about blue mage

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

I've already seen a bit of this, had a few DF runs where whm was kicked for not having regen or a pld was kicked for not having shield oath (post 50 content). Now even though these abilities are extremely easy to get, it does show that community will discriminate against players not having certain skills.

First of all it is less likely to happen when skills are more difficult to get, unlike now when there really is no excuse for not having them. I mean there will always be people saying "LFM farming lvl 1 dungeon, experience and ilvl 120 or gtfo" either way, but I find it bothersome that they consider that an issue to the point where they might not even implement a job partly because of it.

[abzoluut]

As so many already mentioned: it's not BLU that does not fit, it's the horrible 1.0 class/job-system remnant they force on us.

There would be so many options if only we had a system that just creates jobs. No cross skill crap or shared attributes.

It doesn't matter if SMN's raging strikes has another name and/or animation. Have them learn it at some point. It's not like it doesn't happen right now. DRG's, PLD's and WAR's ranged atttack are the exact same thing. Just a different name/potency etc.. Just to give one example.

Please SE, do it right of 3.0 or we'll run out of options to add jobs.

[Fyrebrand]

* The hallmark of the Blue Mage is that they learn their spells from enemies, by getting hit by them. This is not possible in FFXIV for anything other than damaging spells or debuffs, since obviously an enemy is not going to cast a heal or support spell on you, such as White Wind.

* Whatever spells you expect a Blue Mage to learn, obviously the existing enemies in the game do not cast them. So, a bunch of new monsters would have to be placed in the environments, or they'd just have to find mundane skills certain enemies already have and just go with those.

* I never played FFXI, but from what I gather you actually don't learn spells by getting hit by them, but rather by defeating certain enemies. It sounds a little like completing a glorified Hunting Log to learn new spells. And obviously, there is a limited range of enemies you would realistically be able to defeat at any given experience level. So, in the grand scheme of things, it is not fundamentally different from simply learning new skills at certain levels, the way all other classes do. The only major difference is that Blue Mage would have an added hassle attached to it, forcing you to go on a fetch quest for specific enemies every time you want to learn a new spell.

* The most interesting part of a Blue Mage is the quirky novelty of how they learn enemy abilities, and the fact that they have unique access to some exclusive spells and effects. Once you know all the spells, that novelty ceases to exist, and you're just another class. The class needs to be justified and balanced on the merits of its arsenal in comparison to others. In a single-player FF game, there is no need to worry about whether every character is fairly "balanced" to be viable solo, or that they will always have a role, or whether one character is overpowered. But in an MMO like FFXIV, this is the prime concern.

* FFXIV's system, where you start off as a class and then transition into a Job, does not fit Blue Mage at all. Blue Mage is too different from anything else in the game. It cannot integrate with other classes/jobs at all.

* I'm sorry, but you are never getting Bad Breath. It would be OP. The only way it would exist is if they neutered it beyond recognition. And for that matter, that is also the only way Blue Mage would exist. You would have a "Blue Mage" in name only.

[Duelle]

* I never played FFXI, but from what I gather you actually don't learn spells by getting hit by them, but rather by defeating certain enemies. It sounds a little like completing a glorified Hunting Log to learn new spells. And obviously, there is a limited range of enemies you would realistically be able to defeat at any given experience level. So, in the grand scheme of things, it is not fundamentally different from simply learning new skills at certain levels, the way all other classes do. The only major difference is that Blue Mage would have an added hassle attached to it, forcing you to go on a fetch quest for specific enemies every time you want to learn a new spell.

Meh, this was a decent compromise in XI's BLU design. XIV's faster combat would make it less painful, and if you tie it to an ability (my suggested Azure Lash, for example), you have a decent chance to learn a spell from a single enemy instead of killing them and waiting for the RNG to say you learned the spell.

* The most interesting part of a Blue Mage is the quirky novelty of how they learn enemy abilities, and the fact that they have unique access to some exclusive spells and effects. Once you know all the spells, that novelty ceases to exist, and you're just another class. The class needs to be justified and balanced on the merits of its arsenal in comparison to others. In a single-player FF game, there is no need to worry about whether every character is fairly "balanced" to be viable solo, or that they will always have a role, or whether one character is overpowered. But in an MMO like FFXIV, this is the prime concern.

