BLU & RNG

Until now, I never really had any complaints about BLU when it was first announced. So far I've been enjoying it for what it is for the most part, but I would never defend it against the vast majority of the common complaints about the class. But my complaint is more on the RNG aspect of getting some of these abilities.

I know the 4 star abilities should be more difficult to get than 3 star and below abilities, but oh my goodness, this is terrible.

For those of you that have been blessed by good graces and have earned your abilities quickly and easily, good for you that's awesome. But for most people, including myself, it's been taking an absolutely obnoxious amount of time to get some of these skills. Spending hours upon hours in ARR trials for pretty much nothing.

If the goal was to promote a sense of accomplishment upon earning these skills, then I feel the current expected method is not the right one. I'm at the point where, if I were to finally get these abilities, I'd just feel glad its over with instead of accomplished. Then I'd dread the next grind for the next skill.

I'm not basing this complaint around anything like lack of time or whatever. Mostly that it just feels like a waste of time. I want to play BLU, but I don't want to be forced to waste hours trying to get a single ability that i may not even use most of the time.

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Originally Posted by ClaireCreofas

I don't want to be forced to waste hours trying to get a single ability that i may not even use most of the time.

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So just like primal mounts really, you can spend hours farming and RNG can screw you over every single time. It's very much the case when a Trial is quite new and the drop rate is low with no totem option available till a later patch.

The situation resonates with BLU and honestly, for all that we know once this job is older, the learn rate for BLU might even get increased or we may get alternative ways to learn the spells. I understand it's frustrating to spend hours, but the reward isn't something you need right now, it's not required to continue the game (just like mounts), and the content is still new so give it time, no one is forcing you to do anything.

What I hate is they said they wanted this to be the blue experience, yet I don't remember having to farm mobs for their spells with a percentage chance. You learned it if you ate the mob, used Lancet, used the item, or got hit, with a 100% success rate.

How is this true to blue mages identity? How is this supposed to be a solo job when we're required to spend hours farming a single spell at 50 in a party of blue mages?

Yeah, the RNG is quite horrendous. Ironically, in the content that requires a party to do (Dungeons/Trials).

It is neither accurate to how it worked in previous games, nor does it promote that same feeling that makes people want to go back after finishing the game and learn all of the abilities.

Further to this, several of BLU's key spells are actually ones from these massively RNG Dungeons/Trials, in addition to some of their job quests (For example, I'm still stuck on the level 20 job quest, because I can't learn Mind Blast no matter how many times I seem to run through Tam-Tara)

Like, honestly, they really needed to pick one angle to go with on this. If they wanted to have RNG heavy skills to learn, make them pure fluff ones that no-one needs to be effective so you can at least play the job properly while you farm for them (Also, don't make them required for the job quests and make them solo friendly). If they wanted to put some in duties, don't make them RNG so you have to keep spamming this party content over and over.

Don't mix together all of the worst parts of forcing the content together. Making RNG heavy skills, required for the class to play optimally and to advance job quests, while putting them firmly inside group content so they're inaccesible to solo players or players who might start playing the game later when BLU hype has faded and no-one is putting together parties to go farm the required content (Notably EX trials... I mean, eventually all the dungeons, even the level 50 hard modes, will be soloable. The EX trials... Not so much, especially Titan)

A full synced party of Blue Mages should have 100% learn rate.

*mic drop*

The RNG is slightly stupid, honestly if they let BLU in DF (which they should) it should be near 100% because thats how it was traditionally, and I thought we wanted the True essense of BLU

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

The RNG is slightly stupid, honestly if they let BLU in DF (which they should) it should be near 100% because thats how it was traditionally, and I thought we wanted the True essense of BLU

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Letting Blue mages in Duty Finder would give them an actual end game, whereas right now the blue mage end game is farming for primal abilities. So much of the design of this job right now is kerfuffled.

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Originally Posted by SWB

What I hate is they said they wanted this to be the blue experience, yet I don't remember having to farm mobs for their spells with a percentage chance. You learned it if you ate the mob, used Lancet, used the item, or got hit, with a 100% success rate.

