So, what is the hold up on Beastmaster?

[SweetPete]

Didn't the devs say that all jobs going forward would be original to FFXIV, specifically because people end up with preconceived notions of a job (based on some other FF game) which don't fit how a job might work in XIV? (Honest question, not rhetorical; I am fairly sure I remember that being said in a live letter, but it's almost midnight and I am far too tired to go digging through live-letters to check myself on that.)

I mean, beyond that, this game has been steadily moving away from pet-based combat; the SCH fairies are two appearances for the same thing, SMN pets no longer have HP, etc. Whether you think that's a good thing or not, it is a thing... and an XIV version of BST seems like it would be a sharp U-turn in that regard, which I suspect is unlikely.

I don’t think they said they will never do final fantasy based jobs. They just said they would like to do more final fantasy XIV based jobs. It will be silly of them to just not do originals.

[Packetdancer]

It's a bit unfair to say "Oh we can't have BLU in the game without changing" when really you could just learn spells like everyone else does: job quests.

Again: it's not a technical hurdle. You could absolutely change BLU so that you just learn spells automatically at specific levels. There's no reason that BLU can't be "just another caster, like black mage, but where the spells are ones that came from monsters in the world." (Just like BST could be "SMN, but with animals instead of egis"; it works, technically, and maintains the aesthetic of the job.)

You would, of course, need to do away with setting specific 'sets' of active blue magic spells (to ensure players have the approved/necessary/balanced spells at a specific level). You'd also need to sharply prune the blue magic spellbook, to limit them to the number of spells/abilities other casters have, and to start following the same philosophy as with other jobs where you either prune away older abilities in later expansions or simply stick to the existing ones with traits that upgrade them.

(After all, if BLU is drawing from a massive selection of potential abilities they can slot, you cannot feasibly balance the job alongside all the other jobs. And we as a playerbase have demonstrated that we need to have all the combat jobs smoothed into a relatively-equally-viable paste.)

But yes. You can absolutely make a caster that's just got a set list of spells/abilities a'la BLM or RDM or SMN, where each one is tied to specific levels, and when you level sync down your kit changes appropriately. BLU does not require you to learn spells manually, nor to have multiple spells to pick from (and choose what your specific BLU 'build' is), etc.

I do think people would be likely to call that implementation lazy and complain (about both BLU-as-generic-caster and BST-as-SMN-but-physical-DPS), but that's not a technical limitation. (And let's be honest, there's no decision the devs can make about anything in this game that is not going to produce complaints from some section of the playerbase.)

Now, do keep in mind SQEX has demonstrably shown a desire to move away from both job quests unlocking abilities -- probably in part because of people not doing those quests -- and also to move away from job quests themselves in general, due to the growing number of jobs. So we should assume here that a full-job BLU would just silently learn abilities automatically at a specific level, the way all other jobs now do (at least once past their initial job introduction questline). No cutscenes or questlines, just the "New Action Learned" popup when you level.

After all, BLU is only the continued exception to the 'no more job quests save for when a job is first introduced' trend by virtue of the fact that it's off in its own little limited-job corner; if it were a real job, it'd be doing caster role quests like everyone else instead.

But the thing is, there are other casters in the game to play in normal content with, even if they don't have BLU's theme of "the spells are ones you see coming from opponents". But there's nothing else that fills the same niche BLU currently does... and some of us really enjoy that BLU.

There's no real "this is the build for Black Mage that I came up with, and my weird custom rotation that works because these are the spells I chose to put in my kit"; there is the rotation as defined by the Balance/SaltedXIV/whatever, and if you deviate from that you're 'wrong'. (Which, I mean... numerically, that's accurate.)

But that is how BLU plays; my preferred BLU 'build' may be significantly different than someone else's. And that's why I -- and others I know -- enjoy the BLU we have right now. Because BLU as it stands isn't necessarily about being numerically optimal (like every other job in the game gets treated by players), it's about being creative. And there's no way that you make that BLU work in real content -- or at least, not real high-end content -- alongside every other job, just given the overall culture of this game's userbase.

(And if it is a real full job, it must be balanced for savage and ultimate alongside every other caster. If you restrict it from joining current savage/ultimate in normal parties, then it's inherently still by definition a limited job, as it has limits on it that other jobs do not.)

Ironically, while 'limited' jobs are limited in what content they can do, it often feels to me that the 'full' jobs are the limited ones in terms of what the job can actually be allowed to do.

Edit: to me, BLU is about using your enemy's skills, not Learning as a mechanic. Every class learns in one way or another, BLU being quirky is just fluff to the lore. It can be done in cutscenes, it's fine. That's what I think BLU is: the ability to use skills, not the Learn mechanic itself.

I mean, as noted, you're not getting job-specific cutscenes either. Because once it's a real job BLU's off to the role questlines with the rest of them.

