As an FFXI player, thank you for Limited Jobs and BLU SE

[Seku]

The thing is, Final Fantasy XI was an objectively terrible game. The EXP Party system that players developed in response to the twin mechanics of "You lose EXP when you die"

You mean like some other current and popular games do in this day and age that are considered hard? Just because you don't like being punished for your mistakes, doesn't mean that death shouldn't have a consequence.

and "You have to be in a party to get anything accomplished"

Crafting, soloing, unlocking jobs, doing some quests, missions, making gil didn't require parties at release. Heck with the right job, decent gear, and skill some jobs could solo relevant end game bosses and sold gear like this. As the game went on more activities opened up that went into solo play. Heck, pet jobs thrived for solo play. It's why people keep begging for something like beast master. They even did a better job at making the solo job being able to solo than FF14.

It was fun in the same way a second job or an emotionally-needy long-distance girlfriend might be considered as such. You had to take the same approach to playing FFXI as you would to building a model ship, or writing a novel, just without any tangible results on the other end of it.

Sounds like you were over all bad at the game or never played it and are just speaking from second hand experience of someone that was bad at the game. The only thing that made FF11 like a second job was farming HNM's and finding a party if you didn't have any friends on the game, due to the lack of a auto group feature that made balanced parties. But anyone that knew a basic party composition or knew their way around the jobs usually could hit the max level of a job within a few days.

There is a big distinction between having fun doing an activity and putting up with doing an activity with the expectation that a reward would appear at the end of it. The Blue Mage skill grind, and Final Fantasy XI as a whole, are decidedly in the second category.

You mean like how people put up doing roulettes to get their gear? Because I can tell you right now most people don't like doing the same thr-- oh I mean two dungeons over and over again just to stay relevant. I'm pretty sure most would just like to have the gear after the first or second run and be done with it. But that's not how most MMORPG's work because they don't want the severs to be empty.

And to the OP, just no. As a FF11 player, this Blue mage is actually horrible. Lacking customization. Unique abilities and debuffs. The ability to properly fit into any role. The ability to actually do current content with your group and learn spells as you go. They need to get rid of the limited job idea and just go ahead and set it as a DPS with some type of utility because they are too afraid to actually do anything that is creative and make anything that requires the player to really think and the way it's set up, it basically already fits in line with the rest of the jobs. Maybe a bit lack luster DPS though.

As for those saying that this is new content. Just no. Restart the game, go grind in your fates where you gathered up multiple monsters and just aoe them down and then go and grind your mounts. As that's what they basically turned BLU into, and it is sickening to the core. The only "new" things are the animations, the learning system, and the Masked Carnival, which the last one really should have been the Battle Arena from FF7 put into the Golden Saucer for glam glam weapons that any job could have done.

FFXI experience here for content...
Dungeon with changing objectives each floor
Side event that requires a escort mission, not being detected by enemies, a hot and cold game, capture the flag style game, rescue prisoners...ect.
Dungeon that the player starts off with no equipment and as they progress through they have to pick which gear pieces they want, and then have to choose if they want higher rewards or more gear.
Dungeon that is a open zone, where a set of players take out particual monsters to gain particular stat boosts or abilities to help them along. Have a time constraint of some sort. Divde the monsters up by either giving better stats to progress, or higher equipment rewards.

That would be new...at least for this game. But we'll probably get the same thre-- I mean two dungeons, a 8 man raid and a 24 man raid. With something else that is tottally random thrown in at some point.

[Saefinn]

Game design itself is rarely subjective. Much of game design can be objectively looked at and errors pointed out, even in an early design stage.

For example, the moment Blue mage and its capacity was announced, it didn't take playing the job to realize what was going to happen to it the week it released. You'd level, you get your skills, and you'd beat the Masked Carnival and then not have anything to do with it afterwards.

We just didn't know the timescale. I honestly thought leveling would take longer, and Blue Mage would be dead to me within a month until the next content patch.

Turns out I hit that point on day 3, and I sincerely hope you all love sitting in a corner while someone else does your primal fights.

