Did the devs lie to us? Either actually make BLU OP, or unlock it

For the longest time, I’ve taken a wait and see approach before BLU dropped – then when it did, I wanted to wait a week and give it a legitimate try before I gave it any real thoughts. Now that it has been a week and I have gotten it up to level 50, I think the problem with BLU is the dev team themselves. And here’s the problem with that – the devs insisted through the LL that BLU was supposed to be designed for solo content, but the literal only solo content is in the Masked Carnivale. Sure, players can unsync and run through some of the ARR solo dungeons, but for those level 50 instances, that just isn’t happening in a lot of cases. And what is bugging me the most is that the devs outright advertised this as being designed for solo.

In what way?!

You can’t farm primals solo – you’d need a party because your potencies are just far too low to be effective. A good chunk of the most interesting skills in your spellbook just flat out don’t work on the bosses. So how in the world is this designed for solo play, when literally all you guys have done was add in two minigames (gathering spells and the Masked Carnivale), but is otherwise unless even in the ARR endgame dungeons because your potencies are so low, even at ilvl 130?

You guys really say up there and insinuated that BLU would be this heavily OP job, thus restricted it from normal party comps – but there isn’t really a single thing OP about this job. 1000 Needles loses its effectiveness around the time you run through Cutter’s Cry, to the point where it’s just more effective to use other spells if you have them.

So I’ll add my voice to the chorus of other players with a caveat: since you clearly have a different definition of what overpowered means, Devs, maybe you should…oh I dunno, actually make the job OP like you advertised it to be for solo runs, or allow it to join duties like normal. From the information provided thus far, and from what is currently available, BLU is limited in the sense that it’s almost…useless. Even for just having fun runs, it’s like, what’s the point?

If you were so afraid of it being so OP, why in the world did you limit the potencies to the 100-130 range? Most players who are currently trying BLU have already fought the Hard Mode of all the primals when they were going through ARR – so why in the world could players not feasibly use our spells to challenge these primals solo? Rather than just hyping players up to having this amazing solo job that was supposed to be ‘too hard to balance’, you just gave us a huge mini-game that will require some party play – a direct opposite of what you guys had been preaching over the last couple months.

Either follow the hype that you’d clearly been preaching and actually make it OP – as in raising the potencies, allowing half our spells to actually work outside of the Carnivale, and making it feel like it’s this wholly amazing job that you got people excited for back at the fanfest – or quit lying about it being designed for solo play (Masked Carnivale does not exactly scream solo job) and make it available for the DF/MSQ up to whatever the stopgap level is (currently level 50).

I realize this may not be a popular opinion, and that’s fine, everybody has different opinions – I’m just here sharing my own.

I am all for unlocking it as a full actual job along with others. This limited job bs needs to stop. Balance Blue as a lvl 70 job and be done with it. Masked Carnivale isn't even fun and plenty of people been wanting to main blue mage as a full job.

I must confess I've given up on BLU, it's tedious and pointless. About the only thing you can solo is open world mobs, everything else is in dungeons you cannot use the DF to queue, and just like Eureka, getting any kind of party together is like pulling teeth (then add the ridiculous RNG just to put even more people off it). No levelling options at all to add some interest - no roulettes, no squadrons, no POTD, no nothing. Silly me, I had assumed the masked carnival would be for levelling this "solo" job, but no, it's just something they tagged on at the end. Learn the skills you need to solo in dungeons and primals you can't queue for? Talk about circular logic.

Did we need a mrw thread for this, or would any of the previous ones currently on fromt page too be sufficient to discuss this? It does fragment the issue quite a bit. It's still not that balanced for group play and would be even more watered down to not oneshot especially low level stuff in DF/issue with having enough spells. This in my opinion.

I agree, but can't be bothered typing up yet another post about BLU, so have a lazily copy pasted quote from another thread.

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

Every reason as to why they claimed BLU shouldn't be allowed to play in DF content at level 70 has been proven false within a day, good job Square.

