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

[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.

[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.

[Zebraoracle]

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THANK YOU, someone gets it. There are so many solutions to BLU and people have this adamant, downright arrogant idea that this is how it HAS to be. Maybe It's because BLU has always been one of my favorite jobs in the series that I'm so vehemently against limited jobs, but this arrogant insistence that this is how things have to be and there's no solution whatsoever is so offensive and so freaking shortsighted and ridiculous.

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If that's what you took from that person's post, boy howdy do I worry for your reading comprehension. Your arrogant attitude towards this subject is all too common in these discussions and it freaking drives me up the wall. It's so frustrating how you people won't even consider anything outside of your own opinion. "I got what I wanted, so screw everyone else who was looking forward to this job!" Never mind there can easily be compromise between the two camps...

You make this claim that it would "break everything" at 90. Please back this statement up - how exactly would it "break everything"?

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Come on dude, I know you're smarter than that. Go do any BLU content in PF - if you're not running the meta build for the content, you're kicked or downright not allowed in the party. Literally everyone runs the same exact thing. I agree the design idea should be celebrated, if it were a normal job that can do relevant content. I also think Square should do away with the stupid two minute burst meta and allow jobs to not be so homogenized, but maybe I'm crazy.

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What party synergy though? Like legit, please explain. Because I've done plenty of BLU content and I don't see any glaring examples of synergy you wouldn't find in normal parties. The only BLU tossing out heals is the healing aspected one. The only BLU tanking is the tanking aspected one. All of them are tossing out DPS, of course, and most of those DPS abilities are used by the entire party.

[Atelier-Bagur]

THANK YOU, someone gets it. There are so many solutions to BLU and people have this adamant, downright arrogant idea that this is how it HAS to be. Maybe It's because BLU has always been one of my favorite jobs in the series that I'm so vehemently against limited jobs, but this arrogant insistence that this is how things have to be and there's no solution whatsoever is so offensive and so freaking shortsighted and ridiculous.



If that's what you took from that person's post, boy howdy do I worry for your reading comprehension. Your arrogant attitude towards this subject is all too common in these discussions and it freaking drives me up the wall. It's so frustrating how you people won't even consider anything outside of your own opinion. "I got what I wanted, so screw everyone else who was looking forward to this job!" Never mind there can easily be compromise between the two camps...

You make this claim that it would "break everything" at 90. Please back this statement up - how exactly would it "break everything"?



Come on dude, I know you're smarter than that. Go do any BLU content in PF - if you're not running the meta build for the content, you're kicked or downright not allowed in the party. Literally everyone runs the same exact thing. I agree the design idea should be celebrated, if it were a normal job that can do relevant content. I also think Square should do away with the stupid two minute burst meta and allow jobs to not be so homogenized, but maybe I'm crazy.




What party synergy though? Like legit, please explain. Because I've done plenty of BLU content and I don't see any glaring examples of synergy you wouldn't find in normal parties. The only BLU tossing out heals is the healing aspected one. The only BLU tanking is the tanking aspected one. All of them are tossing out DPS, of course, and most of those DPS abilities are used by the entire party.

I feel like people are just going through the motions in this game without paying attention to whats happening sometimes. A blue mage's party has a bit more advantage than the limitations of a 4-Man or 8-Man group consisted of dedicated roles. Any one player has the potential answer to everything. Everyone can apply dots, everyone can apply vulnerability debuffs, everyone can party wide buff damage, everyone can rez, everyone can insta-heal the team to full etc and you can see this being the case when doing old bosses were because of a party mostly consistent of blues, the party's effectiveness is a lot more efficient than a regular party. Im obviously referring to synced content but its even more broken during unsynced especially when running dungeons were you can melt trash mobs even more easily.

Also I mostly create my own Blue Mage PFs for either Blue Mage log or dungeon runs so I dont pull any of that elitism and even when I do join other groups, I have yet to encounter it so I cant respond to that statement of yours sadly.

