So...About Blue Mage

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Originally Posted by Syln

Blue mage only purpose is to farm allied seals :3

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Centurio seals should've been added for the stormblood cap update. :p

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

There are some interesting ideas about what could be, but not enough thought about the time it will actually take to make something happen. BLU is a side job and it's fine as it is. It's also very OP in its capabilities. For this reason, it's perma-banned from things like Ultimates and Eureka / Bozja.

Conversion to a non-limited status is moot when you have 19 classes to choose from.

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Oh I have taken the time investment into account. Given that SE's original plan was to release multiple limited jobs, my suggestion was to take the development time that would go into the next Limited Job and instead spend it on turning Blue Mage into the full job that it should be. This should have no impact on the regularly scheduled program of releasing two jobs with each expansion. They've shown us that they can give us "two and a half" jobs over an expansion cycle. In the future, they can give us two normal jobs as per usual, plus the "remaining half" of Blue Mage so that it may participate in regular duties alongside every other job.

And no, converted Blue Mage to a non-limited status is not moot. Blue Mage is one of the most iconic and beloved jobs of the Final Fantasy franchise. Some are fine with its limited status, but there are many who see it as a total disservice to the job and its fans.

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Originally Posted by Syln

More seriously sometime i wish they just change it to something more constructed with 3 archetypes (dps,heal,tank), each coming with its separate set of spell that you have to learn and balanced to do content with other jobs.

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I think this is a good middle road. Out of unsynced and/or premades current content, BLU retains all its original potency and effect spells. When it's doing current content, player picks a role, a set of rebalanced spells temporarily replace the og spells to fit that role. It would be a good compromise, imo.

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

Oh I have taken the time investment into account. Given that SE's original plan was to release multiple limited jobs, my suggestion was to take the development time that would go into the next Limited Job and instead spend it on turning Blue Mage into the full job that it should be. This should have no impact on the regularly scheduled program of releasing two jobs with each expansion. They've shown us that they can give us "two and a half" jobs over an expansion cycle. In the future, they can give us two normal jobs as per usual, plus the "remaining half" of Blue Mage so that it may participate in regular duties alongside every other job.

And no, converted Blue Mage to a non-limited status is not moot. Blue Mage is one of the most iconic and beloved jobs of the Final Fantasy franchise. Some are fine with its limited status, but there are many who see it as a total disservice to the job and its fans.

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At this point, non-limited PVE job design has become so genericized and toothless, I would not want that to happen to BLU.

Instead, I would prefer the opposite. Make BLU non-limited *as-is* and bring up every other job to be equally as broken and distinct. Use the PVP designs as a foundation and build out from there.

Screw balance. The evolution of FFXIV has been a gradual heat death as everything approaches absolute zero in the service of "balance". I don't want to play a balanced game, no matter how "challenging," if the individual job fantasies aren't engaging and fun.

It can never be a full job. Its totally unbalanced for a party and would basically need a complete remake from the ground up.

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Originally Posted by deadman1204

It can never be a full job. Its totally unbalanced for a party and would basically need a complete remake from the ground up.

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Mans just stormed into the thread, not read anything and has been like "nah needs a total rework from the ground up". To catch you up, no it doesn't really, its pretty much on the cusp of being balanced as is, the current blu rotation isn't particularly overpowered and most of its more aggregious elements of its kit don't work/ are very sub optimal in hardcore content anyway.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

At this point, non-limited PVE job design has become so genericized and toothless, I would not want that to happen to BLU.

Instead, I would prefer the opposite. Make BLU non-limited *as-is* and bring up every other job to be equally as broken and distinct. Use the PVP designs as a foundation and build out from there.

Screw balance. The evolution of FFXIV has been a gradual heat death as everything approaches absolute zero in the service of "balance". I don't want to play a balanced game, no matter how "challenging," if the individual job fantasies aren't engaging and fun.

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Haha, reminds me of the time someone told me that (paraphrasing) "There are only six jobs in FFXIV : Tank, Healer, Melee, Caster, Missile, and Blue Mage. You can choose your flavor of each."

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Originally Posted by Irenia

Haha, reminds me of the time someone told me that (paraphrasing) "There are only six jobs in FFXIV : Tank, Healer, Melee, Caster, Missile, and Blue Mage. You can choose your flavor of each."

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Really only five, because I can think of at least four flavors of Blue Mage that correspond to Tank, Healer, Melee (Kamikaze), and Missile/Caster (Moon Flute/Matra Magic).

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Mighty Guard+ Diamondback is only good within the context of BLU raiding, if you were to have blu as a normal job you would never want to use that over an actual tank. Also "Many different play styles" is a massive reach, you have the BLU rotation and you occasionaly use a different filler (i.e. revenge blast), fundamentally you only have one playstyle of your primal burst+ filler.

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Cause that's where the direction is with Blue Mage, it isn't ever going to be normal. These skills were all designed for party and raiding content.

The beauty and difficulty of doing them on blue mage is because the game sees a party of them as all red DPS, and that means any mechanic that was once role-aligned is randomized. Like any party member could get the O4S earthshakers, versus the healers only with a normal comp. Or you can get any gavel mechanic in A8S. This also opens up interpretation of what skills could be best slotted for the instance.