Overpowered abilities? I count one, White Wind is bonkers, and that's it. 1k Needles drops off drastically as mob hp increases, and most other abilities are complete garbage. Bosses are immune to the majority of BLU shenanigans like Petrify and Sticky Tongue, rendering Yoshi's "hurr L5 Death in O12S lul" comment completely moot.

They might have no skills going into DF, yet you make specific abilities mandatory for the job quests? So you're saying you could lock job quests behind having a specific set of core abilities that are actually balanced around party play, and then open up the relevant DF options upon completion of job quest milestones? You can have that one for free SE. You're welcome.

They're designed as a solo experience, yet it's mandatory to go into instanced content with other players to learn certain abilities. That one is just ass backwards, and I highly doubt an i130 level 50 BLU is gonna be able to solo Shiva Extreme to gain her bow skill, let alone kill her before she enrages considering how garbage most skills are.

It's a complete mess, frankly. They've done it yet again, said one thing but done another. Either make it broken OP as you claimed and keep it limited, or balance it around party play and offer it as a complete job. Not this weird hybrid of garbage ass skills where 50% of them come from instances that you're probably not going to be able to effectively solo, despite that being the entire point of the job.

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The core of the conflict isn't so much in BLU's own performance, but the acquisition of its spells, Otherwise it being a wet noodle that doesn't play well with others wouldn't have been such an issue.

"BLU is not designed for party play" and "BLU was designed for solo play" - these statements are true if you keep in mind that it was designed for the Masked Carnivale. They made absolutely no effort to make sure that it plays well in party content because that's not what you're supposed to play on BLU. And to an extent, this would've been fine, but if you want to complete the BLU experience in its entirety, that involves getting all of its spells. At the absolute least we're talking about two extreme ARR Primals. Where even if you run it unsynced, the BLU in question might just not be able to survive through it to even have a chance at the skill. And that's besides the fact that while not designed for party play, BLU is forced to party up constantly for more than half its kit, be it dungeons or trials. And I mean you can 4-BLU dungeons and hope you get the spell at the end, but as we all know that BLU was not designed for party play, many players decided to opt out of that, rightly so, and so the 2-2/4-4 solutions were made.
Which at this point I'd legit say is how the devs intended it to happen. Which only makes this entire thing seem all the more lazy and insulting to the playerbase.

They should've invested more in the Masked Carnivale and locked all those skills behind it. I wouldn't have even minded it that much if the spells were locked behind frigging Carnivale Lockboxes if only because it meant I could farm them myself, as befitting a a job designed for solo play that doesn't fit parties.

But the Carnivale has a very limited lifespan in the first place, that's part of why they slapped weekly bonuses on it, to get people coming back, but even that won't last once everyone has their ARR mount speed upgrades.

Oh, and their "Level 5 Death on Omega" example? None of those skills work on trial/raid bosses or even dungeon end-bosses, so can we please stop pretending BLU was ever designed to run around as an avatar of death and destruction?

Inb4 that's the one boss that won't be immune to Level 5 Death just so Yoshi-P won't have to go back on the example he gave.

Bluemage would be overpowered if it get a approximate weapon like the other Jobs at this level. Bothers me to walk around with a iLvl 130 weapon with 1 attack damage like the starter weapon.

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Originally Posted by Sieben79

Bluemage would be overpowered if it get a approximate weapon like the other Jobs at this level. Bothers me to walk around with a iLvl 130 weapon with 1 attack damage like the starter weapon.

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The thing is that it needs to be overpowered if it stays as solo job

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Originally Posted by Sieben79

Bluemage would be overpowered if it get a approximate weapon like the other Jobs at this level. Bothers me to walk around with a iLvl 130 weapon with 1 attack damage like the starter weapon.

