What happened to Beastmaster?

Was'nt BM supposed to be released "sometime" after the xpac released? what happened?

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...14da17c3661196

Please look forward to it?

Sincerely, I never expected Beastmaster any sooner than 7.4, because 6.4(well, 6.45 but who's counting...) was when BLU got its level 90 update, and we are still on 7.1.

The limited job stuff usually comes toward the end of the expansion if it follows the same pattern as Blue Mage.

Sorry, you expected a feature of the expansion to come out before the last 6 months of it? Shame.

They meant within the patch cycle of the expansion. Currently, these span 2 and a half years.

Blue Mage released in 4.5 for example. It then received updates in X.15 and X.45 patches. Once it was almost max level, they only updated it once per expansion at X.45.

Thus, the precedents we have for Limited Job updates are: 7.15, 7.45 and 7.5. I assumed we would get the Blue Mage update at 7.15 this time so that we could get Beast Master's in 7.45 or 7.5, but it seems they will probably do them both together now. Or some different scheduling.

Beastmaster was said to be coming in late 7.X, so it's most likely coming during patches 7.4-7.55 when the "content drought" portion of Dawntrail hits so players have something more to do until the launch of 8.0

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Originally Posted by Jangles

Sorry, you expected a feature of the expansion to come out before the last 6 months of it? Shame.

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This is very depressing but true...

The worst is that BLU feels nearly useless now. With the increase in the level of all the Wondrous Tails activities, using BLU for those tasks is hardly faster than using a regular job.

As for FATEs, I don't remember how many bicolor gemstones we used to earn during EW, but now in DT, farming SHB fates on BLU is likely even slower than before:
SHB - 12 bicolor
EW - 14 bicolor
DT - 16 bicolor

Why is it that a unique job like this has to feel so incredibly useless until two years into an expansion?

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Originally Posted by Jovakim

This is very depressing but true...

The worst is that BLU feels nearly useless now. With the increase in the level of all the Wondrous Tails activities, using BLU for those tasks is hardly faster than using a regular job.

As for FATEs, I don't remember how many bicolor gemstones we used to earn during EW, but now in DT, farming SHB fates on BLU is likely even slower than before:
SHB - 12 bicolor
EW - 14 bicolor
DT - 16 bicolor

Why is it that a unique job like this has to feel so incredibly useless until two years into an expansion?

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Maybe they should have realized that they need to make their actual jobs unique, not create a half attended job locked off from most of the valuable game-play experience.



My 'gamer rage' (first world problems) is much lower and I appreciate that they have taken /some/ feedback on the job, but I still think overall it was a bad choice and failed to achieve what it set out to do. Even the reasons it does exist which aren't terrible, still, imo, sound bad. Like being able to do old content, once or twice, differently. That could have been achieved a lot of ways, that incorporated all jobs.



*pokes dead horse*



I'm ready for Beastmaster to follow a similar fate. Hopefully they at least learned to make the 1 to 50 more interesting unlike BLU.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...14da17c3661196

Please look forward to it?

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..... man, it's already February? Wasn't Christmas like a week ago?
https://imgur.com/qyobRQV.png

Still coming, probably not for another patch or two.

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Originally Posted by Jovakim

This is very depressing but true...

The worst is that BLU feels nearly useless now. With the increase in the level of all the Wondrous Tails activities, using BLU for those tasks is hardly faster than using a regular job.

As for FATEs, I don't remember how many bicolor gemstones we used to earn during EW, but now in DT, farming SHB fates on BLU is likely even slower than before:
SHB - 12 bicolor
EW - 14 bicolor
DT - 16 bicolor

Why is it that a unique job like this has to feel so incredibly useless until two years into an expansion?

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The limited jobs can't even queue roulettes and stuff. why can't they just be at current max level exactly? Would it really ruin peoples lives to have them be the best open world job for those who put in time lol

They need to stop announcing "end of expansion" features before the expansion is even out. At most they should show us stuff up until .3 patches. The rest they can announce later. All they do with these early announcements is frustrate the playerbase cause they are wondering where that content is.

