Problem with BLU solutions

[Balipu]

It is obvious from one glance at the general discussion forum, that Blue Mage sparked heavy controversy within the english speaking community.

Some are excited, many others threaten unsubing, some are genuinely unsubing, and some are just complaining.

Between mentions of slaps in the face and accusations of entitlement, the community came up with several solutions to the limitedness of Blue Mage. Let's look at them and see if there is anything wrong with them!

1. Rebalance it/water it down

A lot of people would hate this. The current blue mage is exactly like blue mage. If that gets changed people would complain like they did with Dark Knight and Red Mage.

2. Give Blue Mage two versions. One balanced for solo play, and one for group play.
Nah. Not only would it be too much work, it wouldn't be pracitcal. Where would you learn how to use group blue mage? You wouldn't have the same rotation. Hell, at this point we don't even know if blue mage has a rotation at all? With different traits and abilities it will be like a different job you never played. You can't fight raids with a job you can't use. Or at the very least you shouldn't.

3.Just let it raid as it is now.

First thing first. I don't recall it ever being said, that Blue Mage can't raid. It can't use matchmaking and will have cap of 50 in 4.5. But it was never said that once it climbs to the same level cap as the other jobs, it won't be able to enter raids with premade parties.
Got that? Okay. Let us assume that it can't enter raids, because it is totally not balanced for that. Unbalanced can mean two things. Either it is too effective or too ineffective. In the former case, nobody would let it fight. It would just be a chain of votekicks till serios buffs come and it becomes OP. In the latter case it would be a necessity and other DPS jobs won't see play. In either case it would destroy the raiding meta.

4. Make the other jobs broken as well.

This doesn't sound all that bad on paper. Every job unique, inbalanced and fun. There is just one tiny flaw with this. It would require the complete rework of every job/class plus every boss encounter. That is an insanely large ammount of work for something that does not increase the ammount of playable content. Doing this only for Blue Mage to get into raids is disproportionate.


So I invite all those against limited jobs, to consider all this and come up with a solution that actually works better than the one we got now.

[DracotheDragon]

2 and 4 can work but would require a massive rework of both the open world and the battle system (much bigger then what they most likely have planned for 5.0), so players can be 'overpowered' or more wild skills in the open world with a instanced dungeon Hotbar set aside like the PvP hotbar but once done then they would only work on balancing until the next expansion where they would add more, though even with that it would get rid of some customisability some people have on there hotbeds most likely. with a free ability to switch between the 'wild' skills and the Instanced hotbar to use to practice.

3 - i have the feeling it will be locked out of high end duties, mainly due to the 'reasons' yoshi-p gave about them being overpowered against Omega-m and omega-f (current end tier) they spisificly used lvl 5 death, but due to the skills overall they may be banned full out so SE dosnt even have to worry about tweaking them to end game meta.

1 - from what i have been seeing a lot would hate it a lot would love it, i'm on the hate it side.

I'm mainly just waiting to see how it is when it gets added, plus for all we know SE may make it unlimited, i feel like this is a beta test both for the new job and way it works, as well as a beta test for possible expansions to current jobs.

[Seraphor]

I agree with this, I don't think these suggestions are viable solutions to what we're getting, at least not ones that will please everyone any better than what we're getting.

But I do think there can be improvements to make Blue Mage better than what people are fearing it will be.

I think a lot could be done with this system, even without necessarily changing how it functions to squeeze it into end-game content, in order to make it more viable as end-game ‘relevant’ content for those who would otherwise see it is a “minigame”.

Open access to all content available at its level cap, excluding only the current raid tier. For example, if it were at cap now, then the only content it would be locked out of would be Alphascape, Ridorana, Susaku EX and Ultimate.
It would still be excluded from Duty Finder, however all other content would be possible via Party Finder or otherwise premade parties.

Give end-game relevant rewards for the Masked Carnivale, including:
New mounts, minions, glamour and furniture, similar to the rewards from Eureka.
Current Tombstones, e.g. completing each tier of the Masked Carnivale (there are 25) each day would award you with something like 40 Medacity and 5 Genesis, with a bonus 100 Medacity and 50 Genesis for completing the whole thing.

Give it regular updates:
A new Masked Carnivale stage for each expansion’s worth of content. Heavensward enemies in MC 2.0, Stormblood enemies in MC 3.0, etc. Keeping those rewards mentioned above relevant. Provide more spells with updates, that also increases the level cap, something like:
5.0 increases the cap to 60, and 5 new skills to hunt down.
5.1 introduces the new Masked Carnival up to level 60.
5.3 increases to 70 with 3 new skills and a new level 70 Masked Carnivale.
5.5 increases to the global cap of 80 with 3 final new skills and a new level 80 Masked Carnivale.
This carries on to the next expansion: level 82 with 6.1, 86 with 6.3 and 90 with 6.5, and so on.
Perhaps it would make sense for these new skills to be tied to the raids or dungeons that are unlocked via the level cap increase, for example, learning skills from Bismarck, Ravana and Zurvan in the ‘HW update’, Byakko, Suzaku and Seiryu in the ‘SB update’ etc.

