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

[whiskeybravo]

I would much rather have had blue mage implemented like a normal FFXIV job with the monster abilities it learns being part of its job quests and chosen to work within the normal structure of class abilities for FFXIV. It just does not feel right to have a job that can't actually go into duty finder, etc.

I imagine if we could go back in time to conduct a poll of which version of BLU people would prefer, it'd be this.

[XelphatolTylenolCepacolAlcohol]

I would much rather have had blue mage implemented like a normal FFXIV job with the monster abilities it learns being part of its job quests and chosen to work within the normal structure of class abilities for FFXIV. It just does not feel right to have a job that can't actually go into duty finder, etc.

I imagine if we could go back in time to conduct a poll of which version of BLU people would prefer, it'd be this.

I co-sign this. That is 100% what I expected, and I would have been completely satisfied. Being hit by a monster skill has been the most common way in the FF series, but has not been the only way. Hell, just on the fly, I could think of our job quests being monster hunts, and then consuming the monster (or a certain part of the monster) or its soul to obtain its power. Like Quina or Shang Tsung.

[Melichoir]

I imagine if we could go back in time to conduct a poll of which version of BLU people would prefer, it'd be this.

Anyone who keeps brining up the "I want it to be implemented so it can be used like all the other classes," please describe to us, in your own words, how you would balance it? And be clear and to the point about details. Cause Ive been thinking this over a bit, and I am more in line with the Devs. Balancing it would not be possible without it being OP or without it having its identity gutted and gimped.

[Nariel]

Anyone who keeps brining up the "I want it to be implemented so it can be used like all the other classes," please describe to us, in your own words, how you would balance it? And be clear and to the point about details. Cause Ive been thinking this over a bit, and I am more in line with the Devs. Balancing it would not be possible without it being OP or without it having its identity gutted and gimped.

Blue mage identity is learning spell from monster and making them their, not being an over powered mage. How is that difficult to do compared to learning song by myself after a quest or any other way we learn our skill in job quest ? What kind of mysterious reason force those skill to being far too much powerfull ? Like Yeah bad breath as it is would be OP but why used by a Blue mage it can't be a damage debuff per exemple ? How Mighty guard can't be a simple single or party wide defense boost ? How any other skill can't be balanced like any other ? Because shiva does 7.500 k damage with her skill Blue mage should do the same regardless of his own capacity/strenght ?

[Melichoir]

Blue mage identity is learning spell from monster and making them their, not being an over powered mage. How is that difficult to do compared to learning song by myself after a quest or any other way we learn our skill in job quest ? What kind of mysterious reason force those skill to being far too much powerfull ? Like Yeah bad breath as it is would be OP but why used by a Blue mage it can't be a damage debuff per exemple ? How Mighty guard can't be a simple single or party wide defense boost ? How any other skill can't be balanced like any other ? Because shiva does 7.500 k damage with her skill Blue mage should do the same regardless of his own capacity/strenght ?

The Gimmick for SMN is what? The ability to summon 'pets' and pets have special actions.
The Gimmick for BLM is what? The Hot/Cold system (I know thats a real stripped down version)
The Gimmick of RDM is what? Insta-cast, with some hybrid melee combat.

These three classes have 3 specific gimmicks that affect their playstyle outside of their actual skills. WHen you boil down what raw skills they have, theyre actually a lot more similar. They all have an AoE skill, a few damage dealers, a dot or two. So on so forth. its how these skills are used in a system that differentiate the classes. They all learn skills in a similar enough vein, but how they use them and when is different.

Now, what is the Gimmick of BLU? It is to learn monster skills. Unlike the other classes, the Gimmick for BLU is the means of how skills are acquired. Not the application of them. They may have some little 'minigame' system (resource management or something) involved, but at the end of the day, the goal of BLU is to LEARN exotic skills and then use those exotic skills as they are to accomplish a variety of tasks. This creates the inherent problem. It's not just raw numbers that matter. Its what those monster skills would do.


Bad breath, as an example, would have to be dumbed down A LOT to work in a party environment. It would be a vastly smaller cone of effect, have most to all its debuffs removed, and likely deal minor damage (if at all). It would need this treatment so it woudl fall in line with all the other caster AoE spells. Then you have to consider which skills get gutted or not. If you make to many BLU skills have utility (i.e, make it to flexible), it would become an almost must pick. To few, and you limit the Gimmick of the class, stripping it of its identity. You cant have a wide array of skills either, because that is also powerful. Having more skills than any other class either means the skills are vestigial, or if theyre all viable, youd end up with an overly flexible class. Again, that would make them must picks in a raid environment. This is a big blind spot in points like yours. You assume power is merely a numbers game. X skill does Y damage, therefore it is/isnt powerful. But its not just skill damage, its what skills do, what BLU would have access too, and how that access interacts with all other classes. For example, if BLU could get Trick Attack, that would skew raid balance hard. Double the up time damage windows without impacting the LB bar, on top of providing everything else it might (buffs, heals, CC, you name it.)

