Blue Mage: Are you kidding me!?

From a comment I made on YouTube.

"Blue mage is my favorite class and all I have to say to the people who think this is okay as a concept or fun: why couldn't we have both? I want to raid, que for dungeons, do main story, and be a help to my link shell as my favorite class. You want to pretend this is pokemon stadium with the carnival. Why couldn't we have both? Why does my enjoyment of my favorite job in all of final fantasy need to be made into side content only?

I was fine with the idea that I'd need to compromise abilities and lore to play what I love. Guess we should switch summoner, red mage, dark knight, scholar, and astrologian to limited jobs. Last I checked summoner didn't cast dots and have tiny summons, red mage had more white magic, dark knight wasn't a tank and powered up abilities sacrificing health, no ancient magic for scholar. Well let's fix that and make them all solo. Because obviously it's the only way they'll work."

I actually don't mind. I love casters in FFXIV (and RPGs in general), and I "forced" myself to believe BLU could fit in FFXIV, with each spell being learnt through a job quest and that's it.
But reading comments here and there, and thinking about it overall, it would have been lazy design to create a rotation for a caster and then paste monsters abilities to give the whole thing a Blue Mage flavour.
That job quietly underlines the problems of overall job balances, roles in FFXIV and how everything is restricted to this. So I won't mind additional side-content based on FF legacy like this Blue Mage (and maybe it's a testing ground for other jobs), and then have real FFXIV jobs with their own identity and ability to fit the game's system. If it's too grindy and uninteresting for me, then I won't do it. And I'll mourn my hope for a BLU regular job. But I won't be angry at the devs for trying to add something new, in a moment where the game is likely to be dead.

Let's hope BLU reaches lvl 80 by 5.2 or something like this, with all that time to get a better grasp on how players use it, and what could fit as a "real" job or not.

I was worried about what "Limited Job" would mean. I hoped it didn't mean solo-based job. Well, it is. I have a REAAAAAAAAALLY bad feeling about it. I hope I am wrong. I hope it actually will be fun.

I'm reserving final judgement for when we actually get to play with it. BLU raises many questions:

1) What are the rewards of playing BLU? That will say a lot about the job's experience. We don't know yet what the Masked Carnivale will reward. Can you imagine if it's stuff like a XP boosting potion, to help level other regular jobs? I could see that as a huge incentive. Maybe unique glamours, minions and mounts? Heck, maybe even actual DoW/M content-relevant items. The key to make this feature interesting is if the developers keep consistently updating it with new enemies and rewards.

2) It was hinted the level cap would increase later. How long is later? Level 80 at 5.0? And even if BLU is locked out of duty roulette by then, what it means to be in a regular light or full party? Will BLU, in the futue, ever be able to be in the same content-relevant level with the other jobs?

3) It would be really hard to make this iteration of BLU work in pve? I honestly don't know if they will ever intend on this in the future, and I don't have a clue how... But the example of Lv5 Death spell they gave in the live letter is terrible. We all know this spell almost never worked in any boss in the whole FF franchise. Plus, a LOT of BLU's repertoire was straightforward useless agains bosses. In every old FF title that a Blue Mage was available, we had just a handful of spells that we actually used repeatedly. The rest of the list were basically for bragging rights and completionists.


In short, I'm not terribly mad on how they plan to implement BLU, as long as it's a relevant content through the whole timeline of the game.

How many people playing this game are grouped with people 24/7 while logged on? The only time I'm ever in a group these days is when I'm doing my roulette's with random people. Whether you are the same as that, or someone who does play mostly with people - there will be times you are on your own. You could AFK in your local town, or you could level your Blue Mage. Think of it like Command Missions - except you're not carting NPC's through older content but solo'ing it on a class actually designed to do so, absorbing creature skills and building up your power that way rather than another "spam duty finder to max level" class.

I get why people are annoyed, yes, even though I've never played any FF game with Blue Mages - but I'd only understand the venom more if that was the only new thing/class. Chances are we're getting another one (playable normally) and a new race to boot, nevermind the other new things. If the extent of your excitement stems solely on getting one 'normal' class you like from an older game, I feel people aren't holding on to much in the present. It is also not fair to hold all other classes as a contrary example to BLU's design - yes, most of the baseline roster aren't copies of their previous forms either, yet they were still made as the foundation of the trinity that would form the basis for the MMORPG. BLU is coming years after SE realized they are not under-threat like they were with old-FFXIV (it's seemingly here to stay). Sure, they could butcher it to make it less like its previous iterations and have it played 'normally', but given time the critique would swap from "Why is this class treated like a solo-feature?" to "Why is BLU nothing like a Blue Mage?"

You can't keep everyone happy.

On that note, I suggest the same thing I do every single patch, expansion, change, tweak and update --- wait and see for yourself. There's nothing to be gained beforehand other than to raise your own blood-pressure, and SE certainly won't care for feedback bourne of pure ranty frustration.

This isn't about other classes. People who say "why are you mad? Other jobs are coming out" are focused on the wrong thing. Yes. New jobs are coming. I will probably try them all. I want to main blue in real content. What does other jobs have to do with me being able to do that? Nothing.

1. This iteration of Blue Mage is great design. The fact that it could be transposed as a DLC into any Final Fantasy game when it's in FFXIV is a huge problem though. By putting this design in FFXIV, it comes at a cost. The cost being the Massively Multiplayer part of MMORPG. That's a huge downside unique to this situation, when it could be implemented anywhere else at no expense to gameplay opportunities.