There is different play style because each of the raids you do bring different skills, as you don't take the exact same skills in each one. Like who wants to be the 'DPS tank' to take a swap, buster they need Frog Legs, not everyone does Or one of the DPS mimics has another heal skill in-case the healer gets involved in a mechanic. You need someone with the fish in A8S, or if you go in using Eureka best-in-slot gear you probably need one of the HP raising skills to survive certain mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Soge01

Will the blue haired step child finally be made a full Job next expansion since we're probably going to New World then. Or will it remain a niche, left in the molding dust of previous expansions?

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I don't think Blue Mage is a "limited job" because they want to not give it attention; I'd argue that with the Masked Carnivale, the Blue Mage Log, and a ton of Blue Mage specific achievements, there's a solid chance that it's received more job-specific attention than any other job in the game (limited or otherwise). I think it's limited because they wanted to do Blue Mage with actual Blue Mage mechanics.

Blue Mage's whole core conceit is learning spells by seeing them cast by enemies you defeat. It would be extremely difficult to both have BLU able to learn things like Tsukuyomi's "Nightbloom" and still have them able to participate in real content. Not because the primal spells are necessarily OP compared to other job abilities, because of the versatility. Who'd want a black mage as the caster in their raid static if you could have a BLU who can use attacks they learned from the fights on previous raid tiers that might well trivialize specific mechanics, and act as a backup healer at the same time? (As the joke went with the Endwalker summaries of jobs, BLU sitting here going "Laugh all you want. This expansion I get Light Rampant.")

So, okay, you make a 'real job' version of BLU, and restrict them to the GCD spells that you learn, stripping out all the potentially-difficult-to-balance oGCD ones you learn from trials and raids; prune the list quite a bit, to make it so the spell sets are more or less balanced with the other jobs. Or something else to make the spellbook not difficult to balance alongside other jobs in content. At the very least, adding minimum levels for the spells, where you can't use a given spell when level synced down, so that BLU at level 50 doesn't have multiple hotbars of abilities where most jobs have only a few.

A bit disappointing (and potentially an immense pain if you take a hotbar into leveling roulette and end up at a level where you don't have any of those spells available), but it's at least still BLU where you go deliberately learn the spells.

But now you have the scenario where you get a BLU in roulette who hasn't learned some key spell, and the party's upset about it. (One need only look at the commentary when someone shows up in content without their job stone -- or having forgotten to do some job quest that a key ability was locked behind -- to see that the problem's likely to arise.)

Okay, so to avoid that, you just make sure that BLU gets the spells, guaranteed, at specific levels; no worries about someone having not unlocked that spell yet. But I question whether people who enjoy playing BLU would still like that BLU... because, to me, that doesn't seem like Blue Mage anymore; it just seems like another caster DPS.

Edit to add one additional note: if BLU becomes a full, real job, you likely end up with the same scenario as all the other real jobs... namely, you get maybe 2-3 new things per expansion. It would hardly be balanced easily if you still had 10 new abilities to learn from the various raids and trials over the course of the expansion, while another caster DPS gets an upgrade to one existing spell via a trait, one new oGCD, and then a capstone ability when they hit cap for that expansion.

BLU is a limited job not because it doesn't get enough love, BLU is a limited job because it pretty much needs to be in order to actually be BLU. Or, at least, to be a proper incarnation of blue magic.

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Originally Posted by technole

Cause that's where the direction is with Blue Mage, it isn't ever going to be normal. These skills were all designed for party and raiding content.

The beauty and difficulty of doing them on blue mage is because the game sees a party of them as all red DPS, and that means any mechanic that was once role-aligned is randomized. Like any party member could get the O4S earthshakers, versus the healers only with a normal comp. Or you can get any gavel mechanic in A8S. This also opens up interpretation of what skills could be best slotted for the instance.

There is different play style because each of the raids you do bring different skills, as you don't take the exact same skills in each one. Like who wants to be the 'DPS tank' to take a swap, buster they need Frog Legs, not everyone does Or one of the DPS mimics has another heal skill in-case the healer gets involved in a mechanic. You need someone with the fish in A8S, or if you go in using Eureka best-in-slot gear you probably need one of the HP raising skills to survive certain mechanics.

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Taking different skills =/= having a different playstyle. All of these skills do not change blu's playstlye, you still burst at your 1/2 min window and filler inbetween, all these skills are doing are adding a situational button, it's like saying having your lost actions (not essences) in bozja changes your playstyle, they don't, they are just momentary diversions from your fundamental kit, which we have mentioned before in the case of BLU has all the workings of a normal job. Like thats literally it though as well, blu is essentially a caster dps that has access to "lost actions/essenses" as part of their kit, give ANY job access to their lost actions from bozja and they'd be able to do what blu does, instant kills and all, they even have thier own version of diamondback and BETTER versions of skills like white wind/frog legs. It boggles the mind how people can't see that BLU's rotation currently is anything other than just another caster rotation with lost actions spiced in, and if we were to give that rotation to people as a normal job nobody loses anything.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Taking different skills =/= having a different playstyle. All of these skills do not change blu's playstlye, you still burst at your 1/2 min window and filler inbetween, all these skills are doing are adding a situational button, it's like saying having your lost actions (not essences) in bozja changes your playstyle, they don't, they are just momentary diversions from your fundamental kit, which we have mentioned before in the case of BLU has all the workings of a normal job. Like thats literally it though as well, blu is essentially a caster dps that has access to "lost actions/essenses" as part of their kit, give ANY job access to their lost actions from bozja and they'd be able to do what blu does, instant kills and all, they even have thier own version of diamondback and BETTER versions of skills like white wind/frog legs. It boggles the mind how people can't see that BLU's rotation currently is anything other than just another caster rotation with lost actions spiced in, and if we were to give that rotation to people as a normal job nobody loses anything.

