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

[Eorzean_username]

This is literally the argument people are making - that part of what makes BLU fun is that it's not at all balanced, so to make it work with the other 19, it would have to be balanced, and that likely means not overpowered and not fun. People have fun on BLU gathering up massive trash packs, freezing them, then shattering them, for example.

Look, I was on a bit of a tear in my last posts because I'm someone who "mained" BLU in every single FF game it was ever possible to do, and had been patiently waiting for it in FFXIV since ARR.

So Yoshida basically poked me directly in the eye with a very sharp stick with his "Oh, we just couldn't do it, it was impossible, instead you get a Limited Job", and yeah, I'm still bitter about it.

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So I am definitely not an unbiased perspective, and in turn, I've overexaggerated the weakness of BLU — a little.

I still maintain that XIV's version of BLU is ~90% crap — largely due to a constant slew of terrible design decisions — and feels like a bizarre "Emperor's New Clothes" kind of thing when I hear players insist that XIV BLU is fun and powerful and amazing.

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However, there's content like Ultimates where BLU's utility would prrrrrrrobably legit be valued higher than its clunk or raw DPS contribution... if you left it in its current state with zero effort to adjust for that.

Because let's be real, taking an action like Diamondback into content where some of the most dangerous mechanics happen when the boss isn't targetable anyway could legit become something exploitable.

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But.

Acting like this is "unsolvable"... honestly drives me straight up a wall.

a) Only a tiny portion of BLU's actions actually have any serious potential to become "overpowered" in some niche situation or other.

Most of the rest of BLU's kit ranges from a slew of mechanically-redundant garbage, to pointless gimmicks used for trolling your friends, to potency-busted and otherwise completely-uncreative filler that's used as a design kickstand to prop-up BLU's wobbly, rusting bicycle from tipping over completely.

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b) Other actions from other Jobs have also been historically overpowered in content, and/or had the potential to become so.

In response, the game implemented flags to start specifically-ignoring and bypassing certain actions with certain mechanics.

This is why there are attacks that mysteriously penetrate Hallowed Ground, or refuse to transfer through Cover, or ignore Arm's Length/Surecast, or... (etc)

So if BLU is ever breaking something specific by existing, the same system can be used to tag-and-flag it back down to earth.

This ties directly into "c" below.

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c) Right now, BLU is "overpowered" (let's just set the semantic debate aside for a second, and allow this hypothetical premise) in... level 80 content (because we're < 2 days from 6.45), and spends most of each expansion only being "overpowered" in content –20 Levels (ie, BLU has been stuck at Level 70 until ~18 months into Endwalker).

...So (Man Ray Meme goes here):

• You claim you love BLU because it's "overpowered", right?

• And you don't want BLU to lose its "overpoweredness" if it's allowed to actually play the rest of the game, right?

• And you're currently only "overpowered" in content that's 10-20 levels lower than current content — ie, Unsyncable content, right?

• So if BLU's actions were given the Crafter "Trained Eye" treatment, and automatically nerfed in content that isn't at least 10 levels below your current level... nothing would change, right?

But BLU can't be level 90 because it would be too overpowered

(screams)

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I personally just don't see the issue with BLU having a split-personality — "Hello my name is Blue Mage, I behave more like a normal Job in Level 81-90 content, and I have various gimmicks and side content available for me in Level 1-80 content".

Honestly, I think more Jobs should have extra flavor like that — side content that they can explore to layer more [design buzzwords like "texture" and "flavor" go here] on top of their baseline experience.

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...Also this is kind of tangential and, definitely, highly-personal and subjective, but I just don't see where people are coming from praising BLU for having unique or interesting gameplay compared to "homogenised" normal Jobs:

Are you honestly impressed by your burst phase consisting of 15s of fragile Potency vomit every 2 minutes (why does this... sound so... familiar...) followed by 15s of literally doing nothing except fidgeting around with your movement keys because you've been chocoblocked worse than even the old Warrior post-Berserk refractory-period Pacify?

And then your "filler" being spamming Glare Sonic Boom (or equivalent) over and over and over again, while... smacking OGCDs as they light up, and... refreshing... Dia Song of Torment... every 30s... (why does this sound... so... familiar) ?

I'm just... really not seeing it, personally — BLU seems depressingly mid from nearly every angle, with the only thing propping it up being the desperate illusion of having some kind of choice in building your character and loadout compared to "real" Jobs.

But it's really not much better than the old Cross-Class Actions everyone had in ARR/HW, or the implementation of Role Actions in SB — and just like those, you end up using a fixed/recommended formula the vast majority of the time, and swapping around a few wildcards to address niche situations... because the value of "more burst / DPS" still overwhelms nearly any other consideration outside literally not dying/wiping.