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Originally Posted by ZXN

Beastmaster was said to be coming in late 7.X, so it's most likely coming during patches 7.4-7.55 when the "content drought" portion of Dawntrail hits so players have something more to do until the launch of 8.0

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When it was announced to come late in Dawntrail's patch cycle, it was also stated that the Blue Mage update would be released before it, around the middle of Dawntrail's patch cycle and we haven't even gotten that yet (I'm expecting that to be around 7.3).

I mean, they going to need to release things to do with it too, most of blue mage's content is in levelling the job and collecting achievements, after that a weekly log for alliance seals is hardly a tempting offer.

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Originally Posted by NaoSen

I mean, they going to need to release things to do with it too, most of blue mage's content is in levelling the job and collecting achievements, after that a weekly log for alliance seals is hardly a tempting offer.

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Yeah they dropped the ball hard on the last 2 blue mage updates. 1 carnival stage and no good reward for doing savages/ex trials with blue mages. Content was dead on arrival. The only good update was the level 60 one back in ShB cause it added 5 carnival stages and gave a cool mount for doing the savage raids.

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Originally Posted by Kemiko

When it was announced to come late in Dawntrail's patch cycle, it was also stated that the Blue Mage update would be released before it, around the middle of Dawntrail's patch cycle and we haven't even gotten that yet (I'm expecting that to be around 7.3).

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This is correct yes, they did announce Blue Mage would receive updates during the patches. If it's like the past updates though: Blue Mage should receive it's Dawntrail update in patch 7.45, aka the level 90 cap / more spells / more duties it can complete [Which should be Endwalker's Extreme Trials / Pandemonium Savage fights]. Don't know if/how this will clash with the Beastmaster job when it releases though until later down the road with live letters. While they did say that Beastmaster/Blue Mage will be able to do duties together, we still don't know what state Beastmaster will actually release in. Will it release with a low-ish level cap, like 60 or 70, to ease players into learning how the job functions and how you'll get your "stuff" to actually fight with, or will they just go fuck it and release it with the level 90 cap immediately so it can do the Endwalker EX/Savage content right alongside the Blue Mages?

Also while the Blue Mage updates happened on patches 5.45 and 6.45: Blue mage itself first released on patch 4.5, so I can somewhat see the potential of them making Patch 7.45 the Blue Mage update for this expansion, and then Patch 7.5 being Beastmaster's actual release. There is of course always the possibility they plan to have Blue Mage / Beastmaster be "synced" with one another going forward, and do both the Beastmaster job release AND Blue Mage update both on patch 7.45.

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

They need to stop announcing "end of expansion" features before the expansion is even out. At most they should show us stuff up until .3 patches. The rest they can announce later. All they do with these early announcements is frustrate the playerbase cause they are wondering where that content is.

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Yeah, it's very disingenuous to inflate the expansion bullet points by including stuff planned to be released 6 month to a year after the expansion itself. I mean, I'm used to marketing campaigns to be shitty and disingenuous but still...

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Originally Posted by YumieYumiki

Yeah, it's very disingenuous to inflate the expansion bullet points by including stuff planned to be released 6 month to a year after the expansion itself. I mean, I'm used to marketing campaigns to be shitty and disingenuous but still...

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I find this interesting, because there are calls for them not having a roadmap, they provide information in advance, and then people are saying to not announce it so far in advance. I guess this is one of those situations where no matter what, people are going to be upset.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

I find this interesting, because there are calls for them not having a roadmap, they provide information in advance, and then people are saying to not announce it so far in advance. I guess this is one of those situations where no matter what, people are going to be upset.

