A question for the BLU peeps

[Reynhart]

They can just choose to play with you or kick you.

And that's one of the reason why BLU is excluded from matchmaking.

As long as one could change skills out of combat a good player could shine by making good skill choices in place of a perfectly executed rotation.

Problem is that, for now, nothing points out to skills having a required level to use. So, basically, a synced lvl 40 BLU could use a skill that required lvl50 to learn. So, there could be a huge difference between two BLU of the same synced lvl depending on their real level.

If it were a requirement to unlock some mandatory skills, consider it a consequence of it being a Limited Job.

Again, what is mandatory for the game is not what other players consider mandatory. Exactly like the game allows you to enter a duty as soon as you're above min ilvl but a leader could ask for you to have the maximum ilvl available. BLU add more opportunities for drama.

[jon041065]

And that's one of the reason why BLU is excluded from matchmaking.

Again, what is mandatory for the game is not what other players consider mandatory. Exactly like the game allows you to enter a duty as soon as you're above min ilvl but a leader could ask for you to have the maximum ilvl available. BLU add more opportunities for drama.

So either people should be forced to play with each other or just take away the option entirely? It's not SE's place to solve this. I think they should have just said to use the party finder if you're worried about being matched with people that might want you to play a certain way but they could have added more DF settings to let us have more control over the situation. Like how FCs can mark themselves as casual and/or hardcore, there could have been settings for "relaxed, intermediate, and serious" and you could check the players with a similar mindset of how you want to play. Add choices or letting us have more control over our choice instead of taking choices away.

[Reynhart]

So either people should be forced to play with each other or just take away the option entirely? It's not SE's place to solve this.

That's what they did since the very beginning of ARR. They removed the elemental resistance, they removed special bonuses, they narrowed the effect of all main stats to a single thing, they removed cross-class skills in case people would be too lazy to gather them, they reduced the skill ceiling of every job, they streamlined everything so that there would be less reason for dramas. All of that point toward them not trust the playerbase to be mature enough to manage different point of vienws in random matchmaking.

[Reinha]

BLU add more opportunities for drama.

Every job and game play option adds opportunities for drama, but not having them risks boredom.

Problem is that, for now, nothing points out to skills having a required level to use. So, basically, a synced lvl 40 BLU could use a skill that required lvl50 to learn. So, there could be a huge difference between two BLU of the same synced lvl depending on their real level.

Your solution doesn't solve a lot of issues regarding matchmaking with Blue Mages (skill balance, absence of a rotation, BLU not using the "optimal" skills, number of skills depending on the level sync, etc.).

Those balance problems are a result of the assumption that BLU would take their outdoor skill set in party content. That assumption was not made by me, so I'm not going to put in the effort to solve the balance issues. I suggested earlier in the thread that BLU would not use their outdoor skill set in party content, but would instead have a job gauge and a rotation. Below is the context of my latest responses. I merely pointed out that, if it's not about balance but missing skills, requirements to enter an instance a thing.

I think everyone is missing the main point. Its not about balance. Its about the fact you can't guarantee a BLU will have the skills they need to do content in this holy trinity system. So the BLU could gimp groups.

How will you guarantee that I have exactly the 24 skills that the rest of the party want between the 49 I'm free to choose from ?

All of that development time and resources invested into "making it work" for what purpose in the end? Being able to do your roulettes to farm Poetics, or do Sastasha with randoms "for fun".
Great.

Well, you're not wrong. IMO bringing BLU to DF would be a waste if it stayed level 50 so raising the level cap should definitely be the first priority.

[Reynhart]

Every job and game play option adds opportunities for drama, but not having them risks boredom.

Sure, but for me, drama is more likely to happen with strangers, so you can offer more options for people who group outside of a duty. At one point, someone was surprised when someone else said something like "limited jobs makes the game more social". Even though BLU itself doesn't really do this, having to create a premade if you want to have access to jobs at full power (If we imagine that talents trees could be a future limited feature) means that you'll likely talk more with party members instead of simply queuing alone, posting a {Hello} at the start, {Congratulations} at the end (At best), then leave the duty.

