Blue Mage is a masterpiece of game design.

[Jandor]

Timesinks aren't actually a very good idea these days though.

Timesinks are a great idea, from a player retention point of view anyway, you've just got to disguise it properly at the beginning so that players get far enough along for the sunk cost fallacy to kick in.

[Zephera]

Timesinks are a great idea, from a player retention point of view anyway, you've just got to disguise it properly at the beginning so that players get far enough along for the sunk cost fallacy to kick in.

That's a good point on how a lot of companies try to do it these days. Doesn't always work though, if the players see through it it becomes pretty unpopular. I do know from WoW that the timesinks tied with the RNG seem to be big complaints driving away players from their latest expansion, at least among other issues as well.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

That's a good point on how a lot of companies try to do it these days. Doesn't always work though, if the players see through it it becomes pretty unpopular. I do know from WoW that the timesinks tied with the RNG seem to be big complaints driving away players from their latest expansion, at least among other issues as well.

For companies, DLCs and cut content seemed to be great too, from a market stand point. Look where that has led them.

No, it's your fault that you only view the game from one point of view, which is far for the legitimate only one.

Yeah, i'm just asking FFXIV to do what any good game, critically acclaimed, would do. To focus on gameplay instead of time sinking and obstuce mechanics. What, there is a design law that forces MMORPG to be boring grindfests? There is none, and in 2019, entering the third decade of the XXI century, i hardly think it has a place anymore in any respectable videogame. Specially as average gamer age increases and average gamer time allowed to play games is ever shorter. Again, NEETs/Highschoolers shouldn't be the measure of any kind of game.

Yes, I love Eureka, but not because it's difficult or easy, but because it's more social than everything else in the game combined.

Following a Zerg and doing FATEs is now social. For me social is when you have to discuss a strategy with your party in order to tackle a boss, or form a organization with mindlike goals like a static or crafting groups, or a pvp team. Not following other 90 players that might aswell be NPCs for all you care.

Ok, so not only you have one strict POV on "dedication", but now on "fun" too.

Yeah, dedication as a time sink is bad, dedication as a skill learning process is good. This is something i know very well as i am a teacher and i apply this daily: Repetitive simple tasks are bad, interesting innovative tasks are good, learning increases, challenge motivates participation. In games also motivates replayability, something this game lacks massively as its full of dead content, even has cases of content dead on arrival, and the sole promise of higher arbitrary numbers is not good enough for many anymore. Fun is very subjective, there are tons of timesinks in game that could stay for those who enjoy repetitive tasks, just don't let those to lead every aspect of the game as it is now.

For an MMO to be successful, it needs players. And for that, it needs to understand that different players have different legitimate tastes and legitimate expectations. It also need to have more long term goals, and difficulty is the shortest timesink of all.

I totally agree. But also, long timesinks are actually hurting now. The whole genre was founded with that line of thought, and look where it is now as a genre... This is the case of the rich passenger on the titanic. Their room might be the pretiest and have the greatest service, still, he sailing on a doomed ship. These old rules you so strictly defend are literally taking FFXIV, WoW, and any other somewhat relevant MMORPG right into an Iceberg. I wanna rock the boat, maybe it will sink anyway, but i rather do something than keep going straight ahead.

You realize that the "sheer number" of people engaged in difficult content is a single dot on XIV's demography, right ? The problem of FFXIV is not difficulty, it's stagnation. And for that, BLU (and Eureka) are far better solutions that another Savage raid or a third Ultimate.

I think the game needs both. Im greedy and always encourage other for excellence. I don't see why we have to choose considering the amount of subscriptions and the massive cash shop revenue this game has. We need more eurekas for people wanting that kind of content. We need more challenging and interesting main game events, like better and more complex dungeon design. If a player wants to watch netflix while repeating skills 1 to 5 on a FATE, thats great, but also there should be more content that demanded skill, refinement and quick solutions or social interactions, thats what dungeons should be, a bridge between overworld and raid challenges.

[LilMightBeACannibal]

I've been having a great time with it! Going out and collecting spells with my friends has been a blast. Getting some of the fancier ones from trials and the like has proven a little troublesome for me, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not having fun anyway.

self destruct squad wya

[zuzu-bq]

I wouldn't say masterpiece. But it's very well crafted.

[Aster_E]

I'm amused at how many folks are simultaneously complaining about the job lasting for only a day (after going non-stop) but then also that some skills might (gasp) take more than fifteen runs to get. (How does mount farming make you feel?)

Different. Mounts are not, necessarily, progression towards developing your character, unless your character considers collecting things to be their sole purpose in life. Skills for a job are very much an advancement. Some of us, more than others, hate tying such growth to factors of luck.

With BLU you have a "Limited Job" that starts at level 1--HW ones started at 30, and other StB ones at 50--and asks us to grind, albeit with improved exp from world mobs instead of anything else. We are tasked with getting only to level 50, which only takes a few hours if you know what you're doing on that end, and also raises the question of why have leveling at all? We could have started at 50 and stayed there, just as easily, if the devs really, really wanted to save on effort; no the process was obligatory and put in for the illusion of vertical growth, I'm sure. The main point of BLU is the luck-based horizontal progression so we can each take part in solo side content. Some of us want to take BLU into level 50 content, but aren't being accepted into unsynced speed runs people do for WT, leaving the same BLUs with needing to set up their own PFs and discovering how poor most of their 49 abilities are against raid bosses or primals, because BLU wasn't balanced for party content,at all. That's not the kind of job it is. It was sold to us as such, and wanting it to be otherwise doesn't change that unless you choose not to touch BLU in its current form, choose possibly not to sub, and simply let SE know in a non-obtrusive nor violent manner so they will at least have records of dissent they can look at that match a decline in player interest or activity. Only then might change be considered. Until then, BLU is what it is, and you either like it or you don't.