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I would argue that there's a difference between having a roadmap for the expansion and saying "The expansion will have [X]!" with no elaboration on when it's coming out, sometimes as far down the road as the last patch of that expansion. It frequently boils down to guessing off of when comparable content released in previous patch cycles or people repeatedly asking Yoshida or senior devs if it's in the next patch until the answer is yes.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

I would argue that there's a difference between having a roadmap for the expansion and saying "The expansion will have [X]!" with no elaboration on when it's coming out, sometimes as far down the road as the last patch of that expansion. It frequently boils down to guessing off of when comparable content released in previous patch cycles or people repeatedly asking Yoshida or senior devs if it's in the next patch until the answer is yes.

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That's a fair take. However, by putting a roadmap for an expansion, they have now timeboxed themselves. Let's say for example Cosmic Exploration was on the roadmap for 7.2. Any number of things caused it to slip, and now they are getting heat if they don't release it 7.2 because they "promised" it would be 7.2. However, if they never said when it would release, just that it would release in the expansion, then even if they didn't hit their internal goal, they can still meet the "promise" of delivering it during the expansion.

As a developer, I would really like to understand the MMO's reason for still doing "waterfall" deployments. I'd much rather have smaller iterations of releases (i.e. 7.0-7.98) and deliver content when it's done. This keeps people engaged with quicker releases, and let's them iterate on feedback much sooner. I know there are a lot of factors that go into content (artists, VA, designers, etc.), but I still think this is something that can be overcome at a quicker cadence.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

That's a fair take. However, by putting a roadmap for an expansion, they have now timeboxed themselves. Let's say for example Cosmic Exploration was on the roadmap for 7.2. Any number of things caused it to slip, and now they are getting heat if they don't release it 7.2 because they "promised" it would be 7.2.

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Deadlines are important. You know this if you've ever so much as gone to a place of education. Without deadlines, humans often just kinda, don't do stuff. Since there is no pressure to get it done. Even if they don't release the deadline publicly, they have an internal one (we usually know what it is because we know when they released comparable content in every other expansion :D).

It tends to be completed months before that deadline normally. As you said, they wouldn't set a deadline they were not certain they could make, so if it's a new content type they don't always put an exact timeframe.

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As a developer, I would really like to understand the MMO's reason for still doing "waterfall" deployments. I'd much rather have smaller iterations of releases (i.e. 7.0-7.98) and deliver content when it's done.

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Quality Assurance. As a developer you must know how prevalent bugs are and what games are like if they are released riddled with bugs like Cyberpunk was.

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This keeps people engaged with quicker releases, and let's them iterate on feedback much sooner. I know there are a lot of factors that go into content (artists, VA, designers, etc.), but I still think this is something that can be overcome at a quicker cadence.

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As you said, factors like concept art/story design > models/textures > placement of those models in a world to design the world > designing and creating the story and quests - you're looking at what is something like an 8 month process (this was mentioned in dev panels) and they also have to QA it to iron out thousands of bugs. So the bulk of it is taken up by that time anyway and would only be made faster by, say, a few months where they skip QA and let you play it riddled with critical bugs.

Where there are no critical bugs, there is value in a consistent schedule. It keeps it consistent, not just for developers but also for players who can predict the cycle and plan ahead when the subscribe. I personally like this, and many others do too.

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

They need to stop announcing "end of expansion" features before the expansion is even out.

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We know most of it is coming anyway because we can predict it based on precedent, so they may as well announce it.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

I guess this is one of those situations where no matter what, people are going to be upset.

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Very true.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Deadlines are important. You know this if you've ever so much as gone to a place of education. Without deadlines, humans often just kinda, don't do stuff. Since there is no pressure to get it done. Even if they don't release the deadline publicly, they have an internal one (we usually know what it is because we know when they released comparable content in every other expansion :D).

It tends to be completed months before that deadline normally. As you said, they wouldn't set a deadline they were not certain they could make, so if it's a new content type they don't always put an exact timeframe.