If you got someone using the wrong talent or wrong gear bonus wouldn't be that different from "ice mages" and melee not doing positionals.

When you have 49 spells (and even more in the future) to choose from, you can't sum it up by "They're playing wrong". If jobs could only equip half of their skills, you'd have tank chastized for choosing or not choosing their tank stance depending on if the run went well or if something went wrong, probably by the same person both times. As for bonuses, you also have the "difficulty" of obtaining them. Would it be reasonable to expect everyone having a completed relic, a final Deep Dungeon weapon or upgraded tome weapon in every random duties, considering their bonus might be better ? Would it be reasonable to demand a BLU having a skill learned from a lvl70 instance during a lvl50/60 roulette ?

[jon041065]

When you have 49 spells (and even more in the future) to choose from, you can't sum it up by "They're playing wrong". If jobs could only equip half of their skills, you'd have tank chastized for choosing or not choosing their tank stance depending on if the run went well or if something went wrong, probably by the same person both times. As for bonuses, you also have the "difficulty" of obtaining them. Would it be reasonable to expect everyone having a completed relic, a final Deep Dungeon weapon or upgraded tome weapon in every random duties, considering their bonus might be better ? Would it be reasonable to demand a BLU having a skill learned from a lvl70 instance during a lvl50/60 roulette ?

I've asked you in the past if you were under the assumption that you would be unable to change spells once inside an instance and you said yes but we don't know if you can or not yet. Also, I've never said to just leave blu as it is and lift the restrictions. That's why I've been saying it will take probably to 6.0 for SE to make blu work in the full game. They already have most of Shadowbringers planned out (inlcuding the blu content) so IF they did listen to the backlash, adding what we are asking for would most likely have to be part of the following expansion.

I'm pretty sure that we talked about set bonuses in another thread and I said I don't think they would go for them in the full game and then linked you to an onion knight thread where I made a post about how I can see them added in a strictly solo setting.

People can expect what they want in matchmaking but will seldom get that and either they accept it or drop from the group. If they harass the player without X, then that player should report them for a possible ToS violation.

Your final sentence is again assuming there won't be a hard level requirement to learn spells and we don't know that yet. Even if there isn't a hard level requirement the job quests could give us traits to make it possible to learn more spells. So in your example, that blu might not even have the ability to learn that level 70 spell yet. We don't know enough yet about how spell learning works.

[Reynhart]

I've asked you in the past if you were under the assumption that you would be unable to change spells once inside an instance and you said yes but we don't know if you can or not yet.

Yes, that's my assumption, and here's why. One of the official reason for BLU to be excluded from matchmaking is the risk of missing some spells and being kicked for it. Everytime this is mentionned, you have people rightfully arguing that current jobs could technically skip their job quest and missing some skills. But, since no other job has that type of restriction (Like, you must do your job quest of the appropriate level for the duty) , "not doing what you should have done" is apparently not enough. So, we could suppose it's about choices then ? Right now, the only things you can "choose" are your role skills and it wasn't reason enough to restrict someone from matchmaking, even if some of them are mandatory. Probably because you can change them even in Duty ? (Well, it's not an issue anymore, but it probably has more to do with several role actions being useless, so that there isn't really any choice here.) The other reason could be that some spells have a very very low learn rate, enough so that you can't expect every BLU to have them, with the same end result.

That's why I've been saying it will take probably to 6.0 for SE to make blu work in the full game. They already have most of Shadowbringers planned out (inlcuding the blu content) so IF they did listen to the backlash, adding what we are asking for would most likely have to be part of the following expansion.

