I Thought BLU Was Made For Solo Players

[Atelier-Bagur]

Yeah I can see that, a sense of character progression alone can be a motivator, but I can argue the same over getting BiS on savages and I just don't know how you would go about it without pissing off the balance of effort x reward, because in the end, doing savage only allows players to get better IL faster, since on odd patches, they add the possibility for anyone to upgrade their tome gears by exchanging alliance and nuts for the upgrades, if only the tome cap limit was higher everyone would get a high IL gear in a considerable speed.

Edit: after some thought I believe the best course of action on this would be making savage gear being the only kind of set that has visual effects (remove them from the normal set), to compensate, make it so the normal set could be dyable, and the savage set could be dyable + you can dye/chage color of the effects emanating from the set, that in a sense would be the fair way to reward a player that goes through a harder piece of content and not feel robbed of going the hard way for gearing up.

Yeah I dont think even hardcore raiders care so much about the exclusivity. Sure the ideal is that the hardest fights should give the best gear and that emphasis should heavily be skewed towards that but many feel frustrated about the slow gearing process and many are getting sick and tired of dealing with 8 man statics.

Criterion is an easy solution to introduce that avenue to get BiS savage gear since its just as hard (or at least Criterion Savage) and its less stress having to deal with less people in a week.

[Cabalabob]

BLUs design pivoted with the level 60 update. At level 50 BLU was simply too weak. You couldn’t solo anything higher than a level 30 dungeon. A lot of the spells that have made BLU a good solo job now didn’t exist back then, basic instinct, aetherial mimicry, Pom cure, gobskin, all abilities that came with the 60 update. At level 50 BLU was basically a weaker BLM that had access to diamondback and white wind.

People had to group up to learn higher level spells like the primal spells and obviously you tried to go with as many BLUs as possible so you didn’t have to run it multiple times. But this lead to another problem. BLU didn’t have the tools to specialise into roles. No provoke, no raise spell (which mattered because dead BLUs don’t learn the spell), no cure spell other than white wind, no mitigation other than diamondback (both spells with an unsustainable mp cost).

So with the 60 update they took the feedback from the way people were playing the job and redesigned it into a job that could specialise into roles and could build parties of BLUs. But since then it has gained a lot of the tools to be a decent solo job, I’ve personally soloed every spell since the 70 update and seen people soloing savage content unsynced. But the damage is done, the mark left on the job from the 50 era is there and now SE thinks people want to group up as BLUs so they are making content to cater to that.

[Shougun]

I’ll admit, i’m late to the party on this, but it just now hit me. I started getting into BLU and I really enjoy it. It’s been something fun I can work on outside of the usual grind for gear and progression through raiding. However, it was a huge letdown when I realized that most of the titles and even a mount are all locked behind completing some of the hardest content the game has to offer. I never got into savage raiding because I just never had the time to commit to being in a static. But to get all the good BLU achievements, you pretty much need one. It feels contradicting to what the whole “solo content” that BLU was pitched as. Sadly I don’t think ill ever be able to do it.

I don't see anything wrong with having party content be an option, and certainly it seems some people are having fun with that so might as well have it be a thing too, but I do also hope / wish that these types of jobs are intentionally designed to stand on the solo concept either first or at 'the end'. Either a sort of delayed release to solo ability (so it pushed people into PF for a few patches), or perhaps some method that might dissuade but allow a fun solo alternative for the log.

Like if you use approximately 3 beast tribe worth of tokens you could join the dungeon with a variant of echo for blue mage (ideally it just dynamically adjusts the dungeon so it's neither too easy nor too hard, it shouldn't feel like Red Mage solo in FFXI where you can finish your lasagna in the oven before you finish pounding your head into the sand till victory, but neither 500 item levels over the target unsynced where sneezing means victory). Being tribe tokens has no major significance but the thought was thematically blue mage has a tribe like association, tribe tokens have a limiter which would impose an encouragement to do group content still (but not dissuade it), and rewards can be granted for doing the content without much concern since the tribe tokens are already pre-associated with rewards.

