SE, the concept of "Limited Jobs" is a really bad idea, turn back now

[BlitzAceRush]

I still think there could be a way to have both—open-world/solo play where you run around and learn all these different mob abilities, and then matched group-play/raiding where you have a set arsenal of skills that are used and balanced against the other DPS jobs (and that you do learn throughout your BLU travels via quests or something similar), so that both parties can enjoy the new job.

Sadly, that would take extra development time.

I get what you mean, but wouldn't that just kind of defeat the point?
"You get all theses cool abilities to learn and find!"
"Except for when you set foot in here, then you only have these ones, oh and they work differently then they did outside of here too."
At that point you'd effectively have two separate classes trying to live in one, it would be SCH and SMN all over again, only you get forced into one depending on being in the over world or an instance.

[Belhi]

I get what you mean, but wouldn't that just kind of defeat the point?
"You get all theses cool abilities to learn and find!"
"Except for when you set foot in here, then you only have these ones, oh and they work differently then they did outside of here too."
At that point you'd effectively have two separate classes trying to live in one, it would be SCH and SMN all over again, only you get forced into one depending on being in the over world or an instance.

This is the problem I see with this concept too.

[HyoMinPark]

I get what you mean, but wouldn't that just kind of defeat the point?
"You get all theses cool abilities to learn and find!"
"Except for when you set foot in here, then you only have these ones, oh and they work differently then they did outside of here too."
At that point you'd effectively have two separate classes trying to live in one, it would be SCH and SMN all over again, only you get forced into one depending on being in the over world or an instance.

I imagine that the skills you retain in group content are the same as the ones you obtain in open-world—you just cannot retain all of the skills (due to the skew in “This BLU has all the good skills” and “This BLU only has half of them”) and/or need to have the required ones to enter the content (again, going back to addressing the problems with skew), and the skills you keep are scaled so as to not make the job overpowered in content (i.e., their power is balanced against the power of the other DPS jobs). Not that their inherent function is different.

Well worded, hyperbolic, inaccurate, demanding. It's an eloquent tantrum, but a tantrum none the less. And yes the can make classless content for non raiders, that doesn't mean that has to be the only content for non raiders.

With regards to the raiders argument, speaking for myself:

I only raid on BRD and occasionally AST. While I was indifferent to BLU, I don’t find myself enjoying the job as much if I’m limited only to premades or open-world content. Open-world can only be so interesting, since all we have to go on right now is killing mobs and participating in FATEs (and I guess sidequests if you haven’t done those already—I’m assuming we can do sidequests with BLU?). I’d like to be able to take it into other things without having to find 3/7/23 (assuming we can take them into 24-mans under the criteria that it’s a full alliance party) people to do it with. I have friends I play with, but still...

I don’t even want it to raid on—the jobs I raid on are limited to one 95% of the time and the other 5% of the time. I just want to play it normally as you would any other job (i.e., I can participate in random-matching duties with it).

[Valdegarde]

I get what you mean, but wouldn't that just kind of defeat the point?
"You get all theses cool abilities to learn and find!"
"Except for when you set foot in here, then you only have these ones, oh and they work differently then they did outside of here too."
At that point you'd effectively have two separate classes trying to live in one, it would be SCH and SMN all over again, only you get forced into one depending on being in the over world or an instance.

It defeats the point far less than it not functioning as a job in the first place.
To put it in comparison, I like Monk's Somersault PvP action, it's a cool little Tifa reference and I'm sad that they don't get to use it outside PvP. That does not mean Monk should be a PvP only job.

[kikix12]

I get what you mean, but wouldn't that just kind of defeat the point?

It wouldn't actually. And that's what I've been saying from the moment the Live Letter ended and the flood of negativity hit the forums.

Many skills will be overpowered, yes. But some of the skills will not. Have these non-overpowered skills form some sort of "progression". You still gain them in the exact same way. The Blue Mage would not be changed at all from how it is. But they would count towards the skills you should have at X level.

If you do, in addition to doing any content the 4.5 Blue Mage can in the exact same way (aka. complete freedom in pre-made parties etc.), you get the ability to use Duty Finder but at the cost of using a pre-made, balanced build. Anywhere outside the PvP (which is separate on its own and I think they will release a PvP "build" anyway, once they catch up to the levels as much as they plan on), Deep Dungeon and Duty Roulette you can use any and all your skills as you please. Inside these three, you are limited like any other class but at least you can use them.

This maximizes the amount of stuff that Blue Mage can utilize, while minimizing the time and costs of making it such, both on players and developers. After all, if you are only interested in the Duty Finder, you can only look for those abilities you need for it and have a normal class with unique learning mechanics.

Of course, it's possible that a "grace period" for current raids and such would need to be implemented where you can only use the pre-made build even in pre-made parties, just so that Blue Mage wouldn't completely wreck the most current content making it virtually "mandatory" for the meta.