Please reconsider stance on blue mage

If they added a controller role to the game, they could fit red mage, but blue mage is in a completely different ball park. Since Yoshida isn't at the point where he feels comfortable with reworking the combat system (and has stated he isn't going to do any major changes for the expansion), I don't see an honest interpretation of blue mage showing up in the game for a very long time.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Exact same system...?

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The way Blue Mage worked you had to pick and choose your skills which also granted certain traits with certain combinations - In ARR you have to pick your cross-class skills you want to use, it uses the same system. In XIV 1.0 you had a list of skills you wanted to use and set it to your hotbar, so 1.x > ARR is an evolution of the same system Blue Mage in XI uses. That's what I mean.

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As for "shifting between roles", no BLU in ANY FF game ever did that

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99 Blue Mage as well - I've been a healer, DD and Tank in quite a lot of content, so maybe you never did it, but I sure as heck have :p And they did shift roles, their primary design was a mage that does damage, but due to skills like Mighty Guard and White Wind you almost never needed a healer if you were properly prepared for some encounters. That's what I mean with that.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

The way Blue Mage worked you had to pick and choose your skills which also granted certain traits with certain combinations - In ARR you have to pick your cross-class skills you want to use, it uses the same system. In XIV 1.0 you had a list of skills you wanted to use and set it to your hotbar, so 1.x > ARR is an evolution of the same system Blue Mage in XI uses. That's what I mean.

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What is the point if people just make one desired strat and then it becomes that way or the highway? Yoshida said himself it would lead to this. I would like to see Blue Mage as much as the next person, but making one job more complicated to set up than another is not the vision the developers are going for. Also if you decided to make BLU hybrid, it would defeat the purpose of the job system. Job system's intent is to put you to one specific role. People are not going to be thrown into a DF with randoms and ask what the BLU is doing. Also a cruddy situation if people want BLU on healing/tanking and they refuse...DPS only! This is an issue when creating a hybrid for jobs. Inevitable "Set role to tank, then claim you are DPS going in." scenarios for a quick DF party.

That is only just one of many reasons that a traditional BLU will not work in ARR. I do hope BLU does find some way of making it in without rocking the boat, but I guarantee any form it comes in, it will not be the kind of BLU that people are looking for, I can guarantee that. This game is not FFXI nor 1.xx rather if you like it or not, it can't jump off it's rails unless developers decide to take a major shift in the game's concepts with all jobs, which is very unlikely.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

99 Blue Mage as well - I've been a healer, DD and Tank in quite a lot of content, so maybe you never did it, but I sure as heck have :p And they did shift roles, their primary design was a mage that does damage, but due to skills like Mighty Guard and White Wind you almost never needed a healer if you were properly prepared for some encounters. That's what I mean with that.

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You have to go back quite a ways to remember the Blue Mage tanks of olde, though. I remember the versatility of blue mage. It's possible that Lineage has only played the newer XI, which is not quite the same.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

What is the point if people just make one desired strat and then it becomes that way or the highway? Yoshida said himself it would lead to this..

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You mean, like it is now?

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

You mean, like it is now?

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I meant rotations. You can have a job that does 100+ spells, but people are going to require you only use 5 of them or no invite. Convince me that will not happen.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

As I recall, and I could be wrong, you could only slot a specific number of spells at any given time. That's probably what he meant by "stance shuffling" - you slot the spells that are appropriate for your role in the party.

And just because something wouldn't fit into the way XIV is structure right now doesn't mean YoshiP won't wake up tomorrow and realize that the FF playerbase is comfortable with and embraces the idea of support roles and classes. I hold out hope for getting real support classes again - Red mage and Bard being at the top of my list.

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I have no issue with Yoshi P waking up and deciding to overhaul to make room for a radically different job role. I also find the likelihood of that actually happening to be ridiculously small. All I was presenting was a form BLU could take in this game that does not mark an enormous departure from what is already in the game while still including most of what gives BLU its unique place in Final Fantasy lore. The live letter indicated reluctance at adding BLU because it wouldn't fit. I wanted to address those concerns, and show one way that it can fit without changing the system as a whole.

I don't even have issues with BLU being given support options - SMN and BLM both have party buffs and limited curing ability, after all, in spite of being DPS, and some other DPS jobs have support abilities as well. There's no reason BLU can't be similar. Again, though, mobs would need to be added to the game that actually HAVE healing and buffing abilities to learn, because right now there are few, if any.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

You have to go back quite a ways to remember the Blue Mage tanks of olde, though. I remember the versatility of blue mage. It's possible that Lineage has only played the newer XI, which is not quite the same.