My guess is that we won't have to wait that long. Like you said, they have most of SH content planned...alongside BLU. So, that content can be designed for potentially having a BLU in party wthout completely falling apart, while SB content can't. Also, some skills can be less and less broken the higher the cap is (Like my idea of a lvl000 needles). Also also, if their goal was simply to not break meaningful content in 4.5, a lvl60 BLU would have been ok. I still think BLU is restricted to lvl50 because some players still don't have any expansion for them to still be able to play BLU. Once you go into expansion level caps, 60, 70 or 80 is not that different. But yes, all of these are only guesses, and we'll have to wait to confirm/deny them.

I'm pretty sure that we talked about set bonuses in another thread and I said I don't think they would go for them in the full game and then linked you to an onion knight thread where I made a post about how I can see them added in a strictly solo setting.

Frankly, once you use premade parties, you can really expand the customization. As a leader, you ask for a specific build, and if someone doesn't match that build, they won't join, or they ask if they can join what that other build, etc...so, more communication and less "Oh, crap, I ended with someone useless".

People can expect what they want in matchmaking but will seldom get that and either they accept it or drop from the group. If they harass the player without X, then that player should report them for a possible ToS violation.

And that player will get the usual reponse with "We can't judge different game style".

Your final sentence is again assuming there won't be a hard level requirement to learn spells and we don't know that yet.

Yes, because nothing suggest that there will be. The spellbook doesn't show any lvl for the spells, and we know you can learn a specific spell from different levels of the same enemy type, with higher level giving you a higher chance to learn. And even with that, you'd still have the possibility of learning and using not having the same requirement (Like Role Actions) and, even if learning and using both have the same level requirement, you'd still have the issue of having more spells learned that what you can use, which brings us back to the first topic of wether or not you will be able to change your spells in duty.

So, in the end, we have a lot of unknown factors to ask for BLU to already be changed.

[jon041065]

Yes, that's my assumption, and here's why. One of the official reason for BLU to be excluded from matchmaking is the risk of missing some spells and being kicked for it. Everytime this is mentionned, you have people rightfully arguing that current jobs could technically skip their job quest and missing some skills. But, since no other job has that type of restriction (Like, you must do your job quest of the appropriate level for the duty) , "not doing what you should have done" is apparently not enough. So, we could suppose it's about choices then ? Right now, the only things you can "choose" are your role skills and it wasn't reason enough to restrict someone from matchmaking, even if some of them are mandatory. Probably because you can change them even in Duty ? (Well, it's not an issue anymore, but it probably has more to do with several role actions being useless, so that there isn't really any choice here.) The other reason could be that some spells have a very very low learn rate, enough so that you can't expect every BLU to have them, with the same end result.

I'd be fine with "advance jobs" in the sense that restrictions from content would be lifted if you complete some goal(s). Also, it seems the very low learn rate is to make the content stretch for a long time which will probably anger more people. We will have to see if that happens and how much.

And that player will get the usual reponse with "We can't judge different game style".

Then that would mean it wasn't actually harassment and the player should just try again. Maybe after a breather.

I'll give an example that happened to me on XI over the summer. I was working on the last Abyssea trial for my Almace. Those 75 khimera horns. One night, this random player ran up to me and said that I'm botting because I had been up there for too long. I had been working on the horns for a few days and just got up to the camp area a few minutes before the person ran up to me. I asked why the thought I was a bot and got "you've been doing this for too long to not be done yet". I told them that I just had some bad luck. I then claimed an enemy needed to pop the khimera and that same player ran up again and started to tell me that I'm taking too long to kill and that I was the "equivalent of slow ass people on the roads that cause bad traffic". Definitely a jerk but not quite harassment yet. Someone to add to my blacklist.

Then twenty minutes later, I got another tell from this player to just leave the camp area since I haven't popped the khimera yet. I was actually running down to where you pop him just as that player popped their's. They hit him once then turned around for over seven minutes. I sent a tell asking if they were serious. The player attacked the NM a few more times before turning around for another five minutes. Told them that this was harassment because they were intentionally preventing me from being able to pop the NM myself. I put in a ticket for a GM and they said they were going to investigate if the events went down as I said because it would count as harassment.