[Zebraoracle]

I feel like people are just going through the motions in this game without paying attention to whats happening sometimes. A blue mage's party has a bit more advantage than the limitations of a 4-Man or 8-Man group consisted of dedicated roles. Any one player has the potential answer to everything. Everyone can apply dots, everyone can apply vulnerability debuffs, everyone can party wide buff damage, everyone can rez, everyone can insta-heal the team to full etc and you can see this being the case when doing old bosses were because of a party mostly consistent of blues, the party's effectiveness is a lot more efficient than a regular party. Im obviously referring to synced content but its even more broken during unsynced especially when running dungeons were you can melt trash mobs even more easily.

Also I mostly create my own Blue Mage PFs for either Blue Mage log or dungeon runs so I dont pull any of that elitism and even when I do join other groups, I have yet to encounter it so I cant respond to that statement of yours sadly.

So a few things here

1. Sounds like everyone runs the same meta builds to me! The community has already homogenized the job lol
2. Square can literally change things to make them balanced within the context of 14 while still keeping their flavors. White Wind? Doesn't have to be "heals hp equal to the caster's hp", it can easily be "heals this base potency increasing as the caster's hp increases". Slap an appropriate MP cost on it and White Wind is now solved.
3. Square can limit certain abilities based on which mimicry the BLU is using. The easiest solution to "everyone can do everything".

I feel like people are just seeing what we have and are sticking their feet in the mud and refusing to budge instead of seeing BLU for the potential it truly has. We could have an amazing and creative job if Square actually took the time and care to implement it.

[Atelier-Bagur]

So a few things here

1. Sounds like everyone runs the same meta builds to me! The community has already homogenized the job lol
2. Square can literally change things to make them balanced within the context of 14 while still keeping their flavors. White Wind? Doesn't have to be "heals hp equal to the caster's hp", it can easily be "heals this base potency increasing as the caster's hp increases". Slap an appropriate MP cost on it and White Wind is now solved.
3. Square can limit certain abilities based on which mimicry the BLU is using. The easiest solution to "everyone can do everything".

I feel like people are just seeing what we have and are sticking their feet in the mud and refusing to budge instead of seeing BLU for the potential it truly has. We could have an amazing and creative job if Square actually took the time and care to implement it.

Gonna counter some of these points.

1. Metas will always exist. There's no point into bringing this into the conversation as its just an inevitable outcome with games. You ignore that not everyone follows this meta, especially with blue mages.
2. You fail to realize that blue magic is a thing in previous FF games and its spells and effects were done to be as closely translated into FFXIV as possible. This is the sole reason why its limited with current content only, so that veterans and players can have keep the integrity of the unbalance of the class. You cant have a White Wind that doesnt heal based on your HP's values, because every other FF game that has that spell thats what the intended effect is supposed to be. Dumbing the blue magic spells down kills the whole point and appeal of blue mage and funny enough the fact that you're trying to do this, is the same level of thinking for why we have the 2-minute meta homogenization existing in the first place. Congratulations Zebraoracle, if I didnt know you any better, you're rocking the same boring wavelength as the actual dev combat team.
3. Again, you are failing to realize the whole point of Blue Mage. Blue Magic itself isnt supposed to be balanced nor limiting. You're saying that in order to make Blue Mage not limited...is to actually cut the meat and potatoes on why the job is fun to play. Nobody is going to want to play a neutered class. We have seen countless examples of the audience complaining about their jobs further being streamlined to fit into the "meta" agenda, therefore making it worse.

Blue's potential is already here in this game. The points you are proposing here are EXACTLY the opposite of giving the job its creativity. It baffles my mind how you're not even hearing yourself telling me that in order for Blue Mage to be amazing and creative...it needs to be further limited?

[Zebraoracle]

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You're misconstruing what I'm saying and I don't know if it's purposeful or accidental, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

The meta thing is very relevant. You can't just say "there's no point to bringing it up" when the complaint that SE will just homogenize it is one of the biggest arguments your side of the debate uses, when in reality the playerbase (not all, but by far the majority) is literally already doing it themselves, just in a different way. Again, any moogle tomestone run on PF, you're expected to be able to do the ultravibrarion combo and the final sting combo.