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That kind of is the point of this thread. Outside of the Carnivale, there's not really much of a purpose for a job that had been touted as 'designed for solo'. That's my whole disconnect with it. It's woefully underpowered for a solo job, when even after you collect all the spells, you STILL can't really do much of the lvl 50 content as this so-called solo job by yourself. It needs to be overpowered as it is right now, otherwise what exactly is the point after you collect your spells? If you can't go into the DF, if you can't do MSQ, if you can't even take it into PoTD, then there's literally no point to the job after you have your spells and finished off the Masked Carnivale. You can't even meld anything on the artifact gear.

I'm bothered that this limited job is restricted from even being fun once you get your spells and finish the Carnivale. Repeating an entire dungeon run for one spell that has a limited chance of even learning for the 20th time, while being limited by your own very low potencies and spells that don't even work on the boss is not fun when you have to do it past the third time (hello Mind Blast, Glower). At the very least if it was overpowered, you'd have a realistic chance of actually going into almost all Level 50 instances using your own strats and spells to get through it without needing the requirement of a level 70 or other party members.

So now we wrap up to my original point: the devs hyped up something that just wasn't true and/or over-exaggerated to the point that it was insulting upon release. As it is right now, there's no reason at all why BLU should have been restricted as is. It's far too weak to really 'too strong' as was insinuated multiple times by the devs.

To be fair, the kind of OP Yoshi-P was talking about is more the "I can immediately kill the boss with this single skill" aspect, not necessarily that BLU is the king of parsers.
But that fell flat the second they did what we all knew they'd do and put invuls to those effects on any enemy worth anything, including things as flimsy as overworld B ranks

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

To be fair, the kind of OP Yoshi-P was talking about is more the "I can immediately kill the boss with this single skill" aspect, not necessarily that BLU is the king of parsers.
But that fell flat the second they did what we all knew they'd do and put invuls to those effects on any enemy worth anything, including things as flimsy as overworld B ranks

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Indeed. I imagine that this wouldn't even be as much of a problem as it is now if you could feasibly fight solo with properly adjusted potencies. 100-130 is just far too low - even in the Masked Carnivale. They dropped the ball hard on this one, and the sad is that BLU itself is an interesting job. But the way that it's implemented is just underwhelming in almost every aspect, even as it's limited self.

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Originally Posted by Sieben79

Bluemage would be overpowered if it get a approximate weapon like the other Jobs at this level. Bothers me to walk around with a iLvl 130 weapon with 1 attack damage like the starter weapon.

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They have a higher int coefficient to try and compensate, but they lowballed it. It definitely needs to be increased just so that its filler spells aren't so horrifically weak.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

I imagine that this wouldn't even be as much of a problem as it is now if you could feasibly fight solo with properly adjusted potencies.

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The problem isn't just the damage potencies - BLU's survivability isn't up to par with what it should be, either. Sure, it has a lot of niche skills most other dps don't have and White Wind can top it off easily, but it needs to survive a hit in order to use it. Mighty Guard really ups BLU's defense but you're still working with a caster's health pool. And that's besides Mighty Guard mutilating your damage if you use it, part of why 1000 was as good as it was for so long - it's flat damage, not potency based, Mighty Guard doesn't tickle it.
But good luck getting Shiva's skill solo when you're absolutely not going to survive her shared damage sword buster.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

The problem isn't just the damage potencies - BLU's survivability isn't up to par with what it should be, either. Sure, it has a lot of niche skills most other dps don't have and White Wind can top it off easily, but it needs to survive a hit in order to use it. Mighty Guard really ups BLU's defense but you're still working with a caster's health pool. And that's besides Mighty Guard mutilating your damage if you use it, part of why 1000 was as good as it was for so long - it's flat damage, not potency based, Mighty Guard doesn't tickle it.
But good luck getting Shiva's skill solo when you're absolutely not going to survive her shared damage sword buster.

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Mighty Guard needs it's numbers switched. 40% damage outgoing damage reduced and 70% damage reduction. Instead of the 70/40 ratio they are running.

If they really are all for making BLU a Solo job.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

If they really are all for making BLU a Solo job.

