Blitzballer?

[Daralii]

Eh. I say do another healer role. With the Sword Master boss, I'm thinking Rune Fencer.
A melee healer with magical sword slashes who uses defensive and healing runes to support the party.

After all, not all healers need to be casters. Let some swing around melee weapons for variety.

Tank and phys ranged are the roles that have gone the longest without a new job. Based on what they're doing to RDM, a healer with a sword would probably just do melee attacks from 25 yalms away anyway.

[ForsakenRoe]

Blitzballer wouldn't really make any sense to add. There's been zero mention of it in FF14, and so I expect that hamfisting it into FF14 just for the reference will feel like it's exactly that, hamfisted and clearly 'just for the reference'. Adding Blitzball to Gold Saucer also would feel hamfisted, the point of it being a thing in FF10 was that it was something that people all over the world could enjoy and draw a feeling of hope from. Does SE have to then add a Blitz team for each of the citystates of the world, to explain why Blitzball suddenly exists at the Gold Saucer? Or would it be against randomly-generated 'only exists inside the Blitzball menu' NPCs, making it feel less connected to the world at large and very self-contained?

I also don't really understand the hype around Blitzball as a Gold Saucer minigame in the first place. Playing Blitzball in FF10 was an exercise in frustration, and I would bet real money that most of us used some tactics that were a bit cheesy whenever we played. Passing back and forth between two backliners to run down the clock while you're ahead, making shots you know will not succeed from across the whole pitch so they take longer to travel and run down the clock, scoring once with Jecht Shot in the first match you have to play in the tournament and then hiding behind your own Goalie to bug the NPCs out and run down the clock, etc. Actually 'playing' Blitzball is a pain in the backside, and it'd be just as forgotten a system in the GS as the Triple Triad tournaments are, or Chocobo Racing, or Lord of Verminion

If 'Add Blitzball to Gold Saucer, and then add Blitzballer as a Job' is the plan to justify its addition as a Job, then there's genuinely more justification to add Chocobo Knight because Chocobo Racing (and the Breeding system) is in the Gold Saucer already. Or some kind of Job that uses Triple Triad, since people all over the world of FF14 play Triple Triad (even people on alternate Shards know of it)

Tank and phys ranged are the roles that have gone the longest without a new job. Based on what they're doing to RDM, a healer with a sword would probably just do melee attacks from 25 yalms away anyway.

Considering what they did to GNB this patch (turning Lionheart into a 60s '3 hits' design like Inner Release/Fell Cleave, Delerium/Bloodspiller, Requiescat/Blade combo (that one is 4 hits though, very different /s)), I don't think it's even worth them adding a new Tank, even if it has been so long since the last one. Better to spend the time making the current Tanks feel distinct from one another, rather than adding a 5th 'press this button every 60s, then 'big hit' button 3 times (or maybe 4)' design

Could make a Melee Healer where you're incentivized to be in Melee distance, but not 'required' to be there at all times. For example, having a combo which fills their Job Gauge (which is then spent on Healing OGCDs), but also having Ranged attacks of near-equal potency. Perhaps the Ranged attacks could build Gauge too, but at a slower rate. When you have to disengage to resolve fight mechanics, you'd use the Ranged attacks. When in Melee distance, you'd use Melee to fill your Gauge. If you need to be out of range AND heal with OGCDs at the same time, you'd pool resources to do so. 'Melee distance' can be 'not actually Melee distance' too, Phlegma for SGE is an example of this, it's longer range than actual Melee attacks, but some consider it a 'Melee distance attack'. It'd be a very mobile Healer, since the Melee attacks would presumably have no cast time

[TKMXIV]

Tank and phys ranged are the roles that have gone the longest without a new job. Based on what they're doing to RDM, a healer with a sword would probably just do melee attacks from 25 yalms away anyway.

I'm not against them doing Phys ranged. I'm also aware the last Tank and Phys range was from SHB. I mostly just threw that comment out there just to get it out there.

On reflection it does feel kind of pointless of me to do that or post any job ideas. Because combat design is just not built for it.

I mean you bring up Red Mage having its sword combo made into a ranged attack when a skill is used. While I'm thinking about last week when my auto attack delt 1 damage to a Heavensward mob while I'm level 100.
I should just stick to non combat stuff. Like glam, mounts and character customizations.