I find it funny at this point. WoW, the hardcore raid-only MMO, is now giving you the ability to get endgame raid-level gear from just casually playing the game and plans to expand this to even more solo content with Delves in the next expansion.
While XIV has suddenly become the "raid or bust" MMO when it comes to gearing your character.

They're better than that even since you can play them with friends, or alone. I suppose one might link it to the variant dungeon, but those of course don't nearly have the staying power that a Delve is intended to have (also pretty cool you can stumble upon them seamlessly).

I would be for variant dungeons getting some sort of substantial benefit even if the major reward was on a sort of timer (like leve, beast tribe, weekly challenge log, etc are- in order to balance reward quantity and reward quality).

More content would be nice. I wish they'd just unlock the BLU log. The only thing stopping me from tearing through the BLU log is the fact that duties must be completed with a full party. Most people don't even care about the BLU log, I usually see people asking for the weekly targets in PF at the start of the week and during the weekends, but there's not that many listings.

Maybe it really is down to rewards. Allied seals seem to be BLU's choice of currency, but I'm always at cap. They could do something with that at least too.

I think it would be a really nice addition to the solo / low party side of blue if they did something like you suggested here. Since mentioning Delves and variants, could use a notch of dynamic scaling for gameplay benefit. Certainly you could do most unsynced but if the intension was to enjoy some mechanics, or alternatively avoid hyper attrition battles then a touch of dynamic scaling could make it harder and easier where needed.

We have the tomestone armor and weapons but they suffer from strict weekly lockouts due to the low tomecap and with the weapons themselves having you to wait 4 to 7 months (during current patch) to get a single one in a game that encourages you to play multiple jobs is such an out of touch design choice. Yeah I get it, its mostly there to keep retention but seriously we couldn't have other avenues that help bypass that limit just even a little bit? The current tomecap and weekly lockout wouldn't be insulting if it wasn't the ONLY way to get that gear.

Game needs to spread its loot structure to other forms of content and not just Savage raids.

I really wanted to see PvP become a valid gear source... personally.

One of the interesting things that WoW essentially will have is jobs but without our lockout and tome lock issues, I believe FFXIV / SE need to look at WoW more closely soon as it appears, imo, that WoW is looking more closely at FFXIV and taking some of it's best features (the intended claims will provide them essentially jobs, but with more QoL and customization in almost all situations, improved class fantasy, and story telling focus). They are still different games naturally, but when I watched WoW's latest expansion news it felt to me that blizzard was doing what made it good initially (which was taking from the best and attempting to make it better / fit their game).

I wonder if after your first tome cap purchase all items of that same type can be purchased at a significantly reduced cost might be one potential solution? Like if you buy a weapon, then all the other weapons of similar ilvl would become massively discounted.


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Didn't really want to bump a thread for it, nor create a new one, but blue feedback- the new spells like the last tier are interesting, while wishing the 1 to 50 had similar level of interest. Also perhaps having some weaker variant of core skills included in early carnivals to improve early solo experience (like maybe an oGCD just okay heal). Avoiding to be as complicated and detailed in previous posts (though most feelings in those posts remain as they were, with the continued addition that I believe SE has taken feedback into account and skill quality has increased).

- Basic Instinct always grants basic instinct when possible, however when using it perhaps grants all stances to the next spell cast (tank, healer, damage - to the spell effect specifically not the passive buffs applied to the character via mimicry).
- Make aetheric mimicry a class mechanic, it can be a quest to run around and collect roles (running around town casting spells on people could be cute) but once 'unlocked' it is just a mechanic where you select the role you want and it takes up no spell slot. You could create a specialization or slot passive system (thinking inspiration from FFXI's blue mage or Diablo 3 and 4 systems), where then basic instinct could also go here. On that... I'd love to see some better and more tangible encouragement to collecting spells (mantra magic might be a counter argument as it takes 100 spells to earn), but I was hoping more FFXI blue mage passives or such (where each spell had a tangible impact, like "now that I learned this I can get +5% max hp, or I can combine it with Y to get this new interaction with lightning spells).
- Remove self stuns (it's not fun, strongly imo, to not able to play, at all, and feels worse when great effects are put behind that concept) and where obviously divergent return skills to similar glory of their source (for example Fire Angon - was far beyond a regular fire spell, or Diamondback which had a cool reflective thorn effect)

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It stopped being about solo content the moment you hit Lv50 and wanted to obtain the first 49 spells due to the EX trial requirement back in 4.5.