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It would make sense, even for its own niche content, especially if it's still supposed to get spells from stuff like Extreme Primals (and without the design including "being carried by max levels"). Still not sure how much it would do against stuff like Shiva's sword buster, which is why I'm hoping more that they'll move those skills away from those instances, or to be precise, offer us alternative, solo friendly ways, to getting the Primal skills. Then whoever wants to have people carry them, they still can, but now there'll be an alternative that's true to what they declared about BLU, without breaking either job or content too much (something they obviously don't want to do, or they'd have done it already)

While BLU definitely needs some balancing tweaks, and increased potencies is at the top of that list, the job isn't OP because of potencies, it's OP because of mechanics and gimmicks.
An OP healing spell, vast damage and defense buffs that are no competition for the other jobs, and a bucket-load of enemy exclusive debuffs that are not available to any other jobs specifically due to balance.
They'd never give a regular DOW/M the ability to paralyze, or petrify.

It's potencies actually aren't that horrendous compared to other level 50 DOW/Ms that are geared to that level (ilvl 90 or so), considering it gets a 50% Maim and Mend compared to other jobs 30%, and it has the ability to increase it's own potencies by 50% and decrease enemy defence by 80%! This effectively translates a 130 potency magic attack into something more comparable to effective 350 potency, which is on par with an AF Fire I.

There's definitely room to grow, it should be able to match a regular dps spell as a general attack, rather than only reaching it with all burst modifiers in place, so yeah the potencies are a bit lackluster, but it's not horrendous and I hope the job will get these sort of tweaks down the road.
It could also do with about a 50% HP buff too.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Mighty Guard needs it's numbers switched. 40% damage outgoing damage reduced and 70% damage reduction. Instead of the 70/40 ratio they are running.

If they really are all for making BLU a Solo job.

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I think that would be too OP, you'd never need to drop it.
I'd rather 50/50 to be honest.

I agree, this was a poorly designed, deceptive experience that I believe was intentional from the devs until they say otherwise.


BLU looked bad on paper, the fact that it is even worse than that is sad. They will constantly be nothing more than window dressing in a unsynced party and is too weak to handle dungeons in any sort of solo capacity. The learning system is also highly suspect, as the low drop rate from primals is simply unnescesary.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

They'd never give a regular DOW/M the ability to paralyze, or petrify.

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But at the end if boils down to CC, which other classes have. Several classes have bind, or sleep. Not as strong, I agree, but then again none of these works on bosses and hunt marks, so it's all the same at the end of the day.

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considering it gets a 50% Maim and Mend compared to other jobs 30%

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Other jobs get that bonus from their weapon damage, which BLU doesn't have - and that is exactly why BLU has such a high level Maim & Mend.

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but it's not horrendous and I hope the job will get these sort of tweaks down the road.

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I wonder if they'll bother. Because this entire debate about potencies is born out of the paradox in which Masked Carnivale's BLU is forced to engage with content outside of it.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

I wonder if they'll bother. Because this entire debate about potencies is born out of the paradox in which Masked Carnivale's BLU is forced to engage with content outside of it.

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Very good point. Increasing potencies by too much would mean they'd need to buff the entire set of Masked Carnival encounters...
That could be a lot of work.
Or it could be a simply level adjustment, who knows.
Or maybe they'll wait until they expand the Masked Carnival to level 60, making the original level 50 challenges redundant and not worth fixing.

I think they did lie to us but only for the sake of keeping secret the playstyle of BLU. Like how you might tell a friend you can't go out because you're working only to surprise them at their party and you were off all along.
Reason being they don't allow DF is that (take me for example) I levelled Blu to 50 and had only water cannon at my disposal. Now what's to stop others doing that and running Aurum Vale or 50 Dngs with just water cannon. They couldn't say that though or else spoil how the spell mechanics would work with finding them etc. SO they claim it is too OP. For some instances it might be (Considering skills don't have levels so you could do sasasha fairly easy with bad Breath and needles etc) bu for the most part it is down to them being unable to control the players themselves and stopping under skilled Blue mages from queuing for duties.