2. I don't really understand the people saying "Do you really want Blue Mage to just be a copy of OTHER jobs?". It seems like you think there's literally no design space left for caster, or even ANY of the roles. Should Square just not introduce any new full jobs because you think that A. There's no way they can be anything but copies or B. You have no faith in the devs to introduce a new unique full job? I really can't fathom how you make this argument and then think ANY new class would be acceptable in the future.

3. Arguing that BLU somehow can't work in FFXIV because of FFXIV's systems, is again, absurd. Literally every job has had major sweeping changes to its core identity and kit to be able to fit into FFXIV. By this logic, FFXIV should never have another full class, because there's no way they could be true enough to their identity in other games while being added effectively to FFXIV. Seriously, FFXIV is the game. That is the core that design is based around. The jobs SHOULD be designed to fit into it and its core gameplay and content, even at the expense of the job's identity, as has been done with EVERY JOB BEFORE IT.

EDIT: I'll be clear here and say I'd be extremely happy if they just clarified and said "this is a test run for a unique new system that we want to see how players use and interact with before allowing it to influence the rest of the game". Hell, I'd be ecstatic because it would be hinting that not only are they going to continue with big experimentation and let it interact the rest of the game eventually, they are doing it responsibly with caution towards disrupting what the current game is. The implication now is that all future unique, experimental content will be segregated from the central experience of FFXIV, even at the expense of beloved classic classes, which is, in my opinion, not worth it.

I would have honestly preferred blue mage as a normal job that had the monster spell aspect folded into its lore and job quests. But, I can see why they would be hesitant to do a middle of the road.


If it was a normal job and you had to go out and learn all your spells, it would lead to issues. People holding parties back or getting vote kicked for not having all of the spells they should. Or limiting the spells you can learn to a set rotation like other jobs have so that blue mage doesn't break the game.

I think a middle of the road aspect would be too messy, but they could have done what they did for red mage, summoner etc and reworked the job form what it normally does, to fitting into the FFXIV trinity mold.

I would have preferred that honestly but I'm curious to see how the solo duty works and what variety of spells they can get. It may function as a bit of fun side content at least.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mibgestalt

1. This iteration of Blue Mage is great design. The fact that it could be transposed as a DLC into any Final Fantasy game when it's in FFXIV is a huge problem though. By putting this design in FFXIV, it comes at a cost. The cost being the Massively Multiplayer part of MMORPG. That's a huge downside unique to this situation, when it could be implemented anywhere else at no expense to gameplay opportunities.

2. I don't really understand the people saying "Do you really want Blue Mage to just be a copy of OTHER jobs?". It seems like you think there's literally no design space left for caster, or even ANY of the roles. Should Square just not introduce any new full jobs because you think that A. There's no way they can be anything but copies or B. You have no faith in the devs to introduce a new unique full job? I really can't fathom how you make this argument and then think ANY new class would be acceptable in the future.

3. Arguing that BLU somehow can't work in FFXIV because of FFXIV's systems, is again, absurd. Literally every job has had major sweeping changes to its core identity and kit to be able to fit into FFXIV. By this logic, FFXIV should never have another full class, because there's no way they could be true enough to their identity in other games while being added effectively to FFXIV. Seriously, FFXIV is the game. That is the core that design is based around. The jobs SHOULD be designed to fit into it and its core gameplay and content, even at the expense of the job's identity, as has been done with EVERY JOB BEFORE IT.

EDIT: I'll be clear here and say I'd be extremely happy if they just clarified and said "this is a test run for a unique new system that we want to see how players use and interact with before allowing it to influence the rest of the game". Hell, I'd be ecstatic because it would be hinting that not only are they going to continue with big experimentation and let it interact the rest of the game eventually, they are doing it responsibly with caution towards disrupting what the current game is. The implication now is that all future unique, experimental content will be segregated from the central experience of FFXIV, even at the expense of beloved classic classes, which is, in my opinion, not worth it.

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For point 2 specifically, I don't think the game needs a FOURTH CASTING DPS right now. Sure they could make blue mage as a traditional job, but if we were going to get another dps in 4.5/5.0 as a regular job I'd much rather get something besides another caster. We just got red mage in 4.0 afterall and we have three caster dps to deal with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mibgestalt

3. Arguing that BLU somehow can't work in FFXIV because of FFXIV's systems, is again, absurd. Literally every job has had major sweeping changes to its core identity and kit to be able to fit into FFXIV. By this logic, FFXIV should never have another full class, because there's no way they could be true enough to their identity in other games while being added effectively to FFXIV. Seriously, FFXIV is the game. That is the core that design is based around. The jobs SHOULD be designed to fit into it and its core gameplay and content, even at the expense of the job's identity, as has been done with EVERY JOB BEFORE IT.

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Want to really support this.

on FFXIV, there is nothing else that healing skill, damage skill (and buffs/debuffs for this) and mitigation skills. No crowd controll is usefull, nearly never have any use from interrupt/silence spells. One of the game with the less use of interrupt/CC (if not the top1...)

Also, in ARR there was the idea to get "support job". Brad was shown this way... why not continuing this way? Blue mage would be a wonderfull support class. Because on other FF, bluemage is not a healer, nor a damage dealer, or a tank, it is a man able to help on any side... on MMORPG we call it support...

Sure people (not only BLU fans) would LOVE getting a support class, with not a lot damages (really low) but a really wonderfull use in raid...