4.5 will be huge

[Hyperia]

Its a forever.

They said too many of those skill are gamebreaking and would totaly destroy the content without a sweat.

The whole job is balanced to be a solo mob wrecker and can't find his place in a party. Limited Job is a new concept on his own, Blue mage is part of it and will be forever if he's not totaly rework to be a normal job ditching a year of work to the trash and needing another year to be completely rework. All we can expect is another jobs to be limited in the future cause "we can't make it work like a normal job".

Its pretty easy to make monsters immune to various mechanics. As a PLD I have Hallowed Ground, some boss mechanics cut right through my immunity and kill me regardless if I have it up or not. There are bosses that are immune to my Provoke and Flash mechanics, such as bosses in Eureka. As others have said, if there is enough demand for it, the developers will try and make it work.

The expansion and patch 4.5 really is build around the theme, "Give them what they wanted".

Wants fulfilled or mostly fulfilled:
* Vierra
* BLU - mostly
* Ihgard Housing
* DOH/DOL high end content
* Making "Friends" of the Scions
* Being able to play with friends on other servers, its not perfect but its a start and can be refined
* Dramatic changes - Yoshi's clearly been reading more Game of Thrones again (Good thing)
* Addressing server lag / data center issues - yes this one is a mixed bag but there trying for better or for worse
* Many more features to come - 2 more Fanfests to go

As you can see, they are really trying hard to give us what we want with what resources they have. SE took a big hit financially and are now depending on XIV to help them through their rough times. That means they are going to keep us "fed and happy" so we will continue to pay subscriptions, there will be more pretties to buy in the Mogstation, etc.

[Astarotha]

we can do everything but pvp (ew) and potd up to 50 using pf, we just cant roulette or df atm, which wont be an issue in asia where nobody uses df, but here where everybody and their dog uses df for everything, its more of an issue, im hoping once they see blum being used a ton in partied content and have the data they would need to balance them they can remove that restriction

once that happens pvp is rather simple, you take 10-12 of the most iconic blue mage spells and balance them for pvp, boom done
potd/hoh, if the job is balanced for pve and partied content then itll steamroll those like any other party thats not running around like chickens with their heads cut off

[Nariel]

snip

Sure its "easy", still they choose to don't do it and make the BLU a solo job to play mostly in a BLU only instance and balance it for this and only this with a weakness exloiting and ability learning gameplay.

SE don't depend on FFXIV to survive, mobile apps are the true deal for them and they make far more money than their MMO ever does from them, they publish so many other game with or without it being their license its ridiculous. Just look at how many game have a SE brand on it.

Sure they give us what we hoped to get, don't change the fact they do their way and very rarely go back on already release content. So many complaign about Eureka and still being trash every patch.

[Saefinn]

SE don't depend on FFXIV to survive, mobile apps are the true deal for them and they make far more money than their MMO ever does from them, they publish so many other game with or without it being their license its ridiculous. Just look at how many game have a SE brand on it.

I think to say "they make far more money than their MMO ever does from them" is an exaggeration, although their mobile apps no doubt make a good amount of money for a lower cost. But Final Fantasy XIV is their biggest grossing game of their biggest grossing series. If the figures I've seen are accurate, then you're looking at $2.3 billion gross for FFXIV once inflation is considered, and Final Fantasy XI is not far behind with about $1.7billion. Final Fantasy VII and its various spins off add up to about $1.8billion. The series itself stands at $25.3 billion - all gross values. When you consider the volume of FF titles, it is a sizeable chunk just for their 2 MMO's, it's $4 billion or 16% of their total gross for the franchise as of March 2018.

I'd not go as far as saying without FFXIV SE would kill their business, but I'd argue it'd be a considerably painful hit. These figures also perhaps explain why SE were so adament on fixing FFXIV after the massive flop of 1.0, they realise they can give a lot of profit and considered it worth investing that extra time and money into it. But you make it as sound as though the money generated by FFXIV is dwarfed by mobile apps, whilst the mobile market makes a lot of money as a platform, none of their biggest grossing mobile games have come close to what their MMO's do, perhaps there is comparison in the mobile OS games combined, but I don't think anywhere near as big enough to dwarf their MMO sales.

[Fhaerron]

the developers will try and make it work.

Diadem 2.0 ... I mean Eureka comes to mind.