Thank you for making Blue Mage unique!

[FlatArtiq]

Man I love playing solo in my MMO

[InkstainedGwyn]

Man I love playing solo in my MMO

To be fair, my thoughts and feelings on BLU aside, there are plenty of folks who apparently do. That's why we get threads every new MSQ patch pleading with the devs to stop putting dungeons and trials in MSQ, because they can't handle being forced to group with other players for 45m per patch.

Edit: There's even currently a thread on the front page asking for solo versions of every class, so... ?

[SDaemon]

Man I love playing solo in my MMO

Enough people have voiced that opinion for SE to implement the Trust system. Can't be that uncommon of a feeling.

[Belhi]

Man I love playing solo in my MMO

There are a lot of solo players in MMOs. A lot of players are less interested in MMOs for their multiplayer aspect and more interested in their game as a service aspect. Generally very few solo games are continually updated and supported for years.

[WellFooled]

Saying they're jerks is wrong. You could say the person who refuses to use the optimum build is a jerk because it forces the rest of their team to work harder if they don't.

The game isn't limited because of jerks. I think SE recognise that a lot of mmos have customisable features that are actually locked into very limited uses by cookie cutter builds the community figures out. Having everyone use the same build really makes these custom features pretty irrelevant.

I don't think its wrong when the situation presented was specifically toxicity, but you're right, the other end of the spectrum does exist. In fact it exists right now. You have players all the time who don't know their rotations or who insist on playing Ice Mages. Just like you can't design a system to be jerk proof you also can't design one to be idiot proof. FFXIV doesn't assume players can't understand a rotation and so it keeps rotations in the game instead of removing them.

However, I would argue that it's possible to add customization to the game without allowing it to get to the point of totally invalid builds. As an example, consider a simple skill tree as used in other MMOs. Imagine a class at level 10 gets to pick between a 15% passive speed buff, a charge skill like Monk's fire tackle, or an ability that makes you immune to the next AoE you hit. All three are utility moves, mostly designed to work around AoE. One just makes it a little easier all the time, one lets you get back into the fight after dodging an AoE and deal a little extra damage, one makes it so you don't need to move at all occasionally. None are useless, some are more useful than others in some fights while being less useful in others.

[Belhi]

I don't think its wrong when the situation presented was specifically toxicity, but you're right, the other end of the spectrum does exist. In fact it exists right now. You have players all the time who don't know their rotations or who insist on playing Ice Mages. Just like you can't design a system to be jerk proof you also can't design one to be idiot proof. FFXIV doesn't assume players can't understand a rotation and so removes rotations from the game.

However, I would argue that it's possible to add customization to the game without allowing it to get to the point of totally invalid builds. As an example, consider a simple skill tree as used in other MMOs. Imagine a class at level 10 gets to pick between a 15% passive speed buff, a charge skill like Monk's fire tackle, or an ability that makes you immune to the next AoE you hit. All three are utility moves, mostly designed to work around AoE. One just makes it a little easier all the time, one lets you get back into the fight after dodging an AoE and deal a little extra damage, one makes it so you don't need to move at all occasionally. None are useless, some are more useful than others in some fights while being less useful in others.

Most mainstream MMOs that use the model FF14 uses have progressively stripped back a lot of the 'customisation'. Just look at WoW. Yeah sure they have 'talent trees' but they tend to be rather dull variance and almost always there is one clearly superior to the others in most cases. I am not saying FF14 couldn't do with a bit more though. I do think FF14 has gone a bit too far into playing it safe. That said, considering their issues often with Job balance maybe they are just afraid of complicating things further by adding more variables.

However there is a difference between a bit more customisation and what in reality BLU is. BLU just doesn't fit the structure and the role structure exists for a reason.

[FlatArtiq]

There are a lot of solo players in MMOs. A lot of players are less interested in MMOs for their multiplayer aspect and more interested in their game as a service aspect. Generally very few solo games are continually updated and supported for years.

then why play an MMO? we have the technology that you never have to say a single word in order to group up for content. you press a button and the game finds players for you . the goal in an MMO is to accomplish things together with friends, or strangers that will become friends after hard work together. if you are slowely demanding everything to be solo then in the end you are paying a monthly sub for a single player game where you can just see other people walking

[Saefinn]

Well I think there are positives. SE are breaking the mould, which is what they have needed to do as things have gotten formulaic, otherwise they'll keep using the same formula and Blue Mage would be a very challenging job to do using their existing formula and there are other jobs that are the same in the Final Fantasy repertoire, so I admire that they're trying to work in a way for jobs to feel as though they ought. Now, as I feel they hit the nail on the head with RDM and SAM and with some of the job changes in Stormblood like BRD, SMN and PLD where I think they ended up moving closer to how those jobs should play, so I have faith they know what they're doing...to an extent, because there are jobs where they do not (MNK, MCH, WHM come to mind). And with SMN I think suffers from there being those who love the DoT mage with a pet (akin to WoW's Affliction Warlock) and those who want the focus to be on the summons as in more traditional Final Fantasys. This system does open up potential for an alternative version of Summoner to satisfy the latter without annoying the former.

How they've implemented the job itself sounds positive (it sounds like it may be a true-to-life Blue Mage). But I understand the controversy and is also why I have reservations of my own, as on who has long awaited Blue Mage, but I can see how this -can- work and hope SE do make it work. Their track record makes me nervous but I won't join the naysaying just yet. Once I get my mitts on it, I am sure I will have a better idea of how this will pan out.

[Penthea]

then why play an MMO? we have the technology that you never have to say a single word in order to group up for content. you press a button and the game finds players for you . the goal in an MMO is to accomplish things together with friends, or strangers that will become friends after hard work together. if you are slowely demanding everything to be solo then in the end you are paying a monthly sub for a single player game where you can just see other people walking

You are making the mistake of thinking that people who want solo content only want solo content. I love group content but sometimes I want to do stuff on my own. I want to do things at my own pace, be chill, listen to music and reboot a bit before I do group content again. I also find it satisfying to do some things by myself instead of having to always rely on others to help me do things.

Sure mmos' primary goal is to provide group content and encourage people to make teams and friends, but it's not the only goal. A good dev team knows their game has several types of players and they have several types of needs.

[WellFooled]

Most mainstream MMOs that use the model FF14 uses have progressively stripped back a lot of the 'customisation'. Just look at WoW. Yeah sure they have 'talent trees' but they tend to be rather dull variance and almost always there is one clearly superior to the others in most cases. I am not saying FF14 couldn't do with a bit more though. I do think FF14 has gone a bit too far into playing it safe. That said, considering their issues often with Job balance maybe they are just afraid of complicating things further by adding more variables.

However there is a difference between a bit more customisation and what in reality BLU is. BLU just doesn't fit the structure and the role structure exists for a reason.

I admit, I'm mostly upset that the first hope of a job that has customization, something I've longed for in this game since I first started playing it, was immediately snuffed out because of the Limited Job concept. Maybe Blue Mage as designed so far is indeed not something that can exist in the current structure, but there must be a happy medium somewhere between complete ability freedom and the strict zero customization situation the other battle jobs are in. Some happy medium that we can actually use as a full time job.