I think if they had a way of making the skills level blocked (for example you cant learn primal skills at 50 until you are level 50)...need an Aurum Vale skill? Well tha Dng is 48 so you need to be 48 to learn it. That enemy is level 18 so you too need to be 18 to learn it. If they could do that you might see a shift to Blue in duties. I don't think the intentionally made it weak bu thought "Lets troll the community and push it as the most OP job ever when really it's trash xD"

At first I think I was more annoyed about not being able to get at least half the spells solo, but I thought maybe the carnival would be really fun once unlocked, and that somehow that would sustain the job. Don’t get me wrong, I always did want blu to be a full job too, but just thought the carnival would have some meat on it’s bones. Boy was I wrong.

A couple of days ago I managed to get very lucky when scrolling through party finder and saw someone trying to form a blu Aurum Vale glower farming group. I decided to join, and miraculously we got the spell on the first try, and off I went to the carnival. And it was.... underwhelming at best. Now here we are with a solo job that requires parties willing to sit around for hours running old content repeatedly for a low low chance at a drop in order to complete its tool kit, with the only thing to actually do with it once you’re done being this...thing.

Now that I’ve seen the carnival I no longer even care that I’ll never be able to get all the blu spells because it just doesn’t matter. There is nothing to do with this job that feels worthwhile. I really wish they’d go back and reimagine this and figure out how to make it a real job, but I sincerely doubt they will. They’ve said they will raise the level cap, add some more spells, and add more to the carnival. That’s all I expect to ever come of this mini game, and it’s a real shame.

It's kinda like how I feel about how they handled Parry. They kept on promising changes to it, kept us in the dark and then removed it entirely.

It doesn't surprise me that the dev team lies or misleads it's player base. It's one of the few things they are consistent with.

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Farming the 4 and 5 star spells is like farming for Extreme mounts. They should implement a totem system where you turn in 10 or 99 totems or items to learn the spell if you don't learn it passively.

Yeah i tried to solo Haukke Manor the other day... did not go well at all. Granted i do not fully have all spells yet but it really is weak.
I guess the slide they had shown at fanfest was false?

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

It's kinda like how I feel about how they handled Parry. They kept on promising changes to it, kept us in the dark and then removed it entirely.

It doesn't surprise me that the dev team lies or misleads it's player base. It's one of the few things they are consistent with.

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Farming the 4 and 5 star spells is like farming for Extreme mounts. They should implement a totem system where you turn in 10 or 99 totems or items to learn the spell if you don't learn it passively.

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Either that, or if they insist on keeping it as a limited job, at least make BLU capable enough to farm the ex primals solo. Make it so that Mighty Guard can allow you to survive Titans Gaols. Or comfortably deal with Garuda and her adds. Or hell, they could've given us Last Stand as a cooldown ability - just add it in the Carnivale. It was just so much wasted potential that the devs misled us about. Even when they boost it up to 60, I have no confidence that it'll feel any better at that level. Hell, probably still won't be able to solo fight ex trials reliably.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

Hell, probably still won't be able to solo fight ex trials reliably.

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At this point I'd say their biggest mistake was to force BLU into content outside the Masked Carnivale in the first place. They tried to reuse existing content so they won't have to invest in it more than they already did, but because of how it was designed in the first place we got this disaster at all. If they had invested a bit more we could've had solo versions of the Primals within the Masked Carnival we could've learned the skills from. It would basically be a SMN trial at that point, but their lore within XIV is already very similar at its core, and this way BLU wouldn't have been forced into content it had no business running in the first place

The promise has been broken.
The Blue Mage we have is not what we were supposed to have.
Half solo - half party.
Designed for Masked Carnival and not well for leveling or soloing contents.
The whole idea of their Blue Mage is conflicting, like 2 identities trying to merge and form a new one.
I think I can say, Blue Mage is my 2nd deception after Lord of Verminion.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

