Blue Mage: Are you kidding me!?

[Glaceon10]

I'm gonna say let's wait and see. It sounds like the trade-off is "no duty finder", if it allows us to use party finder or team up with friends and still do actual content, then whilst not ideal, it's a compromise. If they plan on doing this with future jobs, it may well be the plan on giving this system attention. Hopefully this early release prior to Shadowbringers will end up giving the SE the feedback they need going forward and perhaps make adjustments for release, though that's 'hopefully' not anything based on SE's track record.

I was disappointed at first, but I am seeing how it -could- work, but whether it does or doesn't is going to depend on SE's delivery. I am going to judge once I get my hands on it and then maybe I'll join the people complaining or say "hang on, this is not as bad as you guys think". I think too much focus is on the 'solo', it seems to be designed for solo play, yet is permissable in groups. For me the extent of which is the deal breaker, removing the duty finder for BLU is not the end of the world for me even if largely inconvenient, because I expect we'll see more Party Finder groups made by Blue Mages and I generally do stuff with friends.

The thing is, it's not necessarily how they do the content - it's the fact that they condemned Blue Mage to it. They basically took Blue Mage, which many people, including myself, have wanted for a very long time, and relegated it to side content.

The Carnivale and the like could all be pretty fun as solo content in general, but the various actions that you'd need to succeed in it could have very well just been in a Logos-like way instead of relegating one of the most desired and potentially interesting Jobs in the game and putting it in completely irrelevant content exclusively.

And yeah, there's the "compromise" of being able to use it in Party Finder, but that compromise shouldn't have to exist to begin with.

[Lyden]

And yeah, there's the "compromise" of being able to use it in Party Finder, but that compromise shouldn't have to exist to begin with.

tbh better to begin with, as it ruins at the start for all other ppl which has to play with a BLU without there wish for.
I think it is much more worse to have a BLU which dont feel like a real BLU and no one said side content we all dont know how this carnivale will take place in the endcontent world ... maybe its just a another way to archive the endcontent ... maybe its a shining star for all DoL and DoH only ppl which have problems with random groups...

Time will see, be patience i bet yoshida is a good Dev and has the numbers of this game well analiced.
We will get well made content unusual /inovative but well made content.

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

They easily could have made this side content in a similar way to Performances on BRD, accessible via a job-exclusive tab, while maintaining a baseline kit to be awarded as the player levels up. Forcing it into old ARR content does it no favors at all. And the way it sounds it's going to be perpetually locked behind a lower level cap relative to whatever the current expansion is. If it doesn't get that change the backlash is going to be huge.

There was a poll floating around on reddit (Source Here) that basically asked if people would rather not have this at all just so they could play the job in regular duties. It has 10x as many votes as the SMN lockout poll I have in my sig yet the ratio is very similar. People want to be able to play this job in current content with other players. The backlash is warranted.

[Flatopia]

((Copy and pasted from my Reddit post))
With how apparent the majority dislike the entire premise of limited jobs and the mishandling of BLU, it got me thinking on the why it ended up like this.
It's clear the biggest reason it's a limited job is because they absolutely did not want to sacrifice the class fantasy of what they imagined a BLU to be.
But at the same time, why not both?

People keep saying "It's not doable! The only way for BLU to be in, is only if it's separate and solo if we want to preserve the core identity.
But it is! It's very doable!
Why not have unique quests that say "Find x in y" and have it be an actual duty every time for moves? The common response is "That'd be a lot of work" but it's less work than what this job currently is.
Or better yet, maybe incorporate the idea of 'learning abilities from monsters' into the gameplay. What about a set of learn stacks that you gain more of from enemies near you performing unique skills? Every skill cast earns you a stack on top of your own generated stacks from time or combos?

The class fantasy would be perfectly preserved while making sure people can actually play it in content.
I find it lazy and short sighted to tell people that it has to be this way and is, in fact, the ONLY way. That's both on the developers and players. If things can be better, why not? Why NOT make everyone happy?

[Mibgestalt]

Found this post on reddit that pretty much summed up my feelings.

