Thank you SE for...

[Deceptus]

SE did not present Blue Mage as a solo job exclusively. That's it. That's my point. My entire point. There's nothing more to it. Nothing else to extrapolate from it.

Except they did. You can try to defend it all you want but a picture is worth a thousand words.

[Taebok]

Kind of hard to mis-interpret "designed for solo play" ... yet people find a way.

[Cidel]

The biggest problem I have with the "Designed for Solo Play" spiel they tried to give us about BLU is that BLU has turned-out to be arguably less solo-oriented than pretty much every other existing, non-limited job on the way to it's designated level cap, and then some.

"It can learn a lot of it's spells playing solo in the open world." Well yes- and so can everything else. The class/job quests you get on the other classes/jobs for abilities and spells are designed to be done solo, so touting that a BLU can learn spells on it's own is not even worth calling it "solo play." To add to it, once they start needing the spells from dungeons and trials, it becomes even less a solo experience than everything else which has access to their full job kit provided they participated in their own solo quests- unlike BLU, who is at the mercy of not only the participation of other players but scathing RNG.

To top it all off, BLUs can't even participate in squadron missions; another possible outlet for BLUs to learn some potential dungeon spells. Seeing as you're accompanied by NPCs and not actual players, this would be another place they could go play solo, but nope, BLU currently isn't even allowed in there.

It's almost as if they decided to label it as being "designed for solo play" purely on the basis that the Masked Memeval is designed for one player and to justify not having to balance it for DF usage. Because almost everything else about BLU thus far points otherwise.

[Shougun]

It's almost as if they decided to label it as being "designed for solo play" purely on the basis that the Masked Memeval is designed for one player and to justify not having to balance it for DF usage. Because almost everything else about BLU thus far points otherwise.

I think that's literally true, not probably lol. I imagine the hardest part of the job to design was not adding a bunch of hard to get spells from primals but designing masked, so to them from a design cost perspective probably is fine to say. However, obviously to us the players we spend most of the time banging our head against the instances and breezing through the carnival lol (making the pinnacle of solo content seem like a flash in the pan).

[TheHeavenAbyss]

The biggest problem I have with the "Designed for Solo Play" spiel they tried to give us about BLU is that BLU has turned-out to be arguably less solo-oriented than pretty much every other existing, non-limited job on the way to it's designated level cap, and then some.

"It can learn a lot of it's spells playing solo in the open world." Well yes- and so can everything else. The class/job quests you get on the other classes/jobs for abilities and spells are designed to be done solo, so touting that a BLU can learn spells on it's own is not even worth calling it "solo play." To add to it, once they start needing the spells from dungeons and trials, it becomes even less a solo experience than everything else which has access to their full job kit provided they participated in their own solo quests- unlike BLU, who is at the mercy of not only the participation of other players but scathing RNG.

That's very true. Other jobs can build their entire toolkit just by playing solo, but not the solo-not-designed-for-parties-job.

I mean, if they really wanted to put some skills locked behind harder challenges, why not use Marks or Fates instead (new ones if needed)? That way you could even breathe some new life into that content.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

Except they did. You can try to defend it all you want but a picture is worth a thousand words.

Except when the next slide contradicts that... But let's ignore that and cherry pick only the convenient one.



And no one's doing synced dungeons to get XP so drop the "It's only partying up for levelling" argument

[BillyKaplan]

And no one's doing synced dungeons to get XP so drop the "It's only partying up for levelling" argument

You're right, they're doing it because half their bloody kit is inside instances they can't solo.

Two things I'd like to say:
1. It can join parties. Yes. Ok. And? People use this slide to counter the "designed for solo" argument but they also said, clearly, that it was not designed for party play. Being able to join a party does not, in any way, shape or form, contradict the two points presented in the first slide. I can tank as BLM and heal as SMN; doesn't mean I'll be good at it or that the job was designed for it.
2. BLU joining parties is a necessity born out of their kit's distribution. Did you notice where they wrote the "forming parties" part? Under "BLU Progression". But it's not like the BLU in question is going to be able to carry their weight in there because their kit is not designed for anything outside of the Masked Carnivale

BLU is this monstrous hybrid of design, and in the worst possible sense. It was created to be carried.