Blue Mage: Are you kidding me!?

[Shadowshinra]

I just don't understand why Blue mage is the only job that apparently people aren't willing to bend on. "It won't work." "You can't have that many abilities in a game." "With the role system, they just don't fit." "This is the only way they could put in blue mage." Yet every other Job it's fine to lower or change their abilities. It's fine to try and balance them, even if some are disappointed with certain ones (Such as Summoner). Fine, you're playing a white mage. Then you don't get your skills unless you gain enough AP to acquire them. Or would you rather wear armor that has your skills on it, or magicite that gives you abilities, and you can't unequip them until you've mastered them. Maybe a sphere grid you have to go through to learn them? Or FF11 route and find scrolls in shops or on monsters.

Hmmm? You're saying that those aren't applicable because they're single player games? And that FF11 is an old way of doing MMOs that just doesn't work in modern MMOs anymore? Huh... Funny that... Now then, back to making sure Blue mage HAS to collect every single ability in the game otherwise it's not blue!

Edit: While I'm at it. Blue mages
Quistis Trepe (VIII): 16 Blue spells
Blue Mage (V): 30 Blue Spells (One of which is Aero, white mage)
Strago (VI): 24 Blue Spells (One of which is Stone, Damnit White mage)
Kimahri (X): 12 Blue Spells. (One of which is Jump. Our bad on this one, Dragoons)
Quina (IX): 24 Blue Spells.
Enemy Skill Materia (VII): 24 Blue Spells.

Hmm.. Certainly seems like too large a number...

Coincidentally I think 24 is the max we can slot using that hotbar thing, but seriously out of the 49 abilties, they couldn't take 10-24 of them and make a rotation/set skills like a normal job would have? Heck it doesn't need a rotation that could be it's battle gimmick, using it's skills in any order the player chooses.

[Zeggy]

Coincidentally I think 24 is the max we can slot using that hotbar thing, but seriously out of the 49 abilties, they couldn't take 10-24 of them and make a rotation/set skills like a normal job would have? Heck it doesn't need a rotation that could be it's battle gimmick, using it's skills in any order the player chooses.

Ya, weird how that works huh? 24 is a rather common number in Blue Mage spells it seems.. and we just happen to have about 24 abilities... Hmmm...

Though for reference.

What my hotbar looks like on my Dark Knight. 36 slots taken up. Sure, some are role actions, one is sprint, and another is duty action but you know. Still quite a lot of buttons there. (In fact, 6 more buttons than the highest Blue Mage spells outside of Final Fantasy XI )

[Mithia]

I find it odd that people are saying they can't play with their friends with a Blue Mage, because you can, just not endgame content from the get go.
You can always go in a dungeon, trial or raid with a premade party. I don't see why you wont be able to go for savage at the end of the day if they'll up the level to max.

From my point of view SE is just beta testing their new idea of a class, its normal that SE isn't going to introduce a potential OP class when there is still prestige content such as Ucob or Uwu being progressed on.

For now just enjoy the beta of the blue mage class, give SE feedback and see how it grows. Personally I like the approach they are taking, this is what makes FFxiv so attractive to play for casuals, not all content that gets released is part of the endgame gear treadmill. Some savage raiders tend to forget that its not all about raiding.

As it is now, Blue Mage can be played by anyone with anyone till level 50. You just will not be able to use the dungeon finder which is fine. I don't want to queue for a Qarn run where 2 Blue Mages can only auto attack and cast one spell. Nor do I wish to be a part of their quest to obtain a certain skill from a specific type of mob in said dungeon which would potentially double the amount of time that would be required to finish said dungeon. You can do this solo or with "friends".

[Zeggy]

Yes, my friends are very eager to go into a dungeon from ARR. That's not the point though. Nothing they've said makes me believe they are using this as a beta test.