Update the deep dungeons specifically for Blue Mage, with its own rewards for completing them as a Blue Mage. After all, these are things designed to be solo’d so it makes sense that the ‘solo job’ can do them.

Give it a PvP skillset. Every other job has its own PvP skillset that works completely different to its normal skills, there’s no reason why BLU can’t be the same.

Lastly, rename the ‘Limited Job’ concept, it really doesn’t help. How about something like ‘Frontiers’ or ‘Disciples of the Fringe’, given that they’re entirely new concepts that break new ground (at least as far as XIV is concerned) and kind of walk the line between war/magic and hand/land jobs.

None of this would conflict with their vision of Blue Mages being an ability hunting class, that’s overpowered and not balanced for the end-game scene, and I think it would go a long way to alleviating a lot of complaints about it. Not all of them, but enough to make it a ‘success’ for the majority.

Will they do all of this? Maybe not, regular updates might not be so involved and resource intensive, and Deep Dungeons and PvP are totally up in the air. But we can push for it via constructive feedback, and if they see enough people playing Blue Mage they might be more inclined to invest more into it.

[Mibgestalt]

1. Rebalance it/water it down

A lot of people would hate this. The current blue mage is exactly like blue mage. If that gets changed people would complain like they did with Dark Knight and Red Mage.

No, the current Blue Mage is closely like the FFXI iteration of Blue Mage, except it can't take part in the MMO part. Your argument falls flat on the very first sentence by attempting to say your personal opinion of what Blue Mage is is the defacto. There is no CONSISTENT identity for Blue Mage across all games that is being met by this design. We're learning by seeing like in VI, doing the aesthetics of V and T:A, with the customization of XI. Why not learn skills through items? Why not learn skills through eating enemies and using a fork? Why DON'T we have to take it to the face to learn it, the most consistent method across all games. Why aren't we using a scimitar, the most consistent weapon across all games? Those are all Blue Mage too. BLU has never learned skills from summons, of all things, so it's not EXACTLY Blue Mage. The part of it that is universally loved, learning monster skills in a way that isn't just standard job quests, could ABSOLUTELY be implemented without the loss of access to the rest of the game it will be implemented in, FFXIV.

2. Give Blue Mage two versions. One balanced for solo play, and one for group play.
Nah. Not only would it be too much work, it wouldn't be pracitcal. Where would you learn how to use group blue mage? You wouldn't have the same rotation. Hell, at this point we don't even know if blue mage has a rotation at all? With different traits and abilities it will be like a different job you never played. You can't fight raids with a job you can't use. Or at the very least you shouldn't.

"Where would you learn how to use group Blue Mage?" Dude... the same place you learn how to use group ANY job. Nothing in the game teaches you how to use the best rotation or how to properly play any of the jobs in the game. It's a glaring flaw in this game, and pointing it out as a reason to limit BLU is just disingenuous.

3.Just let it raid as it is now.

First thing first. I don't recall it ever being said, that Blue Mage can't raid. It can't use matchmaking and will have cap of 50 in 4.5. But it was never said that once it climbs to the same level cap as the other jobs, it won't be able to enter raids with premade parties.
Got that? Okay. Let us assume that it can't enter raids, because it is totally not balanced for that. Unbalanced can mean two things. Either it is too effective or too ineffective. In the former case, nobody would let it fight. It would just be a chain of votekicks till serios buffs come and it becomes OP. In the latter case it would be a necessity and other DPS jobs won't see play. In either case it would destroy the raiding meta.

Which is people's main complaint. You're arguing that it can't work in raids because it's the way they've designed it to be. Duh, literally everyone on the forum, regardless of side has acknowledged it.

4. Make the other jobs broken as well.

No one has really argued for this seriously, because, get this, it's an MMORPG named FFXIV that we are all playing. How this game works has been established. How they implement classes has been established. Things SHOULD be adjusted because of the genre and game, if you don't like that maybe you don't like FFXIV.

I'm not going to write up an entire class idea for you. Other people have done it. Something like raising the level cap, and balancing Blue Mage as a melee magic caster DPS for end-game raiding while keeping the rest of their design would work. White Wind is an OGCD heal, Mighty Guard is a raid or tank defense buff, L5 Death is a button you can press on a 10-minute GCD that kills a normal mob instantly, even in dungeons, or does high potency damage based on remaining HP of the enemy. 1,000 needles can trait up to 10,000 or 100,000 needles, or you can "count" it up like many Cactuar do in this game. There are solutions. Acting like there aren't shows a startling lack of faith in the devs and a weird inability to adjust new ideas to existing systems. A trait you should be using a lot in real life.

[Aerlana]

2. Give Blue Mage two versions. One balanced for solo play, and one for group play.
Nah. Not only would it be too much work, it wouldn't be pracitcal. Where would you learn how to use group blue mage? You wouldn't have the same rotation. Hell, at this point we don't even know if blue mage has a rotation at all? With different traits and abilities it will be like a different job you never played. You can't fight raids with a job you can't use. Or at the very least you shouldn't.

