Please reconsider stance on blue mage

[Volsung]

Q: I love the blue mage job that appears in the FINAL FANTASY series. Will the blue mage job ever be implemented in FFXIV?
A: I think that blue mage is an interesting job because you can learn spells enemies, but honestly I don't think that it really fits MMORPG party settings. If anything, I think it would work solo and it would be really fun to implement it as a job where you go around and learn abilities from every monster, so I'd definitely like to try and do this, but I'm concerned when it comes to playing in a party players would put up barriers if you haven't learned certain abilities. Additionally, in the event you are able to use abilities forever once you learn them, the difficulty of learning abilities would be high, and we wouldn't be able to balance the system so it wouldn't revolve around procuring your abilities instead of equipment. This wouldn't be practical enough to fit in an MMORPG party setting and conversely if you are swapping in only certain abilities you've learned, the true image of a blue mage would diminish, so this is something that I am concerned with.

Please reconsider this stance on blue mage. Not only is setting spells fine,
but some players WANT to enjoy a job/class you need to go out and put
a bit of extra effort into. This level of handholding is taking it too far to
the extreme of "fire fira firaga is too hard to understand". Please don't be
afraid to add something new like this.

Not to mention this could give players at least a little variety in their play. I know
what you mean about it being difficult in a party setting, but if you can figure
it out, the benefits would be enthralling.

I have enjoyed blue mage since FF5. And I know this is something you can do!
Also you've already proved that this will be its own game and does not need
to hold true to the standards set by previous games.

[Crystallus]

Op: Please explain how Blue Mage would work in FFXIV please?

Sincerely Curious.

[Nalien]

Eh, I always figured Blue Mage would work somewhat like Summoner in XIV. Drop the Pets, but keep the extra Skills they provide. Rather than a Pet Bar they get a Blue Magic Bar, and they could switch between the spells on that Bar with a stance, rather than summoning a Pet; switching to Vilekin Stance gives you a selection of Vilekin skills, Cloudkin Stance gives you some Cloudkin skills. Something like that.

Only issue I see is learning the spells, but I honestly wouldn't mind them just putting that in the Job quests; "Go get hit by these enemy abilities". Done. "Go get hit by this enemy ability until you learn it (at the whim of the RNG)" only existed to be a time sink, after all.

Really don't see it being vastly different from Summoner... Certainly something they can implement, though perhaps peoples dislike of Summoner puts them off that idea. If done right it would be head and shoulders above Summoner, switching between the preset loadouts would actually be nice, instead of just Garuda-Egi all the things.

[Brine_Gildchaff]

The problem isn't that it would be complex. The problem is that theorycrafters would quickly determine the "best set" and the elitist core would refuse to play with anyone who did not use that exact set. We already have a situation where people can vote-kick just because the tank refuses to do a speedrun, or the healer refuses to contribute DPS. Blue Mage would become all but unplayable unless players stuck to the "BiS" loadout. -That- is what Yoshida is trying to get across in what you quoted. It's the same reason that the elemental wheel was abolished; people would be forced into playing exactly as the rest of the raiding or even DF community demanded, and Yoshida does NOT want that sort of situation to arise any more than he can possibly prevent it.

[Aylis]

As a lover and constant player of hybrid support roles in other MMO's. As well as someone who does find heavy enjoyment of selecting and buffing spells and abilities to match situations while enjoying the trial and error aspects to it. I support this fully ^o^

[Lithera]

There's an element of laziness in dropping the Elemental Wheel to be honest since the reason it failed in XI was only because they devs themselves designed the spells so that not all spells at a given tier were created equal. One of by biggest pet peeves with XI. Why should Thunder be a be-all-end-all just because it's the highest level spell in every Tier? They've corrected it a tiny bit but now people just use the most MP effective spell...Stone...lol How hard would it be to equalize the elemental spells at each tier so BLMs could properly select spells based on the mob?

Anyways...back on topic.. BLU would simply require a similar balance. Even in XI there is no true optimal loadout other than the expectation of a few Job Traits which actually vary depending on encounter. I do think though that it woud be difficult to implement under the current level cap. Even using the previously mentioned "BLU bar" option they'd be a tiny bit limited without a few more levels worth of skills to work with. BLU would likely be a DPS so I wouldn't expect healing spells or a lot of damage buffs unless a fair way to make them multi-role was developed (need to lock them to a Role in dungeons etc.).

[Volsung]

The problem isn't that it would be complex. Wealready have a situation where people can vote-kick just because the tank refuses to do a speedrun, or the healer refuses to contribute DPS. Blue Mage would become all but unplayable unless players stuck to the "BiS" loadout. -That- is what Yoshida is trying to get across in what you quoted. It's the same reason that the elemental wheel was abolished; people would be forced into playing exactly as the rest of the raiding or even DF community demanded, and Yoshida does NOT want that sort of situation to arise any more than he can possibly prevent it.

Oh I know why he said it, and I believe that handholding goes too far when it hurts possible development.
This stuff will happen regardless of what classes/jobs are added to the game. I'm well aware of what
that community acts like. You can't hit this dps in this fight, you're out etc. We can't cower behind that
so much as to even fathom adding a class or content to the game. It will happen, no matter what. Once
you get past that, why not add something players can put extra time into. Thats part of the point of blue
mage or how to "play the class" is to go learn spells. If you arent putting in the time, you arent playing it
correctly, just as a drg might never use heavy thrust (sad pandas when this happens btw) But again,
that goes for all classes.

[Lusavari]

Personally, I think the best way to make Blue Mage work would be to have it as a job that has access to 0 cross class abilities from any other class, and instead uses Spells its learned in other occasions. Also, rather than gaining new abilities in job quests, it could just gain a new slot, so after 5 job quests, and 5 levels, you have 10 total spells you can mix in.

[Laerune]

As much as I want to have a Blue Mage, this will not work with the community that we have right now. Yoshida knows this and he wants to prevent this. Can you imagine how horrible the community will react towards the Blue Mages who do not use certain ability loadouts?

Unless they make the Blue Mage spells very limited (which basicly destroys the whole class) so Blue Mages wont be kicked, I wont see this class/job working in FFXIV.


PS: I love the idea of exploring the world and collecting the spells.

[Zumi]

Would blue mage be tank, healer, or dps? It has to have 1 role for the duty finder