Why we have to rethink the way we allow Limited jobs

[TeraTyrantShadic]

Definition of Limited Jobs - “Limited jobs are jobs designed for casual solo play, with mechanics that are not balanced for grouping, and a level cap of 50”

The problems with it

It is not casual solo play

There may be content regarding it to promote its casual play but in the long run, in certain cases shown by Blue Mage some of its move set cannot be obtained unless it went through group content, like learning J Kick (Brute Justice), Surpanakha (Ravana), Quasar (Sophia) and a few others which can be really useful in masked carnival. Overall if jobs had to go through trials, raids and dungeons just to obtain parts or pet items, it is no longer solo content rather incorporated with multiplayer content.

Locked out from Duty Finder

Blue Mage being the only case study, most of the spells it learns are from Dungeons, Trials and Raids. At level 50 raids they can solo, but there is a chance of learning while in a full group and syncing the chance of learning raises to a guarantee. Even if the Party Finder system is there this would have been a hard time for some due to time constraints (In Real Life Schedule); People leaving midway of searching for members through Party Finder and eventually some dropping out because of In Real life Issue or couldn’t wait any longer, which eventually leads the party finder being empty for over 50 min+ compared to a manual duty finder queue where it can take up to 30 minutes at most; Some people play at different times and sometimes some players play at odd hours.
There are casual solo content, but they are locked out from it - Content like Squadron Mission and Deep Dungeons are mainly solo content. Squadron allows you to queue with NPC to clear a dungeon while the other is randomly generated and has several floors to clear but can be queued alone. When limited Jobs are advertised for Casual Solo Content, Deep Dungeon and Squadron come to mind alongside the Main Scenario Quest line. An example to compare Blue Mage in Deep Dungeon would be Red Mage, because they can Heal and Raise while dealing a lot of damage as it is counted as a DPS.

Limited Jobs Capped below 20 levels of current content

No one is willing to manually replay old content unless it was during hype, in the short term yes people will do it to complete the job. However in the long run people will be stuck, unless they try to use PF or find like minded people to redo the content. Below current cap is a bad idea because how can they play that job with their friend if they really want to play that job in the current content with them.

It sets a dark standard for future jobs

It will set a standard for any and new potential jobs to be put into FFXIV. If we were to implement Rune Fencer into FFXIV (As an example) it can be done into a Tank with the right idea or a DPS. However with Limited Job now set into the mix if a development team couldn’t come up with a solution to add it to the normal roster they would categorize it as a limited job. Blue Mage as a Limited Job has already set an example that they can post half done content when they cannot find a solution. There are plenty of solutions but now that we have Limited Jobs you could say the next 2 new jobs are going to be limited and not added to the normal job roster because they couldn’t get the solution on how to fit the job into the game and will allow the reason of “It has to be this way”.

[B]Arguments against Limited Jobs[/B]

It allows freedom of the Job Design

No it doesn’t, it is already there for the traditional/normal jobs. There is nothing impossible with the jobs as of now, because design is by creativity not the rules that defines it. Even with Puppetmaster and Beastmaster they can be a full fledged job and can be played with the current content without the Limited Job Status. This is because they already have a set idea in previous Final Fantasy Games. Beastmaster is more likely to be a DPS role because it is a melee job with pets like summoners (With the exception of melee weapons). Puppetmaster may cover all roles, but it can be given a Tank or DPS role depending on how it is meant to be played and it would be interesting to have a pet based Tank where the pet tanks the monster instead of a player. Limited jobs only allows the excuse to release half done ideas rather than a finished idea.

It allows unbalanced classes to be played

All jobs are unbalanced as there are too many factors. One of the prominent factors would be the battle itself, an example would be E8S Shiva where there is 3 phases, A Black Mage would suffer because of the 45 second cutscene before the final phase of the battle where they cannot upkeep their Enochian because it only lasts for 15 seconds, not just that but the boss moving around and mechanics forcing you to move it make it difficult for Black Mages to get a sustain DPS on the boss where summoners can easily sustain their DPS. There too many fights and many of them favor different classes and many disfavor them. There is no way to perfectly balance every job in every fight. Potency wise they can balance it, but many variable factors like player skill, differently jobs play differently in every scenario, players tend to have their own way of calculating the effectiveness in certain fights.

[Vespar]

I have nothing against limited jobs per se.
But I think its more so that the vast majority of us want classic jobs or new jobs added to be playable in current content. And not just as a mini-game.

This has been said repeatedly so its nothing new. BLU as a limited job was particularly painful for me to like as I played FFXI and had preconceptions of the job that fell very short of my expectations. Had it been an all new job that had never been released in a FF title to date I likely would not have taken issue with it.
As it stands, fun or not, capped or limited or not, I can not like BLU in the way that it stands now as it just clashes too much with my own preference for FFXI's version.

[Morningstar1337]

I feel like the issue was one of Flavor, especially in the case of BLU. Blue Mages were known for using enemy skills and learning them from the selfsame enemies. Which is a troublesome task to adapt, and so skip out on one of them would mean losing its general flavor...

