST, SAM, WAR, MNK, THF or whatever job to be nerfed, there weren't massive wave of anti nerf opinions like today. Unlike these days people uses all sorts of excuses, including "just play BLU" or "just play with people let you come other jobs" to justify their reasoning against adjustments.

I'll tell you why design issues, regardless of the jobs, needs to be adjusted. Because that's the whole point of game design. SE as a game dev, it's their job to work on adjustments to designs. If you play a fighting game and every player picked same char in tournament, or if you play a RTS game and every player picked same side, it's called bad games. MMORPG is the same.

Therefore us as a player, our job is to provide feedback when we notice issues in design, to help them create a better game.

Just because MMO can never be truly balanced, doesn't mean dev and playerbase shouldn't work toward this goal.

Therefore comments like "just play BLU!!!" or "just deal with the lack of haste!!!" or "just play with friends!!!" really shouldn't be in a design balance discussion as it doesn't solve any issue from game design pov, it only solve individual player issue of not getting pt invite.

[Diavolo]

My question is why can't people express opinions about design adjustments?

Back in the past people asked for BST nerf, SAM nerf, THF rudra nerf, WAR MNK nerf, all the time.

In fact there's one very, very vocal BLU in FFXI community(not naming names) that always run around asking BST nerf, and went "SAM needs nerf ASAP" in SAM discussion when he thinks those jobs had advantage over other jobs.

And now that BLU has slight advantage over other jobs, this same BLU suddenly jump into every single BLU discussion and essentially attack anyone that asked for BLU job adjustment.

This is double standard.

He asked for a nerf. You are asking for a nerf. I'm sure he was met with both support and resistance, just as you are being met with both support and resistance. Where's the double standard?

Back when people ask for BST, SAM, WAR, MNK, THF or whatever job to be nerfed, there weren't massive wave of anti nerf opinions like today. Unlike these days people uses all sorts of excuses, including "just play BLU" or "just play with people let you come other jobs" to justify their reasoning against adjustments.

This made me laugh because it seems the answer to your problem continues to elude you, despite being right under your nose.

Job imbalances become easy to detect if they involve mechanics that everyone wants to exploit, which is the case that's been made, so if the dev team takes the time to monitor its servers and the number of people playing BLU over a period of time rises to an unacceptable level you can be sure they would address the issue even if there was no forum feedback whatsoever. Ergo, "Go play BLU" isn't an excuse - I'm not even sure how you've come to define it as such - it acts as a means to an end and doubles as a devastatingly powerful job choice if you happen to share the beliefs of others asking for a nerf, so hey, why not, right?

[Afania]

He asked for a nerf. You are asking for a nerf. I'm sure he was met with both support and resistance, just as you are being met with both support and resistance. Where's the double standard?

Exactly who was against SAM nerf in 2014? Even some of the most hardcore SAM players in the community at that time agreed SAM needed a nerf. There definitely weren't this massive wave of anti nerf people in 2014 saying the job in question is just fine.

Job imbalances become easy to detect if they involve mechanics that everyone wants to exploit, which is the case that's been made, so if the dev team takes the time to monitor its servers and the number of people playing BLU over a period of time rises to an unacceptable level you can be sure they would address the issue even if there was no forum feedback whatsoever. Ergo, "Go play BLU" isn't an excuse - I'm not even sure how you've come to define it as such - it acts as a means to an end and doubles as a devastatingly powerful job choice if you happen to share the beliefs of others asking for a nerf, so hey, why not, right?

Suggesting people "go play BLU" is fine, saying design adjustment shouldn't happen because you can just play BLU isn't. And the msg I kept getting from people.

[Vashkoda]

My question is why can't people express opinions about design adjustments?
...

Unlike these days people uses all sorts of excuses, including "just play BLU" or "just play with people let you come other jobs" to justify their reasoning against adjustments.

No one is stopping you from expressing your opinions; you're doing it right now. But in order to have a productive discussion, I think we need to be clear on what the issues are. Obviously the issues have not been expressed clearly, otherwise you wouldn't have people asking "is this thread the result of people not getting jobs in PUGS for everyday content" or "just to be clear, the thing people have a problem with is Mighty Guard?" And just because those particular aspects might not apply to *you*, it doesn't mean they don't matter to other players. The impression I have had is that most of the griping is indeed coming from other melee jobs feeling they are being edged out of PUG invites by blus. And the solutions that have been mentioned, which included starting your own shouts, finding statics/shells who can learn to trust you on those other jobs, or even just making sure everyone remembers how to play properly (eat food, use acc gear, get GEOs with 900 skill, remind mages to haste you) were legitimate options for people in those situations.

I'm happy for you that you have access to top geared players and are doing endgame content. If you have access to honor march, why are you complaining about a blu's MG? If your groups have access to lionheart RUNS and other heavy dds that have the potential to out-dd blu, why are you complaining about BLU damage? I'm actually surprised that you complain about BLU in endgame at all, since that's not generally where they shine. Sure you save a entrust GEO slot (assuming you don't have honor march, which you apparently do), but in endgame content you also generally bring more than one GEO, unless you are lowmaning just for the challenge of it. So you feel that having a BLU spare you one of 5 geo buff slots is too OP?

I do think that in order to have this discussion, clear distinctions have to be made about what level of game play you're addressing. You seem to think everyone is in denial except you, but it's possible that your experience in the game is just different from everyone else's, so people are having a hard time seeing from your POV and meeting you half way. And maybe it would help if you also acknowledged some of the points others in here are making, so we see that you are also trying to have an honest discussion.

As for the game design being flawed, I actually liked the points that that Overwatch video brought up that someone linked to. It's really hard to balance a game while allowing multiple jobs to keep their own unique style. And as the video brought up, *individual playstyle* is in fact an important consideration for the devs. And that's a point that people in here have been trying to make for the last few pages.