FFXIV: Limited Job and why it doesn't work

[Shougun]

People always compare it to FFXI version, but this isn't XI version - what worked there, doesn't work here, that's why they didn't want to add it in the first place. But they have this tendency to do everything that players shout for, so we got BLU....not quite as they wanted it, because it can't fit into the role system, without ruining it. I don't think they have any intention of adding more limited jobs, just BLU, because it doesn't fit into the system, so it has its own system. If it could fit in, they would already done that.
It's troublesome to balance one new job, but BLU with its huge pile of skills, would be impossible to balance for normal content, without it being OP or UP, or just weird and gimmicky - what's this person even supposed to do??

The recent abilities are much better, imo, than the FFXI version, some of the 50 era skills had flecks of that but I was overall rather disappointed with those skills, 60-70 I think should represent the entire job (and skills that are like the 60-70 are the ones I'd say are consistently shining better than FFXI's). One of the things though that might have been quite fun to preserve, maybe not 1:1, but the passive sort of system could have made some interesting opportunities to mix up the gameplay loops. I think also referencing Diablo 3 and it's passive system (consuming legendary items to equip them later, and also how that system can clearly mix with your gameplay choices and evolve your style as you go along). Could have added an extra wild element to blue mage. Of course balancing such a concept to PF may have been difficult though.. but I think at least in a solo situation it could be very fun. I can imagine wild effects like self inflected lich status, or a passive every other spell's cast time is cut down by 2s (blue mage fast cast).

I do want to note though that people mention big book of spells like that's a blue mage requirement but in the games where blue mages had big books often other jobs, usually multiple, had the same circumstance. Similarly many other jobs also had gimmicky spells, like white mage reflect or casting raise on the dead. Blue mage was often wacky due to the pacing of their gimmicks and the large spread of seemingly unrelated effects with most skills having an effect beyond 'element + damage' (due to them taking monster skills). That isn't to say some people can't really like the big list or gimmicks, but if a white mage or black mage, or heck summoner lol, can become normal (famous for multiple gimmick spells and huge lists) then so too I would say it is fair that Blue Mage could have well been "blue mage" and yet also a normal job. Since the elements people reference that can't be balanced are not really exclusive to blue mage. That isn't also to say one can't relish the gimmicks instead, again, by being limited, though I think both limited and normal.. would have been nice, just that.. I would full stop argue that the idea of big list or broken spells is not specifically a blue mage thing and has been a feature in many jobs for different situations (and so you don't have to represent those concepts in order to have the job be well represented).

Personally a big list can be neat, but given, at least the 1-50 skills, and maybe only a few of the 60-70 skills, are largely non-useful . . . I would say it's not taking great advantage of that, at least for the moment. I'd love for that to be wrong (like hope it changes)- I think if they remixed their 1-50 to be consistently more interesting at the time of attaining and maintain as much as possible without doing big brain rocket to the moon calculous into the future as well. Ideally skills do three things: are neat to try right away / aka fun to use, have a potential impact of value beyond just fun to use, and then will again later when viewed in a large scope of things (aka, fun right away, useful value right away, useful value when considered in context with other abilities but that doesn't have to happen right away- viewing games like Hades, Diablo 3, or many other Rogue-like/lite games that often have combos appear to skills yet those skills had already been useful from the get go). The first release skills I feel regularly fail the majority if not all three criteria I feel would be ideal (for example some skills were useless right away, not fun to 'use', and never became useful later, some skills useful right away but not fun to use), though later added skills pass and hit all three 'yes' more often. One idea that I saw that could have made it exciting even if a skill was 'meh' was as you learn skills your power level increased, which would encourage doing a complete collection and help you do some more difficult fights if you needed (helps the filler skills, though ideally there are no filler skills lol).

[Ultimatecalibur]

I do want to note though that people mention big book of spells like that's a blue mage requirement but in the games where blue mages had big books often other jobs, usually multiple, had the same circumstance.

Not really. The initial BLU list in FFV had 30; every other spellcaster job had about 15 to 18 spells.

Similarly many other jobs also had gimmicky spells, like white mage reflect or casting raise on the dead. Blue mage was often wacky due to the pacing of their gimmicks and the large spread of seemingly unrelated effects with most skills having an effect beyond 'element + damage' (due to them taking monster skills).

I would not say that WHM had a gimmicky spell list. Cure and Raise reversing to do damage to/instantly kill Undead was an easy method of reducing the spell list by combining the anti-undead Dia line with the Cure spells, both of which were "holy" effects. Reflect was another defensive spell like Protect and Shell. The most gimmicky spell list of the traditional Mages was Time Mage (what with both random damage, fixed percentage damage spells and ATB influencing status effect spells) and even then those spells all followed at Space/Time theme. Blue Mage has always had weird 4th wall breaking spells.

[Shougun]

Not really. The initial BLU list in FFV had 30; every other spellcaster job had about 15 to 18 spells.

I did say often (this does not mean always), you could also make an extreme example the other way with the other character variants of blue mage that had like 10 abilities while black magic was like 20. The point being that a book of spells is not strictly blue mage nor is it always blue mage. It's had it sometimes it's not had it sometimes, it's also not always been the only one with a huge list of skills.

Which is to say blue mage does not require a book to be blue mage. Though it certainly could have one. (If the job is limited it makes sense to, but ideally most spells are interesting then, a big book of interesting spells on a limited job would be clearly ideal - obviously if it was 'normal' there would have to be some weird restrictions or just not having that, but it not being a book would be fine because the precedence is clearly there for short lists too "big book" being not a requirement to be blue).

Edit: Just for giggles I checked out many of the representations of the jobs and it's certainly more extreme, but I would still say my exact point stands as I intended it. Blue mage doesn't need a huge list to be blue mage and in games that had big lists blue mage was often not the only one, and gimmicks that blue mage had were also often represented in other jobs (though not as densely as Blue Mage, but like death, or status buff / debuff dumps, etc, existed elsewhere). In some of the games blue magic was one of the shorter magic lists, and others the longest, but in long list games many other jobs also had fairly long lists as well (this doesn't mean it has to be 1:1 length). In the end the length of the list didn't make it blue magic or not, case in point of the many variations of the magic- which means the job doesn't have to have a huge list (though it could). My point never being it can't have a huge list, the point being it doesn't require one and therefore means that isn't a strict bullet point to cross out to make it a real boy. Having a huge list of bad though, imo, is not worth more than a nice list of good skills so even if we do have big lists lets hope for cool and interesting spells over 5 variations of the same potency different colors at tiers 1 2 and 3.

I would not say that WHM had a gimmicky spell list. Cure and Raise reversing to do damage to/instantly kill Undead was an easy method of reducing the spell list by combining the anti-undead Dia line with the Cure spells, both of which were "holy" effects. Reflect was another defensive spell like Protect and Shell. The most gimmicky spell list of the traditional Mages was Time Mage (what with both random damage, fixed percentage damage spells and ATB influencing status effect spells) and even then those spells all followed at Space/Time theme. Blue Mage has always had weird 4th wall breaking spells.

There were loads of gimmick abilities, many of blue mage's skills had comparable variants existing in other jobs like summoner, black mage, or white mage (although the weirdness was usually collected more so in that job than others, a few times you might see Summoner get close though). I always considered reflect massively gimmicky and saving myself in a lot of situations through cheese, although it's not always a white mage spell. I think Vivi did wild stuff with it in FFIX. Not sure how blue mage breaks the 4th wall though.