But it's a sword.

[Jerbob]

(Regarding single player FFs) That's because your melee is limited to just the Fight command and nothing else. By your logic the WAR action bars should be completely empty and PLD should only have the Cover skill.

I think this is so important! Melee combat is expanded upon in XIV to create all these other melee-capable jobs that ordinarily would be boiled down to the classic "menu of four options", of which only one would be direct attacking. RDM's melee combat should be expanded as well, in proportion to its original capability.

Also, consider why a lot of people focused on RDM's magic in single player games, instead of its melee ability. It's the same reason people sometimes complain about WHM being "the pure healer" in XIV - you only need so much magical support. If you can get all of your magical needs in RDM, it efficiently replaces other mages in one slot, so you can go all out on your physical attackers elsewhere. I know this is a hyper-generalisation and that there are many exceptions, but I think it's a significant contributing factor to RDM's pattern of use.

As for RDM itself, the job has always been defined by two aspects: a blend of offensive (traditionally black) and supportive (traditionally white) magic, and being tougher (via medium armour) and physically more capable (via the sword) than your traditional mage. The idea of "fast cast", "double cast" etc is a more recent but nonetheless iconic feature as well. You just have to look at all the artistic depictions to know it's not "just a mage".

I'd argue that the mix of magics is not fully represented. In the context of RDM, "White Magic" has consistently referred to the support magic, not XIV's geomancy-style interpretation of nature magic. Aero has sometimes been White Magic in FF history, certainly, but again - this is not what "White Magic" in the RDM context refers to. No-one in good faith can claim that RDM has ever had access to only the offensive White Magic spells. It's explicitly support that this refers to, and XIV RDM's support options are extremely limited (though, admittedly, functional in what they are intended to do).

Is the "tougher and more physically capable" aspect represented? Again I'd argue no. How much time is XIV RDM's sword an actual sword? How often is it reasonably accessible, by design? Is auto-attacking an intended part of the job? It's quite clearly a tacked-on feature to tick a box, and not a major design, aesthetic or mechanical feature. And, as far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong), RDM is no more resilient or tough than BLM or SMN. Being a martial job is the only thing that separates RDM from other magical hybrids like the Sage - without the sword, and all it represents, you don't have RDM. You have one of those other hybrids.

I do really like the dualcast though. If it synergised with the martial aspect better I'd like it more, but this bit I do feel has been done nicely. That box is ticked for me.

Of course, XIV is an MMO - a very role-restrictive one, at that - and so naturally questions should be raised. Should a DD in XIV have lots of support magic, expanded beyond the bare minimum? Should it be able to blend the roles and not be so utterly imprisoned by its designation as a "ranged caster"? Should it be able to cast spells and not have a traditional "mage weapon"? Should a job with "mage" in the name be allowed to be on the front lines?

If having a support-heavy DD or a close-combat hybrid caster is something that people think isn't feasible, isn't appropriate, or just wouldn't work in XIV, do not add RDM. Don't try to crush it into a box that it just doesn't fit in. Just do Sage instead. Unless, of course, you're trying to cash in on a popular image. Then rip off a few limbs, glue on a feathered chapeau, and implement it a bit like this. Ka-ching!

[Fyce]

This is FFXIV's intepretation of Red Mage, keeping the actual lore in mind. FFXIV's RDM is well made and does respect Red Mages's main characteristic of being a mage able to use both Black and White magic while still having a bit of sword usage.
It's not because it doesn't exactly fit 15-30 years old games that it's not a Red Mage.

I think that people arguing on what a RDM is should first try to undersand what FFXIV is.
The context is not "RDM", it's "FFXIV".

[Jerbob]

The context is not "RDM", it's "FFXIV".

I would like to think that I understand what XIV is - my argument would be that if RDM doesn't fit XIV, then it shouldn't be in XIV. Changing fundamental aspects of the job just to squash it in to XIV's restrictive environment isn't doing RDM any favours. I fundamentally disagree that XIV is some sort of special snowflake installment - it's different, certainly, but that doesn't mean the entirety of established FF job history needs to warp around it.

I'm also not sure how it can be justifiably argued that RDM's existance in XIV isn't an RDM issue, at least in part.

[Fyce]

I fundamentally disagree that XIV is some sort of special snowflake installment - it's different, certainly, but that doesn't mean the entirety of established FF job history needs to warp around it.

So, basically, you are saying that because a Final Fantasy MMORPG cannot exactly replicate how Red Mage was in a 15-30 years old solo, turn-based opus, with different lore regarding magic, then it doesn't have the right to exists?
So what? Should they simply delete the job? Should they rename it "That job that can use Black and White magic while hitting with its sword from time to time but is totally not Red Mage"? That's quite a long name.

Besides, there are countless things in FFXIV which are taken from older Final Fantasy and do not like they were. Monsters, and especially bosses are a prime example.

This is not the Red Mage from FF, FFIII, FFV or whatever. This is FFXIV's Red Mage.
And yes, FFXIV is a special snowflake. Every Final Fantasy in this series is a special snowflake.

