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

[MikkoAkure]

In extremes and savage, everyone is expected to have all of their abilities so... what's the problem, exactly? BLU might take longer to get abilities for than other jobs? Oh no the horror, the people that care about the job will still do it. Having a job that gains abilities a different way than other jobs isn't somehow making said job incapable of doing content... it just requires a bit more effort.

The problem is that no other job in FFXIV that is integrated with all the other jobs for content that has this level of complexity where 100+ spells are required to be balanced with each other as well as with everything else in the game and it has its own side-content as well. I think it's delusional to think that SE would do all of this for just one job only out of twenty and maintain it every single expansion to be balanced with the other jobs and the main content that is being released. Why should BLU get extremely focused support, more dev work, more abilities, and special content over everything else in the game? That is what I think is arrogant.

The only option I see we could have had for BLU that make sense integrated with everything else would have been a limited BLU that had the same number of abilities every other job has and perhaps a job quest that establishes that monster-learning happens off-screen for most spells while abilities other jobs get after completing quests could be explained as monster-learned spells we get in the quest. I would have preferred a BLU like that and I was a BLU main in FFXI. It's still disappointing to me, but there are other people who enjoy that content and I knew people who like BLU who don't think it's really BLU unless you're hunting spells just like there are people who don't see FFXIV's RDM or DRK as anything like past RDMs or DRKs.


Also, missing a couple of abilities because the player is lazy is one thing, but missing a whole swath of spells is another. Roulettes with BLU missing spells would be a nightmare since it would be expected that only a fully-equipped BLU would be balanced to just a normal RDM of the same level. You could have a threshold of "core" spells BLU needs, but a BLU missing spells beyond the core would still be objectively weaker than one with them all, as well as every other DPS. No other job is asking for so much time in order to reach the bar of being acceptable.

Ye olde idea of BLU just doesn't work in the model of this specific MMO exactly like how the old ideas of lots of other jobs don't exactly fit and had to be changed. Compromise has to be made somewhere and I don't understand why you think that BLU needs to have everything and be able to do anything just because it's your favorite. Compromises don't generally make everyone happy and I don't think this compromise made enough people happy enough to support the content they created for it. That said, I don't think they're going to throw away all of the side-content they created for the job just to overhaul it and give themselves more work balancing it to be a job that is meant for main content.