If you start limiting what skills BLU can use and do in a party environment, then you end up chipping away at its Gimmick. The class becomes empty. Its just a caster with a few fancy spells that it learned from monsters. It identity and concept get reduced in scope and people then start saying "SE, you sucked at implementing this! This isnt BLU. This is a travesty!" If they add an extra gimmick to compensate, then its no longer BLU, because the Monster learning aspect is just a more complicated way to get skills, and the gimmick then becomes the second thing tacked on.

This is the problem that having it be part of the DF system would end up contributing to. Thats why its hard to balance. They can either give you a game experience of being a Mage who learns magic from monsters, and has to go on some quest or another and must use all the skills he or she learned to win (making the emphasis on learning monster skills), but restrict it so that it cant participate in end game content, OR they gut it, dumb it down, and possibly add a second gimmick, turning it into a shell of what the BLU concept was all so you can take a reskinned thaumaturge to party content. I dont know about others, but I prefer the first.

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Ok, so you pretty much have a reskinned Thamaturge. See above to understand why. Even more so, but youre creating a system that has soft restrictions too. So any skill that isnt useable in a dungeon makes it moot simply because youre defeating the point of the party system, and any skill that cant be used on a boss is also moot, for the same reason. But now you have to remember what skills can be used where. We have that to an extreme limited extent. CC is generally tied to one or two skills at most, and most bosses are invulnerable to it. Your system would require more skills to become moot in boss encounters, and dungeons at large.

Aslo again, consider the power of having a class with to much flexibility. Lastly, you are adding a gimmick ontop of a gimmick. The core identity of BLU is learning skills, not the application of them in rotations. Where RMD, SMN, and BLM all have systems that use their skills in different ways (so the focus is on application within their gimmicks - like summoning Bahamut in SMN's case), BLU does not have such a system inherently. Their set up is "I have a scenario, and Ill use my plethora of skills casted as is to overcome it." Any gimmick system on top of that would either be very basic or would take power from the "Learned Skills" system for the sake of balance, thus mitigating the identity of BLU and making it more of a generic caster that happens to learn skills from monsters rather than an NPC.

[Nariel]

The Gimmick for SMN is what? The ability to summon 'pets' and pets have special actions.
The Gimmick for BLM is what? The Hot/Cold system (I know thats a real stripped down version)
The Gimmick of RDM is what? Insta-cast, with some hybrid melee combat.

So how fighting a monster in a job quest is not learning from a monster ? Don't want to make him learn anything by leveling ? Make short job quest requiring to do "whocare" to learn his abilty, don't even need a instanced fight, just go kill this monster in the overworld/dungeon and be done with it.

How the actual learning process is that incompatible with balancing the said spell for actual content ? They can't have normal potency or effect ? Of course they can't, they are balanced for the mask carnival and nothing else.

Nobody will reject them for missing xxxx spell, many player barely know how to play and still manage to get carried away in any dungeon or normal raid. So many floormop have primal mount its ridiculous. Rejection in savage ? Well looking to do savage without being ready for it is kinda self defeating.

[Vunak]

Snip

In just about every other iteration of BLU it was dumbed down to fit into that games systems. Even in FFXI where you had literal 100s of spells, not a single one of them was instant death or some such (at least when I played it at 75 cap, idk if it is still this way) and it definitely didn't feel or play like the other mages in the game. Thinking in absolutes like this is what caused us to get a "limited" job to begin with. There are numerous different ways to make BLU work in and out of the DF. Level 5 Death is a poor example of a reason as to why BLU can't work as the example SE gave. Level 5 Death wasn't given to BLU in FFXI. Just like Black Mage in FFXIV doesn't have Death the spell a very iconic BLM spell.

As someone mentioned above giving it a Monster Gauge where certain skills add to the gauge and when it hits a certain threshold opens up a big BLU spell of certain affect. I thought something along the lines of XI lore would work with the gauge as well where you have to balance it out on your spell use to not be consumed by the Blue Magic. Your spells get stronger as you get closer to that top end and if you let it go to far, something like the Ninja bunny happens but in BLU flair (or get a massive DPS boost for a few seconds and then a large DPS loss when it wears off) and you have to start over. But keeping that balance allows you to push DPS higher.

[Melichoir]

So how fighting a monster in a job quest is not learning from a monster ? Don't want to make him learn anything by leveling ? Make short job quest requiring to do "whocare" to learn his abilty, don't even need a instanced fight, just go kill this monster in the overworld/dungeon and be done with it.

How the actual learning process is that incompatible with balancing the said spell for actual content ? They can't have normal potency or effect ? Of course they can't, they are balanced for the mask carnival and nothing else.

