Why do people want Blue Mage in this game?

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Actually, in FF7, the summons could take up to 15 minutes to completely perform. You're also forgetting that in the early FFs, summons were too expensive and their damage was equal to magic-type 2.5, rather htan 3. they were useless starting about halfway into each game. /shrug

uhhhhh.......WHAT!?

[Chasely]

Knights of the Round. look it up. Took a VERY long time to cast. did a ton of damage, though.

[AlphaFox]

uhhhhh.......WHAT!?

Agreed, longest summon I recall is Knights of the Round and that is only at best 2minutes. 15 if you do some fancy materia quad summon jumbo.

However as for the talk of Summoners the only summoners I recall doing black magic were in Tactics off the top of my head or any FF game that allowed crossing of skills. We have to remember that what works in a single player game may not transfer well into a mmorpg setting. If summoners had the same power I think they would be the most dominant class with massive nukes or in PvP they would be laughed at for having such huge predictable hit zones or an automatic "First to kill". Blue magic, we have to remember is going to have to fit into the world we have, which is currently set to 1 new skill every 5 levels till 50. At best that is like 10 monsters (assuming it starts at 30) which means your other skills will either be given as you level with no real reason or they will play along side skills you have already (or were suppose to) learn at earlier levels. Assuming you skipped class quests.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Oh I completely forgot about the quad casting, but....at that point you might as well just wack things with your sword in half the time.

[Sicno]

The thing is, this is a new game with a new system, so jobs have to go through transformations. Some need more changes than others and in some cases some jobs may be unrecognizable. Sure, summoner has the tie-in of summoning an entity, and that's the extent of it. In practice it's a poison mage with a pet, and let's not even talk of post-50 summoner. So such jobs that get extreme deviations are there merely for poking at nostalgia. Such jobs could exist without using the name of classic jobs, but of course they're more impactful with the player base with a tie-in to the classics. So they're more of a marketing device than anything else.

With that in mind, what I'm saying is that people requesting blue mages: what aspect of blue mages as a class is it you want in the game? The gameplay aspect of fighting specific enemies and learning their skills? If they take that it'll be in the classic format of taking a class quest, going to a destination, using a key item or right clicking on a purple cloud to do a /lookout emote and wait for a few seconds, mob appears, kill it. Just like EVERY OTHER CLASS/JOB IN THE GAME DOES FOR THEIR QUESTS. The only unique thing for the blue mages quests may be if you actually have to get hit by an aoe before killing the mob, otherwise it's just the same as any other job in the game. The same way you learn warrior, bard, paladin, etc. skills.

Now, if all you want is some visual representation or even just a title, and ANY caster that has a blue cape will make you happy then go on, you may not be disappointed

[Mayoyama]

We're forgeting one thing. The community. Yes, we can have 100+ skills, and you have slots to put the Blue Magic and customize the skills. Now, there will be always "proprer" rotation. People will demand you do determinated skills rotations.

"Did you have got Goblin Punch"?
"Not yet.
"OMG, you cannot do the proper rotation without that. Don't you know you need use Goblin Punch -> Aqua breath -> Death Claw then the Flame Tower + Mind Blast to maximize DPS!!"

This is the problem .YOu can add all the skills you want to Blue Mage and let players personalize (it is a good idea eh), but people will stack with only one proper rotation because is the more efficient one, so, why have 100 skills? It is like the Egi. All people uses Garuda, no one uses Ifrit.

Like there wasnt this attitude in XI....

As a BLU in XI you just accepted that the expectation was for you to have every spell available, but you would only ever set maybe 12 of 100+ spells due to what was considered "best in slot"

[dinnertime]

Now, if all you want is some visual representation or even just a title, and ANY caster that has a blue cape will make you happy then go on, you may not be disappointed

I could say the same thing to all the people who actually want Red Mage to be a Mystic Knight with "Red Mage" as its name.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

You missed the point. The way summons work in the console FFs outside of X is that they're basically nukes with artwork instead of an explosion, or a 30-60 second cutscene in the PSX FF games (VII-IX). That's why the whole "feel like a summoner" claim is complete bullocks. Summons in the other FFs are basically pretty and time-consuming nukes.

Pretty, time consuming, and pretty much worthless. Even Knights of the Round is hilariously awful, with its only saving grace being the fact you get to cheap shot with the animation lock.

[Yasuhiro]

Words with question marks after nearly every sentence

"I want the Blue Mage to be dumbed down because this game has babied me through linear progression and it's out of my comfort zone"
Gotcha?

It may be surprising, but I'd guess there's plenty of folks who love the idea of a mage slinging monster attacks who are less than enchanted with the idea of having to pray to RNGesus for hours on end to learn new spells.

So the modern MMO Audience who have been babied through spoonfeeding? Welcome to post WoW MMO's I guess. That is not surprising at all, have you played any other Final Fantasy game? There's plenty of ways for a Blue Mage to bait spells, don't worry though if Blue Mage is ever this way I'm sure you can ask the dev team to have the spells for sale in Idyllshire if leaving that place for anything other than Midas Savage sounds intimidating.

This is because what actually makes a "true" Blue Mage is a lot less specific than you might think - and, of course, very subjective.

10 games with the Blue Mage I'll list them
Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy VII (Enemy Materia)
Final Fantasy VIII (Quistis)
Final Fantasy IX (Quina)
Final Fantasy X (Khimari)
Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Final Fantasy Tactics A2
And Braverly Default (Vampire)

All have the blue mage go out of their way to acquire skills I'd say that is pretty unique and a series staple for the job but ofcourse XIV being the special snowflake game has to say no to tradition.
I'd say this is a very specific trait of the Blue Mage.

Don't even get me started on why Red Mage wouldn't work in this game either.

I've been thinking about this as I've seen this topic come up of Blue Mages. And personally, I'm of the opinion that if the next expansion requires us to go to Ala Mhigo, I'm thinking that Blue Mage is a very solid and possible choice as the mage class.

So how does it work? Simple:

Instead of getting skills every x level, make it that at x level, you can unlock a skill by being attacked by said skill in the game. It might not be traditional BLU skills, but you use what your game has and incorporate the class into the game. That way, you're still getting attacked to get the skill, learn it, and your level 5 stuff could be enhancers to skills or some neat little feature to help empower the skill depending on what it does.

Just thinking outloud but you could easily just list a bunch of skills and you have to learn them by getting hit by them and surviving the battle (which would hinder having a high level sitting there and bringing you to get all the skills right away).

Just food for thought.

Best suggestion so far in this thread.

[Blackcanary]

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
No actual chance of discovering skills yourself.

It honeslty 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. Please don\\'t let this game butcher such an awesome job.

It was kind of the same thing in Final Fantasy 11 (well also the fact there was a list to let you know what mobs you had to kill).

I think SE could make it work you have a Hunting log for the mobs that have the spells you can learn. Only certain persefic important spells would be the ones you get from Job quest.

Not everyone plays WOW.