But again, at least from my point of view, it's not that BLU as an aesthetic cannot work as a generic yet-another-caster full job and stand alongside BLM, SMN, and RDM. You can absolutely make a fairly mechanically viable BLU that works as a full job, because learning spells isn't inherently necessarily part of the job. And even if it were, it's not like the jobs being re-imagined and re-balanced for an MMO hasn't meant deviating from previous interpretations of them at times anyway.

But that isn't this BLU. And I feel like that is less interesting; in that world, what makes BLU unique? What job mechanic makes it stand out from the other casters during gameplay?

Because all the things that make it unique right now are things that would absolutely not work as a real job, just culturally given how the playerbase approaches things.

Sure, you can come up with alternatives. For instance, BLU still has a lot of their stuff elementally aspected, where others do not. So let's say that you carve the spellbook down to the minimum and then you have an 'elemental gauge'; each spell you cast adds to that. If the spell is aspected differently than your current element, it reduces the gauge; if it's aspected the same (or unaspected), it adds to it. When the gauge fills, you can use a Primal Judgment ability that will use a primal attack based on your aspected ability. Aspected Levin/lightning? Primal Judgment becomes Levinstrike, and you do a big lighting AoE a'la Ramuh. Aspected ice? Primal Judgment becomes Shiva's Glass Arrow. Etc.

That can be your level 50 capstone. When you get to level 60, you can have it 'bank' a charge of the meter; when it fills, you get an elemental gem that lights up, and now Primal Judgment can be used twice in a row when you fill the gauge a second time and then spend the stored gem as well.

Level 70, you can have it so that you can bank multiple gems, and do something akin to MNK's combo system where you get a BIG attack you can use instead by consuming all the gems at once, and the attack depends on how many different elements you've banked. Something like that.

So, sure, you can absolutely come up with a job gauge and mechanic that works with the BLU aesthetic. But under the hood, it cannot be too fundamentally different than the other casters, because it must balance with them and play well in the same sandbox. And it will turn into the same sort of 'there is one true rotation' all other jobs do.

And that's why I actually like it as a limited job -- and why I think BST would actually be a really interesting limited job. Because the things you could do there would be more varied, with more room for creativity.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

How would Beastmaster be implemented as a limited job? By having 3 other monsters out with you while in a dungeon? 7 others while in a raid or trial? Because that sounds like the most clusterfuckiest of clusterfucks to me. Not to mention how bad the AI will act. Or would the monsters be untargetable and invincible thus defeating the purpose of Beastmaster?

Because get real, there's no way the devs are going to implement smoothly running AI for pets to dodge mechanics. They'd make Beastmaster more limited than Blue Mage is by being only able to run dungeons with Trusts/Duty Support AI already baked into to them. And have drastically less stages of their side attraction to accommodate pet AI. Otherwise you'll be playing a soulless job with un-targetable pets or a frustrating mess of crap AI, or lack thereof, because good luck not getting your dps pet insta-killed by that tankbuster cleave, or getting yourself killed because of a multitarget party mechanic or getting yourself or all of your pets killed because your pet is not listening to your commands while off in narnia when an Akh Morn mechanic is happening.

[JRat]

Because get real, there's no way the devs are going to implement smoothly running AI for pets to dodge mechanics.

I dunno, In a support duty the NPCs seem to be pretty good at not eating an AoE.

But say you have a full party with 4 Beastmasters.. that could be a laggy/tricky mess.

[Raikai]

Multiple problems:
Pets are so much a problem SMN received a whole rework for it.
We basically have 3 types of pets in the game:
-The Glorified Dot, Automaton Queen and Living Shadow. Terrible AI, works badly against multiple targets and they're so forgettable you mistake them for players.
-The Good Bahamut&Phoenix, stands like a turret and execute Akh Morn on command. The best pet at the moment.
-The fairies, you put them in the middle and they execute order.

The thematic of Beastmaster
Beastmaster captures and use pets. This will not be possible.
I've played MMOs with this mechanic, there was always a pet superior to the other and most of the time it would break the balance.

BLU reception is mixed
Many players are complaning that BLU wasn't a full job and were disappointed about its limited status.
You can't enter content where it would shine such as Eureka, Bozja or Deep Dungeon, you can't queue as a Blue Mage, you can barely do anything as a blue mage.
What should've been a fun job with barely any limits is now an infuriated mess that can't access most of the content.

In conclusion
If Beast Master is released, it will be a generic job with a fixed pet probably close to the Glorified dots or Bahamut&Phoenix, maybe a completely new type of pet if they surprise us.
The best beast master we could have would be a generic job with a pokemon mini game as a side content.

Hm, they could combine both a regular with a limited job.