Paraphrasing:
"You'd be upset if a blue mage went into a raid and used level 5 death and it didn't kill it " - Translation "We have no faith in you being okay with a spell being weaker, so we made blue mage OP on purpose , meaning it has to be side content."
"If a blue mage didn't have a certain spell, then the group leader would get upset and kick you from the group" - Translation "We've resigned that Blue mage has to be a certain way and decided that compromising it like we've done to every other class isn't worth the time or brain power."

I fear for the day that this bites more in the butt, because now they have a lazy excuse to not try to think outside the box anymore. "We thought for three hours on how to make [Insert Class Here] work in our game, and we couldn't think of anything so here's a mini game." I can almost guarantee you that if they had thought of this idea in Heavensward, we would not have Red Mage right now.

We'd have Red Jamboree. It's a game where you go in and have to balance between killing a monster, and healing NPCs. Make sure to use Paralyze correctly, otherwise the monsters might overwhelm you while you're trying to heal an NPC. You'll love it because it's nostalgic of Final Fantasy XI, because the monsters are slightly slower than normal running speed, meaning you can DoT and run it in circles. Please look forward to it.

[Flatopia]

I find it odd that people are saying they can't play with their friends with a Blue Mage, because you can, just not endgame content from the get go.
You can always go in a dungeon, trial or raid with a premade party. I don't see why you wont be able to go for savage at the end of the day if they'll up the level to max.

From my point of view SE is just beta testing their new idea of a class, its normal that SE isn't going to introduce a potential OP class when there is still prestige content such as Ucob or Uwu being progressed on.

For now just enjoy the beta of the blue mage class, give SE feedback and see how it grows. Personally I like the approach they are taking, this is what makes FFxiv so attractive to play for casuals, not all content that gets released is part of the endgame gear treadmill. Some savage raiders tend to forget that its not all about raiding.

As it is now, Blue Mage can be played by anyone with anyone till level 50. You just will not be able to use the dungeon finder which is fine. I don't want to queue for a Qarn run where 2 Blue Mages can only auto attack and cast one spell. Nor do I wish to be a part of their quest to obtain a certain skill from a specific type of mob in said dungeon which would potentially double the amount of time that would be required to finish said dungeon. You can do this solo or with "friends".

The issue is that the blue mages are tooled to not be in a group, and that being in one is going to be a broken unfun mess as they said so themselves
It's literally a minigame and playing with friends will be only used for moves that are in particularly dangerous instances like bahamut prime. This is not something to play with friends.

It's not just "no dungeon finder that's all!" it's not a real job, and instead is used as hunt logs with RNG.
Besides, it's not like this mode has to be exclusive to a real job that can do all content as a standard job should. They could add a separate job crystal that uses the same moves and effects retooled into a real job with mechanics.

[Ekimmak]

Yes, my friends are very eager to go into a dungeon from ARR. That's not the point though. Nothing they've said makes me believe they are using this as a beta test.

Paraphrasing:
"You'd be upset if a blue mage went into a raid and used level 5 death and it didn't kill it " - Translation "We have no faith in you being okay with a spell being weaker, so we made blue mage OP on purpose , meaning it has to be side content."
"If a blue mage didn't have a certain spell, then the group leader would get upset and kick you from the group" - Translation "We've resigned that Blue mage has to be a certain way and decided that compromising it like we've done to every other class isn't worth the time or brain power."

I fear for the day that this bites more in the butt, because now they have a lazy excuse to not try to think outside the box anymore. "We thought for three hours on how to make [Insert Class Here] work in our game, and we couldn't think of anything so here's a mini game." I can almost guarantee you that if they had thought of this idea in Heavensward, we would not have Red Mage right now.

Alternatively, they thought "people were so angry about how we compromised DRK to make it work, we're just going to make it as true to its roots as possible.

[Zeggy]

Alternatively, they thought "people were so angry about how we compromised DRK to make it work, we're just going to make it as true to its roots as possible.

"By not letting anyone play it where they want to."

