BLU for Duty Finder and Raids! Show your support!

[Vahlnir]

You know, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is exactly how development works at times.

[Flay_wind]

They literally have a system that checks what spells you've learned for the job quests, translate that system into a "blue mage licence" from a job quest which checks what spells you've learned and boom, duty finder

One small nitpick. You have to equip said spells. I learned all the spells, but i want to be self-destruct mage. So i only set up Toad Oil and Selfdestruct. Oh and Flying Sardine! Because fish, lol.

[Crushnight]

One small nitpick. You have to equip said spells. I learned all the spells, but i want to be self-destruct mage. So i only set up Toad Oil and Selfdestruct. Oh and Flying Sardine! Because fish, lol.

That is straight up no different than ice mage and no DoT smn, kick feature tends to get rid of them :P

[Shougun]

Because you have to go get the skills first to do it. If you don't have the skills, you can't do anything. I suspect it's incredibly hard for them to set up a system that checks which abilities you have and don't have, so rather than adjust PF for that (which at this point is pure spaghetti code) they'd prefer to just give a BLU only one since the playerbase itself will sort things out.

Long ago, like ARR beta days lol, Yoshi had came out with a rough plan of Blue Mage (it's basically been this concept that we have now since ever, which he called a hunting mini game sort of concept)- at that time beyond saying please don't, I had suggested that they could keep a similar structure to other jobs and systems by making Blue Mage gain experience via learning spells.

This learning spells = leveling concept can be broken into a few pieces that I think while not "perfect" I believe would have been accepted better by the general public than purely limited. I say purely limited in that I think many of those who wanted to play Blue Mage in standard group would either like or not care about the limited side if it was in addition to standard features (not everyone who is upset hates the idea of weird stuff, personally I'm for advanced job concept, just that, myself included, had really wanted to play Blue Mage in DF / as a main).

Actually as an aside I think if a game was designed from the ground up with the idea that limited is main and balanced is "limited" that you'd have a potentially interesting mmo on your hands- such that the extreme content and pvp was balanced (so our current kit) but the really weird highly specific to that job systems (each job being VERY unique) would be the standard MSQ / normal / "hard" kit. Would mean a lot of different ways to approach the main game and experience it, but still everyone plays together and in the content where every little % of damage matters the jobs would be better balanced (so your job isn't useless because it doesn't use a blunt weapon or have magic or what have you).

Back on the leveling thing though- Some concepts that add flexibility to the idea of leveling via spells could include tiers. Imagine our hunting log, change that to spells- now Blue Mage can't join content without having the spells required to level. SE could still add weird stuff or minor variations for color / debuff choice lol (or even have an advanced job concept), but those spells wouldn't be part of the exp requirements.

In this way the DF doesn't have to check anything but level, like it does for other jobs, and any blue mage at level 25 would have the expected skills because they COULDN'T be level 25 without them. Some minor variation of have and have not like most jobs in FFXIV since you might be in a level 15-19 dungeon where some players have level 17 skills and some don't, but that's natural variation. To add if not obvious like the Hunting Log you can't get way later tasks done without doing your current bracket, so there is no way to run away level your job. The worst part (for design) is having to pick spells in an order that makes sense play wise and be available for each leveling group, which is a bit limiting but that's why if you notice I've just moved onto a variation of the concept. That variation in short if someone cared is basically having two job stones, the limited (chained) and unlimited (unchained) side (conceptually thinking of flipping/turning the stone in hand)- where the chained side is for DF / current content and is held back by the gilded spells in your book (DF approved spells they've learned/not learned) and the unchained side is do whatever the heck you want but you can't do current content. So using the leveling concept introduced here on the chained side you could say there is a connection between chained and unchained like SMN/SCH, but that the chained side is level capped at it's highest gilded spell in the book (highest spell that's not been skipped, so if you had 20's and 25's but not 22's then you'd only be level 22), such that the job can't join relevant content without having it's relevant kit (but your unchained side could readily go about at a much higher level and learn the skills for your chained half, making it not really stressful to learn your DF kit).

Anyway a bit late for that now.. haha, but I still think all the issues presented with blue mage could have been overcome, and ultimately there was no reason other than "they didn't want to" for the reason why blue mage is the way it is right now. Which is to be expected to happen sometimes.. I mean.. They are designing the game and all. One would expect to hear this reason come up sometimes, "I'm the driver and I really don't want to do that route, thanks". Also I imagine the cost of adding these jobs is just getting higher and higher and not doing it all is much easier. Of course, doing less costs less, but I kind of wish they didn't use the blue mage name and came up with a new concept then- allow me to stay hopeful even if it's a false hope. So ultimately that at least when I hear "we didn't want people to join in without the expected skills" or other stuff like that I don't actually find that very satisfying as it sounds more like an excuse rather than an unsolvable problem. Or to put it another way "why didn't you do what I said?" "because the door was locked" "yes, but you know to go ask Karen to get the keys" "well I just told you why I didn't do it, what more do you want?" "to go get the keys". One might say "yeah but some of those solutions are freaky/weird", but I'd say there is a decent number of people who find the current implementation of Blue Mage weird/freaky so.. c'est la vie? lol.

[Deceptus]

One thing they could have done is have a requirement on the Job Quests to Learn 4-5 spells on each one and require the final job quest to be done in order to do certain content.

BLU Mage So-and-so, for this job quest you need to go out and learn X skills!

[Brightshadow]

Why can't they just stop building useless BLU only content and actually reallocate those resources into making BLU into an actual job.

They wasted a whole year to build a BLU party finder rather than working out the kinks on BLU and testing it in the regular duty finder.

The reality is that not everyone is going to play one job that's why we party up with the other jobs. Not everyone in the community wants to be a BLU so adding their own party finder or duty finder isn't exactly great.

[Alleo]

They literally have a system that checks what spells you've learned for the job quests, translate that system into a "blue mage licence" from a job quest which checks what spells you've learned and boom, duty finder

Exactly and with these new group duties Blue will have its own rotation anyway because you will need certain skills to survive it..good luck going at this with 23 people or 7 in the extreme trials and then noticing that a lot are missing skills and thus cant beat it.

Edit: And seeing how you have to do these things snych too makes BLue just another content for mostly the hardcore players, or those who have a whole group of good people. So limited and not casual at all.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Oh dear gods, Thordan EX with an all-BLU party will be hilarious.

[Crushnight]

sync'd a8s and a4s on blu
XD

[Vahlnir]

Oh dear gods, Thordan EX with an all-BLU party will be hilarious.

sync'd a8s and a4s on blu
XD