How is this true to blue mages identity? How is this supposed to be a solo job when we're required to spend hours farming a single spell at 50 in a party of blue mages?

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Not true, it was this way for Blue Mage in ffxi. You had to trigger a mob to use its ability and then it was an RNG chance of success

The bad RNG is only really a big issue for instanced Spells, specifically Trials. Basically encouraging players to get a carry with someone at the level cap instead of actually playing the new job. Since world enemies are usually abundant in a single map and respawn fast enough, while giving the BLU multiplied EXP too making the non spell learning kills to not be a complete waste.

A suggestion that has been growing in Twitter and The Balance's discussions I've seen is to gran a 100% chance for spells behind instanced content if the party was entirely made of Blue Mages (4 or 8 BLU) akin to the minimum ilv 100% chance of multiple Orchestrion drops. Would be a good solution to bypass the randomness, while keeping it a challenge and at the same time having players to actually play BLU.

In the end BLU is a mini-game in itself. It has a collection mini-game and a challenge hall. Which is fine, really. But when the best way by far to obtain part of that collection is by barely playing BLU itself, then that part of the mini-game needs a slight adjustment. Collecting Ultros and Typhon spells inside the Carnival itself was actually pretty cool. Trying to discover enemies with the spells you wanted that were easier to kill multiples of them in succession was rewarding in itself as well (like a Leve enemy that casts the Look or realizing you could do Turn 2 instead of Turn 1 for multiple chances of obtaining High Voltage).

Except ff11 was balanced because every other caster had to pay an arm and a leg to have all of their spells, whilst blue mage didn't have to spend anything but time (albeit a lot of it) where in 14 other jobs don't have to scrape their poclets for their abilities and won't end up in dungeons without their skills like in 11.

Therefore blue shouldn't be treated the same, and they shouldn't hold how the job was last done over every other iteration of it where the job was more about USING enemy skills to be a unique job, not in HOW YOU OBTAINED the spell, seeing as they're mostly different means of obtaining depending on the game.

Guys on Primals if we could do it I say Ex and get some tanks and healers involve and just go anyone in game want a horse. because you easy get ever new Player a horse. did hard 5 times and EX 3 on ifrit and a no go for spells.

After spending 5 hours farming Ramuh alone before learning the spell and hours farming ruda and iffy with no luck on my other char, I am retiring blu. The sheer amount of work to learn spells does not equal the lack of reward from the carnival. Working for spells is fine. Working this hard for spells that just get you a title on a job that you can do nothing else with is not worth it imo.

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Originally Posted by Hyala

Not true, it was this way for Blue Mage in ffxi. You had to trigger a mob to use its ability and then it was an RNG chance of success

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I played a ton of blu, like a ton of it in xi and never had to kill a mob over a hundred times to learn the spell. Maybe an hour or two of farming at max and that was only for 1 or 2 spells out of hundreds. The rng they put on this job is outrageous, esp since as I previously stated, you can do nothing outside carnival with it which has no real rewards for doing outside of a title and the fact you are playing blu.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

After spending 5 hours farming Ramuh alone before learning the spell and hours farming ruda and iffy with no luck on my other char, I am retiring blu. The sheer amount of work to learn spells does not equal the lack of reward from the carnival. Working for spells is fine. Working this hard for spells that just get you a title on a job that you can do nothing else with is not worth it imo.

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I feel this will be a major issue for BLU going forwards.

Like, right now, it's not so bad. BLU is brand new so everyone's playing it because it's new and different. Though, soon people will get burnt out on grinding for EX skills...

But that's okay because in 5.01 there pushing BLU up to level 60 cap and adding in more spells!

Though, how long will that last? Sure, people will pick up BLU again, level it up to 60 and maybe go out and learn all the Overworld skills and maybe do the HW dungeons that have skills in. But then? Presumably we'll be in the same situation, where all that's left to do is farm Trials (Since, even if they don't put any more skills into like HW trials, there'd still be these ARR ones to do...).