I'm a big fan of that part in Final Fantasy IX where you pick up Quina, and then, because you can't put them in the normal party, you have to go over and only play that frog mini game that they have where they collect frogs. It's real good for killing monsters on the overworld, but have you ever tried to take Quina into a boss? It just locks you out unless you're fighting only disc 1 bosses. Anything past disc 2 though, don't think about it.

[Mithia]

You can always make new friends, there will be plenty of Blue Mages out there who will need their skill. You can also go in there unsync'd with a lvl 70.
There really is no need to tax complete strangers with your needs when they are just doing the duty for their MSQ or daily exp reward.

Let me re-paraphrase for you:
"You'd be upset if a blue mage went into a raid and used level 5 death and it didn't kill it " (can be wrong but I thought they were talking about how absurdly OP it would be for having a class that can use death V, but ok) - Translation: the content isn't designed for blue mages at the moment but we'll let you guys have fun with it right now all be it in a limited way because we are working on a new expansion right now for you guys. With that we can update ALL bosses to be resistant to death and other kind of overpowered abilities that would break encounters.
"If a blue mage didn't have a certain spell, then the group leader would get upset and kick you from the group" - Translation: We have seen you guys shun non-meta classes in endgame before, and for dungeon finder its unfair to tax an entire party which may already have difficulties to complete the duty with a player that doesn't have their level appropriate core abilities yet. Hence we are preventing unnecessary drama.

[Mithia]

The issue is that the blue mages are tooled to not be in a group, and that being in one is going to be a broken unfun mess as they said so themselves
It's literally a minigame and playing with friends will be only used for moves that are in particularly dangerous instances like bahamut prime. This is not something to play with friends.

It's not just "no dungeon finder that's all!" it's not a real job, and instead is used as hunt logs with RNG.
Besides, it's not like this mode has to be exclusive to a real job that can do all content as a standard job should. They could add a separate job crystal that uses the same moves and effects retooled into a real job with mechanics.

No, it is a real job, something actually true to its roots. Because it isn't for endgame content right away doesn't mean it can't grow into it eventually. Balancing a class can be a living nightmare. I mean look at ninja's, they have to settle for low dps compared to other classes because they just have trick attack.

So instead they say, ok, you can go to 50 right now, give us some data to look into and then later in another patch we will up the level cap.

[Zeggy]

That already happens though. I guarantee it'll happen with the new classes that they decided were okay enough to put in. Is apparently Blue mage a special flower that cannot be sullied under this? Apparently if I play Blue Mage, I will get 100x more upset about getting kicked out of a group than I already am for being kicked out as a Dark Knight?

"Hmm... We're worried they'll get kicked out of groups because of the Meta... So lets skip a step and kick them out of the groups ourselves."

Edit: Give me a real belief that they actually are doing the beta test thing. Find me something that actually sounds like they really are doing it that way. What you're saying does not fit with how and what they are saying. They've more or less said in the live letter that this was the only way they could think to make this okay. You keep saying "They're probably just using it as a beta test" but there's no proof other than the words they've said which is Yoshida doesn't think Blue mage works in FF14 at all, and the only way they could think to make it work is as side content. Find me a quote that says there's hope, because everything they've said makes it sound like when they run out of ideas, they'll up our level maybe.. 5 levels, add a few more blue mage spells and say "go do the Colosseum again." then maybe, just maybe, we'll be 75 by the time 6.0 comes out.

Remember how when they added the Music feature to Bard, they said they weren't sure about it. They were worried we were going to use it to make songs outside of the game, and that this was only a test period? All I need from them is "This is a test period to see if this can work." A hard quote or even a vague quote. "We'll level it in later patches" is not even a vague quote. It is a "This is golden saucer, and we use it when it helps us".

But if they came out today and said "This is a test to see if players can be trusted with this kind of job." Today. I would apologize right now for everything I've said in this thread, and play it the day it comes out. Trust me when I say I WANT to be proven wrong.