At this point I'd say their biggest mistake was to force BLU into content outside the Masked Carnivale in the first place. They tried to reuse existing content so they won't have to invest in it more than they already did, but because of how it was designed in the first place we got this disaster at all. If they had invested a bit more we could've had solo versions of the Primals within the Masked Carnival we could've learned the skills from. It would basically be a SMN trial at that point, but their lore within XIV is already very similar at its core, and this way BLU wouldn't have been forced into content it had no business running in the first place

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They wouldn't have even needed to do that. Making solo versions probably would've "taken away resources from 5.0". It could've been a simple solution of just allowing it to be broken, and push up the potencies of multiple spells.

Their biggest mistakes in this lead up to BLU is highlighted in this trailer for BLU.

If the devs didn't mean for us to be able to solo primals, why in the blue hell did they put that in the trailer? The other parts, yes, understandable because you can learn at least half of your spells on your own. But the trailer totally makes it seem like this something you are capable of doing solo, and that is what led to a bad taste in my mouth.

Did the devs lie? Yes and No
Is blu too OP? Again yes and no blu can invalidate both the hlr role and the tank role but as a dps it is just average at best this needs the biggest boost to warrant being a limited job as stands its limited due to 1kN,MG,DB and WW and that isn't good enough reason for it and how many of us remember the titan-egi vs Ramuh ex making tanks obsolete for awhile
What did the devs lie about? "Solo-oriented job" this is untrue you can have a max of 23 abilities solo (1 start, 16 Overworld without needing a friend, 4 totem abilities, 2 mask carnivale) that leave 26 needing someone to do duties/way higher overworld mobs they should've advertised blu as a "solo and party job" showcasing that you can do some solo masked carnivale and ability hunting but advise players you may need to group up to tackle some of the harder abilities showcasing primals/dungeons

Lie? That depends on a lot of factors.

Mislead? Definitely.

I don't understand the solo job aspect of it, literally any job can do shit solo, what makes BLU so special? Is it because its locked out of most content and can't sign up for DF? The Masked Carnivale is neat but its mostly a one and done deal except for weekly challenges which, once you know how to clear the fight, takes no time at all. It needs a party to learn most of the spellbook, not just a party, usually one that has several lvl 70's because running with only blue mages is incredibly inefficient and the drop rates are laughably low so you want to speed the process up, making it so BLU needs babying for it to learn spells, this is laughable considering this is the job that is supposed to be overpowered.

For all their insistence that it is OP, it doesn't feel like it in any way, 4 BLU's doing content is more tedious than fun, yeah its cool using all your skills but they are so underpowered its barely worth it, Missile and junk is nice but I find most enemies are immune to the abilities that would make BLU OP in the first place.

I would honestly prefer if they ditched the limited jobs, the idea is nice in concept but if this is the execution, I really can't say I want to see more. They say it would be hard to implement BLU to fit the current paradigm but come on, I'm sure the devs can think of something, that's their job.

I was skeptical when BLU was announced, but I wanted to give it a fair shake. As it is now, it feels like they tried for a middle ground, which was not the play. Either balance it for normal play and make it a normal job, or make it broken enough to solo most things without too much difficulty.

It wasn’t too bad at first, as the open world spells are pretty quick and easy to get. I thought I could unsync Haukke Manor and get through it fine on my own...but no. Even though I outleveled the dungeon by 10 or so levels, the mobs still hit hard enough to force me to use Mighty Guard and spam 1K needles, which made the whole process incredibly slow, dull, and boring. I know I could use all the self buffs + toad oil and self-destruct to take out everything, but this is still tedious and a waste of time to constantly respawn and run back. There’s no way Cutter’s Cry or Aurum Vale will be any better, so I doubt I’ll try soloing them.

