All that BLU hate is just absurd

[Hunky]

I think it's important to point out that players are not necessarily hating Blue Mage, but rather they are upset at the new Limited Job system.

It's understandable. Blue Mage is a job that many players wanted to play. However, many of these players, if not most, want to be able to make Blue Mage their main job that they can take into dungeons, raids, and other group-focused pve content.

As of now, it seems Blue Mage is designed moreso for solo play, which is interesting too. The idea of a limited job can really help make a job feel distinct and unique, and of course, true to its original design. And personally, the idea of hunting down overworld monsters to gain new abilities sounds fun.

But, I think most players wanted Blue Mage to be adapted for group/pve play. They want to be able to play as Blue Mage amongst other others. Much like how Red Mage and Dark Knight were adapted for an MMO style of play, people were expecting the same for Blue Mage.

Perhaps in the future this will be addressed. The best-case scenario would be that Blue Mage is adapted to be made implementable in a group setting while still maintaining its solo-play features. That adaptation would have to have no impact on its solo style of play though. This way, we reach a happy compromise.

On a side note, I'm curious to know whether players will be able to complete MSQ quests and duties as Blue Mage.

[Elerus]

On a side note, I'm curious to know whether players will be able to complete MSQ quests and duties as Blue Mage.

I believe the answer to that is no:

"Yoshida explained the basics of Blue Mage. Like Blue Mages throughout the series, Blue Mages learn their abilities from monsters; the job starts at level 1 and is capped at level 50 to start, with the job available to unlock by anyone at level 50 even if they haven’t gotten any expansions to the game. (Yes, it’s technically 2.0 content!) Clear the 2.0 MSQ and reach level 50, and you can be a Blue Mage, the first limited job!"

So from what we know by the time you can unlock Blue Mage you're done with the MSQ up to that point, and as it's level capped at 50 there would be no going ahead and doing more advanced story quests. As for the future, it's difficult to say, but given the incremental level cap increase strategy that was discussed I would not he hopeful that Blue Mage can participate.

[Seraphor]

This is sounding a lot like the Eureka on release discussions already... Some people like it, some people hate it, and some people are telling others they can't hate it because they are being unreasonable and stuff.

While others are saying that we can't like it because we're being "shills" and stuff.
Don't paint this so one-sided.

[Neophyte]

Broken expectations.

This sums it up pretty much. We got told 4 years ago that BLU, if it comes at all, won't be a 'normal' job.

Yoshi-P: I think that blue mage is an interesting job because you can learn spells from enemies, but honestly I don't think that it really fits MMORPG party settings. If anything, I think it would work solo and it would be really fun to implement it as a job where you go around and learn abilities from every monster, so I'd definitely like to try and do this, but I'm concerned when it comes to playing in a party players would put up barriers if you haven't learned certain abilities. Additionally, in the event you are able to use abilities forever once you learn them, the difficulty of learning abilities would be high, and we wouldn't be able to balance the system so it wouldn't revolve around procuring your abilities instead of equipment. This wouldn't be practical enough to fit in an MMORPG party setting and conversely if you are swapping in only certain abilities you've learned, the true image of a blue mage would diminish, so this is something that I am concerned with.
09/11/2014

[Shurrikhan]

Ooooh yes I was right on point.

How can you even talk about an opinion on something, when you didn't even tried it ?

Let's make it clearer for you.
How would you feel if I told you "your 6 months of work is just utter BS, change it now, I can tell without even trying it."
Of course I would give you suggestions, and you would say I'm right and change everything huh ?
It was feedback after all.

"Here, you've been paying back on your house for the requisite 30 years or and it's finally, in limited form, yours! You can use the master bedroom and bathroom, and when it's okay with the other people we've sold the house to in duplicate, your kitchen, patio, and living room! Also, we've taken out the plumbing, but you're free to reinstall it in your designated space."

"Here's the 4K TV you requested. Oh, but keep in mind it's a personal TV. You won't have to worry about pesky people watching whatever you're watching; this one has only a 10-degree viewing angle!"

That's not to say we're owed the metaphorical house or TV or whatever else; we'll get "enough" or we'll leave -- simple as that. But, completely irrelevant from entitlement of any other sort of expectation, there are some things you don't need to "try out" to see the flaw.

If the developers wanted to avoid it being perceived as such, then they should have been more honest with its scope from the start, in both detail and tone. When you sell something as a "job", which would normally entail an equally relevant perspective on and inclusion in any and all content, it doesn't make much sense to then "limit" it to an extent that runs contrary to the general description's widely held definition. There are some things that don't go together -- be it for reasons of classification, synergy, or functionality -- like a sausage ice-cream, a four-wheeled bicycle, or a hand-cranked TV.

