Late to the BLU Party

[jon041065]

i will have to disagree the reason blu is such a topic is due to its low lvl cap not all that many players actually raid or do primals yes lots of players do those things but statistically most don't so being able to do everything but those would be fine and the whole can't do roulettes for tomes would affect most players but again thats only 1 specific thing compared to as many as it is now.

So wrong here. The anger is over blue mage being potentially limited from large pieces of the game even if it's able to reach the current level cap at any given time. We want to be able to main the job in any and every way that we can with the current jobs. We are trying to get the devs to make a compromise and give us a full blue mage while leaving the solo and open world aspects alone.

[Inoch]

don't like what yoshi p hinted? speculation is speculation and is always worth discussing but that isn't your intent.

ngp is something to do for players who would find that enjoyable (especially good ol 2.0-2.55) what i am telling you is i wonder if it even can participate in MSQ or not at all as we don't even know if it can since we already did it all.

Then what was my intent or what are you getting at?

It's not really speculations when he literally said it will be raised by patches, nothing about it being up to date with Shadowbringer (release, but if we'll get 80 2 years later with 5.5 then that's really inexcusable tbh)
Remember - he said exacly same thing with Egi glamour and we haven't seen a single update to that since it was added 2+ years ago.

And NGP isn't any new content just like how we're locked at lv50 doing 5 year old content isn't new. It just a tool for you to revisit old MSQ, without having to play on a new character. I suppose it's nice if you help a new player through MSQ but then again most of it is just solo duties, run A-B and run a handful of dungeons.

[Stormfur]

My concern with it is it's the only class of its kind (that we know of) which is limited in this way. Even if more limited-style jobs were introduced like this, you'd end up with a big chunk of developer time split between "all the solo/limited jobs" and "all the party jobs" giving them each their respective content. You think two expert dungeons per patch is boring? Wait until it goes down to one. That's my fear.

[LineageRazor]

Honestly, the bottom line is this: Blue Mage is a popular and highly-demanded job - YoshiP admitted as such, mentioning that everywhere he went, folks would ask him, "When is Blue Mage coming?" Chances are high that all of those people, without exception, when asking YoshiP for Blue Mage were asking for the job to be added as a fully-fledged job, balanced with the other jobs and capable of participating in any content that the other jobs could.

Instead of providing what the players were asking for, we have received Blue Mage the Minigame, solo side content featuring this much-demanded job, with no guarantee that it will ever stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other jobs, and the implication that it never will.

It's certainly a valid point that we've yet to actually try this content, and it's possible that it's so amazingly fun that players will forget about all of their rage once they have a chance to try it. If that happens, all of the detractors will be forced to eat crow. However, that's a mighty big "if", there. Folks are well within their rights to be skeptical and dismayed.

[Seraphor]

My concern with it is it's the only class of its kind (that we know of) which is limited in this way. Even if more limited-style jobs were introduced like this, you'd end up with a big chunk of developer time split between "all the solo/limited jobs" and "all the party jobs" giving them each their respective content. You think two expert dungeons per patch is boring? Wait until it goes down to one. That's my fear.

On the other hand, if the future limited jobs take the gameplay resources that would have been spent if the next Diadem/Eureka, and the world building resources goes towards the overworld and benefits everyone instead of being a segregated instanced zone, then its a net benefit for all.

[Andevom]

Are people just forgetting Crafting/Gathering jobs? Those are designed primarily for solo play; you don't get in a party to go fishing, and the only time crafters have to party up is for Company crafts (for which they literally just stand there so a project can progress). Where is all the outrage that these classes go "against the spirit of MMORPGs" because they are solo experiences?

[Fyce]

The team usually does a good job of leaving the feeling and fantasy of that job while allowing it to fit into the game, with summoner being the biggest odd one out given egis and dots instead of massive one time nukes.

You can pretty much criticize every job in the game for not having kept some of its iconic identity that made them popular in the franchise: Bard is a glorified Archer. Red Mage has lost almost everything regarding supportive White Magic. Dragoon is a glorified Lancer. Black Mage has lost its elemental weakness exploit aspect (because the game abandonned this mechanic), which is key with Black Magic. Etc.
Saying that it indeed does change in FFXIV doesn't make it a good thing. Not even a desirable one. It's not a positive argument, it's just a cold and straight fact: jobs change and often lose some of their identity when being introduced in FFXIV.