Whether it is ‘good’ design is still subjective, whilst we can measure it and compare it, the parameters set to be considered ‘good’ are still subjective because they are based on opinion, professional or otherwise. Even if people overwhelmingly agree, it isn’t objective. That is not to say it devalues a person’s opinion, especially if it is a professional opinion, but in the example of FFXI and also Blue Mage there are people who disagree that it is bad design. It’s not because they are in denial of the facts, because opinions aren’t facts.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

I'm done posting about this. Negative or Positive, done is done.

BuT aS lOnG As I gEt MiNe I dOnT cArE.

I agree with everything you said, but this is the part that hurts the most. I'm trying to be as collaborative as I can these days, but it still bothers me. I'm better understanding and empathizing with the viewpoint of those players who felt like their specific version of FFXIV would be satisfied with something wildly new and particular and niche like this, but frequently it seems to be at the cost of the dashed hopes of many other players.
Edit: Just had another instance of this in another topic. I really should back away from these forums for a while...the hostility and entitlement is ridiculous.

It's really telling at this point that the people who are actually in the majority on this forum are making themselves out to be the victim when they are being the most hostile of the bunch. I mean look at the very first response in this thread, look at all the upvotes these hostile responses are getting. I mean look at the upvotes you two are getting, you certainly aren't alone or a minority to any degree here.

If anything, the main "hostility" as you put it have been from people hating on those who enjoy Blue Mage and like it's implementation and what it means for the future of this game.

[Teraluna]

8 self-buffs, 5 Passives and 176(!) spells.
And about 80%+ were TP based and quite gimmiky.

Ok, if it was so good in FXI, then how can people like this dogs breakfast of a half class here?

[Maero]

Well they have had their experiment which despite starting to hate blu i still think parts of it is good. It's somewhat different and feels like your back at 2.0, seeing old areas filled again is a good feeling.
With that said however i would not like classic jobs to be turned into limited jobs only.

[Deceptus]

And just because this is a BLU thread too, after talking about 1.0, I've come to realize something. This limited BLU in many ways is an allegory of FFXIV 1.0. Think about it:
-Both were released seemingly incomplete with the promise of "we can just update it later."
-Both had a lot of outcry from the pre-launch about the direction.
-Both have arguably minimal (if any) "endgame," with the first point being the rationalization.
-Both have "stopgates" of sorts implemented to attempt to dissuade players from getting to said "endgame" to realize there isn't much of anything there (primal/trial spell RNG vs. exp fatigue system).
- Both imposed seemingly pointless restrictions on the basis that they thought they were doing something "different."

Agree 100%.

[Seku]

If anything, the main "hostility" as you put it have been from people hating on those who enjoy Blue Mage and like it's implementation and what it means for the future of this game.

Not hating on the people that enjoy the implenmentation, there are quite a few that will take about anything. Personally though, I like my jobs to be completed and usable in current content. Not something to do as a side activity that has no use outside of what should have been a golden saucer activity and that be it's only function. But good for those that are willing to bite that bullet.

As for the future of this game. 2 dungeons, trial, Savage raid or 24 man dungeons , and some type of random side content that they claim is a test, normally fails, and is good for about a month and we won't see again for about 6 months, if ever. Currently Blue mage is that side content.

If it's a new expansion hours upon hours of fetch-em quests, about 5 leveling dungeons, 3-4 trials, some random air points to go and find so that you can actually fly in the zone.

Oh and glam glam for the mog station so that SE can get more money on top of people's sub. It's actually a really good business model.

Ok, if it was so good in FXI, then how can people like this dogs breakfast of a half class here?

Simple, they don't. If you take a stroll around the forums you'll see that there are a lot of complaint threads, both here and at other sites.

[whiskeybravo]

It's really telling at this point that the people who are actually in the majority on this forum are making themselves out to be the victim when they are being the most hostile of the bunch. I mean look at the very first response in this thread, look at all the upvotes these hostile responses are getting. I mean look at the upvotes you two are getting, you certainly aren't alone or a minority to any degree here.

If anything, the main "hostility" as you put it have been from people hating on those who enjoy Blue Mage and like it's implementation and what it means for the future of this game.