I wouldn't be shocked, "Based on the Community Feedback, We decided to cancel the Blue Mage Project" Thank you for your feedback."

Because the best way to meet increased expectations in the same direction is to run back the other way?

The problem isn't that there will be BLU. It's that there's going to be too little BLU. All evidence from 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x points at a complete unwillingness to make significant or especially thematic or (external) systemic changes to any job after implementation, so an implementation in 4.5 in a lackluster state fully signals a lackluster state from then on. When the two options historically given are "put it to sleep" or "let it crawl", a flawed foundation lasts and its effects compound.

So basically you want them to make two jobs. A fun broken job for solo play and a watered down version for group play. I think many from the hater side already mentioned limited dev resources.

While that may be the limits of the devs' abilities, not even that duality is technically needed. You need only sensible systematic limitations on the individual skills.

We're using a systematically oversized toolkit here, and thus certain abilities can afford to be skipped for certain fights; entire jobs have already been passed over for particular fights to less outcry, it would seem.

Yes, a spell like Death would not be able to one-shot a boss. It would not even be able to be reliable against an elite mob or guaranteed against a standard one. But neither would those things in themselves be fun. One-shotting a mob twice your level, without any nuance, consideration, or preparation, is not on average fun. It is far more difficult to make something like that fun than it is to make it balanced. Balance was already achieved fairly well even just one release in the series before XIV. In an absolute effect, until degraded to a secondary mechanic, chance is diminished with effective potency. The stronger the enemy, the less chance Death had of succeeding. True, In XIV, it would make no sense to allow players farm its RNG until it finally succeeds against the hardest boss in the game. And, frankly, that's not a downside of the constraining system; it's a reality check for compelling design. But adds? Subtargets? Pieces of the boss's armor that are separately targetable or made attackable by one's positionals? Certainly, you could cast Death on those with a chance to wholly succeed (though, still based on remaining HP or, downtuned at base, eHP). The effect of RNG there is vastly mitigated. Add to that the actual things that can make a BLU play uniquely -- not just in the things it does outside of or prior to combat -- such as new thematic synergies and ramp-up systems in place of stale combos and you can make Death not only serviceable and balanced, but entertaining.

[Hierro]

I don't think there's any BLU hate. People love BLU, that's why people won't settle for this crap.

This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. We can still go collect skills. We can still have a solo-instance. We can still grind in the overworld. We can still be bonkers in outdated content. Why not?

But why can't we have a seperate amount of traits that'll tune BLU for current content/duty roulette? It isn't impossible to please both parties. A solution that contains BLU as it will come, and BLU as the majority of people want it CAN INDEED EXIST. We just have to make it very clear that's what we want.

[jon041065]

Could be a deeper meaning. If Blu mage is a solo job. That means that we will get a new tank and healer for 5.0 and people will be furious because BLU cannot be played with in endgame content.

However if they made BLU a tank job I am sure people would be even angrier.

I'd be estatic for blu tank. I told my first static leader during the second day of 2.0 early access that if blu tank was ever put into the game then I was going to main it no matter what he said.

[Zafran]

The hate isnt for BLU.
We love the blue magic spellbook, we are ok with the grind from level 1 and collecting spells, we are happy for the solo carnivale content.

What we arent happy about is 2 major things:
- level 50 cap! This is absolutely insane how stupid that is. We are locked to 2013 content. And yes, cap will increase in patches, but we want to play BLU like every other job, not be turned into a patch feature. (5 new triple triad cards, 2 new haircuts, 3 new BLU spells)

- group content and queue lock. This is "fine" in its core. Having to find people that will take a semi optimal BLU is OKish, but because we are locked to level 50, we arent able to participate in the content others are playing.

We arent hating on the job. We like its idea and concept. We just want to PLAY the damn job!!!

[Balipu]

I don't think there's any BLU hate. People love BLU, that's why people won't settle for this crap.

This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. We can still go collect skills. We can still have a solo-instance. We can still grind in the overworld. We can still be bonkers in outdated content. Why not?

But why can't we have a seperate amount of traits that'll tune BLU for current content/duty roulette? It isn't impossible to please both parties. A solution that contains BLU as it will come, and BLU as the majority of people want it CAN INDEED EXIST. We just have to make it very clear that's what we want.

So basically you want them to make two jobs. A fun broken job for solo play and a watered down version for group play. I think many from the hater side already mentioned limited dev resources.

[LauraAdalena]

While others are saying that we can't like it because we're being "shills" and stuff.
Don't paint this so one-sided.

Wasn’t trying to. I was just trying to say that the way it’s playing out is very similar...