Blue Mage might actually be a good thing.

[ADarklore]

I, for one, am all for adding more SOLO content. I've seen far too many MMO's flailing around because they focus too much on the 'social' or 'group' content and fail to realize that a huge amount of people, if not majority, would rather be able to do things solo. MMO no longer means "group only" in today's MMO era... it simply means a massive amount of people playing the same game. Many players, myself included, prefer MMOs because we like games we can play for YEARS, that are always adding new content, always changing... it has nothing to do with any desire to group with others or even interact with others. A single player games lasts, what, a few weeks at most... then wait for DLC... and after a year or so most single player games discontinue support. I don't game hop, I don't play multiple games at the same time, I focus on one game for hours each day and months or years at a time. I started with DCUO which I played for two years, then ESO which I played for almost three, and I started FFXIV a short while ago. I have no interest in raiding or group content, I am here for the questing and open world content. At least FFXIV has a decent duty finder for when I'm forced to group to continue MSQ, but outside of that, I don't do any other group activities. So hearing that Blue Mage was going to be solo-centric and other jobs might follow, I jumped for joy! Perhaps SE is finally seeing how many players actually want to be able to solo content, that they are listening and making content for players like us.

[Nariel]

There will be guides on the internet so the content will be easy is some real galaxy brained thinking considering the caliber of play you say in roullettes.

Because pleople are really bad at this game doesn't mean the game isn't easy, it mean they suck really hard at MMO.

[TroySoFab]

This minigame is conceptually so much more interesting than another job to level and ignore.

You forgot to add "In my opinion" to the beginning of your statement.

[Raikai]

I think at this moment, it will all boil down to three things:

1) What Masked Carnivale rewards, what is the incentive and replayability? Will we be able to farm relevant tomestomes in this content, for example?

2) Will Masked Carnivale be a fun activity in general consensus or a chore, like Eureka?

3) They intend for Limited Jobs to have some sort of limited "endgame" play too. But they will keep that updated with new features every patch?

Overall, the feeling is that this is a huge "test-drive" aspect. And maybe, depending on player response, they might really turn BLU into a support ranged caster unit by 5.0. To answers their worries about "not bringing the right abilities", just lock endgame duties to a certain Blue Magic collection with the main tools for dpsing, and some supportive spells.

[Arkdra]

You forgot to add "In my opinion" to the beginning of your statement.

Lol, got 'em! Everybody in this thread and the other 7 blu threads I am vainly yelling into the void on are chock full of people posting their bad opinions, myself included. Lmbo you posted this like it was some scathing rebuttal and not just you missing the inherent implication of discourse over an entirely subjective thing.

[Adiart]

1) What Masked Carnivale rewards, what is the incentive and replayability? Will we be able to farm relevant tomestomes in this content, for example?

2) Will Masked Carnivale be a fun activity in general consensus or a chore, like Eureka?

3) They intend for Limited Jobs to have some sort of limited "endgame" play too. But they will keep that updated with new features every patch?

Well, I have no clue about 2 and 3, but 1 has a likely answer: It's not level cap battle content, so it will not give current tomestones, but it is level 50 battle content, and so will likely reward Tomestone of Poetics.

I am somewhat worried about 3 too. SE's track record for keeping content up to date isn't exactly the best. On top of that, this is not something they can just abandon just fine at the end of an expansion like the Diadem or Eureka. They would have to devote development time to it for the rest of the game's lifetime, and I'm not sure they are willing to do that.

[Seraphor]

The "I'll do it alone without internet" is nowaday a very very niche mindset. A handfull of people will do it "legit" the rest will go trough it like any other content. People expecting you to have already seen the full guide of the extreme fight to enter the training party is common while blind run is quite the rare fish in the sea, it applied to any content the game have and people will breeze this colisseum mini-game like any other content, get their reward and let the blu catch dust in their job-cristal pouch cause there is nothing more to do with it.

Close to nobody look after the magicite in eureka by themselves.