I don’t want to sit in PF to get a group to run dungeons and trials over and over. I just want to do a run here and there, like I do for other jobs to get glamour, but it seems in PF the expectation is to spam something until the spell is learned. I could learn spells on my own time using DF or squadrons, but of course BLU can’t use these systems (the latter of which is mind-boggling). So let me solo these things in a reasonable amount of time, instead. That’s what I thought the job would be based on the trailers with the BLU fighting Shiva. Instead we got a weak job that needs to use PF to farm skills for hours on end because the drop rates are so low.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Lie? That depends on a lot of factors.

Mislead? Definitely.

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Let's consult a dictionary.

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Originally Posted by Miriam-Webster;

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lie

Definition of lie (Entry 3 of 6)

intransitive verb
1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive She was lying when she said she didn't break the vase. He lied about his past experience.
2 : to create a false or misleading impression Statistics sometimes lie. The mirror never lies.

transitive verb
: to bring about by telling lies He lied his way out of trouble.

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I find it very hard to believe that they deliberately lied. That they deliberately created a unique job design that was mediocre and tried to sell it as amazing when they could actually make it amazing for the same amount of work and a whole lot more player satisfaction.

Maybe they're out of step with their playerbase and really do think it's a good design. Maybe it's a "cultural difference" and all their playtesters agreed it was a good design.

Whatever it is, something has gone wrong between how they described it and what we actually got, but I will assume lack of awareness over actual malice.

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Originally Posted by Kallera

Let's consult a dictionary.

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Personally I don't believe SE purposefully mislead their audience (did not attempt to lie to us). I do think whatever expectation they had of their audience was off from what people were hoping for though.

I'm still very confused on the statistic Yoshida mentioned in an interview, certainly I could be in a bubble but it really seems to be the opposite of his presented data (in game, reddit, youtube, and the forums). I wouldn't say they lied but unintentionally mislead might be accurate.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I find it very hard to believe that they deliberately lied. . . . Maybe they're out of step with their playerbase and really do think it's a good design. Maybe it's a "cultural difference" and all their playtesters agreed it was a good design. . . but I will assume lack of awareness over actual malice.

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I agree with this greatly. I would/will be exceptionally worried about the future of FFXIV if I believed that they did this out any sort of malice or attempt to purposefully mislead... That's a really bad sign.

I find it more likely they weren't in sync, perhaps even internally even. One of my suspicions is this is mostly one person's passion project (with help here and there), so perhaps they've got a very particular design mindset or were given very tight reigns.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I find it very hard to believe that they deliberately lied. That they deliberately created a unique job design that was mediocre and tried to sell it as amazing when they could actually make it amazing for the same amount of work and a whole lot more player satisfaction.

Maybe they're out of step with their playerbase and really do think it's a good design. Maybe it's a "cultural difference" and all their playtesters agreed it was a good design.

Whatever it is, something has gone wrong between how they described it and what we actually got, but I will assume lack of awareness over actual malice.

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I have a character that I play on Yojimbo server which is mostly a JPN server and I can tell you, almost the whole server was running Blu when it launched last Tuesday. By the weekend though there were only a handful still running Blu. All the ARR zones were back to being dead again. Even where the Masked Carnival NPC is, there's maybe like one or two people there at a time, not to mention I haven't seen a single PF up for Primal Spells. My Japanese isn't fluent, but I would say they aren't too fond of BLU either, so it's definitely not a difference in culture.

I said this in another thread, but I guess I'll say it here too. It's painfully obvious to see that the framework for BLU to be a normal job is there. Job Quests requiring you to go learn certain spells in order to progress, needing a party to acquire said spells, because said spells are locked in dungeons with a horrible RNG learning rate. All they would need to do is force BLU to go out and acquire any particular spell every 5-10 lvls (increase the learning rate of said spells of course) and the only excuse ppl would have for not having their tool kit in DF and Raids would be what we have now, players that just didn't care in the first place.

The thing that I can see that even remotely makes BLU OP or broken is the fact that there's no level lock on the spells and so certain spells such as White Wind and 1k needles can be acquired at level 1. If they (the devs) are just going to give every spell to us at level 1, than why even level blu in the first place? So we can suffer through horrible RNG when trying to get spells from old content nobody does anymore?