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It's almost a normal caster rotation. But there is a glaring issue - Moon Flute. That mechanic simply has to go otherwise BLU will become the old SAM on steroids, feeding every raid buff with ungodly burst numbers.

I just want to wear my lv 90 gear that lists BLU as being able to use it on my Blue mage without having to wait 2 years.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

It's almost a normal caster rotation. But there is a glaring issue - Moon Flute. That mechanic simply has to go otherwise BLU will become the old SAM on steroids, feeding every raid buff with ungodly burst numbers.

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Very true, and as much as i like moonflute as a concept i wouldnt mind giving it up or having a weaker version of it for the sake of balance on a normal job blu, as it does seem to be the only sticking point of its rotation, they would have to compensate elswhere though, as blus damage output without moonflute isnt all that.

Edit: a decent change could be "the next 5 spells cast have the effect of bristle/whistle applied to them and are instant cast" then shorten the lockout time to 10s, that way moonflute helps set up triple trident and matra under buffs

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

Oh I have taken the time investment into account. Given that SE's original plan was to release multiple limited jobs, my suggestion was to take the development time that would go into the next Limited Job and instead spend it on turning Blue Mage into the full job that it should be. This should have no impact on the regularly scheduled program of releasing two jobs with each expansion. They've shown us that they can give us "two and a half" jobs over an expansion cycle. In the future, they can give us two normal jobs as per usual, plus the "remaining half" of Blue Mage so that it may participate in regular duties alongside every other job.

And no, converted Blue Mage to a non-limited status is not moot. Blue Mage is one of the most iconic and beloved jobs of the Final Fantasy franchise. Some are fine with its limited status, but there are many who see it as a total disservice to the job and its fans.

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My perspective is fresh on the whole blue mage thing. I understand there's a history, but this is not those games. It's gonna be different. Blue mage is its own way to play and it should be left as such. There's only so much to be done within the confines of this game and its system.

If they start to make it more like other jobs so it can play more with them, it will lose what flavor it has. Even the idea of simply allowing them into roulette as they are forces everyone into the DPS role. Then they have to have a basic kit for whatever might come up. We certainly don't want to have to wait for them to tidy up their spells when they pop into roulette content.

I can't say that I'm interested in the idea of more limited jobs. What would even be different about them? They would likely be limited in the same way as BLU, but just have a slightly different flavor. It hardly seems worth the effort.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I can't say that I'm interested in the idea of more limited jobs. What would even be different about them? They would likely be limited in the same way as BLU, but just have a slightly different flavor. It hardly seems worth the effort.

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BLU's gimmick is about collecting spells and other limited jobs can have a similar niche as well. Take Beastmaster for example: it's entire thing can be about charming and raising pets. Fight alongside a Mandragora and after a while it learns Photosynthesis or Leaf Dagger or w/e. Puppetmaster can be all about collecting parts for your mammet that unlocks different abilities and traits for a slew of different scenarios and synergies. It's pretty vague on what the Master actually does and would probably borrow a lot from the XI iterations, but you get the idea.

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Originally Posted by Auryan

BLU's gimmick is about collecting spells and other limited jobs can have a similar niche as well. Take Beastmaster for example: it's entire thing can be about charming and raising pets. Fight alongside a Mandragora and after a while it learns Photosynthesis or Leaf Dagger or w/e. Puppetmaster can be all about collecting parts for your mammet that unlocks different abilities and traits for a slew of different scenarios and synergies. It's pretty vague on what the Master actually does and would probably borrow a lot from the XI iterations, but you get the idea.

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Pet AI has a long history of being buggy in MMOs. Summoner had its share from problems with the egis. Bahamut would even just sit there and not hit anything. EW finally saw summoner pets essentially take on a more decorative role performing a bare minimum of attacks in a general area. Beast master seems like something that will remain in the realm of NPC capabilities.

Puppet master could potentially work. I think they could do some kind of marionette / mount situation where we have control over a puppet, but we would likely have more turrets. I think rather than being limited, it should actually be something like Arcanist, where it can branch off into at least 2 different roles.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

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Buuuut, that's the reason why I suggested just making it so you have your standard limited BLU that still functions as it always has, but also an "unlimited" BLU so you can participate in all content from the get go, while limited BLU can still be worked on as a fun niche activity with other BLU players.

For example, when I think of a really good Job that takes an established iconic job and recreates it into something new, but still has all the key traits that still make it what it is. I think of Red Mage. No other Red Mage in any of the previous FF games function like XIV's. And yet, it is still a Red Mage because it still retains its classic roots, just repackaged in a unique way. Its physical attacks are all magick based due to he fact that we have to charge up our rapier with magical energy from casting spells. Our magical attacks and certain support capabilities are all derivatives of Black and White Mage magick made into something entirely new that functions differently compared to the other two and, again, helps charge up our rapier for close range powerful magical attacks.

I think, if the devs think it through well, they could do a similar thing with Blue Mage while keeping all of its core traits that make what a Blue Mage is intact.

Personally, I would say the devs should focus on giving an "unlimited" BLU access to various types of iconic Blue Mage spells that would work well within a standard XIV job class. Again just like how they did it with Red Mage.