All this means is that BLU would have some reasonable limitations to the spells it has access to in order to fit in. That may mean nerfed monster abilities when cast by you (similar to FFXI's BLU) or a clipped down spell list depending on the approach taken. This also means the role-switching thing from FFXI's BLU would be a no-go, but that's to be expected.

* FFXIV's system, where you start off as a class and then transition into a Job, does not fit Blue Mage at all. Blue Mage is too different from anything else in the game. It cannot integrate with other classes/jobs at all.

The BLU can be built on top of an existing class or combat model. My suggestion used Quistis from FFVIII as the base design, where her Blue Magic has a lot of utility but is situational (in her case since Blue Magic is her limit break). You could make a class solely for the purpose of becoming a blue mage, but then you run into the issue of wasted developer time on one class when you could fit BLU on to a class that can branch off like ACN does to SCH and SMN.

* I'm sorry, but you are never getting Bad Breath. It would be OP. The only way it would exist is if they neutered it beyond recognition. And for that matter, that is also the only way Blue Mage would exist. You would have a "Blue Mage" in name only.

Balance > preconceptions on Blue Mage. Currently Bad Breath gives poison, paralyze, blind, weight and silence. Shorten the duration, make bosses and PvE targets immune to one or more of the effects, or simply nerf the effect potency. I'd probably go for a really short duration (10 seconds or less for PvE, 5 seconds in PvP).

[ShiloEET]

First off, you took only a portion of reply and responded out of context, here is the full answer, if it's too long for you to read then that's your own fault

Well so maybe blue mage could simply have a talent tree as a class. So blue mages can be one of 2 or 3 different builds. so no spell absorption just give them their own talent tree for this class like death knight.

edit: so blue mage can be tank/healer/dps or healer/dps. a unique class.
edit2: meaning in a group one healer might be a blue mage, and one dps would be a blue mage too.

for the record i also think maybe he could become a blue mage first but he can become healer or dps so you can see a blue mage fufill two roles.

[Tupsi]

* I never played FFXI, but from what I gather you actually don't learn spells by getting hit by them, but rather by defeating certain enemies.

In XI you learn spells from enemies that teaches you spells within a certain range, for example at level 11, you can learn Bomb Toss from goblins by seeing them use it even though it's a level 28 spell I believe. Same with Buffs/Cures, as they don't use them on you, logically it wouldn't have made sense to have the system where you have to be hit by it. But yes you do have to kill them in order to learn it, so dying resets the chance.

I'm sorry, but you are never getting Bad Breath. It would be OP. The only way it would exist is if they neutered it beyond recognition. And for that matter, that is also the only way Blue Mage would exist. You would have a "Blue Mage" in name only.

All Blue Mages were neutered but it definitely would be in XIV due to the limitation of the class/job system, which quite frankly needs to go back to 1.0-1.16 or stick with the XI style. Also:

http://184.154.208.218/~tforum/blu/BLUMain.html

All of the spells Blue Mage can learn in FFXI, including:



The Balance was how much MP it costs and that some bosses natively already resist certain deuffs.

[Seiryuukishi]

Also,Dragoner was a 'breath specialist' for example in the Tactics games.

Fixed that for you. You are referring to Reis.

[Alberel]

The answer to the job needing to have a role to fit within the trinity can be solved simply by looking at another MMO called Rift... Every class in Rift was hybrid, capable of filling every role, but players had to choose a role and skillset prior to queuing.

There's no reason BLU can't do the same here. Have them function as a hybrid when playing solo and then have them specialise into a role when playing within a party. They would basically get the choice to queue as DPS or healer on the Duty Finder and would be restricted to certain learned skills based on which they choose.

Honestly every 'problem' SquareEnix uses as an excuse for why they can't do something has been solved in other MMOs. I don't understand why they can't just get some ideas from other games.

[Kuwagami]

snip

you are welcome to go and program a bug-free way to bypass all the mechanic infrastructure SE put in place in FFxiv. But this is not a priority imo. There are more important stuff to do rather than putting BLU and wrecking all the game system in the process just for the sake of it.

[Brightshadow]

Honestly there is a simple solution to this issue just allow us to queue whichever role we wish as long as the class/job has some tools to accomplish that role, there are many times as a arcanist from 1-30 that I wanted to queue as healer but I couldn't because of the auto role. and Arcanist shouldn't have too much trouble healing dungeons from 1-30.