Late to the BLU Party

[JunseiKei]

Go listen to the part about blue mage from the live letter. It was uploaded to the FFXIV youtube channel yesterday. We are responding to what they said and had in the slides.

*Looks at 2:07:06 time for the thing. Says it's in the latter part 12:00 in.*

<_< Have a timestamp?

[jon041065]

*Looks at 2:07:06 time for the thing. Says it's in the latter part 12:00 in.*

<_< Have a timestamp?

https://youtu.be/UPh-GOdyRiA?t=4645 When they start talking about what a limited job is and their reasons why.

[Inoch]

That's very limited information to have this much hate against it. Reading just that slide, "designed for solo play" and "not suited for parties" comes off to me as many abilities may be locked out of group play. Not suited for parties does not entail full exclusion. I know the class is locked to level 50 for now, which will be raised in the future. My guess to that is to adjust the job according to feedback and see how things scale from there (one thing I can tell you, FFXIV's scaling is not the best, but the other games I've played have none, so my perception is a bit skewed).

Just like I know there's some quote I've vaguely read/heard of Yoshida (maybe even someone else) talking about death possibly 1-shotting bosses (which may even be hyperbole - we don't know yet!). Without knowing the full context of the remark because of how very little information has been presented, this could mean a number of things (including, but not limited to: making sure abilities that are marked to not having access to in certain content cannot be made available through means like pomanders, squadron's ungarmax and scholar's ability to resummon their fairy while under dissipation; making sure checks to are in place that an under-abilitied BLU cannot be carried through content because they did not do enough things to unlock enough abilities to maintain a rotation; testing rotations for damage if they were ever planned to be allowed into current content).

Like I've been trying to say, we literally don't have enough information. It's fine to be cautious, but there's still a difference between caution and pessimism.

Did you maybe not see the PLL? They went more into detail how limited and locked this job is. That's why we're upset.

I don't quite understand. People complain FFXIV needs to create new things and shake up the current, repetitive formula. BLU's design may be intending for that, yet it's being complained about before we even really have all of the information/clarifications.

Let it come out and try it before you preemptively get your panties in twists.

People don't complain they try something new but people don't mean formula like limited job but dungeons, raids etc.

What about this precludes Blue Mage from engaging in duty finder content once enough/all abilities are obtained?

I imagine that even the iconic spells for a "solo class" will not be direct copies of single player abilities. 1000 Needles in its original implementation will be useless for Blue Mage once it goes past the 50 level cap either way. 1000 damage for a spell cast or GCD is simply not up to par if the class scales with the rest of the game whether or not it's in multiplayer content. So it will probably be adjusted in some way, or it will end up useless regardless of what type of content it's in. It's not a multiplayer or solo issue.

1000 needles could be a potency based and do more damage at higher levels.

[JunseiKei]

Did you maybe not see the PLL? They went more into detail how limited and locked this job is. That's why we're upset.

People don't complain they try something new but people don't mean formula like limited job but dungeons, raids etc.

For once, no, I didn't see it. Having to catch up with it now.

Yeah, I know. People tend to ask to reinvent the square wheel.

---

Okay, so what was being brought up is:

- BLU's unique thing is learning moves from monsters, but the moves themselves not being balanced for MMOs;
- Not wanting players for being kicked for not having certain moves;
- An unwillingness to allow the game's [party driven content] to be broken by [a possibility] of one of these learned abilities (like level 5 death, as was used in the example);
- Not wanting to bar BLU out of some content and not others;
- Consistently being asked for BLU, despite the feeling the class's unique identity would not mesh well with the game.

So how did BLU work in FXI? *Looks it up.*
"Can tank, physical DPS, magic DPS, heal and debuff."

So, a pseudo classic red mage with the ability to learn monster abilities that affected their stats.

Okay, a thought comes to mind. SMN's backlash for how a lot of people thought, and some still don't think, that XIV's iteration is very summoner-like to the rest of the franchise. XIV has a very hard emphasis on their trinity. Even RDM in this game is very much a DPS with very limited access to other things (IE: if you thought that XIV's RDM could be built to tank, it can't; if you thought it could be built to heal, it can't; for some, RDM's identity wasn't that they could dabble in lots of things but rather they could be turned into a very niche thing and still be fairly good at it; RDM isn't a jack-of-all-trades in this game - it's a magic caster with a melee combo that deals magic damage with a raise and a mediocre heal). That's XIV's thing; they have hard defined roles.