My limit of Blue Mage experience is only to XIV, VIII, VI and X, so I can't really give any examples of what I would pick to use for a classic standard XIV job class version of Blue Mage; especially since it's been awhile since I played any of those and XIV as a BLU on my alt. But...I just look at Red Mage and think "you know what? They can make a version of Blue Mage that functions like a standard job if they can do it with the likes of Red Mage and it's weird functionality in previous FF titles". So...yeah, I shut up now. x'D

OH BOI OH BOI cant wait to see Blue face Titania in battle thats gonna be fun. All jokes aside that would be cool. Neir raid offering blue skills is a must. Plus cant wait to see what WOL gives us. Time will tell what goes on. But i hope we get another limited class kinda sad for blue to be the only one all for beast tamer class or something that could use our minions outside lord of vermillion. Puppet master class people were talking about.

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Originally Posted by Soge01

Buuuut, that's the reason why I suggested just making it so you have your standard limited BLU that still functions as it always has, but also an "unlimited" BLU so you can participate in all content from the get go, while limited BLU can still be worked on as a fun niche activity with other BLU players.

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Sure, I get that. But if you have "limited BLU" versus "unlimited BLU" as basically functionally separate jobs, and you have to strip away everything that basically makes blue magic "blue magic" (e.g., learning the spells by seeing them cast) in order to make it play well within level roulette... why not just make a different caster? Instead of a broken blue mage stripped of its blue magic identity, why not come up with a different caster that has some identity that works better in roulette?

Or, to put it another way: if, in order to make BLU work in normal play, you have to...

• Ensure that BLU learns spells at specific levels like other jobs (rather than learning them in content through observation), so you can guarantee that a given BLU has the necessary spells (rather than joining Roulette at level 63 while only having Water Cannon).
• Strip out the spellbook functionality, so that you can guarantee a given BLU DPS in a roulette has the necessary skills to function at that level, rather than some custom spell-set that doesn't work. (Who's going to want to wait for 15 minutes while a BLU tries to shuffle their spells to something appropriate to whatever they got in roulette?)
• Ensure that BLU syncs down in roulettes, so that (for instance) you don't have 17 AoEs in Sastasha while the other DPS has precisely none.
• Limit BLU to the DPS role, rather than allowing it to tank/heal, so that roulettes can role-match in a sane manner.

...then I would ask, what exactly about blue mage makes you want to play it in normal content? This is not a facetious question, I am genuinely curious; to me, all the things that would need to get stripped out to make BLU work in normal content would be most of the things that I personally feel actually make BLU... well, BLU. As opposed to just another caster?

Yes, it's possible they could basically define a set of spells from the BLU spellbook and just give them to you at various levels, and turn it into a normal caster; mechanically, that's possible. But what would give BLU a separate identity from any other caster at that point? What would make it worth making one of the two jobs in 7.0 be "BLU with a set spellbook where spells unlock automatically level by level, enforced DPS role, and with all the weird buffs/debuffs that would make balancing high-end content (like Savage or Ultimates) incredibly difficult if they had them", as opposed to some other caster?

Personally, I would prefer BLU remain BLU -- and a limited job that can be all the weird things -- and just get another caster. Because if you've split BLU into functionally two jobs... what's the gain? This is a genuine question, because I don't understand what it is that people actually want out of "second BLU".

And you would have to split it, realistically, because 1. existing BLU needs to be able to learn spells in the overworld, but you wouldn't want someone advancing the MSQ with that, and 2. you wouldn't want someone able to power-level "unlimited BLU' via "limited BLU"s absurd overworld XP buff. Among other things.

(I mean, this is leaving aside the fact that if they did make "unlimited BLU" one of the two jobs for 7.0, I can just imagine the howling on the forums about "that's not a new job, they just took an existing job and stripped all the neat stuff out to give us another caster DPS! That's so lazy! We should get a third job!" or whatever.)

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Very true, and as much as i like moonflute as a concept i wouldnt mind giving it up or having a weaker version of it for the sake of balance on a normal job blu, as it does seem to be the only sticking point of its rotation, they would have to compensate elswhere though, as blus damage output without moonflute isnt all that.

Edit: a decent change could be "the next 5 spells cast have the effect of bristle/whistle applied to them and are instant cast" then shorten the lockout time to 10s, that way moonflute helps set up triple trident and matra under buffs

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Honestly I would love a Moon Flute redesign just as the job is today.

I feel it's a bad design to force a character to just... run around doing nothing for 15s after a period of burst. Reminds me of old MCH overheat, except that there you could at least do something as opposed to goof around.

They could nerf MF's potency for say, 15-20% and let you play normally but just at a 15-20% for those 15s.

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Originally Posted by Jaquan

Yes and no. Saying that Blue Mage is just "Mage using monster Spells" is half truth at best since it omits the way they acquire those skills. Regardless of the game and Blue Mage incarnation it's always removed from mechanics that govern other jobs. In V where you either found/bought skills and spells, or learned them via Job Level ups the Blue Mage required you to seek out enemies with unique skills and get hit by them in order to expand your arsenal. Same deal in 6 with Strago. Even 8 has you seeking out enemies to feed their drops to Quistis. And it's always only up to the player too seek out those enemies and obtain their power. And that's what they aimed to capture. A non linear progression that leaves it up to the player. Something so incompatible with MMO ideas that it's kept in it's own bubble, seen only as a novelty. Yes it's lifespan is finite, yes they are locked from any major content but I like them when I eventually get tired of regular jobs

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That's not true at all. BLU in its current incarnation already requires specific spells for some quests and unlocks. So requiring those things to participate in duties can be done the same way. In fact, acquiring spells could be a part of job quests that can be required. They could have easily done it that way and it would never have been a problem. They simply chose not to. There was nothing that forced them to make BLU limited other than their own desire to do so.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

Pet AI has a long history of being buggy in MMOs. Summoner had its share from problems with the egis. Bahamut would even just sit there and not hit anything. EW finally saw summoner pets essentially take on a more decorative role performing a bare minimum of attacks in a general area. Beast master seems like something that will remain in the realm of NPC capabilities.

