What BLU got this Patch

[Callinon]

If we take in the lucky bancho numbers than you are the minority (and that does not even show if people enjoyed it, just that they have leveled it to 50). Seemingly SE also had no trust in that content since they now put one mount (which was wanted by quite some people), an emote and a minion behind it. Something which is often done to incentive the people to play it.

The thing is: If they had gone the way a lot of us wanted to (normal job+ being able to gather all the skills extra on top of that) you still would have been able to have fun with it. Just that then others might also have fun with it too..I mean its not like all tank runs, all healer runs, all job x runs exist already, so having an all blue run is nothing special.

That's not exactly ironclad logic there as beast tribes have a nearly identical reward structure and require a great deal more time investment to reach the pay off than blue mage does.

I also got a different impression from reading Lucky Bancho's numbers. It looks to me as if a large majority of people who picked up BLU leveled it to 50 (the level cap at the time of the census) as compared with the percentage of players who leveled say.. NIN.. to 80 (the level cap at the time of the census).

BLU: 4635 players on Carbuncle reaching at least level 30, 2981 of them reaching level 50 for a level cap rate of about 64%
NIN: 6418 players on Carbuncle reaching at least level 30, 1468 of them reaching level 80 for a level cap rate of about 23%

Now it's possible that Carbuncle is an outlier server. I didn't check all of them, so my reading here should not be taken as conclusive. But if we're talking about percentages of people reaching level cap as an indicator for enjoyment of a job, then it looks to me like BLU did pretty well.

Ok that all out of the way: would I have preferred BLU be a normal job that could do normal job things yet still retain its spell hunting aspect? Absolutely. Blue mage is one of my favorite jobs across the entire franchise, and it was done particularly well in FFXI where it was a normal job that did normal job things and retained its spell hunting aspect. But that's not what they did with the FFXIV version. And that's ok. It's a different game. I'm enjoying it for what it is, and I'm not going to sit here and sulk over it not being something else.

[Shougun]

That's not exactly ironclad logic there as beast tribes have a nearly identical reward structure and require a great deal more time investment to reach the pay off than blue mage does.

I also got a different impression from reading Lucky Bancho's numbers. It looks to me as if a large majority of people who picked up BLU leveled it to 50 (the level cap at the time of the census) as compared with the percentage of players who leveled say.. NIN.. to 80 (the level cap at the time of the census).

BLU: 4635 players on Carbuncle reaching at least level 30, 2981 of them reaching level 50 for a level cap rate of about 64%
NIN: 6418 players on Carbuncle reaching at least level 30, 1468 of them reaching level 80 for a level cap rate of about 23%

Now it's possible that Carbuncle is an outlier server. I didn't check all of them, so my reading here should not be taken as conclusive. But if we're talking about percentages of people reaching level cap as an indicator for enjoyment of a job, then it looks to me like BLU did pretty well.

Ok that all out of the way: would I have preferred BLU be a normal job that could do normal job things yet still retain its spell hunting aspect? Absolutely. Blue mage is one of my favorite jobs across the entire franchise, and it was done particularly well in FFXI where it was a normal job that did normal job things and retained its spell hunting aspect. But that's not what they did with the FFXIV version. And that's ok. It's a different game. I'm enjoying it for what it is, and I'm not going to sit here and sulk over it not being something else.

I don't know if that data is on the website but I would think it a point of logical failure if SE bases the success on leveling blue mage, especially as it's so easy to level. Honestly I'd say for any job but that's partly because I level all the jobs (slowly lol) and that doesn't mean I love them all equally.

I'd say it would be based on the number of people who continue to play it past hype week, not sure how you'd get that info though...

[Alleo]

That's not exactly ironclad logic there as beast tribes have a nearly identical reward structure and require a great deal more time investment to reach the pay off than blue mage does.

I also got a different impression from reading Lucky Bancho's numbers. It looks to me as if a large majority of people who picked up BLU leveled it to 50 (the level cap at the time of the census) as compared with the percentage of players who leveled say.. NIN.. to 80 (the level cap at the time of the census).

And these incentives for the beast tribes are also probably in there so that people even do them. Just like Eureka has massive amount of items behind it and we do know from people on the forum that some only went through there to get these rewards. This is my point. Before that blue was at least only his own thing, but suddenly they put these rewards (the morbol being requested for quite some time) behind it. Why? If the niche side content is fun enough for those that want it, why would they need something like that? Maybe because it was not used as much as they wanted to. Or they feared that maybe people would not do it if there is nothing at the end.

Why also compare a normal job, which is only one in a whole line of different jobs, to something that is bascially side content? Blue is not normal in that regard. You could have compared them if both had been normal jobs and the question would be if blue is used more or less like the rest. But he is not a normal job. Blue is side content released at a time with not much to do. So of course out of curiosity (being the first limited after all) people might simply try it out even if they normally dont level other jobs. And its even really easy to level that one. (Also you compare a lvl 80 job which might have needed to play through whole expansions and many hours, to a job at lvl 50 which is done in hours.)

My point with the lucky bancho was: Only half of the people that actively played the game were even interested in starting the job. And of those that did not even half of them reached lvl 50. Not sure how you got that the majority of it who picked it up got it to 50. 46.3% (EU) started it, 17.8% (EU) reached 50. That is not even half of the people. So the majority that unlocked the job did not even play it to max level. Only the JP players had at least half of those that unlocked it also getting it to 50, yet they are known to try out everything and even there quite a few people did not play it further. (With a job that can be easily leveled to max in a few hours). That means only like 17.8% even were able to test out the exclusive new content for Blue. So yes 17.8% is the minority of the playerbase. Which can be fine if that is what SE wanted to have with this. (Even though they probably have no idea how many of those 17.8% in the EU even enjoyed it) But seemingly they now put in incentives for people to play it. And the completely new content (carneval) barely got any updates while most of it was put into a party finder to do old content..

I don't know if that data is on the website but I would think it a point of logical failure if SE bases the success on leveling blue mage, especially as it's so easy to level. Honestly I'd say for any job but that's partly because I level all the jobs (slowly lol) and that doesn't mean I love them all equally.

I'd say it would be based on the number of people who continue to play it past hype week, not sure how you'd get that info though...

That too is a problem. How do they read their data? Best would be to sent an ingame survey to anyone and question them about it. Because if something is new and people have not much to do, they often just try it out. And if you can level that new content to max level in a few hours and most drop it afterwards, its not really that successfull imo.