I just wanna say how much I hate a lot of the Masked Carnivale stuff

[Gula]

Have you tried fight 29? Where if you're a bit slow on the recovery you can be dealing with MULTIPLE mechanics at the same time like Throttle (You die if it hits zero) and knock back + DoT (You'll die because the DoT is so bloody heavy)

There's nothing fun about studying for a test like being back in school. I don't know why SE did these fights they way they did. I keep getting screwed over at 25% in this damn fight.

Maybe in Japan it is.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I just find it boring. It's a bunch of damage sponge bosses with one or two gimmicks that will insta-kill you unless you have the specific setup required to deal with it. If you do, then hooray, you get to spam your 220 potency attack of choice at it until it dies. Lather, rinse, repeat. The old Final Sting/Self-Destruct strategies sped it up a little at the end, but it still wasn't a big change. It's just not very interesting or engaging content.

[Raikai]

My problem with the masked carnivale is that there's almost just 1 way to win the fights, and it's more like a "puzzle" of specific skills and patterns than an actual improvisation like thing. The other issue is that many fights have 1 hit KO mechanics if you fail any specific part of that. I don't do it much because of that, and I'm really glad for the new Blu Log... but unfortunately to get Angel Whisper we have to beat every stage, and it being such a staple spell... Ehh.

I just wish the Rez was tied to something else.

[Bonbori]

It isn't the most engaging content. Often times, it involves bashing your head against a wall until you figure out how to handle the instant-kill mechanic, then once you have that down, it becomes a simple stroll to the finish line. And yeah, even if you know what to do, an unfortunate lag spike can put an end to your 3-round fight real quick.

You have just described how all Savage (and to an extent, Extreme) fights are structured and I think those are the most engaging content in the game n_n

I personally think Masked Carnivale is very well designed to provide a similar experience of figuring out and progging a scripted fight without (in most cases) an enrage timer to beat. I'm a big fan of stuff that I can progress through because I feel intrinsically rewarded once all the pieces finally fall into place and all the stuff I was struggling with gradually becomes second nature. Okay, it may not be the best fit for something that has story and an incredibly useful spell locked behind it but... I would like to see a bit more of this kind of design outside of Savage/Extreme/Ultimate.

Content can be fun without being clearable on the first try. I wish people had higher tolerance for wall-bashing ._. Just high enough to notice that many of those walls are actually staircases.

[Gula]

I just find it boring. It's a bunch of damage sponge bosses with one or two gimmicks that will insta-kill you unless you have the specific setup required to deal with it. If you do, then hooray, you get to spam your 220 potency attack of choice at it until it dies. Lather, rinse, repeat. The old Final Sting/Self-Destruct strategies sped it up a little at the end, but it still wasn't a big change. It's just not very interesting or engaging content.

I don't know what you'd call TWEWY, but it's the game that got me to love making special load outs for situations. KH: Birth By Sleep is like this too. And with how BLU works, I thought it'd be the same.

But it's not.

Maybe if they get a redesign Yoshi P can contact the Osaka team (handheld SE titles) for something viable and enjoyable. Cause making a game as big as Chain of Memories for the GBA shows they can work with restrictions.

[Ftail]

You have just described how all Savage (and to an extent, Extreme) fights are structured and I think those are the most engaging content in the game n_n

I personally think Masked Carnivale is very well designed to provide a similar experience of figuring out and progging a scripted fight without (in most cases) an enrage timer to beat. I'm a big fan of stuff that I can progress through because I feel intrinsically rewarded once all the pieces finally fall into place and all the stuff I was struggling with gradually becomes second nature. Okay, it may not be the best fit for something that has story and an incredibly useful spell locked behind it but... I would like to see a bit more of this kind of design outside of Savage/Extreme/Ultimate.

Content can be fun without being clearable on the first try. I wish people had higher tolerance for wall-bashing ._. Just high enough to notice that many of those walls are actually staircases.

Savage and Extreme content are rewarding because they give you rewards suitable for the content. If you want to be all best in slot you need to do savage and extreme. I agree it's the most engaging content, but for stuff that's locked behind story it's too difficult. If it gave a suitable reward, I'd say it would be worth it. Maybe give upgrades to augment your armor to be best in slot.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

The Masked Carnivale can be absurdly punishing in how rigid it is with solutions at times. For example, some cases require you to have Diamondback to survive a big charge-up move. There's not really any kind of spell alternative. So when you die, it feels less like you failed to solve a puzzle and more along the lines of "Oh, I didn't bring what the game wanted me to", often with no warning.

One of my least favorite Masked Carnivale instances of this happened while I was unlocking Angel Whisper on my alt. I was redoing a stage from the 4.2 instance of Blue Mage that I hadn't touched in a while and went in to clear it. As I did, I saw it was a stage with four slimes, where I would have needed to use Loom to get around. I believe I had Flying Frenzy and Diamondback equipped, so I was confident I could clear it.

So the stage starts and I kill one of the slimes. Somehow or other, I get aggro on another one. Immediately, it hits me with a souped up version of Heavy that prevents me from moving. Unfortunately, with how I was positioned, I couldn't use Flying Frenzy to jump to it or even attack with magic, so I decide to wait for the debuff to run out. At about ten seconds left on the debuff, it refilled said debuff to a full thirty seconds and continued to do so. Which effectively kept me stunlocked and unable to finish the stage. I had to wait for the instance to kick me.

[TeraTyrantShadic]

They can keep going with Masked Carnival even when Blue Mage is a normal job. However they have to convert the spells learned through clearing a specific amount of stages in the Masked Carnival to learning x amount of spells to unlock new totems. Masked Carnival has to be an optional content and doesn’t force the player to play because of a specific spell they need from it (Angel Whisper).

The Masked Carnival is easy. Did it take a few tries (for the achievements)? Yes, however every player skill level is different so I'll leave out the part of how easy it is and how I managed to get everything including the savage. Masked Carnival is a puzzle playground meant for Blue Mage and honestly that is the saddest part, that is where most of the effort is put into. Not just that but it’s more like you do it once and never touch it again.

Not much effort is put into trying to make it into a normal job. With what we have now and hopefully patch 5.4 we could possibly see a huge update for Blue Mage. Cause the way I see it is that they are slowly trying to get Blue Mage into group content more often than not. However I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high as 6.0 can mean whether Blue Mage makes it as a normal job or not with 5.4 being the premonition of it. I do hope the developers know the right decision, that is to allow Blue Mage to finally be a normal job with what it has with some added adjustments (that last sentence is to make my answer short and simple, I have a longer response in mind but my previous posts throughout different Blue Mage thread will answer that).