If this branches XIV to be more open-ended, something has to change at some point. Then what I'm getting here is people are more upset that the class/thing they picked was BLU, despite the XIV team saying they were pretty reluctant in putting the class in to begin with. They did - with stipulations.

They also hinted at beastmaster having this same kind of stipulation. It makes sense - these are classes whose abilities aren't simply upgraded - at their core, they learn completely new abilities, but that's me thinking and guessing.

Reading OP's post in their opening; turning level x Death into just a hefty nuke with a CD doesn't make it level x death anymore. It just turns it into an [insert hard hitting magic spell]. Taking Bad Breath's from no status because mobs are immune into a cone attack that deals damage turns it into [insert generic AoE magic attack]. Basically, "do the thing you did to other casters and just slap BLU on it" (my addition: 'so we can complain that it's not very BLU because it doesn't do [this thing that it's supposed to do].') People complain about the sameness of things, but then also complain about it not being same enough. What I read was 'if BLU is in a party, it does this, otherwise it just does this.'

Let the system and class come out first. Try it and give feedback. I can get the gripe players have because of how limiting the job will be in the beginning. They aren't going to change the system because some people are up in arms over how it's being introduced before it actually is introduced; it won't be ready for the date they've publicly set on a free stream then (which is a waaaaaaaaaaaaay worse thing to do business-wise). If they'll change BLU after, they'll change it after (because SE doesn't ever change their minds, like their stance on this class itself). Personally, I'm also of the mindset that I hope the class is available for current content sometime in the future, but this is clearly not the time to push for that desire. Make sure they don't break the system with something new first.

This post isn't really much different from what I've already said above; just having additional notes as to why I think SE decided to do this and trying to rationalize the willingness [of players] to set something on fire before it's even available.

[SDaemon]

1000 needles could be a potency based and do more damage at higher levels.

Personally, I'd rather they not have 1000 needles scale in such a way. They could, as there have been situations in the past, make the skill hit multiple times with each hit doing 1000 damage or they could leave 1000 as a single hit and just let players learn 10,000 needles later on.

[Alleo]

Again, all I was arguing against was the claim that solo experiences have no place in an MMORPG. I pointed to something that has a place and is a solo experience (one that does not require partying up to progress in), which is Crafter/Gatherer Jobs. Maybe Limited Jobs will similarly feel like they have a proper place once we have them. We just don't know, but I'd like to see it at least attempted.

And barely anyone would probably argue for it to have solo experiences next to it being a normal job too. Why do we need to exclude one side in a game that is one of the most successfull MMO out here? Why not push them to do both. Have its unique spell that makes them great for solo content (maybe restrict that with hunts to not make a mess out of that content), have the duty to challenge onself and on top of that have the normal ability to join content. (There as a normal job with rotations that only exist in that content).

Heck I am all for more side content like carnival if its fun and maybe implemented for more jobs later. I am all for PoTD because you can try this solo too.

But the overworld content is imo just lacking to make Blue fun for a longer time. Other than fates and old hunts you have nothing out there.

[jon041065]

snip

I like how defenders of this blue mage/limited jobs say that this iteration is the most faithful to the classic blu although it's basically XI blu like you said but wearing FFV blu mage skin. No other main FF game besides XI had a pool of blue magic larger than 30 and let you make builds with them. Also, XI blu was a decent tank, healer, and debuffer. It was mostly a dps (phsyical and magical) and buffer through Diffusion. The buffer part became even more important later on when blu got things like Mighty Guard.

SMN in 14 is an example that both sides use. That it's not the "summon huge creature for mega damage" people that are still not quite happy to this day and those on our side that have said that SE has been listening and making SMN closer to what it should be over time. That if the first version of "blu in trinity system" wasn't well received that it could at least be changed over time according to feedback. A lot thought that when they added rdm, they would use that opportunity to push the limits of the trinity system or start going beyond that. The rdm we got is pretty fun so at the very least we though we would get a blu that was designed in such a way that is loses some things to fit the trinity system but still be fun to play. We had hoped that they would make the game larger by adding a talent system of sorts or start doing advance jobs.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...21#post4829321

If anything the design philosophy should be to make jobs like this "Advanced Jobs", with additional content and hurdles to clear before being able to bring them into the full game, not "Limited Jobs", where they are just restricted from the full game arbitrarily, and (for now) permanently.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Instead, we got a "limited" system that splits endgame content. They will have to update the Carnival so often to justify it being this way that chances are this system or another area of the game will suffer for it. Then what happens when there is more limited jobs? Which squeaky wheel will get the grease then when there are 5+ wheels?

