The Limitation Dilemma: Why Final Fantasy 14's Limited Job was a Mistake

[Raikai]

I don't think Limited Jobs are a mistake. However, I would put out the thing that Blue Mage doesn't feel like a 'real job' and that's not because of it's limited aspect, but because I can't just log in and jump into content like I can with the others.

You need to form parties to tackle dungeons/raids, but there's barely anyone in the Party Finder outside of update months. Blue mages come really late in an expansion cycle for the materia you buy at their vendor to be meaningful. The Masked Carnivale is a puzzle fight that gets stale after you complete it once.

In short, the job needed more attention to the content it gets to run, making so people can do Blue Mage activities more often, even if solo - which is surprising, because we have an actual soloing tool called Basic Instinct, but we can't use it where it would matter the most, and that is completing the weekly Log challenges alone (no, we can't get credit going without a full party).

I'd even take the job for PVP. Every other job gets completely redesigned for PVP, so there's no reason not to make the same with Blue Mages. An activity like that, something you can spam for hours without the hassle of having to form parties, would make the job feel more 'real', at least for me.

[Iscah]

The only problem with making Blue Mage a limited job was pretending like it's a job. Blue Mage is not a job, it's a side attraction on par with things like Firmanent or Island Sanctuary or any sort of optional side content to go do for fun. Putting it on same list as actual jobs and such was the real mistake with it.

I think the problem is that as a job (or pseudo-job) it still needs equipment, so it needs to be handled like a job in that aspect. Otherwise maybe they could have walled it off more completely.

[Kacho_Nacho]

The only problem with making Blue Mage a limited job was pretending like it's a job. Blue Mage is not a job, it's a side attraction on par with things like Firmanent or Island Sanctuary or any sort of optional side content to go do for fun. Putting it on same list as actual jobs and such was the real mistake with it. The limited jobs are a good and fun idea, but they should never have been called 'jobs' because excessively whiny people in community will use that as excuse to have it be made into a 'real job' which can only ever happen by removing everything that makes Blue Mage unique (and yes, it will HAVE to happen, regardless of your thoughts on current job homogenization, Blue Mage would have never fit into the game at any point in its history, past or present, without being reworked from ground up and homogenized to at least somewhat fit into existing roles).

Exactly. I read the OP, took 100k crit from the dense block of text, and realized it's nothing but a big block of nonsensical circular reasoning.

People just keep being tripped up by the concept of a limited job. It's not a job. It'll never be a job.

It's side content, in much the same way our Island is. Blue mages are not a failure. They succeeded in what limited jobs were intended for and gave players something to do outside of the MSQ.

The only problem was Covid came along and threw a huge spanner into the gears. So, a lot of things were left on the back burner. We see this throughout the entire expansion. For example, we still don't have female hrothgar.

With Square Enix starting to regain its momentum, I'm hoping for more limited jobs. Give us Beastmasters, Geomancers, and whatever else their imagination can dream up. Most of all give us the content we can use them in.

[Heroman3003]

Exactly. I read the OP, took 100k crit from the dense block of text, and realized it's nothing but a big block of nonsensical circular reasoning.

People just keep being tripped up by the concept of a limited job. It's not a job. It'll never be a job.

It's side content, in much the same way our Island is. Blue mages are not a failure. They succeeded in what limited jobs were intended for and gave players something to do outside of the MSQ.

The only problem was Covid came along and threw a huge spanner into the gears. So, a lot of things were left on the back burner. We see this throughout the entire expansion. For example, we still don't have female hrothgar.

With Square Enix starting to regain its momentum, I'm hoping for more limited jobs. Give us Beastmasters, Geomancers, and whatever else their imagination can dream up. Most of all give us the content we can use them in.

Pretty much. The only thing that needs changing is that Limited Jobs should be, like, moved onto their own tab separate from regular jobs (DoW/DoM) and crafter-gatherer jobs (DotH/DotL), to show that they're a 'job' thats completely separate in concept from existing ones. But I guess to do that, they'd need to have more than one Limited Job in the first place. Here's hoping for eventual Beastmaster as most fitting for the role, with the idea of taming creatures in the world for 'abilities' or as actual pet-based job (which honestly would fit with limited jobs more than it does with regular).

[Deceptus]

I'm sorry but Im going to have to disagree here with this statement. You're blatantly ignoring the fact that the purpose behind Blue Mage is to break the game in unconventional ways..

Their most "broken" spells are immune to bosses.

After spamming primal spells they're spamming the same spell over and over again.

And tank aspects have cast times (ick), and lack the HP of a real tank so they're shredded by bosses and have to resort to diamond back as mitigation.

I will say though, playing a BLU healer is relatively engaging though because of how much damage BLU's take.

IMO, the biggest issue I have with BLU is just the simple fact they insisted and even sold it on the premise that BLU would be a solo job. So far, some of the biggest pieces of content with solo content, e.g., Palace of the Dead and Eureka don't even allow Blue Mage to interact with it, which frankly is abysmal.

A class who's one of the biggest selling points upon release and for a long time was the given fact they saw it as a solo job. - The only solo element of this class is Carnival, and frankly nobody cares for those rewards because absolutely everything you get from the Carnival in terms of currency is something you can get far more efficiently doing other pieces of content.

Blue Mage has got to be the most underwhelming content they've ever released due to half-baked decision making. Probably the worst decision they have ever made.

And by far the most amount of their skills are obtained in groups.

[AwesomeJr44]

Blue Mage should never have been added to the game. It is a waste of dev resources that could be better implemented elsewhere.