Puppet master could potentially work. I think they could do some kind of marionette / mount situation where we have control over a puppet, but we would likely have more turrets. I think rather than being limited, it should actually be something like Arcanist, where it can branch off into at least 2 different roles.

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Pet AI's being buggy will definitely be a thing, but I say they embrace the jank. So what if your pet Malboro's Bad Breath is a second late? It will all be worth it when your enemies are covered in 8 status effects and reduced to knee high length. Seeing as BLU isn't balanced around being an optimal DPS against other DPS, why should the thought of BST or PUP having perfect uptime be such an important thing?

We know that the devs hate the ACN/SCH/SMN situation and if they could go back in time they would have never gone that road, so that option is not happening. I like some of your other PUP ideas though.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

Sure, I get that. But if you have "limited BLU" versus "unlimited BLU" as basically functionally separate jobs, and you have to strip away everything that basically makes blue magic "blue magic" (e.g., learning the spells by seeing them cast) in order to make it play well within level roulette... why not just make a different caster? Instead of a broken blue mage stripped of its blue magic identity, why not come up with a different caster that has some identity that works better in roulette?
Or, to put it another way: if, in order to make BLU work in normal play, you have to...

• Ensure that BLU learns spells at specific levels like other jobs (rather than learning them in content through observation), so you can guarantee that a given BLU has the necessary spells (rather than joining Roulette at level 63 while only having Water Cannon).
• Strip out the spellbook functionality, so that you can guarantee a given BLU DPS in a roulette has the necessary skills to function at that level, rather than some custom spell-set that doesn't work. (Who's going to want to wait for 15 minutes while a BLU tries to shuffle their spells to something appropriate to whatever they got in roulette?)
• Ensure that BLU syncs down in roulettes, so that (for instance) you don't have 17 AoEs in Sastasha while the other DPS has precisely none.
• Limit BLU to the DPS role, rather than allowing it to tank/heal, so that roulettes can role-match in a sane manner.

...then I would ask, what exactly about blue mage makes you want to play it in normal content? This is not a facetious question, I am genuinely curious; to me, all the things that would need to get stripped out to make BLU work in normal content would be most of the things that I personally feel actually make BLU... well, BLU. As opposed to just another caster?

Yes, it's possible they could basically define a set of spells from the BLU spellbook and just give them to you at various levels, and turn it into a normal caster; mechanically, that's possible. But what would give BLU a separate identity from any other caster at that point? What would make it worth making one of the two jobs in 7.0 be "BLU with a set spellbook where spells unlock automatically level by level, enforced DPS role, and with all the weird buffs/debuffs that would make balancing high-end content (like Savage or Ultimates) incredibly difficult if they had them", as opposed to some other caster?

Personally, I would prefer BLU remain BLU -- and a limited job that can be all the weird things -- and just get another caster. Because if you've split BLU into functionally two jobs... what's the gain? This is a genuine question, because I don't understand what it is that people actually want out of "second BLU".

And you would have to split it, realistically, because 1. existing BLU needs to be able to learn spells in the overworld, but you wouldn't want someone advancing the MSQ with that, and 2. you wouldn't want someone able to power-level "unlimited BLU' via "limited BLU"s absurd overworld XP buff. Among other things.

(I mean, this is leaving aside the fact that if they did make "unlimited BLU" one of the two jobs for 7.0, I can just imagine the howling on the forums about "that's not a new job, they just took an existing job and stripped all the neat stuff out to give us another caster DPS! That's so lazy! We should get a third job!" or whatever.)

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To take your points a few at a time:

An unlimited blu is not stripped of its identity, peope have this no true scotsman fallacy built up around blu's identity. At its core BLU is just a caster who uses monster spells, how those spells are learned and implemented changes from iteration to iteration, and is even not "true" by a lot of peoples conditions in xiv, because many of your impactful spells are learned from totems.

"then I would ask, what exactly about blue mage makes you want to play it in normal content". If you've played blu raids, you'll have noticed that for the majority of most fights you are playing as "just another caster" if youre running dps blu. And you know what, DPS blu's rotation is fun to me, you make the point of "all the weird buffs/debuffs that would make balancing high-end content (like Savage or Ultimates) incredibly difficult if they had them" but what are you actually talking about? Current BLU in raids isn't unbalanced because of any debuffs they have, theyre unbalanced because dps mimicry gives an absurdly large arbitrary DPS buff, the rest of the stuff they have is not particularly unbalanced, and a lot of the time only becomes unbalanced by the nature of stacking multiple of the same job, which is something you also witness in 8 tank clears of savage/ ultimate so is not exclusive to BLU's identity.

The other thing is for some people, BLU is their favourite job in the franchise, imagine a world where for some ungodly reason RDM was a limited job because "it was too hard to balance being both a Black Mage and White mage ability". People would want an unlimited RDM because RDM is their favourite class, its not hard to wrap your head around.