Which FF are you pulling your BLU info from? Spells often work differently between games, and White Wind is no exception. It doesn't always equal current hp = healing, and in some games it even has an esuna effect. It therefore stands to reason that it can be changed as appropriate to fit into FF14. And let's not get into job integrity when we have white mages acting like elementalists, dark knights not using their hp to fuel their abilities, red mage using a bastardized mystic knight combat style in addition to adding holy and flare to their repertoire, dancer barely being a support, bard mixing previous bow job archetypes into its playstyle, sage being a completely new playstyle versus what previous sages were...

The whole point of Blue Magic is using monster abilities. That's it. And no, that's not what I mean. Maybe an example will explain it better.

Guild Wars 1. You pieced together a skill set from a pool of abilities. Based on what type of build you were going for, you would pull from one or two attributes of skills. Let's take ritualist because base class it's the most diverse in what roles it can perform.

Ritualists have four attributes - channeling magic, communing, restoration magic, and spawning, each with a multitude of skills to pick from.

You have healing ritualists, who would pull specifically from restoration magic, and maybe spawning and/or communing depending on how much non-healing support they wanted. Then you had nuker ritualists, who would focus mainly on channeling magic skills. Then there were spirit spammer ritualists, who would focus on communing skills. Even with only eight skill slots for your action bar, it was not limiting and had some of the most creative build diversity of any online game I've played.

The same general idea could be implemented for BLU. Expand the mimicry function - change it to mimicking a type or monster based on the role the BLU wants to perform. Give BLU different ways of doing things - a mimicry for caster dps, one for melee dps, one for DoT based dps, tanking, healing (maybe even different types of healing, who knows there are so many possibilities!). Let these mimicked roles power up certain spells and add MORE spells to the overall BLU list, so the BLU can have choices to round out their build after they have their core role abilities. As it stands now, BLU isn't all that creative. There are a few redundant spells, a few spells that never get used outside of very niche instances in the Carnivale and even then I'd still say there are some dead spells on the list.

I'm very much an advocate for getting rid of the 2 minute burst, but since that will likely never happen (we can discuss for days how questionable SE's decision making may or may not be lol) I'd rather have the job available in that form while still being able to do its side content/synced shenanigans for achievements and whatnot.

[MikkoAkure]

THANK YOU, someone gets it. There are so many solutions to BLU and people have this adamant, downright arrogant idea that this is how it HAS to be. Maybe It's because BLU has always been one of my favorite jobs in the series that I'm so vehemently against limited jobs, but this arrogant insistence that this is how things have to be and there's no solution whatsoever is so offensive and so freaking shortsighted and ridiculous.

We were already told why BLU is the way it is and why limited jobs exist. The devs either could have made it like all the other jobs, which in FFXIV's streamlined gameplay means unlocking abilities at certain levels with a small handful gated by quests, or they could allow it to have its monster-learning identity but separate it into its own content. It's not to do with balance. Things being unbalanced was a consequence of it not being integrated with the other jobs so it didn't need to worry about balance. It wasn't separated because the devs were too lazy to balance it with the other jobs.

The process of developing one of these jobs doesn’t start with us asking ourselves what will be the next limited job. We are, however, mindful of two things: ensuring both that the job or job type we implement will be enjoyed by the players, and that it will make for an interesting and fun experience. During this process, if we come to a potential job that we feel may not necessarily fit well within standard party gameplay, we will then consider whether or not we make it a limited job.

With Blue Mage, for example, we run in to the issue where learning monster actions is the main pillar of the job, but we can potentially see a huge disparity in power between Blue Mages depending on the blue magic they have learned—even if their job level is the same. In other words, too large of a disparity in the number of blue magic abilities learned would create issues if Blue Mages were able to queue normally for duties.

The issue with BLU is that you can't have it both ways. Either you learn abilities like everyone else and get to play with everyone else and sacrifice part of the historical identity of the job. Or allow it, but experiment with new, separate content. Whether that new content was successful is obviously controversial but the same could've been said if they didn't have monster learning. Though I guess in that case, we probably wouldn't still be talking about it now.

If they did both things together and BLU was a regular job that had to learn its jobs from monsters, you'd have people being kicked for missing certain spells or not having meta builds just as you described is happening right now in PF.

??? 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.

It worked in FFXI because that was a different game.

