Why do people want Blue Mage in this game?

[Lucke]

Hmm, part of me hated the way you'd learn spells in XI. You had to grab a couple friendos, stopping them from doing whatever they wanted to do so you could go hunt mobs for 6 hours. After which, you still don't have the spell. I'd rather go with a Lancet ability like Kimhari. Have it heal a couple hundred HP and MP, nothing OP, with a chance of learning an ability. Could also explore the world and kill mobs solo instead of pulling friendos away from what they are doing.

Job quests could offer abilities like Lancet first, followed by X-Eater buffs - self buffs that boost dmg against certain mob types.

[Evangela]

Because this game is not FFXI.

[Lemuria]

Hmm.. .No. it's actually because Yoshi-P wants all jobs to have access to the same number of skills. Giving SMN, for instance, 7-8 primals to choose from would give them more utility than the jobs that don't have access to primals.

A terribly poor example, since Egi's automatically give the summoner 4 new skills for the price of 1 slot, and the number of player-usable skills could still remain the same even with a larger number of summons. Again, lack of imagination.

There's a simple way to get around the 'number of skills' issue, and that's to simply limit the number of skills that can be set at any one time. Have a large pool to draw from, but a set number of slots, and specific skills to fit in each slot. This would allow the trademark Blue Mage customization without having more skills than other players. Naturally, this should only be interchangeable whilst in a sanctuary to avoid on-the-fly alterations.

I think one of the problems facing the game is that there is only one 'correct' way to play a job. There's little to no flexibility, which is a bad thing in an MMO where the players want to be individuals. Even the cross-class skills are highly limiting and nailed down to prevent experimentation. The sooner SE breaks out of their own prison, the sooner this game can get its own personality instead of borrowing flavours of other games.

[Enkidoh]

I don't think these classic FF jobs in FFXIV are butchered at all. Pray tell how they are butchered?
Most of them became actually more interesting than whatever FF game's counterpart had to offer. Some weren't possible with the kind of combat we have but worked out so well.

Because it's not how FFXI does it - the ones who generally make this complaint are mostly stuck-in-the-mud FFXI fans who are in denial that each FF game interprets the Job classes differently and in their own way. FFXI Jobs were powerful but for a long time many were utterly broken due to oversights by Tanaka's original team (mostly because he did not understand that a MMO requires a totally different design paradigm from the single-player games he was a master of and used as the basis for FFXI, particularly FFIII.).

Because of this oversight, FFXI players worked out certain aspects of Job abilities and exploited them to make use of them in ways SE did not plan that Job for - the NIN's Utsusemi ability being abused to turn the Job (a Job SE had actually intended to be a DPS/debuffing class) into a so-called 'Blink tank' is an example of this.

Thus certain Jobs that might have worked well in earlier FF games (specifically FFXI), due to how FFXIV's design has been executed, would not work well here, BLU and RDM being examples. Either way, Yoshi will probably work out a way to introduce these Jobs into the game in a new way that fits FFXIV and works, but which will not be how certain players expect it to be (ala they won't work like they do in FFXI).

[Ragology]

There's a simple way to get around the 'number of skills' issue, and that's to simply limit the number of skills that can be set at any one time. Have a large pool to draw from, but a set number of slots, and specific skills to fit in each slot. This would allow the trademark Blue Mage customization without having more skills than other players. Naturally, this should only be interchangeable whilst in a sanctuary to avoid on-the-fly alterations.

This could work. I guess the categories would be something like

Conal AOE (bad breath, overpower with wind up, gaze attack)
Self buff
360 AOE ( 1000 needles, self destruct)
Ranged AOE
Free slot

[Duelle]

How about we go over what the Blue Mage is all about.
The Blue Mage is a mage that uses monster skills

Fixed. Anything else is smoke and mirrors. The job's sole raison d'etre is to use monster skills. As long as the job uses monster skills, it's a Blue Mage.

And there's tons of spells you can learn.