[OdrN]

Blitzballer wouldn't really make any sense to add. There's been zero mention of it in FF14

Just as Pictomancer, Viper, Reaper, Sage... No mention in the game before their appearence.

[MikkoAkure]

Blitzballer wouldn't really make any sense to add. There's been zero mention of it in FF14, and so I expect that hamfisting it into FF14 just for the reference will feel like it's exactly that, hamfisted and clearly 'just for the reference'.

I'm not sure what game you've been playing up to this point, but none of the expansion jobs in this game had any mention at all until they were going to be added and several of them were hamfisted into FFXIV just for the reference so I don't know what your point is.


- Gunbreaker very explicitly throws away the notion of how Garlean gunblades work so that Yoshi-P could insert FFVIII-style gunblades that operate completely differently (and don't even shoot bullets) and is probably the most egregious example, with them even giving away Squall's gunblade as a collector's edition item for Shadowbringers.

- Pictomancer is inspired by Relm from FFVI and we got a Chocobo Brush also inspired by a Collector's Edition item from that game with the job's release. The job in XIV just gets randomly tied to an "Archon Relm" we've never heard of before or since who has 0 involvement in the story at all and is not even touched up by Sharlayan NPCs in the expansion we go to Sharlayan in.

- Viper seems to be loosely based off of Zidane's "thief swords" from FFIX and fits right into a very FFIX-themed expansion.


So adding Blitzballer as a class based off a previous FF character reference rather than a specific FF classic job is something that has already been done before so there's certainly precedence.

And the earliest we see any new job is typically the patch before it's actually added to the game or in the expansion trailer. Ishgard pre-HW was known for dragoons, not dark knights and gunners. We had no notion at all that Ala Mhigo had red mages in lore until the expansion came out and even to this day, red mage aesthetics with their roses, fencing swords, and feathery caps completely clash with highlanders who shave their eyebrows and file their teeth to points and to Ala Mhigo in general. Bozja was just a name dropped in lore and had no gunblades or even Hrothgar until Shadowbringers. Thavnair had no dancers and Garlemald had no farmers picking up scythes and summoning voidsent until Endwalker.

The devs are freely allowed to just make stuff up out of nowhere and throw it in and they do it all the time.

Playing Blitzball in FF10 was an exercise in frustration, and I would bet real money that most of us used some tactics that were a bit cheesy whenever we played. Passing back and forth between two backliners to run down the clock while you're ahead, making shots you know will not succeed from across the whole pitch so they take longer to travel and run down the clock, scoring once with Jecht Shot in the first match you have to play in the tournament and then hiding behind your own Goalie to bug the NPCs out and run down the clock, etc. Actually 'playing' Blitzball is a pain in the backside, and it'd be just as forgotten a system in the GS as the Triple Triad tournaments are, or Chocobo Racing, or Lord of Verminion

Don't project what cheesy tactics you may have done onto the rest of us. Just because you didn't like it and you cheesed your way through it doesn't mean everyone else did or feels the same as you do. The fact that enough people liked Blitzball enough to continue to ask for it as a mini-game and to ask for a Blitzballer job based on Wakka shows that it is at least worth reminiscing about fondly.

[Aidorouge]

Blitzballer wouldn't be my first choice, but I could see it being made into the "pair" with MCH if they plan on splitting physical range into "RNG with buffs" and "RNG with debuffs" due to Wakka's Slots Overdrive and how his part of the Sphere Grid had all the status infliction abilities.

MCH having some sort of "spin the barrel" mechanic for the RNG and using Tools to inflict status effects (of which half of the original Tools from FF6 did indeed do things like Blind/Poison/Confuse/forced elemental weakness) sounds sensible enough. Ugh... it's just the RNG part I hope they drop from all physical range (or at least keep miles away from MCH and the new physical range).

[VeyaAkemi]

On a serious note, Blitzballer is one of the worst options for me, I hate the very concept of Blitzball, the most enjoyment I ever got out of it was knocking Wakka's balls back onto his head in KH1 so I could get a couple more levels through Tech XP and try to beat Riku like that, cuz I was a dumb baby who sucked at the game. And in a world where any given new Job is an opportunity cost for a different concept, I need to beg for anything but Blitzballer.