Whenever we compare FFXI with FFXIV, I believe it’s important to have a knowledge of the history of the MMORPG genre. FFXI is a part of the first generation of MMORPGs, and the game itself is structured heavily on a “time to win” model. There is the assumption that players will spend huge amounts of time in-game, and therefore the game world provides the freedom to adventure without guiding the player through it.
[...]
The base of FFXIV is built upon providing a high-quality experience for players, even if they are only playing in shorter sessions. On top of that base, we create content that provides the opportunity for those who wish to spend more time playing, but never making this a mandatory experience. This is the difference in gameplay experience when comparing FFXI and FFXIV.

I grew up heavily immersed in first generation MMORPGs myself, so I would like to have the opportunity to create a game that fits that mold, but I’m certain it would be tough to sell in this day and age…

Having BLU players spend more time than everyone else to experience the same content as everyone else or be kicked from parties is against the model of the game, for better or worse.

[Powercow]

If they did both things together and BLU was a regular job that had to learn its jobs from monsters, you'd have people being kicked for missing certain spells or not having meta builds just as you described is happening right now in PF.

I mean, I'm kicking the WHM who doesn't have Assize because he couldn't be bothered to do his quests. If it's a normal dungeon, who gives a crap every dungeon can be solo'd by a warrior these days. But for high-end content? Yeah bring food, have materia in your gear, and have your spells and abilities from your quests. The only difference is BLU has to spend a bit more time getting the spells -- and hey, they could always just bar BLU from content if they haven't gotten the "core" skills. Barring BLU from content is already the design philosophy of the game anyway.

Having BLU players spend more time than everyone else to experience the same content as everyone else or be kicked from parties is against the model of the game, for better or worse.

The nice thing is, you can switch jobs. If hunting down monsters to learn their skills is so unappealing that a player won't do it, well, maybe BLU isn't the job for them. It'd be like someone playing BRD but hating that whole "song" thing so they just ignore them.

The job already takes more time to get into a playable state than any other job, the only difference is you get to do less content.

As for some other concerns about how the job wouldn't feel right without its OP stuff, like White Wind healing based off the user's HP or death spells or bad breath not working on bosses.

1) White Wind healing the party based off a percentage of HP actually sounds kinda decent and not OP. In different FF games it worked a little differently, sometimes it just healed for your current HP, sometimes it healed a portion of it, sometimes it's based off your max HP, in one case it healed how much HP you were missing. And given that Medica II or Cure III can pretty much top off the entire party anyway I just don't see this as that big of an issue, especially since HP constantly trickles up since stamina is tied to item level, just like spell power.
2) None of that stuff works on bosses anyway, even in most older FF games. Very few bosses are vulnerable to the Death spell (aside from like, "Hey this guard captain and his 2 cronies are a 'boss' because the music is playing but really they're just a random encounter with one guy being green instead of brown."). Heck quite a few bosses -- noteworthy, sometimes difficult, real bosses with real mechanics and sometimes real story relevance, can be one-shot with Life or Raise or a Phoenix Down or whatever. And nobody's saying "ugh, white mage sucks, it's not a real white mage, I can't use Raise to insta-kill this clearly undead boss." (Well, some people do, but everyone else just kind of accepts that one-shotting a boss in an MMO might be a little much.)

[Winterfang]

I mean, I'm kicking the WHM who doesn't have Assize because he couldn't be bothered to do his quests. If it's a normal dungeon, who gives a crap every dungeon can be solo'd by a warrior these days.

I'm going to slightly veer off track the main topic with a personal experience because it's really not emphasized enough that the content people would be afraid to queue into with a BLU without a full kit is so utterly devoid of teeth that going into a End Game EW dungeon, getting a cure spam healer who's allergic to Holy and couldn't cast Esuna to save their own life 3 times because they got hit by Doom Status all while a RPR seems to not notice the big circle on the floor and we still got through it just fine.

Annoyingly longer than it needed to be sure, but we didn't wipe and not a threat of a kick by anyone. I think folks are really exaggerating how many people will go all kick happy just because a BLU might not have BiS spells for queueable content because, for the worse IMO, the devs are afraid of not throwing a Soft ball in queueable content
Anything bigger that's going to need static or a premade team on PF like EX or Savage, then yeah, doing some research isn't asking for a lot, especially since it's rather the norm for this genre.