When it comes to SMN in particular, I have a good example for it. Yuna was recently releaved for Dissidia NT. As you can see, she mostly use magic, and barely do any summoning. This pisses me off. Why? Because that was her gameplay in Dissidia 012. Literally 100% of her attacks were performed by summons. So, yeah, Summoners can be done without that "one time nuke" idea. If they managed to do that with FFXIV's SMN, people wouldn've have been so mad at what they did with the job. But they didn't. They went far below what Yuna in DNT will do. They made it a pet job with DoTs and slapped a "Summoner" label on it. People weren't happy.

You asked (in short): "what if your favourite job was limited?". I answer you by asking another question: "what if your favourite job was being butchered so much to fit in the mold that it'd lose all of its identity and most of what makes you love that job?".

When it comes to BLU, my answer is that I'd prefer a good limited Blue Mage than a trash version of a non-limited Blue Mage. Especially a job so gimmicky, weird and quirky. Which is why I can't understand people claiming that they've been waiting for the job for years and that they wanted to main it, even without knowing anything about how it'd play and how much it'd ressemble Blue Mages. At this point I think that people would main anything as long at it had "Blue Mage" written on it.

But in the end it all comes down to individual preferences and tolerence in regards to how does someone values a job's identity, and how much of that identity they are willing to give up when it's pressed into the FFXIV's mold.

[supaiku]

Are people just forgetting Crafting/Gathering jobs? Those are designed primarily for solo play; you don't get in a party to go fishing, and the only time crafters have to party up is for Company crafts (for which they literally just stand there so a project can progress). Where is all the outrage that these classes go "against the spirit of MMORPGs" because they are solo experiences?

Are you seriously comparing gatherers/crafters with battle jobs?
Yes, you can play these classes solo, but they weren't implemented in the game with the thought of being limited to solo play. You can gather items and sell them on the market board, making someone else happy with giving them the item they want. You can purchase items from the market board that others crafted / gathered. You can trade with others. You can help the battle classes getting better equipment, for example when a new raid tier is released and all the raiders want to get a higher item level with crafter gear. And you can't progress in this game with only playing crafters / gatheres. You still need your battle class to get through the story. And the battle classes are the main point of this game, not the crafters / gatheres, they are more on the support side, helping you with getting equipment / money / glamour or whatever.
But what is the purpose of BLU? It simply doesn't have one if it stays limited forever. Why get all these great skills from enemies if you can only use them on low level unimportant mobs? You can't complete the story with it because of the level cap. You can't enter palace of the dead or heaven on high (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong). You can't raid. There isn't even a reason for bringing a BLU in pony farming groups ( for example), why bother with a level 50 BLU when you can simply take a level 80 BLM? Sure you can do that "for fun", but that still is only possible if your team mates agree and don't kick you.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of getting my skills from enemies and not just by level up. But if I get these skills, I want to use them. I think currently it looks like this will happen: people will either ignore the job from the start or get all the skills and then don't touch BLU again until new skills for it are released, because they can only use it for content they already did 394834 times. Of course this statement is a bit extreme, but I think it's a possibility.

[Seraphor]

"
When it comes to BLU, my answer is that I'd prefer a good limited Blue Mage than a trash version of a non-limited Blue Mage. Especially a job so gimmicky, weird and quirky. Which is why I can't understand people claiming that they've been waiting for the job for years and that they wanted to main it, even without knowing anything about how it'd play and how much it'd ressemble Blue Mages. At this point I think that people would main anything as long at it had "Blue Mage" written on it."

My thoughts exactly.

I cant wait for the gunblade job, i could say that it'd definitely be my main, however my main tank is DRK and that could see some improvements, in addition the gunblade job could be shit.
MCH was my other dteam job, but i dont play it, because its shit.

Moral of the story is that regular jobs can be shit, and Blue Mage could have been one of them.


I commend those who are saying it could still have it's ability hunting mechanic while still being a real job, at least theyre trying, but i do think its a pipe dream.
I think the two playstyles are fundamentally at odds.

You cant have a fulfilling, challenging method of hunting down and learning enemy skills in whatever order you like, and fit those skills into a strict and balanced rotation. One will invariably take from the other.
You cant have any rotation at all, or any kind of skill interaction, unless you learn all your skills in order at certain intervals.
Because you learn skills sporadically, each skill has to work on its own, efficiently and in isolation.

[Seraphor]

"There's no point in solo content in an mmo."

Absolute bullshit. There's every point in solo content, and all mmo devs are aware of this and create specific solo content.

Yes, there are some players, albeit a minority, who only play solo content, but its not just about them.
You cant be playing with other people all the time, there will be downtime, when your friends arent online, when you're waiting for a queue to pop, etc. Solo content is meant for that downtime.