[Dreadlime]

There's a blitzballer video on youtube, which is probably the source of this. That, and folks just really like blitzball.
Gambler could be an interesting option. There's something to said for dealing with problems by directly, and ballistically, throwing money at them. Perhaps the job could have a mini card game where different hands generate buffs or other effects. Nothing too complicated, as it shouldn't cause a distraction. Maybe the job gauge could be a tally counter, and there could be an "press your luck" mechanic that potentially "cashes out" for big damage or a bigger buff.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm not sure what game you've been playing up to this point, but none of the expansion jobs in this game had any mention at all until they were going to be added and several of them were hamfisted into FFXIV just for the reference so I don't know what your point is.


- Gunbreaker very explicitly throws away the notion of how Garlean gunblades work so that Yoshi-P could insert FFVIII-style gunblades that operate completely differently (and don't even shoot bullets) and is probably the most egregious example, with them even giving away Squall's gunblade as a collector's edition item for Shadowbringers.

- Pictomancer is inspired by Relm from FFVI and we got a Chocobo Brush also inspired by a Collector's Edition item from that game with the job's release. The job in XIV just gets randomly tied to an "Archon Relm" we've never heard of before or since who has 0 involvement in the story at all and is not even touched up by Sharlayan NPCs in the expansion we go to Sharlayan in.

- Viper seems to be loosely based off of Zidane's "thief swords" from FFIX and fits right into a very FFIX-themed expansion.


So adding Blitzballer as a class based off a previous FF character reference rather than a specific FF classic job is something that has already been done before so there's certainly precedence.

And the earliest we see any new job is typically the patch before it's actually added to the game or in the expansion trailer. Ishgard pre-HW was known for dragoons, not dark knights and gunners. We had no notion at all that Ala Mhigo had red mages in lore until the expansion came out and even to this day, red mage aesthetics with their roses, fencing swords, and feathery caps completely clash with highlanders who shave their eyebrows and file their teeth to points and to Ala Mhigo in general. Bozja was just a name dropped in lore and had no gunblades or even Hrothgar until Shadowbringers. Thavnair had no dancers and Garlemald had no farmers picking up scythes and summoning voidsent until Endwalker.

The devs are freely allowed to just make stuff up out of nowhere and throw it in and they do it all the time.

I think there is a bit of difference between some of those jobs, and a potential Blitzball-themed Job. For at least some of them, there's a thing in the lore to work from and start to build the lore of the Job to justify its implementation

- While GNB uses a different style of Gunblade from Garlean Gunblades, it's a little bit more than just 'reference to a character from one previous game'. All of the moves are named after Squall, Lightning, and a couple of Seifer moves. So it's a reference to at least 3 characters, rather than the one that Blitzball would be

- I'm not a massive fan of the PCT lore in this game either. Seemed to come entirely out of nowhere, and it especially stings due to BLU being from Tural but getting zero attention. If BLU were to become 'real' this expansion in some way, Krile would be the perfect fit, due to her Echo being a reference to the FF5 Krile being able to 'understand animals'

- Viper uses weapons that Zidane uses, but unlike GNB, that's where the similarities end. It doesn't use any moves that share a name with something in Zidane's kit. Solution Nine is probably the most well known action, and that's a location, not a VPR skill. Trance could have easily been the name of the 'burst window', but they went with Reawaken instead. It seems to me that they went more with 'the weapon looks cool, but lets use only the weapon and take the lore a completely different direction'

And special shoutout to the other examples. The Dark Knight wasn't mentioned directly as being a thing from Ishgard, but we did know of how oppressive and overreaching the Church was, so the buildup for a 'vigilante/works outside of the law' kind of Job was there. MCH did come a bit out of nowhere, I agree, but you don't mention AST, who was absolutely mentioned tons in ARR via the Coerthas section of the questline, and so AST being something we got access to in HW was heavily set up. We did have mention of 'BLM/WHM survivors of the Water Calamity ended up in Ala Mhigo' in the lore, I'm pretty sure, but not the details that they came together to create RDM to avoid the mistake of the past. We've speculated about Thavnair having Dancers ever since the Thavnairian Glam set dropped in Heavensward, and while there was no direct references to exactly how RPR works, we've known that Garlemald A: has no inherent Aether manipulation abilities (hence Magitek) so it makes some sense that they'd try anything and everything to survive, and B: Voidsent have been a thing in the lore since forever