[Carstien]

We need to think of the floor space though. You have 2 melee and 2 tanks around the boss' hitbox, adding a 5th permanent member to that small area will overcrowd it, and since most comps will run two melee then you are basically asking to encroach on real estate that isn't yours, people will die when aoe's go off, or lose dps. Either way, it isn't optimal.

I do understand wanting to use the sword more, but this is an mmo, and RDM has been designated as a caster not a melee, at range with all that space is where they belong. It's safer for the entire raid.

[Hyrist]

Red Mage won't be full time frontline. Just won't happen. At this point, people who are stubbornly holding onto that are asking for a full class re-write. And, given where the majority opinion is now? It's not likely to gain enough momentum. Some adjustments maybe, but we're not talking Ranged Physical rework levels.

Put your bets on Blue Mage or Mystic Knight for that sort of idea. There's no basis in fact that promotes RDM being full-time Melee. None of its mechanics, single player or otherwise have promoted this. Even FFXI's Red Mage, even when you pushed it melee, front-loads a large period of time casting to enhance their melee ability - which isn't much different than what Red Mage does here, baring in mind that FFXIV is a global cooldown centrist game, (which is not much different than turn-based, Duelle) where as FFXI is auto-attack centered.

[Jerbob]

So, basically, you are saying that because a Final Fantasy MMORPG cannot exactly replicate how Red Mage was in a 15-30 years old solo, turn-based opus, with different lore regarding magic, then it doesn't have the right to exists?

I suppose I am, yes. I mean, obviously it doesn't have to be exactly the same - that would be absurd - but when the implementation of RDM in this game starts to overlap heavily with other historical jobs (such as Sage, and even straight up Black Mage) then I think there's a problem.

I mean, as a genuine question, would you (or 90% of people on this forum) be accepting of a true hybrid implementation of RDM? I may well be wrong, but I truly doubt that would be considered acceptable, and I can understand why people might feel that way. This game forces defined and very rigid roles upon jobs, which makes hybridisation unwelcome. For a job practically defined by its hybrid nature in every game it's been in, I can't see how that can work without either XIV or RDM being altered in some way. I'd genuinely rather RDM not be a thing than something different be added with an RDM label glued onto it. I think this must be where our feelings differ.

I'm not saying they should delete the job - it's here to stay, for better for worse, and it'd be ridiculous to do that. People are already playing it, and a lot of people clearly enjoy it. But I do really wish that the developers would be more considerate when implementing jobs. They seem to think that XIV is special enough that it can not only re-implement jobs (as all FF games have), but completely reinterpret them (eg SMN). I take exception to that - if they want to have something new, or something that fits perfectly, they can just create something new, and give it a new name. They say they want to be more creative! They did that with AST, and though there have been some mechanical issues there as well, there have not been problems with totally deviating from established themes - there aren't any for AST, after all.

As for your question of naming, I will confess I don't really know what to call it, because I think it's a bit of a mess. The black magic is certainly there, but the white magic is debatably present (Aero and Stone being white magic in XIV but certainly not support magic, which is what RDM is supposed to be blended with). The martial aspect is... present, sort of, but in such a way that it could easily not be, and 90% of the time isn't - it seems to be a concession, not an integral aspect.

Besides, there are countless things in FFXIV which are taken from older Final Fantasy and do not like they were. Monsters, and especially bosses are a prime example.

Agreed - though I would argue that, though iconic, a lot of these things are less detailed or complex than jobs themselves. A coeurl is a coeurl is a coeurl - as long as it's a cat thing with funky whiskers I'm going to be relatively happy. Change it too much and I won't be - just make something new instead, if it's got to be different! I don't think that's unreasonable. Besides, a monster or a boss is kind of a one-shot affair - it needs to be cool, fun, terrifying, or whatever, but it's not there in front of you every day. A job is something that a player interacts with on a much for fundamental level. It's your interface into the game - it's got to be right. There are certain things you expect to get when you hear the name of a certain job.

This is FFXIV's Red Mage.

I particularly dislike it when this argument is used (no personal offense remotely intended). I heard it a lot in SMN-related threads as well. I mean, of course, each installment of Final Fantasy is going to make some changes - it should, or we'd all be rebuying Final Fantasy I completely unaltered every few years - but, if I may use a metaphor, there's a certain point at which after making lots of changes to the design of a car, it's more like a boat, and you can't really call it a car any more. If FFXIV's Red Mage is going to be that different, then call it something else, and leave the door open to a more faithful rendition.

Red Mage won't be full time frontline. Just won't happen. At this point, people who are stubbornly holding onto that are asking for a full class re-write.

I know it probably won't happen, but these forums are supposedly about feedback, and this is something that I've found quite disappointing, not to mention a bit of a trend where job design is involved. I don't think the futility of expressing my opinions means that I just shouldn't do it. Besides, it's always interesting to see what other people are thinking about the subject.

Put your bets on Blue Mage or Mystic Knight for that sort of idea.

Given this development team's track record for "reimagining" jobs, I'm not sure I can confidently expect either of these jobs to be anything like what I might reasonably imagine. It just takes someone at FFXIV HQ to say "well, Blue Mage doesn't really fit our vision of XIV" - which I am fairly confident the producer literally has said to us at one point - and we could well end up with something just as baffling as this RDM implementation.