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I've played FFXI since PS2 release, and leveled BLU from when it was first released. I played BLU as a tank or healer at times - enough to realize that, while it can get the job done, it is MUCH perferable to have a real tank or healer. Just as RDM started out as the jack-of-all-trades, master of none that no one wanted in their party, but eventually settled into a buffer/debuffer that everyone wanted, BLU quickly settled into a DPS role, and DPS only - and one that few wanted in their party anyway due to their crazy TP feed and how steeply the game punished BLU spells when used against mobs above the spell's level.

In recent content, roles have become even more stratified. Endgame, main healer is WHM only, and main tank is PLD only. RDM and SCH are BARELY acceptable as back-up healers, and NIN and RUN will be laughed off the server if they try to tank. It's a bit depressing, really

If it's really unusable in a dungeon, how about making it a new type of class. Like the classes of the Land and of the Hand.
It could be fun to fight monsters to learn their skills and complete a kind of bestiary, then doing quests or fate, special treasure hunts with them.

Well, that's not a polished idea (and there would be many things to think of to make it viable), but at least, it's an idea that would please me.

(Ps : I hope my english isn't too bad.)

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Originally Posted by Velhart

I meant rotations. You can have a job that does 100+ spells, but people are going to require you only use 5 of them or no invite. Convince me that will not happen.

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This already happens with every DPS class in second coil being required to output a certain # of DPS or no invite. What's your point?

Exclusion is going to happen no matter what, at least some % of the playerbase already plays with exclusion in mind. Knowing that, why not at least take a step to make some interesting classes because the supposed behavior they're trying to prevent with their "Everything must be safe and easy" attitude already exists in the game and has been there since the creation of the MMO genre.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

In recent content, roles have become even more stratified. Endgame, main healer is WHM only, and main tank is PLD only. RDM and SCH are BARELY acceptable as back-up healers, and NIN and RUN will be laughed off the server if they try to tank. It's a bit depressing, really

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People don't usually think of the consequences that come with making very unique jobs, especially in a game like this. It makes it that they are only wanted in certain situations at best. Developers for FFXI still can't balance out jobs after twelve years because they are too unique for their own good. I have been playing FFXI again recently, and it is still a huge issue. If you are not the preferred jobs, you are likely making your own group, and even then they will try to convince you to go to a more convenient job.

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Originally Posted by Prototype909

This already happens with every DPS class in second coil being required to output a certain # of DPS or no invite. What's your point?

Exclusion is going to happen no matter what, at least some % of the playerbase already plays with exclusion in mind. Knowing that, why not at least take a step to make some interesting classes because the supposed behavior they're trying to prevent with their "Everything must be safe and easy" attitude already exists in the game and has been there since the creation of the MMO genre.

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Do you not get what I just said? I said you can give a job 100+ spells, but the optimal is going to lead down to only a few of those being used.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

I meant rotations. You can have a job that does 100+ spells, but people are going to require you only use 5 of them or no invite. Convince me that will not happen.

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And, what's the problem with this? This is exactly how it worked in FFXI as well. It then becomes a spell learning problem, which Yoshi-P also stated.

In FFXI you weren't invited to parties if you didn't have specific spells, but usually it was 1-3 spells which was a MUST, everything else was solely dependent on how you wanted to set up your equipment and traits thereafter. If you are a true fan/enthusiast of Blue Mage, you would have made it your goal to have all spells regardless every couple of levels.

The fact that spells got outdated as you leveled up lends itself well to having 100+ spells. There were only a very few spells that you used that was low level that still maintained it's function and viability at max level (Head Butt, Cocoon, Magic Fruit). Spells were usually upgrades to previous spells in terms of damage dealing capability (Bludgeon -> Uppercut -> Frenetic Rip -> Hysteric Barrage -> Disseverment -> Quadratic Continuum) as you went up in level. Even to speak of games such as FFV, FFVI, FFVII and FFVIII had the same premise, you didn't use previous spells in your repertoire if you had a much higher damaging skill instead, but you collected the spells out of necessity to have a damage dealing spell appropriate of the level you were.

A bigger problem with adding Blue Mage would be the fact that potential spell & attack animations currently in game are pretty bland for fodder enemies. It's obviously something that could be fixed with work as well, however.

Yoshi-P has a lot of source material to go off of as well in creating Blue Mage if he wants, he doesn't only have to look at Final Fantasy XI.