Also "Limit BLU to the DPS role, rather than allowing it to tank/heal, so that roulettes can role-match in a sane manner" is not even a problem, there is no planet where someone would want a BLU tank over a regular tank, BLU tanking is a novelty much like titan egi used to be, or DPS tanking in Bozja, it works but very not well, and the same but to a lesser degree with healer, although thats a whole other can of worms with healer design, and you probably would want to take a blu healer, but only because healing reqs are so low in this game that a BLU being a healer would have more dps options.

TLDR:

Current BLU already has a pretty balanced and fun rotation so WHY NOT have that available as an unlimited form, the game already can gate your progression by checking what spells you have, and adding level ranges for spells is not particularly challenging. For a quick fix, just block DF/MSQ access to unlimited BLU behind finishing the level 70 blu quests, and have another quest that checks if you have the right spells unlocked after. From that point on just have BLU's overworld leveling disabled for above 70 and have check ins every 10 levels where DF access for the next set of 10 levels in disabled until youve learned the 1 or 2 skills added to the unlimited rotation in that level range.

There is no meaningful future for Blue Mage outside of one day being promoted to a full job. Given its complete absence from the EW patch roadmap, it is clear that updating this content is no longer a priority. Whether for lack of passion or lack of resources, Blue Mage is now a "whenever we get to it" project. The barrier to entry is too obtuse for a game that has many other side activities that are easy to jump into. I will forever maintain that allowing the word "limited" to enter this game's vocabulary with this job lead to nothing good.

In any case, if male Viera somehow became a thing then so can a full Blue Mage job. Those who would rather defend the limited design would then go on to have the same reaction that the Viera haters had, "I can't believe they listened to the complainers!" Well yes if there wasn't a problem, people wouldn't be complaining about a job added all the way back in 2019.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

There is no meaningful future for Blue Mage outside of one day being promoted to a full job. Given its complete absence from the EW patch roadmap, it is clear that updating this content is no longer a priority. Whether for lack of passion or lack of resources, Blue Mage is now a "whenever we get to it" project. The barrier to entry is too obtuse for a game that has many other side activities that are easy to jump into. I will forever maintain that allowing the word "limited" to enter this game's vocabulary with this job lead to nothing good.

In any case, if male Viera somehow became a thing then so can a full Blue Mage job. Those who would rather defend the limited design would then go on to have the same reaction that the Viera haters had, "I can't believe they listened to the complainers!" Well yes if there wasn't a problem, people wouldn't be complaining about a job added all the way back in 2019.

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It was mentioned to be updated sometime during EW. Not being given a specific date of release =/= dumped to the wayside. If so, I guess the anticipated updates to the Golden Saucer should also be considered as an afterthought. Because it's either 6.4 or 6.5 for that.
The barrier entry is relatively low? I mean, all you need is to complete 2.0 and with the most recent update, you can very easily solo most of the spells and level to max in no time. Other goals require more time and effort, go figure.

Male Viera and BLU are completely different topics. Are you for real? One is a race made for purely aesthetic reasons and BLU is a piece of side content. Next you'll compare Hrothgar hairstyles with the addition of a 2nd Ultimate or something.

I think it's odd to talk about BLU becoming a full job. It already is. It stands on its own and does everything and more than other jobs. Pushing for it to fit into all the typical daily activities and content is pushing it to a more plain and nerfed status. All the fun spells would surely be stripped in that situation: Ultravibration, Death, Missile, Doom, etc. Primal spells would likely get cut for stepping on SMN toes. Be careful what you wish for.

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Originally Posted by Auryan

It was mentioned to be updated sometime during EW. Not being given a specific date of release =/= dumped to the wayside. If so, I guess the anticipated updates to the Golden Saucer should also be considered as an afterthought. Because it's either 6.4 or 6.5 for that.
The barrier entry is relatively low? I mean, all you need is to complete 2.0 and with the most recent update, you can very easily solo most of the spells and level to max in no time. Other goals require more time and effort, go figure.

Male Viera and BLU are completely different topics. Are you for real? One is a race made for purely aesthetic reasons and BLU is a piece of side content. Next you'll compare Hrothgar hairstyles with the addition of a 2nd Ultimate or something.

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Viera and Hrothgar hairs were never given specific release timeframes. Logic follows that Blue Mage falling in line with this will not bode well for the future of limited job content. Gold Saucer, unlike Blue Mage, doesn't have an absurd barrier to entry and just recently got updated with new rewards. People are "ok" with it and Gold Saucer content isn't nearly as controversial as this situation is.

Blue Mage's levelling meta has always been getting power-leveled by another player to max, the "solo" experience for Blue Mage by comparison is little more than a lengthy boring grind. It isn't fun. Not an overworld that has no danger like this one does. This isn't FFXI where you can get away with this sort of thing. Other goals in this game aren't as boring to do and thus you see more of the playerbase doing those instead of wasting time on Blue Mage.

I bring up the male Viera thing specifically because it shows that continued community efforts over time result in tangible change. Perhaps if we didn't have so many people willing to rush to SE's defense on Blue Mage, it would have been a full job half-way into Shadowbringers instead of being pushed down to one of the lowest priorities. Now Blue Mages will have to wait for the Hrothgar hair person to find time in their schedule to work on something for Blue Mage.

