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

[ForsakenRoe]

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.

I could not agree with this part more. So much so, I think I also said as much (OP effects are available in Unsync). I wouldn't want to have the OP work while 'synced but in old content', like imagine someone's doing Shinryu for the first time and it gets literally oneshot cos a BLU zoned in and Tailscrewed it. Hype killer. So my 'solution', where you can do OP stuff unsync, solves that particular dilemma. And you can still have the 'OP' vibe, in fact moreso, because by my design, you could not only oneshot trashmobs, but also the bosses! Masked Carnivale still exists in my proposal. It's part of the progression of BLU. Levelling up and doing the job quests requires that you complete certain challenges in the Carnivale. I'm not suggesting that it be deleted. Using another Job as a comparison, if Beastmaster was tied to Island Sanctuary, I wouldn't be asking for IS to be removed as part of a BST rework. I'd be asking for it to be 'part of BST's progression, and also a thing on the side to mess with if you want'. Look at BRD, Performance is tied to it (you need BRD unlocked to do the quest), but Performance's existence does not force BRD to be 'the funny noise making Limsa-locked job'

I beg for people to reconsider what I'm proposing. Not just because of the BLU stuff, but how it affects Glam acquisition. If you want to get an old piece of gear, you need to make a party for it. It's not possible to guarantee that party will fill, especially if it's something that takes effort/is more recent. EG, what if you want Edenmorn stuff from E12S? Well, it's not old enough to just dumpster, so you have to learn some of the mechanics still. You still have to respect Basic Relativity. And not everyone knows how to do it, or wants to learn it. But as BLU (in my proposed rework), you'd be able to just oneshot the boss, solo, because she's no longer current content and therefore can be hit by LV? Death's instantkill effect. Additionally, because glam items from previous expansions would be so damn easy to reobtain, players would be less burdened to keep every single item they collect in their dresser. I have every weapon and chestpiece from O12S in my dresser. If it were possible to just oneshot my way through the fight, solo, as BLU, then I could just throw it all out to make room for EW stuff. If I removed it all, and then decided 'actually I want to use the tank chest for this glamour', it'd be a literal 2minute excursion to O12s to instant-death both phases of the fight, get my coffer, and be on my way. This means the devs don't need to worry about 'oh players want more Glam Dresser space again'. Investing dev time now, but saving a lot of dev time in the future

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.

15s that you cannot even fit everything into now (you let Phantom Flurry bleed over into the Waning and let it time out. Yes, 'don't use the big finishing hit, the threatening part when the boss was using it' is more damage). At this point, the only solution I can come up with to make MORE stuff fit in, is to add Spell-In-Waiting, so that we can essentially Wildfire some of our burst just before the burst window goes up, and have it detonate inside while we do the rest of the burst window as normal. An interesting workaround potentially, but the point still remains that the class is so bloated on burst that it requires a workaround, and that's not good design

I made a way for the difference between 'cone for 220p' and 'circle aoe for 220p' to actually mean something in the rotation. Which is more than can be said for SE. There's also a lot, a LOT, of iconic abilities that are just... forgotten/abandoned. I expect we'll get Goblin Punch next patch, and I've already come up with a way to make that interesting/relevant/have a niche of it's own. But look at what we already have now. 1000 Needles, dead content, doesn't scale. Final Sting/Selfdestruct, dead content, only used at the very end of a raid to cheese the last several % of a fight and try to skip mechanics. Missile/TailScrew, doesn't work on most bosses (and is single target so you'd rather just LV?Death in packs). They even changed Matra Magic's effect so that it doesn't do the HP/MP swap thing, so much for 'overpowered'!

And lastly, if the problem people perceive is 'I want to be able to build a loadout', I preserved that aspect. It's not something BLU is known for (you could say, 'it's not the BLU identity'), since 'loadouts' only occur here and FF11, but nevertheless my idea would keep it. You want to have all water spells cos they're blue? You could. You want to go all-physical? You could. If anyone wants to inform me of what the 'BLU identity' my idea would infringe on is, please go ahead. Because as shown here:

Just thought I'd whack this together before shopping, to put the 'but the BLU identity' thing to bed



One of these things is not like the others... And no, I'm not talking about how you eat enemies in FF9

...The BLU Identity is 'it learns spells from enemy', and nothing else. It could even be argued that 'having a spellbook of X skills, and also being able to bring that same X number of skills to battles' is part of it, considering how often that's occurred (only the MMOs break this), in which case, it'd be FFXIV's BLU that's the one that breaks identity, rather than respecting it. But yeh, I perceive BLU identity to be 'collect enemy spells'. And that's preserved with my proposed solution. We can go back and forth on whether SE would implement it or not, but that is not the point. The point is, I'm just a random idiot on the internet, and I can come up with a solution that respects the history of the job, preserving the things that need to be preserved, and also satisfying the people who want to have a Job, not a minigame.

If I can come up with this, why couldn't SE, when it was first implemented?

edit:

Weapon slot used for more than pointless glamour. BLU weapons don't need to be a stat stick like every other job's. However they could at least let us craft new sticks with the crafting materials dropped from trials and raids and have those crafted sticks provide specific spell bonuses based on the boss that could boost spells of a specific element, spell family, or the actual spell learned from the boss if it had one.