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Anyone who has played Blizzard games remember the saying "It will be done when it's done". This was because they released it when they felt it was ready to ship. However, shareholders, like everything else, don't see things the same way. This is why things get released when they shouldn't, not because the developers think it's ready.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Quality Assurance. As a developer you must know how prevalent bugs are and what games are like if they are released riddled with bugs like Cyberpunk was.

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See my quote above. If they felt the game was ready to go, they wouldn't have been in crunch time. They were timeboxed, like I said is an issue when you give a date and are forced to meet it, instead of giving a date when it's ready.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

As you said, factors like concept art/story design > models/textures > placement of those models in a world to design the world > designing and creating the story and quests - you're looking at what is something like an 8 month process (this was mentioned in dev panels) and they also have to QA it to iron out thousands of bugs. So the bulk of it is taken up by that time anyway and would only be made faster by, say, a few months where they skip QA and let you play it riddled with critical bugs.

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Faster by a few months is a pretty big order of magnitude. We've also seen with so much QA, bugs are getting through anyways that should be caught pretty quickly in QA. So either QA isn't doing well, or the timebox is causing issues. Pick your poison.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Where there are no critical bugs, there is value in a consistent schedule. It keeps it consistent, not just for developers but also for players who can predict the cycle and plan ahead when the subscribe. I personally like this, and many others do too.

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Every 2 weeks or every month is a consistent schedule too.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

Anyone who has played Blizzard games remember the saying "It will be done when it's done". This was because they released it when they felt it was ready to ship. However, shareholders, like everything else, don't see things the same way. This is why things get released when they shouldn't, not because the developers think it's ready.

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While it's true that a developer would usually say "it'll be done when it's done", once you've made the content before and have a good system for it, you can at least predict the max time it will likely take.

It's also true that there are companies that will say "release this content on schedule" even though it's not ready. That happened with Cyberpunk, obviously. It also happened with 1.0 of this game (many developers did not feel it was ready). Both were obviously a disaster.

But what I meant was the scheduling is very generous... they are done MONTHS in advance. In fact, when 5.0 was about to release (Shadowbringers), they said 5.1 was done! They actually said the first patch, due to release around 4 months later, was done! And that prevents the issue altogether.

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Faster by a few months is a pretty big order of magnitude.

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But as I said it prevents the issues that happened with Cyberpunk and 1.0.

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We've also seen with so much QA, bugs are getting through anyways that should be caught pretty quickly in QA. So either QA isn't doing well, or the timebox is causing issues.

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Their dev panels explained they reduce bugs from thousands down to a small number. The small number remaining is due to the timebox, otherwise they'd obviously have fixed them instead of listing them as "Known Issues". But most likely if they were given an extra month, they would still eventually find a new bug, because people always find bugs in software even years after development is complete.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

..... man, it's already February? Wasn't Christmas like a week ago?
https://imgur.com/qyobRQV.png

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Whoa... I was just thinking the exact same thought!

Normally, January drags on and on forever. But, this year it has flown by.

If time continues to speed by at this rate there will be daffodils and hyacinths in bloom next week. I'm not ready!

I want at least one more decent snowfall in Columbus this Winter. Someone push the brake pedal on this this thing!

Anywho, I'm very curious to hear about Beastmaster and hope it is implemented by Autumn of 2025. CS3 has had lots of opportunity to learn about limited jobs from its first experiment, Blue Mage. Let us all hope Beastmaster is better.

As an aside, I am also hoping CS3 reviews Blue Mages and makes them relevant again. Limited jobs have a place in FFXIV. Content should never be discarded once its been introduced, especially a job.

If it becomes apparent CS3 is unable to stick to providing support for a limited job, and keep pushing the work required to keep limited jobs relevant to the back of the triage line, then they should bite the bullet and make Blue Mage and Beastmaster regular jobs in 8.0.

they told us beastmaster will come late in the expansion. dont remember which live letter that was, but its probably not before 7.45... which means more than a year to wait