Nobody will reject them for missing xxxx spell, many player barely know how to play and still manage to get carried away in any dungeon or normal raid. So many floormop have primal mount its ridiculous. Rejection in savage ? Well looking to do savage without being ready for it is kinda self defeating.

Again, the core concept of BLU isnt the use of skills within a rotation. Its the fact you can LEARN monster skills.

So you go on a job quest and get the "Summon Bahamut" skill. Well, you cant just "Summon bahamut" You actually have to use your Aetherflows to charge your gauge and use Dreadwyrm trance twice (if Im not mistaken) and then once you meat conditions, you can use the skill. This system is set up and built around a system. The system has limitations built into it, exploits built into it, and pros and cons. Its balance is determined by how that system works and how the skills you get interact with it. This system differentiates its playstyle from BLM and RDM.

BLU doesnt have this, because BLU is based on learning Monster skills themselves and directly applying them in combat. Therer is no "System" per say, other than "Go out and learn as many skills as you can to complete your objectives." Instead of mastering a system, you are mastering skill usage and judgement. This difference becomes the issue. The gimmick isnt a system (learning optimal rotations, when you can use what, etc etc), its how you gain your skills and who you apply it to. Dreadwyrm trance works on all bosses. Bad breath Wouldnt, UNLESS they make BLU be the exception (which would give it a huge power advantage over all other classes), or they gut the skill by a large margin. If they do the latter, you end up with a class that is casting weakened version of skills monsters had (breaking the illusion, Id call it) and trying to compete with other classes that have more interesting game play mechanics.

In just about every other iteration of BLU it was dumbed down to fit into that games systems. Even in FFXI where you had literal 100s of spells, not a single one of them was instant death or some such (at least when I played it at 75 cap, idk if it is still this way) and it definitely didn't feel or play like the other mages in the game. Thinking in absolutes like this is what caused us to get a "limited" job to begin with. There are numerous different ways to make BLU work in and out of the DF. Level 5 Death is a poor example of a reason as to why BLU can't work as the example SE gave. Level 5 Death wasn't given to BLU in FFXI. Just like Black Mage in FFXIV doesn't have Death the spell a very iconic BLM spell.

As someone mentioned above giving it a Monster Gauge where certain skills add to the gauge and when it hits a certain threshold opens up a big BLU spell of certain affect. I thought something along the lines of XI lore would work with the gauge as well where you have to balance it out on your spell use to not be consumed by the Blue Magic. Your spells get stronger as you get closer to that top end and if you let it go to far, something like the Ninja bunny happens but in BLU flair (or get a massive DPS boost for a few seconds and then a large DPS loss when it wears off) and you have to start over. But keeping that balance allows you to push DPS higher.

Youre kinda proving my point: BLU was never functional from a concept lvl in MMOs due to its power issues. They had to dumb it down. And no, thinking how I am is weighing TWO possible outcomes. Dumbing down a concept just so you can have it in end game prog (which from my perspective is just a reskinned thamaturge - instead of casting fire, you cast 1k needles. congrats, you did the same thing except now its visually different and doesnt require consideration to class mechanics), or you can create a separate and unique experience that lives up more to the core concept but at the cost of End Game Prog.

[Vunak]

Youre kinda proving my point: BLU was never functional from a concept lvl in MMOs due to its power issues. They had to dumb it down. And no, thinking how I am is weighing TWO possible outcomes. Dumbing down a concept just so you can have it in end game prog (which from my perspective is just a reskinned thamaturge - instead of casting fire, you cast 1k needles. congrats, you did the same thing except now its visually different and doesnt require consideration to class mechanics), or you can create a separate and unique experience that lives up more to the core concept but at the cost of End Game Prog.

Not really. I gave an example of how to make it different and there is a plethora of other theads completely dedicated to it. Dumbing it down is a bad way of saying it. It was played down mechanically in every FF, just like BLM was played down and just like SMN and all the other jobs were. BLM doesnt go around casting Death on every mob and one shotting it. SMN has their summons played down otherwise they would one shot every mob and boss with one Bahamut cast. THF or NIN doesn't use assassinate and one shot the mobs they are fighting etc.

[Nariel]

Again, the core concept of BLU isnt the use of skills within a rotation

Oh and you came with this fact from where exactly ? I'm kinda sure the first game to ever introduce BLU and many after him didn't have any rotation gameplay for any other job too. Rotation is a MMO thing, BLU isn't define by having a rotation but by the fact he use blue magic and how he get it nothing else.

BLM in FFI isn't about astra/ombral, BRD isn't about DoT and for the love of me RED mage isn't about alternating between white/black magic for spiritual balance.

FFXI didn't define Blue mage, FFXI have an iteration of Blue mage, a recurrent and well known job in the Final Fantasy license.