Then how long until the next update for BLU? Will there be another update for BLU or will the devs look at the poor playtime on the class and decide it's not worth putting so much effort into a class no-one is playing? What's the end goal for BLU, other than farming EX for some stupid RNG chance to learn spells that you can use... While you're farming for the next EX for a stupid RNG chance spell?

It's one of the core differences between an MMO and the single player FF games. In the single player games, Blue Mage was again, completely optional content, you didn't have to use the BLU characters in your main party and if you did you only needed to go learn a handful of skills that were strong and useful. Then when you finished the game you decided to go hunt all the skills down for completionist sakes.

Here in XIV it seems like collecting the spells is both the means to an end and the end in of itself...

Without getting into yet another "BLU should be a real job!" debate, it almost feels like they could have just made current BLU as some Eureka/PotD hybrid, where you have this secluded open world content where everyone's class is set to BLU and there's a bunch of enemies that you can learn skills from and then inside the world there being a PotD style endless dungeon for people to go through, with even more spells to learn in there (Without all this 5% chance to learn BS... Reminds me of farming mounts in WoW, where the "Common" ones were 1% drop rate. I got them all. After about 5 years of daily/weekly farming for them...). Since, at least you'd have some "End-game" content to use your spells in... Heck, they could make it like the Masked Carnival so even the crappy spells could have a use...

But we'll see... Hopefully their update come the next expansion has some indication of a plan for BLU.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

I understand it's frustrating to spend hours, but the reward isn't something you need right now, it's not required to continue the game (just like mounts), and the content is still new so give it time, no one is forcing you to do anything.

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I don't mean "forced to" in the sense that someone is holding my time hostage and making me do something I don't want to do. I mean it more in a way of saying there's no alternative. If I want that skill, I will literally have to sit there for how ever long it takes until it eventually drops if ever. At the very least, mounts have totems that you can accumulate to trade in for the mount itself.

I don't mind the concept of RNG being attached to BLU, in all honesty, it's more true to itself this way. But, not when it's this bad with very little actual reward at the end of it.

The ideal for me would have been more spells and all of them open world with some totem/carnival for the hard to place ones(having them available in instances as well is great if you don't wanna compete with others on a busy spot). As for the rng, I despise it in group content, so I won't even touch the trials ones. But if they were all open world I wouldn't mind them being a bit slower, almost all of my overworld ones I learnt in 2-5 kills. I wouldn't mind if they split the difference and some of the spells were in the 20-30 kills range (for mobs that have multiple spawn locations around the world).

200+ Ramuh runs.

I've seen it drop for others I was helping once.

Ridiculous RNG on him.

The Blu was fun until this garbage.

Finally got in a party of 6 BLU, tank, and healer...

But Blue Mage has always been about RNG... The difference in FFXIV you have to find a group for half the spells where as FF5 thru 10 you solo.

Blue mage was only rng in ff11, and it made sense there to balance other jobs having to pay for their spells

It was bad RNG in other games, so it's only fair to be bad in XIV. /s

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

After spending 5 hours farming Ramuh alone before learning the spell and hours farming ruda and iffy with no luck on my other char, I am retiring blu. The sheer amount of work to learn spells does not equal the lack of reward from the carnival.

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Same. I'm a damned completionist on two mains, and I have patience for anything as long as there are little steps of progress-- little rewards at intervals keeping me going. But spending a full day doing a dungeon over and over in an undersized party and getting NOTHING for it is absolutely distressing. I got to level 50 and did my first level 50 BLU dungeon (Amdapor Keep), and I have to say that I am done. I am done with BLU forever until they patch it. I know Japan absolutely worships luck as a concept and as a mechanic, but this just does not work. It's not rewarding, and it's not worth it. Nobody should have to say about an entire class/job "God that wasn't fun. I'm just so happy I finally got that over with, and there's pretty much nothing to show for it but a dumb title."