Yes, because nothing suggest that there will be. The spellbook doesn't show any lvl for the spells, and we know you can learn a specific spell from different levels of the same enemy type, with higher level giving you a higher chance to learn. And even with that, you'd still have the possibility of learning and using not having the same requirement (Like Role Actions) and, even if learning and using both have the same level requirement, you'd still have the issue of having more spells learned that what you can use, which brings us back to the first topic of wether or not you will be able to change your spells in duty.

So, in the end, we have a lot of unknown factors to ask for BLU to already be changed.

They said higher level enemies that can teach the same spell offer a better chance? I don't remember that but maybe because I was so angry over the announcement.

Anyway, this is under the assumption that SE would just lift the restrictions on blu and set it free in the rest of the content that I think we both will agree is a bad idea.

[Reynhart]

Also, it seems the very low learn rate is to make the content stretch for a long time which will probably anger more people. We will have to see if that happens and how much.

That's the paradox. Low success rate makes players angrier whe they fail but far more happier when they succeed, compared to 100% success.

Then that would mean it wasn't actually harassment and the player should just try again. Maybe after a breather.

As long as no one explicitely insults anyone, it's rarely considered harassment. For example, a hoted debate wether your tank should use its tank stance or not, and a subsequent kick (Regardless of the side) would only be considered "different game style".

They said higher level enemies that can teach the same spell offer a better chance?

I'm pretty sure the did during the Live Letter using Ifrit as an example. However, the LL Digest only says :

Also, if there are several types of monsters that use the same ability, the rate at which you learn differs based on the monster.

...so it might not be exactly that.
EDIT : Actually, the Ifrit example seems to have been a hint that you could learn Eruption not only from Ifrit but also from Ultima, so...we'll see.

Anyway, this is under the assumption that SE would just lift the restrictions on blu and set it free in the rest of the content that I think we both will agree is a bad idea.

They have a lot of room to tweak BLU for high level content but I hope they won't lift the premade restriction. What they also should do, in my opinion, is give BLU a trait to increase the Xp reward on roaming monsters for the whole party and not just himself, so that you could Xp efficiently by chaining mobs as long as you have a BLU in your party.

[Fyce]

Those balance problems are a result of the assumption that BLU would take their outdoor skill set in party content. That assumption was not made by me, so I'm not going to put in the effort to solve the balance issues. I suggested earlier in the thread that BLU would not use their outdoor skill set in party content, but would instead have a job gauge and a rotation. Below is the context of my latest responses. I merely pointed out that, if it's not about balance but missing skills, requirements to enter an instance a thing.

So, you suggested a solution for an issue that was raised, but refuse to address the problems that your solution would create. I'm simply saying that the very vague solution you gave is full of holes and issues if applied in the way you -very vaguely- described it. If you are not ready or willing to speak about your suggestion and what it implies, then don't suggest it in the first place. No matter if the initial assumption was made by you or not. If you thought that this assumption was not correct (ie, that BLU shouldn't have the same set of skills inside and outside of group instances), you should've say that instead of trying to provide such a faulty and incomplete "solution".

We are speaking about complex game design issues and potentially heavy ressources investments. It's something that requires a lot of thoughts and work. A simple line saying "just lock BLU out of content until it unlock every skill" is very far from being enough. So, again, if you don't want to dive into it, don't comment on it without expecting people to call you on what issues your solution raises.

Well, you're not wrong. IMO bringing BLU to DF would be a waste if it stayed level 50 so raising the level cap should definitely be the first priority.

Raising the level cap is one thing. Figuring out a way for Blue Mage to be fitting in the trinity mold and be balanced for regular group play is another. And again, it's something that requires a lot more work that a sentence or two thrown in a forum.