The content for solo players was the Masked Carnivale. The reason why BLU is limited is because they saw the need to make "game-breaking" skills which don't work in 95% of content, yet standard BLU damage rotation is pretty much just another Caster with some slight nuances - basically the devs forced a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For what it is, 8-BLU raids are some crafty stuff, but tbh at this point I wish they would've given us a second job stone, call it "Memoires of the Blue Mage" that just acts as a standard Blue Mage kit with skills tied to levels and design more BLU sticks to work as normal weapons (with VIT).

Instead, now we have the dread of another job receiving "Limited" status on the horizon. I really wish they'd stop.

Definitely a fan of an advanced job (both limited and normal) concept... I had really wanted to main blue before it came out. Release blue had me actively upset with the entire game and soured my mood for a while. I feel they've improved quite a few elements but I still feel they made the job really focused on a small group so they can do savage one more time and then hit it and quit it.. Which feels a shame coming from someone who had wanted to use it a lot. Alternatively I like the idea that the duty log is brought into a solo-capable space, and generally solo of value is pushed where it wont break the game.

Release blue was hardly that special anyways, in terms of balance, there were a few tweaks and you would have gone to 'underpowered, uninteresting combo structure, normal job' from release. I think I was 'first world' infuriated (it's still a video game) when it was like "we wanted to make it just how broken it was before and really give you that power", 'btw Death is crazy low chance, most bosses are immune, we changed quite a few spells from their cool boss counterparts into straight potency color changes, added self inflicting stuns, and other QoL damaging ideas so spells don't feel as good as they could, and you will be spamming a lot for a long while'. At the time I had lost some faith in the team lol. I feel they improved the spell design and made some very fast changes to bring the power level up to better justify 'limited' but the release had me go "seriously guys?... this is.... y". There are still some of the 1 to 50 spell designs that I find quite annoying though, and wish they would improve them (whether it is because they didn't capture the spell or because the spell is useful but actively not fun or cumbersome to use).

While you might have missed out on some of the instant kill stuff, I think a normal blue would have been fine and could easily have kept learning spells too (its code, they could have just said "if you don't have this skill from the open world you don't do the level 70 capstone dungeon" so that whole argument was terrible on people going without their kit). Ultra-vibration instant skill is well designed but initially our chance based spells that you had to spam.. I was like "GOOD GOD, YES, PLEASE TAKE THEM AWAY- GIVE ME A NORMAL.." as the spell felt awful to use. In a group you don't spam it very long, but it's such an ugly gameplay (in terms of actual 'game' 'play') concept when you're relying on yourself lol.

If they add another limited job out of the pool of jobs some people would have wanted to main I hope they have a better touch down this time around. Doesn't have much theme to the expansion but my thought was a magitek operator (Xenogears, Armored Core, G-Warrior) like limited job, which wouldn't really be able to fit well normally.. I don't think people would miss that. Undoubtedly some will miss beast master if that's the job (and thematically to the expansion it feels like an excellent fit), so hopefully if they pick it.. it'll be well done in such a way that people wont go "I lost the chance for my favorite job for THIS.. THIS??" which is why I /had/ felt about blue mage. Still a bit sad, but blue mage is in a better place given the improve spell designs and the immediate changes they made after feedback poured in initially.

My other thought might be a morpher, given the theme of the area and some other reasons, though I had wished to be able to transform as a main job.. so would be funny if two jobs I had really wanted to play both become limited XD. Again, hopefully they learned enough from Blue launch to avoid missing the justification of why it might be labeled 'limited'.

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Now I need to find that Shurrikhan post I promised to look at it. I feel especially an interesting one given WoW is improving their own world designs..