I leveled mine to 50 on Aster while hanging out with an old friend of mine, and 31 on Lyra (only because of bird exp), and haven't touched the skills. My sub just ran out, so things may or may not die down by the time I get back, and I doubt any changes will be made aside from the incoming nerf to chocobo exp--btw, Yoshida, people are only now bothering with leveling their birds because the rate is decent--so I can't promise I'll do much, if anything, with the abilities at that time. The actual point of BLU does nothing for me at this time. If it turned out that Masked Carnival completion could lead to acquiring the Magicked Carpet then I might consider it again down the line. It's not like I'll be buying that or the Fat Cat mount off the cash shop, no matter how much I want them. The memes and intended gameplay are not enough for me right now, personally.

Following a Zerg and doing FATEs is now social. For me social is when you have to discuss a strategy with your party in order to tackle a boss, or form a organization with mindlike goals like a static or crafting groups, or a pvp team. Not following other 90 players that might aswell be NPCs for all you care.

I mean, to be fair, I'm certain Reynhart here was referring to the discussions and jokes being tossed around, especially during much of Anemos' relevance. There was a social atmosphere present, and not for the reason the devs intended. On the other hand you had people who just went AFK during the trains back then, and those people missed out on the social interactions that occured, some or most of the time.

Tried an all BLU Ifrit Ex and the "Tank" BLU got absolutely slaughtered.

Obligatory "Nailed it!"

[Deceptus]

My Critique:

BLU is a contradiction of itself.

The leveling process was great. BLU felt super strong. Abilities seemed to come naturally because you were killing multiples of enemies. The issue is that BLU was touted as a solo job, over half of it's kit requires group content.

BLU can't complete that group content at lvl 50.

Sub 50 isn't a problem, but try tanking an ex as a BLU, you'll be slaughtered. This results in BLU's begging people to assist them.

Elemental Attributes don't matter.

Despite being a selling point, in the end, they don't matter. And most of the time you won't have the required element. Wind? There's only one in the game so far and it's behind a primal with a low drop percentage.

Their Abilities are lackluster.

As predicted, it's strongest abilities don't work in most scenarios. If you're level 50 and a mob casts lvl 5 petrify on you, it works 100% of the time. You're getting petrified. Period. The same can't be said for BLU.

When they do hit, basically on non bosses, the reaction is "Holy crap that's COOL!" "This Job feels Amazing!". When they don't hit it turns to "What is the point of this spell that is useless?" "This Job sucks, back to underpowered Glower Spam".

By most metrics BLU sadly doesn't live up to neither the hype, nor the promises of the developers.

[Cerbolt]

The solution can be so easy, yet people come here to offend & defend the current state of limited jobs.
The side content that BLU offers is totally fine, gathering your own skills is a unique feature. The masked carnivale is another challenge, which sounds refreshing and fun.
But why stop there? Every other job has quests tied with skills. Why not do the same for BLU and hand out skills that are needed for duty finder content?
Simply said, get your self-destruct skills (fun skills) from the outside world, while learning DPS based abilities from job quest that are required to enter the duty finder.
Why does it have to be only one-sided content while it could be both sided. Why gate the one or the other, but not benefit all?
Stop being stubborn.

This is how I always imagined blue would be like in ffxiv.

[xbahax92]

(yes the group consists of 4 BLU's, the rest slots are restricted to the other 15 jobs)

[Bright-Flower]

The solution can be so easy, yet people come here to offend & defend the current state of limited jobs.
The side content that BLU offers is totally fine, gathering your own skills is a unique feature. The masked carnivale is another challenge, which sounds refreshing and fun.
But why stop there? Every other job has quests tied with skills. Why not do the same for BLU and hand out skills that are needed for duty finder content?
Simply said, get your self-destruct skills (fun skills) from the outside world, while learning DPS based abilities from job quest that are required to enter the duty finder.
Why does it have to be only one-sided content while it could be both sided. Why gate the one or the other, but not benefit all?
Stop being stubborn.

At that point you have to develop and balance a static rotation for the job to have. If BLU is allowed into any duty, it needs to be balanced. To balance it, they have to balance it around having every spell it can get. It would require much more development time to craft these spells around a coherent, interesting and unique job gauge and rotation. A lot more effort than giving them a bunch of spells that don't need to work together with any synergy and letting people have fun in old content.

And in terms of new regular jobs, IMO there's probably just a lot of other things to do before adding a fourth 'casting' dps to the game, so I doubt the devs would prioritize that version of blue mage over other things, like say adding another tank and healer to the game that we haven't gotten since HW. I doubt they would pick BLU as a main job until at LEAST 6.0 if even then. (And given the overhead each job adds for every expansion I wouldn't be shocked if they started adding one new job per expansion after Shadowbringers or something. Every new job means a new artifact set to design, a new weapon type to design for every patch as gear is added, new job quests, new abilities/traits/job balancing to add on... combined with that, having gotten red mage in 4.0 etc I really don't think we'd be seeing blue mage as a normal job for 4 years or so if it were done as a regular job anyway.