As such the devs decided that fidelity was more important that balance. the "lack" of which is inherent to Blue Mages due to their versatility and access to spells like White Wind and in certain games, (Bravely Default namely) the most powerful elemental magic).

With that said The issue with Beast/Puppetmaster is a different one that might have the same result as Blue Mage, that being how the devs handled pets. And even then a MCH-like workaround might suffice by having them only be visual indicators.

[Marxam]

I think its just worded poorly and executed poorly. I imagine the intent is to eventually get BLU caught up to max lvl, to match the other jobs, but that would require a full rework of their tool kit so its literally like releasing a new job which is what they should have done in the first place. They should have called it 'Blue Carnival' to distinguish that its not really a job but rather a piece of content that has a job attached to it. As it stands BLU joins the list of half baked ideas implemented into the game only to be reworked from the ground up later.

Assuming they do eventually release it as a new job, it will be heavily nerfed and most likely trimmed down to avoid new players not having certain skills for a fight. It already happens currently with aetherical mimicry so I can only imagine how bad it could get with ShB as my basis of how much they removed from jobs.

[Ekimmak]

I don't think anyone's ever going to be satisfied with Blue Mage, because no matter who you appease, you're going to be angering another group doing so.
You're either going to upset the Final Fantasy lore veterans, or you're going to upset the gamers, and there is no compromise.

Off the top of my head, every time I see a discussion like this, I can think of five different situations that is "You will anger these people XOR these people. No exceptions".

Make it more like Blue Mage of Old, and you'll get idiots queuing into content that they don't have the Blu Spells for, and people are already angry about idiots queuing into duties. Block them from queuing if they don't have the right spells, and you'll get people without time to grind angry that they're being forced to work harder for a job that's just the same as everything else. Make it so you learn the skills purely by leveling, and purists will be angry that it's "just BLM with enemy skills on their spells.

It's a recursive cycle, to me. Limited Jobs are problematic, but the problem wasn't implementing the Limited Job system, it was trying to implement something that wasn't going to work from day 1.

[usernameuwu]

i wish they'd just make blue mage scale to 80 and have like blue mage roulettes, that way you could actually use the class or have leveled it through current content. without needing to use the party finder.
i think my main problem with it, is that it feels so isolated from the actual game. i get that it is supposed to be a troll class, but it feels really useless overall.

the only good use i got out of blu was farming moogle tomes in aurum vale with missile.

[grinkdaboy]

rethink limited jobs entirely

horrible idea, slap in the face to fans of the job, saps away at budget

just find a way to make it work

"oh..but..then it wouldn't be blue mage!"

dark knight cant sacrifice hp to do damage or do increased damage at low hp
monks can't cast any white magic spells
summoners can't cast any white magic or black magic spells and doesn't actually summon things besides a stupid beanie baby

in order to make blu function properly they would just have to make it so:
you would need to acquire all spells
give access to role specific role mechanics instead of the stupid half-assed replacements like frog legs or bad breath
provide a set template of abilities for each role (while giving maybe 1-2 free slots for customization)
allow certain skills to only be useable in the overworld (ie doom, missile, launcher, death, instakill/% dmg stuff mostly)

there, blue mage will now work in all content

[ItMe]

I doubt they'll make BLU a full job, but I hope that instead of making more limited jobs they just keep making BLU more and more robust.

[SpiralMask]

Love BLU, easily favorite class in final fantasy--would never recommend playing 14's version, and how badly it was treated has made me legitimately worried to even have hopes of other classes i like appearing for fear of the monkey's paw curling another finger. (devs chose a BLU design from the myriad styles and types that was the most impractical and punished by the games' core systems--elemental resistances/weaknesses were entirely removed from the game two expansions prior so now they need to be slapped on piecemeal to any content they intend to flag as okay for BLU, monsters become immune to debuffs after the third application, in a 4/8/24 person party game so there can be zero overlap or everyone is useless, enemies are usually outright immune to all of the supposed "broken/OP" skills available, the majority of their skill/achievement/peripheral rewards acquisition is tied to instanced content with zero infrastructure to actually do so such as roulettes or other matchmaking and outright lying by saying the class is intended for solo play, and on content so outdated no human being would willingly touch it unless at gunpoint, so you are forced to locate 3/7/23 equally geared+spell-learned+mechanically skilled+actually interested other players to run anything, again with basically zero infrastructure to help that)

It is the harshest case of "you get what you want, but in the worst most torturous way possible. never ask me for anything ever again." I've seen anywhere.

[Absurdity]

SE basically shot themselves in the foot by releasing it at all. With the way this game functions they were never able to satisfy everyone with this job in the first place, they should've just kept BLU out of the game entirely.

It is the harshest case of "you get what you want, but in the worst most torturous way possible. never ask me for anything ever again." I've seen anywhere.

I like to think that is intentional. People kept pestering SE for Blue Mage without ever thinking about what a nightmare it is to make that thing work in the first place without completely breaking the game. So SE just went "You want it? Here you go, it's terrible, you're welcome...now shut up and never ask again."