[Saito_S]

I'd genuinely rather RDM not be a thing than something different be added with an RDM label glued onto it. I think this must be where our feelings differ.

I'd say that this is indeed where feelings differ.

Really, a big issue in these discussions is that the questions, "to what degree does FFXIV RDM fulfill, or fail to fulfill, the core concept of a Red Mage?" and "How important is it that the class fulfill that concept?" are a matter of opinion. I've been playing FF games for ages, it's definitely my most played series out of all game franchises I've played. Yet I absolutely love FFXIV RDM. I'd been struggling to pick a main for a while during the lead-up to SB (I'd been mostly playing NIN, and while I still find the class fun, I've figured out that it's just not for me, not for my primary class). And then in walked RDM, and I was over the moon on it almost immediately. I find it very fun, and I have no problem whatsoever with its implementation re: how much it "feels like" a Red Mage, in terms of the FF series as a whole.

A casting-class that has a faster pace than BLM, that uses a "maintain balance" mechanic, and can leap in to deliver strong melee attacks, before leaping back out again. That's what I wanted, that's what I expected from the previews before SB landed, and that's what I got.

There's a larger point of disconnection here, as well, at least for me:

Given this development team's track record for "reimagining" jobs, I'm not sure I can confidently expect either of these jobs to be anything like what I might reasonably imagine.

Clearly, you are pulling out the dev team's "track record" as a negative, as if to say, given how they've handled the implementation of other classic FF jobs, you wouldn't hold out much hope for an XIV Blue Mage or Mystic Knight. I don't agree with that, either - more generally, not just as it applies to RDM. I have no problem whatsoever with the XIV interpretation of DRK, SAM, etc... with any classic FF job, really. With the possible exception of Summoner. Given how big a deal "summons" have been in SO MANY FF games, reducing the summoning aspect of a class called "summoner" in an FF game down to the egi's is a misstep. So I'll grant that. But for me, that's basically the only one.

So I suppose that's my point. I'm not going to tell anyone they HAVE to like RDM, but I feel there's a bit of unfairness at times in the other direction. It feels like "You should stop having fun with RDM, because it's badly implemented and isn't a true RDM." That's something that each of us gets to decide for themselves.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Red Mage won't be full time frontline.

I didn't realize asking to actually feel the sword properly integrated into the kit and to feel like a completely natural part of the job instead of an atrophied second limb was asking for it to be full time melee.

All you're doing with that ridiculous statement is cementing the fact no one can really concretely justify the current bland design of RDM. I don't want a full time ranged. I don't want a full time melee. I want an RDM that actually uses their blade as more than a token mana dump.

Give the spells interesting mechanics that supports the melee aspect. Give the melee aspect mechanics that support their spellcasting. They advertised the job as a hybrid melee/ranged that would need to quickly dance between the two zones, not a budget BLM with a laughable number of identical spells. What we have now would be better described as a Sage, not an RDM.

[Fyce]

-snip-

I said that people shoud try to understand what Final Fantasy XIV is. What I meant is that Final Fantasy XIV has its own lore, especially regarding magic. That's completly fine. Not all Final Fantasy share the exact same way of dealing with lore and magic. FFXIV also takes some elements from the oldest FF, such as the job system. This is also totally fine, it even fits quite well with the MMORPG genre.

But here's the thing: when the FFXIV team want to implement something, no matter if it takes a reference from older games or not, the question they ask themselves isn't "how can we copy that as much as we can?". It's more a question about how to interpret it, "how would that thing be in our lore?"
In short, when I say that this RDM is the RDM of Final Fantasy XIV, I mean that this is the vision of how RDM would be if it was in FFXIV. Which is why it doesn't have to be a copy.

I think that this is what you cannot accept. You cannot accept that a class/job isn't a copy from the oldest games, even if it obviously can't be since the lore is different. And I'm not even talking about gameplay, which in itself justify a lot of changes.

So, for RDM, they asked themselves "What a RDM is?" - "A character that can dualcast black and white magic, as well as some swordsmanship skills". If you go too much in detail about "what kind of black/white magic" or "what amount of each kind of spells", then obviously you break everything as it cannot fit given the established lore and rules of FFXIV.

I think they actually did a pretty good job at adapting/interpreting that.

SMN is an example where they initially failed at representing, I think. But with Demi-Bahamut, they tried to get the "you summon something powerful for a short time that goes away after" aspect. So, SMN is improving certainly.
DRK, on the other hand, completly fails at being this character which can use HP to deal damage. They also tried something with the "blood gauge" which kinds of remind of that, but it doesn't translate in the gameplay.
SCH is probably the worse. "Scanning" enemies to find weaknesses to exploit isn't there at all. One might argue that Chain Stratagem is SE's way of trying something, but yeah, it's not much. But the Fairy and the shields are way too strong that FFXIV's Scholar now has its very own identity. And that, I think, is a failure in terms of how to adapt SCH in FFXIV.

So yeah, after these three, I can safely say that RDM isn't that bad represented.