Do I think it should be removed? Of course not.

Do I think it should still be supported and updated? Yes, it already exists so it wouldn't make sense to abandon it at lv 70 or wherever.

However, if I could go back in time and prevent the devs from ever implementing certain features, Blue Mage would be up there along with Hrothgar (for similar reasons).

That being said, I'll still probably get some enjoyment out of the Blue Mage update coming next Tuesday, even if I think that the resources required to make said update would have been better used elsewhere.

[Eorzean_username]

Count me as another voice in the "I never want to see another Limited Job again" pile.

Complete waste of time, and complete waste of an iconic FF-series Job — creating gimmicky walled-gardens for 10 minutes of mild amusement per 2 years, before getting shelved to collect dust again until the next Moogle Tome farm.

"But Masked Carnivale is amazing solo content!"

Masked Carnivale is basically garbage. The puzzles are fixed, the rewards are mundane, the environment is bland and static, and the content itself is barely engaging.

It's slightly better than what a 12-year-old could create using RPG Maker MZ, including the gratingly-repetitive soundtrack. It's like an encyclopedic example of budget content designed to pad out patch cycles using minimal/recycled resources.

Once you figure out an encounter's gimmick and grab whatever carrot-on-a-stick it had, then that encounter is basically drained of value, because they have almost nothing going on except their puzzle-pattern.

"Oh but the strategy!" Yes, it's just incredible. Sometimes you have to take Exuviation. Other times, you have to take Eerie Soundwave! Ahh, my spine is tingling from this riveting tactical gameplay.

"BLU could never be a normal Job! It's SO overpowered!"

??? No, it's not. It's utterly mundane and full of bizarre and annoying limitations.

This weird idea that BLU is abnormally powerful is bordering on actual dictionary-definition gaslighting. You could just unsync the content with any normal Job and be dramatically more "overpowered".

Tanking with BLU is literally underpowered, and approximately as fun as driving bamboo under your fingernails.

"But I can KO trash mobs super fast!" Uhhhh you could also just Unsync it and do the same thing, without a 2-minute cooldown.

BLU is "overpowered" when you arbitrarily decide to break your own kneecaps by entering content Synced. And why do you do that? Because BLU tells you to. "I'm overpowered when I'm underpowered because I decided to be" — amazing.

And what "overpowered" things that BLU can actually do to "break" fights are balanced out by the fact that BLU is so underwhelming that it literally has to do those "overpowered" things just to clear content at all.

"BLU has so many cool options! No other Job could ever be like this!"

Yeah I guess if you're just messing around "freestyling" and shooting your friends with Malediction of Water, sure.

If you're actually seriously trying to get things done as BLU, then you just cram all your bloated, generic Primal/Namazu burst damage actions into your overflowing bar slots until you end up with the same boring 2-minute burst cycle as everyone else — except your filler in-between is even more mind-numbing, and sometimes you have to hold burst, because your burst is full of weird and fragile gimmicks that make SB Machinist seem user-friendly.

Then you swap out your 2 or 3 remaining slots for some mundane bonuses or "utility" that would probably just be Role Actions on a normal Job.

Wow, amazing, no other Job could ever be like every other Job, except with extra, convoluted, fake-decision steps along the way.

FFXI never had quite the same obsession with balancing jobs. So they didn't mind if certain jobs fill a certain niche, or have no niche at all.

??? BLU was and is great in FFXI. It had and has no problems fitting into a party, and one of its strengths is the ability to fit into niches based on adjusting its kit.

It's not some weird phantom "non-Job", it's more like a chameleon that naturally leans towards being a Melee DPS, but can shift around based on what it's learned and what gear it has.

[Heroman3003]

"BLU could never be a normal Job! It's SO overpowered!".

BLU is "overpowered" when you arbitrarily decide to break your own kneecaps by entering content Synced.

Lol. Lmao even. You do realize that 'synced' is the intended way to do content, the way its been designed to be done, and if BLU is Overpowered compared to normal jobs when synced to same level, then it's overpowered and that's the end of story? And if it were a 'normal' job in current state, able to go all the way to level 90, it'd break everything. "It's not overpowered because it, when synced, is worse than another job at level 90 when doing content unsync" is probably the most incredibly stupid take I've ever heard on the forum, and there are some strong contenders.

[Atelier-Bagur]

So many terrible takes with people hating on Blue. I hope they eventually realize this backwater thinking of theirs where the game shouldnt be encouraged to do unique things is exactly why jobs have become so boring.

Go ahead and cry all you want about them dedicating some resources on a piece of content that people like. At least the job itself is a lot more diverse and fun than the "regular" jobs we currently have. This design should be celebrated, not scorned.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Their most "broken" spells are immune to bosses.

After spamming primal spells they're spamming the same spell over and over again.

And tank aspects have cast times (ick), and lack the HP of a real tank so they're shredded by bosses and have to resort to diamond back as mitigation.

I will say though, playing a BLU healer is relatively engaging though because of how much damage BLU's take.



And by far the most amount of their skills are obtained in groups.

Bad argument here. Its mostly because Blue is so versatile that it trivializes even more of the very paper thin holy trinity we have. Who needs a dedicated tank, or healer when we can have a job that can do most of everything? Balance is more than just "oh most of the broken abilities the bosses are immune to". Thats not even a good argument, its the whole party synergy of Blue Mages outclassing any dedicated tank, healer or dps that puts the intended encounter design in jeopardy.