Some on our side are against limited jobs in any form and others are in favor of it being something like freelancer/onion knight or non-combat jobs.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ue-Limited-Job

Or to offer ideas - make limited jobs non combat.

Auctioneer. Merchant. Farmer. Caravan Traveller. Performer.

As for a job like BST. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ut-Beastmaster

I like the idea but would have side content for the charming aspect of XI BST.

A death spell could work like the OP said, work like the eureka version, or just be a super low flat % chance at working with a hefty cooldown. That last one is not likely but would be pretty dam funny to see in a twitch clip. Bad breath could be a DoT along with the trick attack damage taken debuff so that it still feels your enemy is weaker after using the spell. Bonus for starting to give some wiggle room to the meta. Bad breath could also apply the fire, water, poison, miasma, earth, and bleed DoTs already in the game to give the feeling of bad breath being powerful and applying a lot of status ailments in a way that doesn't break the game. The spells wouldn't have to function exactly like their past FF versions but as long as they fulfilled the same fantasy most on our side would be happy.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's not much the "wait and see" approach will do to change most of our minds. Some will find the Carnival fun enough to settle for blu being limited. A lot of us won't have our minds change. We will still want the job to be one we can use in the FULL game. There are just a few asking for blu to be delayed and/or the planned updates for it to be scrapped. The majority of our side knows that any changes won't happen before 5.1 as it's already being worked on and have stated that we are fine with waiting till 6.0 IF we knew the devs were working on making blu a full job. If they announce that they were going to do that after seeing the backlash, it would go away almost overnight.

[Zareshi]

Reading OP's post in their opening; turning level x Death into just a hefty nuke with a CD doesn't make it level x death anymore. It just turns it into an [insert hard hitting magic spell].

(Cutting the quote there since Bad Breath's been addressed by others, going to expand on Death a little)

There's precedent for Death being a nuke instead of instakill. XI and XIII are both a heavy nuke with a low chance of instant kill. So BLU Level X Death in XIV could be the same, a hefty nuke with a low % chance of success, and immunity on mobs they don't want cheesed by it.

"RDM isn't a jack-of-all-trades in this game - it's a magic caster with a melee combo that deals magic damage with a raise and a mediocre heal)."

That has always been RDM's thing. They've never been able to learn the strongest white or black magics, and have never really had an involved affair with melee (push "attack", swing swing, next turn). We received a RDM that may not have been as good at filling spots as in the single player RPGs, but it still fulfills the fantasy of RDM.

You pull from both white and black schools of magic, you have a melee attack. They may not be as strong at being party filler in high end content as they could in single player RPGs, but they shine in places like POTD and HoH where they absolutely can fill that jack of all trades role. This plays back into the discussion with BLU where, while RDM shines in this side content, it's still a fully playable job in the rest of the game.

[Fyce]

That has always been RDM's thing. They've never been able to learn the strongest white or black magics, and have never really had an involved affair with melee (push "attack", swing swing, next turn). We received a RDM that may not have been as good at filling spots as in the single player RPGs, but it still fulfills the fantasy of RDM.

You pull from both white and black schools of magic, you have a melee attack. They may not be as strong at being party filler in high end content as they could in single player RPGs, but they shine in places like POTD and HoH where they absolutely can fill that jack of all trades role. This plays back into the discussion with BLU where, while RDM shines in this side content, it's still a fully playable job in the rest of the game.

I find it amusing that you have to admit that one of the most important and iconic aspect/identity of RDM only works well in a "limited" (see what I did there? Heh) amount of content in FFXIV, Deep Dungeons being your only example.

--- The rest of my post isn't aimed directly at you. ---

It makes me really curious though: what do you guys actually like with the iconic Blue Mages? You are clearly fine with jobs losing A LOT of their identity coming into XIV as long as they "work" in all content, so it makes me think that you actually don't really care about their identity and iconic aspects/gameplay since you're fine with changing almost everything to the point that the only remaining identity is pretty much only the name of the job (hello Summoners!).
I'll quote myself:

At this point I think that people would main anything as long at it had "Blue Mage" written on it.