See, this would be interesting, you craft an Ifrit themed Cane, and it boosts fire spells by, say, 30p. Now you have a reason to use Ifrit's Eruption over Garuda's Featherrain. If you get Garuda's Cane, the opposite is true. I'd ask 'how does SE miss so hard on all of this' but to miss, requires that you attempt to 'hit', and they just... don't. The only spell I'm looking forward to seeing is Goblin Punch. Every other AOE spam spell they add, I expect to be functionally a reskin of the ones we have now. Which is why it's so mindboggling to me that anyone would be against my idea of Skill Glamours. They basically already work that way! What's the difference, while in a all-BLU raid for the Morbol, between Flamethrower, Ink Jet, Alpine Draft, Protean Wave, Kaltstrahl? They're all cone AOEs, that do 220p! 'Oh but the Libra' aaaa

edit2: Ink Jet is 200, not 220, my entire argument falls apart because it's actually WORSE than I thought, I'd consider that an impressive feat if it weren't so damning

[Deceptus]

Why did a class, supposedly 'too overpowered to exist in the normal constraints of FFXIV's battle design', need so many buffs?

Because for some stupid reason it's main hand weapon is lacking in INT as well as materia slots. Which was why a decently played black mage could out dps them. They had a LOT more main stat.

The Carnivale reward canes should have 4-5 slots.

[ForsakenRoe]

Another day, another duty that BLU is locked out of. I'm assuming it's cos of the enforced tank LB being a scripted 'you use it or you die' instead of A12's where it was 'does lots of damage but can be mitigated to non-fatal amounts via LB'

Well, I guess you can go in as a not-all-BLU team to bring a 'real tank' along, to do the LB for you, but like... come on. They don't exactly convince me that 'BLU is too OP' with their words and actions here

This also means, if the 'its cos tank LB' thing is true, all-BLU cannot do Endsinger, THE final boss of the game, because it too has an enforced tank LB. How is this design even remotely acceptable

[fulminating]

Just niggardly devs. Sos was both made after they established the current blue mage and isn't current content. Why does diamondback not count or why wasn't ultimate crossover made into damage (or can it be bypassed with selfdestruct-> res?). What an indictment of their shoddy encounter design.

[Naoki34]

Remember, Yoshi-P promised us a new regular and it's been a while since there's been anything but BLU.

I don't like this single job and it's completely useless in dungeons and raids. And I didn't like the idea of a mob skill hunter.

I'm expecting at least one new single job per expansion, but nope. All we've got is the useless BLU. I know some people like it, but I don't.

[Kisshu]

Adding to this instead of making a new thread.

If I recall, one of the reason BLU is not allowed into normal duty finder is because you risk having BLUs without their spells enter, and that would create conflict. I seem to recall that Yoshi-P even did a small sketch on this back when first introducing it.

But then why the heck can't BLUs use the trust system?
If one of the main reasons BLU is excluded from DF is not having spells, why not just allow them into the solo system with trust where it's only the BLU themselves that are affected by lack of spells.

[ForsakenRoe]

If I recall, one of the reason BLU is not allowed into normal duty finder is because you risk having BLUs without their spells enter, and that would create conflict. I seem to recall that Yoshi-P even did a small sketch on this back when first introducing it.

But then why the heck can't BLUs use the trust system?
If one of the main reasons BLU is excluded from DF is not having spells, why not just allow them into the solo system with trust where it's only the BLU themselves that are affected by lack of spells.

Because SE has no foresight, hindsight, or just sight in general it seems. What's to stop a PLD from going into 90 content without doing any job quests, meaning they're missing their 30-70 skills? Instead of thinking 'hmm, what if we made a system which can do both 'collect enemy spells' and also 'makes sure a BLU has their full kit' at the same time', they decided to half-arse it and just put massive restrictions on them. Because 'it might cause friction'.

Any scrutiny at all, and the presented 'reasons' fall apart like wet paper

Unrelated, was doing some dungeons for learning stuff, and quelle surprise, the trash mobs were immune to Lightheaded from the funny fist move. ????

[SamsonBlacke]

Blue Mage as it stand is the best job in the game, and the last thing I want is for them to make some crappier version of it

[Bobby66]

Remember, Yoshi-P promised us a new regular and it's been a while since there's been anything but BLU.

I don't like this single job and it's completely useless in dungeons and raids. And I didn't like the idea of a mob skill hunter.

I'm expecting at least one new single job per expansion, but nope. All we've got is the useless BLU. I know some people like it, but I don't.

You don't have to like it though or play it. It is okay to have content in a game that is nor for everyone.

[OdinelStarrei]

Dude I am so bummed you can't do SoS as BLU. Not only is there no spell at all, not only is the fight just fantastic and fun to run, both NM and EX, there was SO much potential for a Limit Break skill! Even if BLUs didn't have it before, just bring in an regular tank as your 8th for the first kill!

Limit Break: Healer Mimicry
LB1: Watering Wheel
LB2: True Heart (I know it's for damage up/vuln down normally, it's health for this purpose)
LB3: Flames of Rebirth

Limit Break: DPS Mimicry
LB1: Ecliptic Meteor
LB2: Heavensfall ( a small one )
LB3: Almost Ultima (Melee DPS LB damage 1st Target, 50% to all others, slightly larger than standard caster to fill as ranged as well, make it hecking huge)

Limit Break: Tank Mimicry
LB1: Rock Throw (Those big gaols Titan puts you in on E4S that are really hard to kill, not the granite gaols)
LB2: Plasma Shield
LB3: Divine Judgement (Everyone gets a mini timegate/communion puddle laser on them and the damage is "lost to time" or something I don't know)


Why? Why isn't it possible? At least for DPS alone! Come on man...