BST regular job works with one of the faux-pet options. To me a true "pet class" has the skill ceiling with the player being able to do their thing and micromanage the pet at the same time to make the most of it. I don't know if such a thing is possible with any "pet" iterations we have so far, but I also wonder if they are waiting for combat code improvements to somehow make a new thing that wasn't possible before?

And... as a side activity, let a captured pet battle other pets in a coliseum match, a la pokemon. The pet you own wouldn't change your normal PVE rotation, but they would have unique perks for these matches depending on the type.

[ICountFrom0]

Multiple problems:
Pets are so much a problem SMN received a whole rework for it.
We basically have 3 types of pets in the game:
-The Glorified Dot, Automaton Queen and Living Shadow. Terrible AI, works badly against multiple targets and they're so forgettable you mistake them for players.
-The Good Bahamut&Phoenix, stands like a turret and execute Akh Morn on command. The best pet at the moment.
-The fairies, you put them in the middle and they execute order.

The thematic of Beastmaster
Beastmaster captures and use pets. This will not be possible.
I've played MMOs with this mechanic, there was always a pet superior to the other and most of the time it would break the balance.

BLU reception is mixed
Many players are complaning that BLU wasn't a full job and were disappointed about its limited status.
You can't enter content where it would shine such as Eureka, Bozja or Deep Dungeon, you can't queue as a Blue Mage, you can barely do anything as a blue mage.
What should've been a fun job with barely any limits is now an infuriated mess that can't access most of the content.

In conclusion
If Beast Master is released, it will be a generic job with a fixed pet probably close to the Glorified dots or Bahamut&Phoenix, maybe a completely new type of pet if they surprise us.
The best beast master we could have would be a generic job with a pokemon mini game as a side content.

I see your points, but lets talk limited job.

What if we go turret type, but with a mixed random rotation of possible abilities. Lets say 5 abilities per monster. Lets say 5 monsters with some functional overlap per 10 levels. Yes, we're using the chobobo companion as the template. To make it more limited they have a HP bar, can only be healed by beastmaster abilities, and the HP bar ticks down with each action they take, giving them a timer. If they take damage in combat, that also shortens the lifespan.

This should get around the pet problems by using the only functioning pet in the game.

For the lore it's an Aetheric copy, and you learn it by fighting the monster for long enough for a bar in the book to fill up.

With this setup the right beats could be picked as needed, a tanking one with all melee attacks that do only physical damage and an ability that STEELS your agro bar for itself. A flying DPS that shirks onto you as one of it's 5 abilities and has all ranged attacks.

We're also taking the mechanic from the queen where it targets what you hit last, with the weapon being a 10 yalm range WHIP.

So we CAN get around this stuff, and mostly with borrowed code.

[MonsutaMan]

As for one pet being better than the other (I was of that mindset too....), that is a non-issue for an mmo which does not even have a true pet class to begin with, thus plenty of time to balance things. Jumping to conclusions saying catching a variety of pets won't work, is simply dealing with hypotheticals.


XI was not Pokemon by any means.......but there were a number of pets to chose from.

In XI, it is situational......But people "Believe" one pet is superior to the other.

"Grasshopper"

......Which is good for AOE enemies, but the Hippo and Gambodge are better for single mobs. Hippo can hit the damage cap (99,999) under Unleash and both can close light SCs.

The pink bird, slug & beetle are better for tanking

The Slug can also severely debuff mobs. "Superior" is subjective in XI. A grasshopper user may do more Ready Move damage than the Slug, but is he really superior if the Slug is waaay more durable, plus putting -33 defense and attack down on a boss? Also -10% max hp down? No......

I mostly use the grasshopper for AOE, such as low lvl farming. I rarely use him on high lvl stuff. Another thing to keep in mind, XI had an ecosystem. Where you offered the party a HUGE damage and damage taken reduction boost for using a pet which was strong to the mob you were fighting.

There are ALOT of ways this team could go with pets.

[VictorTheed]

I'd like Beast Master to have dual maces for it's weapon choice.

I want it as a tank but I'd be happy with melee or physical ranged DPS, just give me dual maces, that's how I picture my Beast Master.

I used this exact set up for my Beast Master on Elder Scrolls Online when I played the Warden class.

[MonsutaMan]

Also, BST without the ability to tame what they encounter, is like SMN with no SMNs. This is what defines BST. BST in past FF games were able to tame creatures they encounter. Don't half-A$$ it. if BST cannot tame a multitude of creatures they encounter, don't even release it.......because you will end up with something that makes no sense, Blue mage.

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

Considering the weird mess that BLU is I don't think people would really want them to bring out BST. But... if they bring it out in a similar way to BLU, they can probably make it something for people to grind on.

I'd be happy to get rid of BLU honestly. If it can not be implemented like it's FFXI counterpart then erase BLU once and for all