As a form of content, limited jobs feel like they would be taxing to work on and try to keep innovating for. Blue Mages to my knowledge got less and less carnival fights per patch, that and less spells. Either resources are strained, or the people who work on this would rather be working on something else given the chance. That is the impression that I am getting, and why I want to see this job become a full job. And yeah, at this point I'd much rather see Hrothgar hairs be worked on or get an extra Ultimate than see updates to content that seems to be going nowhere.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I think it's odd to talk about BLU becoming a full job. It already is. It stands on its own and does everything and more than other jobs. Pushing for it to fit into all the typical daily activities and content is pushing it to a more plain and nerfed status. All the fun spells would surely be stripped in that situation: Ultravibration, Death, Missile, Doom, etc. Primal spells would likely get cut for stepping on SMN toes. Be careful what you wish for.

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So be it. As it stands now having all the overpowered spells in the world and nothing to use them in makes the job completely useless outside of grinding for Allied Seals. Blue Mage should not have ever had those primal spells-they should have been Summoner abilities from the start but thanks to 8 years of trying to twist SMN into a warlock it allowed Blue Mage to temporarily fill that niche until the 6.0 rework brought Summoner back to reality. I'm good with wishing for full job BLU. Better than whatever this is.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

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A lot of content work like that. Staple content like MSQ, dungeons, etc are all predictable, but other contents like deep dungeon, Hildebrand, post-expansion side quests are left for a later, unknown date. They were still unsure when to release the Omega follow-up story literally days before 6.1's release. BLU getting a vague "sometime during the expansion" probably means 6.2.5 or 6.3.5.
And it's the 2nd time you've mentioned a high barrier of entry, but haven't describe said barrier. What are you referring to? You can unlock it after completing 2.0 and it's easy to level and gather most of the spells on your own. This is no Eureka/Bozja/Ultimates with 24 mans and savage raids to clear to get access.

Leveling isn't particularly fun, that isn't unique to BLU. You can just do it quicker with BLU than any other job. Whether it's spamming dungeons, grinding FATES, leveling Trusts, it all gets a bit tiresome. PvP might be an engaging alternative with the recent changes though.
You have a simplistic view of things. One moment you're mocking people for "defending" the limited job concept and the next you're blaming the same people for not making your dream job a reality. Maybe it didn't dawn on you that people can simply like content and not have it negatively affect you? I like BLU because I enjoy the content and not to spite the people that rage on it. Likewise, a lot of people didn't a give a single fuck about Viera and Hrothgar but were fine with the recent additions after people requested it.

Making content is taxing, but comparing BLU, that is essentially Wondrous Tails on a stick, to say Criterion dungeons and Ultimate, is just not at all comparable. And neither is the comparison between hairstyles and side content, they do not affect each other. You can have your newest Karen do and new self-harming spells all within the same patch.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I think it's odd to talk about BLU becoming a full job. It already is. It stands on its own and does everything and more than other jobs.

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What are you talking about, it can't even do basic content like main scenario quests LOL :confused::confused:

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

Pushing for it to fit into all the typical daily activities and content is pushing it to a more plain and nerfed status. All the fun spells would surely be stripped in that situation: Ultravibration, Death, Missile, Doom, etc.

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Only if you choose to equip the predetermined spell set that would be required to queue in DF. Anyone would be free to not equip it and ignore their dailies and weeklies in favor of grinding level 50 fates on BLU, or whatever else it is people do with this currently useless job those fun spells.

If they want to keep it really simple, all we need is a "normal full-party queue style in DF but it'll be an unsynced fight" mode.

Blue Mage's barrier to entry to me is as follows:

I do not feel like having a max level player carry me through 70 levels is a fun levelling experience. Levelling any full job by any other means is a step up no how you choose to do it.

FFXIV's overworld is such a joke that I refuse to level solo in it.

Most of FFXIV's Blue Mage skills are useless outside the ones locked behind trials and dungeons.

I do not have 10 hours to wait in party finder to hunt down other Blue Mages to clear content with or learn spells after the 2 week period after their update patch ends. Because at that point no one will play Blue Mage.

Not even unlocking Bozja on my alts was this annoying. And all this for content that isn't even new, these are all old fights released years ago. What they needed to do was make whatever compromises they decided to do for jobs like Red Mage/Dark Knight etc in order to fit them into FFXIV instead of releasing one-off half-baked products like current Blue Mage. If you cannot see the links between what happened with people defending BLU and then going on to defend the state of Viera/Hrothgar until even their patience was exhausted, then I do not know what to tell you.

Limited time events in mobile games have more longevity than the bursts of activity Blue Mage gets in FFXIV, and at least I can carry those rewards into the rest of the game and have them mean something for the most part. Of all the controversial decisions made during that period of troubles in late 2018/early 2019, Blue Mage is the last of those still standing after they started learning their lessons regarding the races and how to handle exploration content. I look forward to the day that they hopefully figure out what to do with Blue Mage instead of wasting time copy-pasting more animations for abilities that have 0 functional difference between them.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

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Luckily you don't have to have a friend carry you to max level, hell you don't even have to do it period. And that's fine. Some people don't like fishing or Triple Triad and it's okay not to catch fish or collect cards. Not one of BLU spells are useless, they all have their niche and can fit in plenty of scenario's (except Transfusion, that one is admittedly bad but flavorful). This also goes against your comment about the spells being copy-pasted where in the last updates have gotten more and more interesting spells.

Fortunately you don't have to wait 10 hours to get most of the spells to complete most of the book. Get to max level, learn Basic Instinct and go through the list of spells one by one. The only problems being the handful of spells behind SB trails. This also depends which data center you're in. On Aether it's a different story than say Crystal, I imagine.