I wasn't being sarcastic or anything, it was a genuine thought. I've been following this debate since it started, and not a single time someone against Limited BLU has managed to show me what they actually liked so much from BLU that would remain in a non-limited BLU in FFXIV. Only one person tried, by saying that -for them- BLU was some sort of nuke mage using strong attacks, and that it was basically their only use. I then pulled up a wiki to see how much nuke and straight forward damage skills they usually had... It turned out that this person had literally dismissed 95% of Blue Mages toolkit. They also couldn't care less about learning abilities in an unusual way.

So, if you are actually okay with throwing out everything that consititute BLU's identity, what's left that you actually like? Because when I read stuff like this:

How do you balance a job that has no real rotations or combos? Simple. Give it real rotations or combos.

then I am really questionning what aspect of BLU you love so much, because statements like these basically throw every situational/gimmicky skills out of the window (which, again, is 95% of what Blue Magic was about in older FF titles). For me, it translates to: "I don't care about how BLU plays as long as it's called BLU and works in all battle content". And, no offense, but that seems to be a really weak reason to support non-limited BLU specifically.

When we say that you can play with your friends as "any of the other jobs", you people answer with "but these jobs are not BLU", implying that it's specifically BLU being actually important somehow. So there must be something that you actually care about that constitutes for you BLU's identity. So, what is it? Is it because you like the name "Blue Mage"? Is blue your favourite color? Do you simply find it funny to see your character use skills with animations used by some monsters? After throwing the gameplay and the toolkit out, there isn't much left...

You are fine with giving up so much that it genuinely makes me wonder what you actually like with Blue Mages and Blue Magic in general.

[jon041065]

snip

Well blue is my favorite color and might have been why I went frost as my spec for death knight when WotLK came out. But let's keep that a secret.

For me, I wanted a job that could learn and use enemy spells throughout the full game. I was really hoping for a tank like this person's write up. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...concept_pitch/
To me that would have felt "blue mage" enough to satisfy that fantasy and still be fun to main. Playing jedi shadow/sith assassin on old republic made me fall in love with caster based tanks.

I also just love the melee/caster hybrid. It's what I normally play as if there's that choice. FFXIV's rdm is pretty fun but wish it was building up a meter with melee combos for a big spell finisher. That's what I thought blu was likely to end up as and be the melee version of brd or mch.

The learning method isn't super important to me and there's been multiple versions of how to learn spells in past FF games so they didn't have to go with this one but they did and that's fine. I was more in favor of hunt logs that would say "go kill 20 cactuars" and then you would get 1k needles. Again, the learning method wasn't that important to me because how spells would be learned wasn't the most important part of blue mage to me. I wanted a job that was as 50/50 as possible between melee and casting with the spells being enemy abilities.

Having OP spells isn't part of the blue mage fantasy for me and there have been suggestions by myself and others for how to make spells like death and bad breath work in a raid setting. As well as concepts and ideas for how to make blue mage feel unique beyond just reskinned spells with the correct names.

I like the idea and aesthetic of blue mage. I like that it had the potential to really ride the line between being a melee or a caster. I like the idea of using enemy spells to make the job feel different. I like that it's so different compared to typical fantasy tropes. These were the things I was looking for when I was one of the people begging for blue mage to be in the game. To be able to get the killing blow on a new savage boss in current content using goblin punch. To then go farm up some crating mats for new expac items and use something like Trine or Grand Delta to aoe down mobs. To be able to do more than just my trinity role because of the various spells that blu could potentially use despite which role SE might have assigned to it. Not many mmo players these days like to do things beyond "just tank/heal/dps and don't worry about dpsing/your utility" and blue mage could have finally felt like "I'm home" in terms of jobs for someone like me that does enjoy trying to play to all the strengths my job/class has. It's why I miss the off healing that enhance shamans had on WoW during the MoP expac.

Trying to be as faithful to "blue mage" as possible wasn't as important as a job that felt like blue mage and I could actually main. This isn't even that truthful to blue mage BESIDES using the more common learning method. No other main FF title had more that 30 blue magic spells besides FFXI. No other main FF title let you make builds besides FFXI. No other main FF title excluded blue mage from the full game after it was unlocked besides FFXIV.