Red Mage is Range Combat? (Discussion)

[Teiren]

They said it fills the Caster role. That means being able to attack at range and having high AoE damage. Sorry, but Red Mage isn't going to dramatically change from that. I think Red Mage is cool, I'm highly looking forward to it, but I think it's had a slightly dysfunctional design from the beginning of the series, so something about it will have to be shoehorned in when it's in a game with strictly described gameplay and content.

The idea of hybrid as it's been presented throughout the series absolutely does not work in a modern MMORPG unless every other class has a similar hybrid design. It's just logic when you're talking about a game that's extremely tightly tuned at the highest levels of difficulty (which unfortunately everyone has to suffer for): If a Red Mage was good enough at both damage and healing, then it would probably become possible to do difficult things with one healer if your Red Mage player was good enough. That sounds nice, but the raids would have to be tuned around your party having a Red Mage or else they'd be too easy. Therefore, parties would be FORCED to have a Red Mage, and that is a design FFXIV will never do. Not only is that known to be poor design for an MMO, but also the battle content guy that designed all of the Coils of Bahamut outright said they learned their lesson from Melusine and how Summoners interacted with that fight to never require, or nearly require, a specific job ever again.

So this time "hybrid" is going to mean combining the elements of White and Black Magic offensively. It's still going to be a hybrid in theme, just not in gameplay past a few weaponskills.