Blitzball's source material would be Wakka, and only Wakka. In this way, it'd be comparable to either GNB (uses skill names from the source material to reinforce the reference), or VPR (does its own thing, only reuses the weapon). In the former's case, it wouldn't work IMO, since all of Wakka's attacks are just 'Dark Buster, Silence Buster, etc'. For the latter, the question becomes 'is it worth it to have a Job that uses a ball as its weapon', when there's other Ranged weapons that could be used instead (ie Crossbow, Hand Cannon, etc). I don't think the reference holds up on its own, when we look beyond the reference and start thinking about 'how to make the Job have a full rotation'.

So, what's the 'starting point' for the explanation of how Blitzball would make sense to be a part of the world? Are the Kojin handing out the 'breathe underwater' blessing to everyone nowadays? Or would it be more of a VPR situation, where the Job is not actually Blitzball related, the sport doesn't exist in FFXIV, the Job just happens to use a Ball as a thrown weapon like Wakka, but nothing else about the reference comes through? In which case, why a Ball? You've got Sniper/Ranger/Hunter and Greatbows as a weapon, you've got Cannoneer, you've got 'any Whip user from previous games', even more obscure things like Juggler and Gambler have more characters to reference than Blitzball-Thrower. Heck, you have an entire Job Icon in the game already, for an unused Musketeer's Guild in Limsa, why not expand on that after 11 years and turn that into a Job?

It took 6 years between Dancer being added, and this speculated 8.0 PhysRanged being added (if one is). With that in mind, I don't really see how to rationalize the Blitzball reference compared to something more... evergreen. The reference just isn't worth the wait IMO, both the wait between DNC and 8.0, and the assumed wait between 8.0 and... assuming there's a pattern going on, I guess it'd be 11.0 for the next PhysRanged? Imagine it from the POV of someone who doesn't like the idea of Blitzball at all, who would be so uninterested in it that they wouldn't even pick up the Job for whatever reason. It'd be 12 years between PhysRanged jobs for them, longer than the (post-rebirth) game's been alive for

[MikkoAkure]

snip.

AST being “teased” in ARR is a huge stretch considering it was never a FF job before, Ishgardian Astrology is just looking through a telescope at a single star to see if it dims or brightens to discern if dragons are coming and not an actual combat class with magic, and is associated with an entire other city altogether. I also don’t believe anyone made a connection of “Thavnair getting vaguely Middle-Eastern-looking outfits” to “Dancer will eventually become a job and it will be connected to Thavnair” all the way back in ARR when those outfits were released.

Every example you’re bringing up makes sense retroactively, which is the whole point of making something new that comes up out of nothing fit into an existing world and I don’t see why they wouldn’t do that with a hypothetical Blitzballer job unless they were to pull another Pictomancer again.

We already know that blitzball as a mini-game had made it to the developer’s table before as something they’ve considered adding so they might already have had a plan on how it fits for years. By now we know that the reasons we didn’t get it were gameplay related and not lore related but that doesn’t exclude the possibility of getting a Wakka-based class.

Bows already exist as a weapon and range in size from short bows to giant 6ft tall ones with giant arrows. That’s already done. Machinist already inherits Musketeer’s legacy with Limsans training them. Both the bow and gun class needed something more than “shoot but better” to round out their identity so they got songs and machinery respectively, I don’t know why people think a boring job that just exists to “purely use” those weapons exclusively as the second poster described is something that’s actually interesting.

There are over 20 other jobs for you to play. Not every one has to be exactly to your liking. This game is also a Final Fantasy theme park as specifically described by the developers that celebrates the series. I’d rather them give something to the game that calls back the series and highlights a game that seems oddly lacking in references despite being so popular and is something actually interesting and unique with dynamic animations.

Not everyone liked Pictomancer either because it messed with BLM or they didn’t like the cartoon animations. Not everything has to please you specifically. The fact that there’s multiple threads asking for it and even videos out there shows that the desire is there whether you personally like it or not.