The bulk of which existed only to take up space and were ridiculously situational. This works in a single-player RPG because a) you don't have to worry about individual balance and b) it gives the player a reason to grind blue magic spells if they are so inclined to (something even I fell into with FFVI and FFVII).

XI's rendition sort of worked around this by making traits gained from spell sets a key point to a build. Even then I'd call it a tentative success since it also led to builds having one or two "bad" spells just for the traits they yield.

How do you earn skills in XIV? you level up or get them from job quests
And should Blue Mage ever be in this game you'd just be learning skills from Job quests
>Defeat 5 Goblins in Dravania Hinterlands
>Well done adventurer! You've now earned the skill Goblin Punch

Not really.

Pulling from my own writeup for BLU, the lv40 quest would eventually lead to a solo fight against a marlboro that is there for story purposes (either directly involved in the story or a powerful monster that interrupts what you are investigating). After defeating it you get a cut scene where you absorb the marlboro in a Shang Tsung "your soul is mine!" way, and the quest ends with the Greater Blue Magic spell Bad Breath as your reward.

You can plausibly build things up to feel meaningful through story, believe it or not.

This could work. I guess the categories would be something like

Conal AOE (bad breath, overpower with wind up, gaze attack)
Self buff
360 AOE ( 1000 needles, self destruct)
Ranged AOE
Free slot

The problem with this is that you run the risk of making skills too similar to each other by categorizing them like that. The fact XIV's class design is dependent on ability synergy via mechanics also makes that approach more challenging.

[Kacho_Nacho]

It honestly sounds like the only people asking for it are Ex- WoW players just discovering that there's more games than just Final Fantasy XIV and they're echoing what they've seen on the Final Fantasy wiki or something.

That's got to be the oddest assertion I've read on these forums.

It's far more reasonable to assume the clamoring is arising out of the nostalgia of players who have played prior versions of Final Fantasy. They have fond memories of the class and wish to play it again.
As far as how classes like blue mage, red mage, dancer, etc... would operate in FFXIV is anyone's guess. The classes would need to be altered significantly in order to work. Personally, I feel FFXIV has all its niches filled and no additional classes should be added. Think about it. What could be added to this game and not be redundant with another job?

[Yasuhiro]

It honestly sounds like you have a disturbing lack of imagination.

Um, you don't know me so don't go around saying stuff like that and it's pretty worrying if you're disturbed by it.
That would mean this game would have to have customization which this game even for a Final Fantasy title has an extreme lack off, you expect them to do all that for one single class? Lel. It's not about having a lack of imagination it's called being realistic.

Except that's a completely appropriate reaction to the comment.

No it's some guy with nothing important to say looking to raise his post count and get likes because people recognize that epic reddit meme. Could have posted somethign related to the Bluemage or give his two cents on how it could work in XIV.

And BLU is about a lot more than "how do I get my skills?" It's about how the job would play once you do. If anything, that might be where it falls apart within 14's framework.

A Blue Mage is unique because it learns its skill from enemies that's what makes the class fun to play in Final Fantasy V going out of your way to discover what skills you can learn so I'd rather talk about that before we go on about how the skills would be used. Yeah jobs do evolve in other Final Fantasy games but when people are saying "It's okay! Just get the skills from job quests!" Totally looks like a downgrade from other games the Blue Mage has been in, why do people who play this game go wild for linear progression?

[Alistaire]

Look, there's like 5+ ppl here saying your assertation was weird enough for that reaction pic.

[Warlyx]

in FFXIV that wouldnt happen since u learn skills while leveling and from quests....guess quest would involve killing a mob and learning it 100%.

FFXIV however could mix spells and create interesting combos , lets say bomb toss , u can modify it to be single target 2s casting time 400 potency , 200 aoe , to do less dmg and put a fire dot ,do 50 dmg but stun.

a healing spell could be centered on the blu (like assize) , targeted heal , or a hot like regen.

that would make blu a interesting class .....however we are playing FFXIV , and hybrids are forbidden....