"Opinion: FFXIVs Blue Mage is Fantastic, but not in FFXIV

As a long time blue mage fan, from back in FFV even to the more obscure version like gun mage in X2, I truly do love this iteration of blue mage. The team did a faithful job of creating an experience that pulls from the jobs varied skillset and unique qualities. I mean it's the aesthetic of V and Tactics Advanced, combined with the customization of XI, learning by seeing like Strago in VI. I would be ecstatic to see this in any Final Fantasy game. And therein lies the problem.

Announcing the newest DLC for the latest entry in Square-Enix's prolific RPG series, FFXV: The Masked Carnival! Join Prince Noctis as he follows the path of the mysterious Blue King, a forgotten ruler who used not royal weaponry, but the skills of fiends themselves to fell his enemies. Discover, hunt, and master dozens of unique classic Final Fantasy monster abilities and use them to sow destruction on the battlefield. Combine them in countless combinations and utilize your cunning and creativity to overcome challenges not seen before. Finally, use your newfound powers to overcome the trials of the mysterious Masked Carnival, where your skills with the Blue will be tested to their utmost in challenges specifically designed for them.

That sounds just as good, right? Like hell yeah, I'll jump right back into FFXV for that.

But it's not in FFXV, it's in FFXIV. We all love the game. Enough to be here talking about it at least. FFXIV, which offers an experience unique to the rest of the series, primarily through its genre. A game whose high point and most developed content are dungeon diving with 4 other intrepid adventurers, facing down primal with 7 other brave heroes in battles of spectacle that are unmatched in anything else in the genre, where you and 23 other adventurers engage in challenges that should be impossible alone. It has a wonderful story that is punctuated and capstoned by these experiences. For me, the adrenaline when barely clearing A3S seconds from the final cascade was a great memory. But that won't be possible as Blue Mage. And that sucks. We finally got Blue Mage in Final Fantasy XIV, but we didn't get Blue Mage IN Final Fantasy XIV. We got it attached.

People will argue it couldn't be implemented in this game, but that's not really true. Summoner barely resembles its classic incarnation, and Samurais central moon, blizzard, flower mechanics have more in common with Romancing Saga than the classic heavily armored gil tossing shogun of Final Fantasy. They're still, in my eyes, fun and faithful renditions of the the class. Blue mage could have been the same.

At the end of the day I'll still play Blue mage, and I'm sure it will be fun. Really fun. But when raid time comes around and I have to change to a different job I feel less of a connection with, when I stand in front of the next larger than life raid boss and wonder what awaits me, when we finally do that final assault on the citadel of Garlemald and the story comes to a climax, it'll be bittersweet. I think I'll be thinking the same thing I am now. It wasn't worth the cost of losing the experience of FFXIV as a Blue Mage. Because we can't get that opportunity anywhere else."

[Saefinn]

The thing is, it's not necessarily how they do the content - it's the fact that they condemned Blue Mage to it. They basically took Blue Mage, which many people, including myself, have wanted for a very long time, and relegated it to side content.

The Carnivale and the like could all be pretty fun as solo content in general, but the various actions that you'd need to succeed in it could have very well just been in a Logos-like way instead of relegating one of the most desired and potentially interesting Jobs in the game and putting it in completely irrelevant content exclusively.

And yeah, there's the "compromise" of being able to use it in Party Finder, but that compromise shouldn't have to exist to begin with.

Well I am not entirely sure it will be just side content, hence my "depends on SE delivery" because if they allow BLU to reach level 80 and they are restricted to not use the duty finder, BLU could be used on content. At the moment we're not clear on exactly how it will work with group content following the announcement you can do premades.

As for the compromise. There would have to be a compromise somewhere, compromises they've done historically have been in how the job plays to balance it and to match it with FFXIV's existing systems, like RDM, which they did intelligently I felt, but I get Blue Mage would be harder to do in this respect. Whether this is the right compromise, I feel remains to be seen, but I think regardless of the compromise they choose, SE was going to get a backlash regardless of their choice.

In anticipation of BLU I did my own theory crafting as to how BLU could work with FFXIV's current system without sacrificing much of how Blue Mage is. If I end up hating it, I may provide it as feedback, although I doubt it'd mean anything, but hey, doesn't hurt.