Blue Mage: Are you kidding me!?

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

They easily could have made this side content in a similar way to Performances on BRD, accessible via a job-exclusive tab, while maintaining a baseline kit to be awarded as the player levels up. Forcing it into old ARR content does it no favors at all. And the way it sounds it's going to be perpetually locked behind a lower level cap relative to whatever the current expansion is. If it doesn't get that change the backlash is going to be huge.

There was a poll floating around on reddit (Source Here) that basically asked if people would rather not have this at all just so they could play the job in regular duties. It has 10x as many votes as the SMN lockout poll I have in my sig yet the ratio is very similar. People want to be able to play this job in current content with other players. The backlash is warranted.

[Saefinn]

The thing is, it's not necessarily how they do the content - it's the fact that they condemned Blue Mage to it. They basically took Blue Mage, which many people, including myself, have wanted for a very long time, and relegated it to side content.

The Carnivale and the like could all be pretty fun as solo content in general, but the various actions that you'd need to succeed in it could have very well just been in a Logos-like way instead of relegating one of the most desired and potentially interesting Jobs in the game and putting it in completely irrelevant content exclusively.

And yeah, there's the "compromise" of being able to use it in Party Finder, but that compromise shouldn't have to exist to begin with.

Well I am not entirely sure it will be just side content, hence my "depends on SE delivery" because if they allow BLU to reach level 80 and they are restricted to not use the duty finder, BLU could be used on content. At the moment we're not clear on exactly how it will work with group content following the announcement you can do premades.

As for the compromise. There would have to be a compromise somewhere, compromises they've done historically have been in how the job plays to balance it and to match it with FFXIV's existing systems, like RDM, which they did intelligently I felt, but I get Blue Mage would be harder to do in this respect. Whether this is the right compromise, I feel remains to be seen, but I think regardless of the compromise they choose, SE was going to get a backlash regardless of their choice.

In anticipation of BLU I did my own theory crafting as to how BLU could work with FFXIV's current system without sacrificing much of how Blue Mage is. If I end up hating it, I may provide it as feedback, although I doubt it'd mean anything, but hey, doesn't hurt.

[Kogekigami]

I feel like yoshi and the design team were in a lose lose situation here. He said several times before he was hesitant with blue mage cause how blue mage traditionally is and how skills are learn in ffxiv. But people in the fourms kept demanding it. So if he had done it to match the current way we learn skills on level up im sure people would be up in arms because its bluemage in name only and not by design.

They done this to keep the jobs indentity as remembered by its fans and as they explained it had to be limited or people who played blue mage that didn't have the 'top attack moves' would get harrased. I mean come on we still have debates about healer dps for christs sake. Then the fact blue mage skills would be to much to take into account for raid boss's and such. Example they gave was death 5 in theory being able to insta kill the ultimate boss's by theory.; The only way around that would be to make the raid/dungeon/trail boss's immune to most of blue mage's skills so why would you take a blue mage then or limit them to fun side content.

Before people say 'oh people won't get kicked from parties for blue mage.' I sure you can find prime examples of healer dps arguments. FFlogs drama and people being barred for being sam or black mage from pfs due to not giving utility...our community is not saintly when it comes to party composition...

Sorry if your disappointed, but i gt the feeling people wouldn't of been happy no matter how Bluemage was designed. I just wish they hadn't spent so long on it...i wanted to see new race...

[Zeggy]

I apologize before hand. I'm currently typing this on my phone from work. I just need to say that I've played every blue mage. I've dealt with all of their ways to learn magic. Stargos lore, Quistis items, Kimahri's Lancet, enemy skill materia, Quina eating everything. But that has NEVER been the selling point for me.

Sure, it's fun. Sure it's different. I don't care. I was fine with the idea of having set abilities if it meant getting to play my favorite class in my favorite mmo. I like just using monster abilities. I want to que for all the content and have fun with others without being stuck to old content, party finder, and not being able to raid.

Now I get to feel my heart ache everyone I see someone playing this side quest off a job. I hope they change their minds but I'm tired of hoping. That is all.

[Atigeve]

Sorry in advance if words are not perfect, had surgery on my arm less then 11 days ago so typing 1 handed.

So honestly it feels like no matter what people will complain. BLU was originally said what 2-3 years ago that they didnt see how they could implement it and people were upset. They find a way to implement it, it looks cool, and people still complain. SO I watched the whole thing yesterday what I took from it was you cant do pvp (this, for me personally, isnt a deal breaker) and you cant use duty finder, but you CAN do that content with a premade (party finder, ls, fc, friends), so how is that a bad thing? We will be limited to lvl 50 for a bit then they will increase the level cap. Also lets not forgot blu is in the game now, this presents an opportunity for it to be altered in the future if they decide to, I am kinda excited about this limited job thing, having a few jobs that are "Solo Oriented" is cool, heck yeah give me bst, pup, blu, it adds more layers of stuff to do that frankly the game was lacking compared to others titles.

[Duskane]

it wont even have a relic at all either...

[Darkpaw]

First and foremost Blue Mage is not the disaster most people seem to fear it is.

It is most importantly a genius marketing decision, and I am prepared to defend this. Yes, blue mage has been one of the most highly requested jobs in this game. It had to be released. One of the more highly requested features of this game has been more content that can be solo’ed as well as content that is different so people aren’t relegated to either high end raiding or relic grinds.

In return square gives us... blue mage. A job starting at level one with a level cap of 50, and a grind that can mostly be done alone for enemy skills, with a party for others. And the Masked Carnivale as a way to showcase and learn and enjoy. Yes, it is sad that we can’t use blue mage how we would like as a fully implemented and balanced job for end game content. The lvl 5 death argument is a weak one at best, but it also has validity. Lvl 5 death is not the only skill that could easily break an end game raid or dungeon or trial, mighty guard itself is a dangerous skill to have in that kind of content.

As is white wind, or any number of skills, bad breath is another good example. They have made the promise to continue to develop content for the blue mage, and given that with the trust system, the world visit system, and blue mage they seem to be focused on making this game a bit more solo player friendly this sort of concept makes sense as a way to appeal to a much broader audience and grow the game in a really special way. It’s a smart decision to use such an iconic job for this content because those ff fans who have not started 14 but love blue mage can be coaxed into this game because it is now offering a traditional blue mage in its own content. Making it a 2.0 job is also smart because it allows people to try the content fall in love with the game and branch out to the other features.

[lulunami]

I would have been fine with a broken BLU to play in raids since the job itself has so much utility with spells like Mighty Guard. Although BLU is a job that would likely remove this enforced meta (by the dev team and players) of 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 damage dealers.


If the dev team chose to balance jobs by giving every job something overpowered and broken instead of making everyone be able to do the same thing, BLU would have been fine. Instead we talk about balance (especially in regards to damage per second) compared to implementing fun and interesting game-play systems.

[Dhaid]

Honestly, why can't we just have the best of both worlds? BLU could learn skills like blu does elsewhere, while restricting skills from being used in raiding and group content so much so that it allows only one set of skills to be used in raids.
It's to the lore, there's a clear class to play, nobody is restricted and the only people who suffer are those who don't want to fight for skills and would rather just level up.

[Seraphic21]

I resubbed recently after hearing of upcoming class rumors, was excited about the initial blue mage reveal, and decided it would be best to unsub when I saw how it was being implemented. I always figured in order to make it work for this game they would just make majority of it's abilities learned in job quests with unique encounters. I do not think keeping it completely true to it's past iterations was as important as making it work in actual content for a majority of the fan base. The explanations as to why they had to implement it this way just seemed very weak. Hoping the dancer rumor is true and they don't do something so troll with that one.