[Jargal]

Yeah I dont think even hardcore raiders care so much about the exclusivity. Sure the ideal is that the hardest fights should give the best gear and that emphasis should heavily be skewed towards that but many feel frustrated about the slow gearing process and many are getting sick and tired of dealing with 8 man statics.

Criterion is an easy solution to introduce that avenue to get BiS savage gear since its just as hard (or at least Criterion Savage) and its less stress having to deal with less people in a week.

Criterion Savage is as hard as the savage tier, it definetly isn't the place to gear up.

As for rewards, not all raiders care about the exclusivity of the visual piece (certainly I don't since I haven't used a single gear from the tier as glam), but at the same time the prestige is what makes the reward sweeter for a lot of folks and I think if only the savage has visual effects would add more prestige to these pieces to compensate for going the hard way to gear up.

[ThaCa]

They should let BLU queue up for anything their level cap allows. Would make doing some Roulettes more fun.

[MonsutaMan]

Eh....just want cross class glamour so I can rock female BLU armor and never have to touch the job again......

[Renathras]

I’ll admit, i’m late to the party on this, but it just now hit me. I started getting into BLU and I really enjoy it. It’s been something fun I can work on outside of the usual grind for gear and progression through raiding. However, it was a huge letdown when I realized that most of the titles and even a mount are all locked behind completing some of the hardest content the game has to offer. I never got into savage raiding because I just never had the time to commit to being in a static. But to get all the good BLU achievements, you pretty much need one. It feels contradicting to what the whole “solo content” that BLU was pitched as. Sadly I don’t think ill ever be able to do it.

I think it WAS supposed to be...but then they decided to give them more big flashy cool spells (like from Primals) and those...required groups. So it's been group content ever since. Sadly. Since I liked the idea of a Job designed for solo stuff.

For example, the most solo-y content in the game, solo runs of Deep Dungeons, BLU isn't even allowed to do.

[Shougun]

I think it WAS supposed to be...but then they decided to give them more big flashy cool spells (like from Primals) and those...required groups. So it's been group content ever since. Sadly. Since I liked the idea of a Job designed for solo stuff.

For example, the most solo-y content in the game, solo runs of Deep Dungeons, BLU isn't even allowed to do.

Limited jobs in deep dungeons sounds like a lot of fun (I'm thinking particularly BLU but I just said it generically since we'll get another one soon). If the achievement is a concern they can always change it from Necromancer to Azul Necromancer or whatever else, definitely a leaderboard dedicated to limited jobs specifically. Also yeah, I was on a roller coaster pre-release and my one hope if it was excluded from content was solo designed with party as an opportunity (as I remembered Yoshida's comment during ARR's beta, where he described BLU back then).

Naturally basic instinct has changed that quite a bit from how it was at release, and is appreciated, but that's to 'patch' that element as it wasn't the primary design (it works but you can tell it's a patch in some places), and the duty log is clearly solo player excluded. Though I think it's fine if some things are party focused, at least initially, just hope for solo elements to be chasing the tail of all those elements (and in a way that feels as 'intended' as possible).

[Nighthawky2010]

I can't imagine this going well at all for another limited job. We got all of ONE more carnivale stage this expansion for blu and not that many new spells.

Can't wait for that to get spread even thinner.

Not only that...many of the spells are the same but with a different name & DOT. Many of the spells to me are lackluster at best.

[Nighthawky2010]

I was at Fanfest 2018 when they announced BLU & at first was excited about it but over time it's MEH to me. Masked Carnivale is boring, I think I stopped at level 19 or whatever in MC. My BLU is level 80 but I have still the level 50 or 60 weapon. I think they should have allowed getting future weapons & gear should have been through the story & some instances and not tied it with MC. At this point, they might as well just boost it up to level 90. All we going to be doing anyway is (1). go to the area that will give us a lot of exp so we can level up & get spells, (2) do level 81-90 dungeons & get some spells; (3) do some EW trials, and alliance raids & get some spells. Then put it away until the next expansion.