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Originally Posted by Evogolist

I have a character that I play on Yojimbo server which is mostly a JPN server and I can tell you, almost the whole server was running Blu when it launched last Tuesday. By the weekend though there were only a handful still running Blu. All the ARR zones were back to being dead again. Even where the Masked Carnival NPC is, there's maybe like one or two people there at a time, not to mention I haven't seen a single PF up for Primal Spells. My Japanese isn't fluent, but I would say they aren't too fond of BLU either, so it's definitely not a difference in culture.

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I'm also on a Japanese server - Elemental group, which I don't think includes Yojimbo.

It's inevitable that it'll be busiest on first release, and after the rush fades you won't see the same concentration, because people have finished their open-world leveling and skills, at which point there's no reason to remain 'out in the open', and are probably hacking away at primal skills if they're still interested. I'm still seeing PFs posted, not that I check all that frequently, but people are also organising to do it with friends or FC members so you won't see all that's going on.

(Also at least on Unicorn server this week, I had to go to northern Thanalan for some quests with my alt character, and there was a fair-sized hunt group chasing the B-rank mark all over the map trying to get its skill. And people still powerleveling in other areas - could not get my hunt marks on the Isles of Umbra because a blue-and-scholar team were wiping out everything on the island. )

I'm not especially defending it, but "there are less people than there were on launch day" isn't a fair argument against the popularity of anything.

I'm 100% behind the make us stronger or allow us to at least join DF. Right now BLU is a non-solo class locked out of any party content. 2/2 4/4 strats are dumb, not challenging. It doesn't even qualify as a grind since you just run and wait for someone else to kill stuff for you.

Carnival is entertaining the first time around, challenges might be decent I haven't tried too hard at this point. However it's frustrating that our decent skills are walled behind group content. I don't have a single decent wind attack spell yet which is a handicap in the carnival.

This is going to suffer the same faith as eureka in that once the content is no longer relevant you won't even find parties to join for most of your skills. I don't understand how the designers keep repeating these mistakes? Are they so held up in their personal ties to old school grind mmorpgs that they just MUST impose outdated concepts to a non grind game like ff14 which basically results in content becoming stale from lack of participation once the bulk of players have gone through it?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I'm also on a Japanese server - Elemental group, which I don't think includes Yojimbo.

It's inevitable that it'll be busiest on first release, and after the rush fades you won't see the same concentration, because people have finished their open-world leveling and skills, at which point there's no reason to remain 'out in the open', and are probably hacking away at primal skills if they're still interested. I'm still seeing PFs posted, not that I check all that frequently, but people are also organising to do it with friends or FC members so you won't see all that's going on.

(Also at least on Unicorn server this week, I had to go to northern Thanalan for some quests with my alt character, and there was a fair-sized hunt group chasing the B-rank mark all over the map trying to get its skill. And people still powerleveling in other areas - could not get my hunt marks on the Isles of Umbra because a blue-and-scholar team were wiping out everything on the island. )

I'm not especially defending it, but "there are less people than there were on launch day" isn't a fair argument against the popularity of anything.

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I did an edit of my last post and posted a bit more, but I do agree with your last statement. However, I've also heard from some others here on the forums that things aren't so cool on the JPN forums, but again...just hearsay. Like I said, my Japanese isn't fluent and I'm still learning, so I'll take back the first part of last post, since I can't speak for them. Just thought I'd offer my observations from my side of Eorzea.

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Originally Posted by Kallera

Let's consult a dictionary.

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Quote:

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Quote Originally Posted by Miriam-Webster;
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lie

Definition of lie (Entry 3 of 6)

intransitive verb
1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive She was lying when she said she didn't break the vase. He lied about his past experience.
2 : to create a false or misleading impression Statistics sometimes lie. The mirror never lies.

transitive verb
: to bring about by telling lies He lied his way out of trouble.

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Important part bolded. Intent is REALLY hard to determine.