The link between the races and BLU is tenuous at best. A race having less customization options is not the same as content you not personally liking being seen by developers as fine. BLU is not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it.

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Originally Posted by Auryan

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"Gender-locked races are not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

"Hrothgar having to pay $10 change their hair is not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

"1-button healer design is not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

"Baldesional Arsenal Entry method and requirements are not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

"Removing Samura's signature ability is not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

I've seen this same old song and dance over and over again. You have players like me who demand accountability when the quality bar drops, and then you have people who either passively or enthusiastically excuse it. Errors in design need to be called out or else they persist and then we have a situation like with Hrothgar where a decent chunk of those players who are upset now were the same ones telling everyone to just be patient when it came to the unfinished state of both races. When Blue Mage ends up receiving less and less updates if not completely stopping to receive them, I imagine there will be a similar situation.

Honestly, I hope that Blu mage gets its own color representation of the color purple. As its being defined as the first starter class of "limited jobs" system. This would separate its identity from dps since it functions wildly different and more versatile than that of a dps.

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

OH BOI OH BOI cant wait to see Blue face Titania in battle thats gonna be fun. All jokes aside that would be cool. Neir raid offering blue skills is a must. Plus cant wait to see what WOL gives us. Time will tell what goes on. But i hope we get another limited class kinda sad for blue to be the only one all for beast tamer class or something that could use our minions outside lord of vermillion. Puppet master class people were talking about.

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He did say they it won't be the only limited job in the game's lifetime. Which is going to make some in the thread Madge even more. But I welcome another completely different job mindset and content to do, and if they can shoehorn it into sync'd raid content, even better.

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Originally Posted by RobynDaBank

You know what? Keep it limited. Of course update it for Shadowbringers, but don't make it a normal Job. It's great fun how it is and I can definitely see it being neutered when it becomes normal.

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Okay but I still want content for it.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

"Gender-locked races are not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

"Hrothgar having to pay $10 change their hair is not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

"1-button healer design is not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

"Baldesional Arsenal Entry method and requirements are not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

"Removing Samura's signature ability is not considered as broken by the devs, only to the people here that like to moan about it."

I've seen this same old song and dance over and over again. You have players like me who demand accountability when the quality bar drops, and then you have people who either passively or enthusiastically excuse it. Errors in design need to be called out or else they persist and then we have a situation like with Hrothgar where a decent chunk of those players who are upset now were the same ones telling everyone to just be patient when it came to the unfinished state of both races. When Blue Mage ends up receiving less and less updates if not completely stopping to receive them, I imagine there will be a similar situation.

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It's a little thing called nuance and subjectivity. I don't personally care about certain decisions like the races or healers, but do care about topics like exploratory content and certain job changes.
What might be annoying for you is not the same for others, something that shouldn't be said but here we are. And I am not suggesting that people that do have issues with certain topics that I personally don't, have no right to complain. Feel free to fill the board with as many redundant complaint threads as you wish.

I am not one of those people telling you to be patient, do whatever you want. What I am saying is that you can give feedback to topics like BLU, but you equating the issues with the newest races created solely for aesthetic purposes to a piece of content is not alike. Not on a reception, conceptional or design level.

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Originally Posted by Auryan

I am not one of those people telling you to be patient, do whatever you want. What I am saying is that you can give feedback to topics like BLU, but you equating the issues with the newest races created solely for aesthetic purposes to a piece of content is not alike. Not on a reception, conceptional or design level.

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FFXIV players have consistently placed a high value on aesthetic features as much as they do gameplay. Why else on earth would they have created a 1000 page megathread asking for male Viera? For an enormous amount of people, character customisations = content. Unfortunately Blue Mages never had such organization and thus here we are today.

It's been the same story each and every time. Broken content is released, we have players who speak against it and those of us who do are shouted down by ardent defenders of things like at-launch Blue Mage and the limited races. I've seen where these paths end up.

Can't wait for them to finally wake up and realize that Blue Mage and limited jobs in general were the wrong way to go about things, and subsequently issue a fix. Let's just hope it doesn't take them until the end of FFXIV's second season to get it done like how they procrastinated with Summoner right up until Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

FFXIV players have consistently placed a high value on aesthetic features as much as they do gameplay. Why else on earth would they have created a 1000 page megathread asking for male Viera? For an enormous amount of people, character customisations = content. Unfortunately Blue Mages never had such organization and thus here we are today.

It's been the same story each and every time. Broken content is released, we have players who speak against it and those of us who do are shouted down by ardent defenders of things like at-launch Blue Mage and the limited races. I've seen where these paths end up.

Can't wait for them to finally wake up and realize that Blue Mage and limited jobs in general were the wrong way to go about things, and subsequently issue a fix. Let's just hope it doesn't take them until the end of FFXIV's second season to get it done like how they procrastinated with Summoner right up until Endwalker.

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A lot of players, sure, but all of them? Nope. In that hundreds page long thread where people constantly squabble about things, there where thousands of players not giving a rat's ass about the entire thing. Don't let an echo chamber paint the whole picture.
BLU didn't get the same reaction, because people just played and enjoyed it for what it is. It's funny when you stated that BLU didn't get the same backlash as Viera as a sort of a communal failure to raise a committed protest, when actually there just wasn't enough anger there in the first place.

I can't for the life of me think of any broken content being released. Buggy? Sure. But broken? Not even Diadem 1.0 would be considered as broken, just very unpopular. I guess my definition is different to yours.

Dare to dream, it's free after all. Just don't be disappointed when you wake up.