The only reason majority/minority plays a part in this is that the overwhelming majority of forum-goers dislike the implementation, which is in disagreement with your personal opinion. There are, quite obviously as your beloved "Likes" indicate, more people who dislike BLU than like BLU. That's important information for SE to consider. But you're almost trying to backdoor in a political & psychological philosophy that, in my simple estimation, has no bearing in this discussion. There's no "majority" silencing the "minority". There's no psuedo-psychological empowering of toxic individuals or opinions. People share their opinions and thoughts, some more bombastically than others, but at the end of the day everyone is free to share their opinion, be criticized for their comments, or be rewarded for their contributions to a discussion. There's no conspiracy.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

The only reason majority/minority plays a part in this is that the overwhelming majority of forum-goers dislike the implementation, which is in disagreement with your personal opinion. There are, quite obviously as your beloved "Likes" indicate, more people who dislike BLU than like BLU. That's important information for SE to consider. But you're almost trying to backdoor in a political & psychological philosophy that, in my simple estimation, has no bearing in this discussion. There's no "majority" silencing the "minority". There's no psuedo-psychological empowering of toxic individuals or opinions. People share their opinions and thoughts, some more bombastically than others, but at the end of the day everyone is free to share their opinion, be criticized for their comments, or be rewarded for their contributions to a discussion. There's no conspiracy.

You have a knack for consistently not understanding what I've been saying at several points. Like... did you even read what they stated? They made themselves out to be a victim when it's not even true. You can look at the very first response in this thread and many others, you know, the ones getting upvoted being as rude as possible for merely suggesting I enjoy what SE did here. They aren't the victim.

Secondly, I don't give a rats butt if there is a consensus opinion, the criticism I've had is the usage of the like system, not that there is a majority and minority. The system hurts discussion when it's already decided by likes.

I don't think there is a conspiracy? Like I've never implied otherwise.

[Kabooa]

Whether it is ‘good’ design is still subjective, whilst we can measure it and compare it, the parameters set to be considered ‘good’ are still subjective because they are based on opinion, professional or otherwise. Even if people overwhelmingly agree, it isn’t objective. That is not to say it devalues a person’s opinion, especially if it is a professional opinion, but in the example of FFXI and also Blue Mage there are people who disagree that it is bad design. It’s not because they are in denial of the facts, because opinions aren’t facts.

No, it really isn't. Good design compliments the system it uses to reach the end goal. Let's make a checklist.

Blue Mage is a job for solo players.
-Half the abilities are in instances the blue mage will either have great difficulty soloing or simply impossible to solo.
Fail. Bad design.

Blue Mages band together to hunt their abilities.
-It's more effective and efficient to just band with non-Blue mages to hunt your abilities. This would have taken 30 seconds to solve via "Full, Synced Blue Mage parties have 100% learn rate"
Fail. Bad design.

Blue Mage cannot participate in standard content the standard way because it breaks content.
-The only ability this is true for is white wind. Every other game breaking ability faces a plethora of things immune to it. Every other damage spell is bland.
Inconsistent. Bad design.

Blue Mage is focused on killing World monsters to progress.
-Except Fates. Guess they didn't want us to level up in a single day. Oh wait. For the first time in 5 years I was almost excited to hunt down a fate group, only to realize they gave !@#% xp.
Inconsistent. Bad design.

Blue Mage is about load out selection.
-Except there are like 12 mandatory actions you will always take, 3 of 5 that you pick based on the masked Carnival, and then damage spells that more or less condense into "What elemental weakness do I need?" or "Guess I'll just keep using Glower."
Fail. Bad design.

Masked Carnival is end game for the Blue mage!
-maybe 3 encounters need a gimmick move to be cleared, otherwise you can beat them with little to no prep and a little trial and error. 'End-game' lasted two hours.
Inconclusive.

Masked Carnival is about self competition!
-But I can't see my own time / score on the selection screen for my best runs.
Fail. Bad Design.

Blue mages have a pimp cane.
-Yes, that's pretty dope.
Good Art Design.