Well I guess im a rare breed then.
Never looked up a raid guide, found eureka magicite by myself, etc

[Seraphor]

Well, I have no clue about 2 and 3, but 1 has a likely answer: It's not level cap battle content, so it will not give current tomestones, but it is level 50 battle content, and so will likely reward Tomestone of Poetics.

I am somewhat worried about 3 too. SE's track record for keeping content up to date isn't exactly the best. On top of that, this is not something they can just abandon just fine at the end of an expansion like the Diadem or Eureka. They would have to devote development time to it for the rest of the game's lifetime, and I'm not sure they are willing to do that.

You're right about level 50 content, but it will be raised to cap through Shadowbringers so it will reach 70 and possibly 80 eventually. By then it should be giving current tombstones, just like Eureka does.

As for updates, if they have any sense then it should be updated simply for being classed as a job.
Crafters and gatherers arent left out of the upgrade each expansion so this shouldn't be either.

[Adiart]

You're right about level 50 content, but it will be raised to cap through Shadowbringers so it will reach 70 and possibly 80 eventually. By then it should be giving current tombstones, just like Eureka does.

Well, I doubt it is ever going to be allowed to reach a current level cap, because of Level 5 Death being a thing, and Yoshida apparently not wanting to make bosses immune to it.

Also, I think it might not even get to 70 in Shadowbringers. They said they would be raising its level, sure, but they never mentionned by how much. (And they probably would just have said it if they planned to eventually meet every other job's level.)

As for updates, if they have any sense then it should be updated simply for being classed as a job.
Crafters and gatherers arent left out of the upgrade each expansion so this shouldn't be either.

Yeah, but Crafters and gatherers are much more important content, since they directly influence the endgame. And they probably don't need that much work compared to BLU.For BLU, they have to adapt and (somewhat) balance new actions, add new enemies to the Carnivale, make sure none of the new actions have bugs, add weapons, new gear, new job quests, and do that for every patch they raise their level cap. etc...

Also, frankly, I don't have a lot of trust in SE actually supporting side systems. There has been quite a lot of abandonned content so far already.

[jon041065]

I feel if its executed right it very well might help with the games longevity. I had a talk with a friend and were wondering if maybe there was some kind of shake up over at SE and they had to do something drastic and new to change how the game is played to try and woo players that either have quit or are hanging by a very loose thread in regards to their future in FFXIV. We all seen how SE loves to tote around the "15 million plus service accounts" line, however based on those lodestone mines the games active player roster fluctuates from between 600k to 800k depending on weither the game is in new patch mode or four months after patch mode. I wanna say which is average to above average in terms of MMO populations. However a game with both the Final Fantasy and Square Enix names, and considering how much time and money they sunk into promoting and advertising the game. If the lodestone mines are near right then the active player numbers is really quite...abysmal.

If say at best the game has a active population of 800k, that means it failed to win over 14.2 million people, and those people talk and share any "avoid this game like the plague" thoughts they may have. Weither it was the MSQ roadblock or it's game play, those players are gone. I know this is a FF game and lore and story are a big thing in the game, however a good chunk of MMO players when looking at a new MMO ask "is this game fun to play?" "is its game play worth going through a bazillion story quests and follow it to unlock everything and keep playing when it's done?" For 14.2 million players, that answer was "no, no its not".

At the end of the day FFXIV is an MMO first, and it's a business to make money. It wouldn't shock me if they would be willing to sacrifice loseing say 1000 subscribers that are upset about BLU ending up like this if it means maybe bringing back in say 100k of those that already quit due to the game play by making something that breaks away from its original game play and have them thinking "hey this game isn't so bad now."

Weither it was a good idea or not remains to be seen until the class has launched and has been out for a week or so and we gotten the chance to play it and see for ourselves and word of mouth spreads.

Then you have those 1000 joining the others that have are saying to "avoid this game like the plague". So that 100k players it might bring back will be diminished by not only the 1000 that left but those that they convince not to return or even give the game a chance. They should have announced they would be working on a version of blu for the full game that wouldn't be ready for some time alongside what they announced during this Fan Fest.