With ungarmax matter, we know that side content are designed by different people that the one making fights, they can easily take a team of people specilist about balance between jobs, and saying "Here is the X skills the blue mage will have, take as much as other jobs have skills, adapt them to create a BLU raiding gameplay"
It wouldnt be so much work, it is not doing a new job from 0. skills already get aesthetic things, and a global idea of the effect.

How to learn it... i forgot the punchingball are in openworld, ok. It is a matter this idea (i support a lot) have to address.
but to train it... just in brutal primals and story mode... Like you already did for the existing job? Personnally i learned to use jobs not in dongeons, i did level all with fate train before 2.1... but i did read the skills/trait descriptions, and work them on the relic quest (so chimera, hydra, ifrit, garuda and titan). This will work to learn how to play the "raid" BLU, and with any jobs...


I understand you care about the amount of work of one of the biggest dev team of the industry (500 without the "management team" said yoshida during gamescon). But i dont think it would add such colossal time for them. And for the learning of players, i really dont see the matters ! If you see one, just explain it.


And this idea get nothing away, it just add thing, adds way to play the game.

[Balipu]

.

Open access to all content available at its level cap, excluding only the current raid tier.

Not good. The raiders are the most vocal haters based on my observations

Give end-game relevant rewards for the Masked Carnivale

Why do you assume this is not the case, though?

Give it regular updates:
A new Masked Carnivale stage for each expansion’s worth of content. Heavensward enemies in MC 2.0, Stormblood enemies in MC 3.0, etc. Keeping those rewards mentioned above relevant. Provide more spells with updates, that also increases the level cap, something like:

Again, why do you assume this is not the case?

Update the deep dungeons specifically for Blue Mage, with its own rewards for completing them as a Blue Mage.

Blue Mage Already has a special duty all for them. Giving them their special dungeon would be weird. And Deep Dungeons don't work because of how Blue Mage gains abilities.

Give it a PvP skillset. Every other job has its own PvP skillset that works completely different to its normal skills, there’s no reason why BLU can’t be the same.

I actually agree with this one.

There is no CONSISTENT identity for Blue Mage across all games that is being met by this design.

Your points after this basically explained that the only consistent part of Blue Mage is learning skills from monsters. This Blue Mage does that. One of the most common water down versions I read says that Blue Mage should get abilites as rewards from job quests where you kill monsters. That would not. Get it now?


"Where would you learn how to use group Blue Mage?" Dude... the same place you learn how to use group ANY job. Nothing in the game teaches you how to use the best rotation or how to properly play any of the jobs in the game. It's a glaring flaw in this game, and pointing it out as a reason to limit BLU is just disingenuous.

You might not learn, but you can practice it in the open world. You use the same skills. But if you use different skills and even different traits in raids (as some posters suggest) you would need to relearn everything with a raid boss in your face. Not good.

I understand you care about the amount of work of one of the biggest dev team of the industry (500 without the "management team" said yoshida during gamescon). But i dont think it would add such colossal time for them.

I do care, cause time and energy are finite. Even for a big development team.

[Mibgestalt]

Right but nothing you've said precludes it from taking part in group content, as it is with this current implementation so... you haven't really disproved or addressed any complaints. You've just made obtuse arguments as to why things can't possibly be addressed. Your arguments are "Not good." and "Would be weird". Those aren't points, they're just, like, your opinion, man. Like... "you'd ONLY be able to learn how to with a raid boss in your face. Not good." is just... so wrong and short-sighted. Jump Potions are already here, bud. It seems you haven't put enough thought into what you're saying, or you're just fishing to get a rise out of people. Try to contribute meaningfully to discussions!

[Fawkes]

4. Make the other jobs broken as well.

This doesn't sound all that bad on paper. Every job unique, inbalanced and fun. There is just one tiny flaw with this. It would require the complete rework of every job/class plus every boss encounter. That is an insanely large ammount of work for something that does not increase the ammount of playable content. Doing this only for Blue Mage to get into raids is disproportionate.

As an FFXI player, I vote for this option.

[Shougun]

1. Rebalance it/water it down

A lot of people would hate this. The current blue mage is exactly like blue mage. If that gets changed people would complain like they did with Dark Knight and Red Mage.

2. Give Blue Mage two versions. One balanced for solo play, and one for group play.
Nah. Not only would it be too much work, it wouldn't be pracitcal. Where would you learn how to use group blue mage? You wouldn't have the same rotation. Hell, at this point we don't even know if blue mage has a rotation at all? With different traits and abilities it will be like a different job you never played. You can't fight raids with a job you can't use. Or at the very least you shouldn't.

Both of these take a lot of work, especially since they're already onto one direction but I feel you're overvaluing the issue for #2. Cause I mean.. the good players will still learn their class and the bad ones still wont care.. so its just like a normal day in duty finder lol.

I feel besides the work involved #2 isn't an issue, the work required of course being substantial though. Personally I think they can meld the two versions together, for example in that blue mage book we saw - some of those skills would be highlighted to show they're available and required for duty finder (can't join without), some combat mechanics revolve around these sets. When you go solo you can replace some of the skills with the non-balanced versions which will buff your character and skills, the rules for replacement could simply (lol, maybe not that simple) be by category. Like you can have 8 unique spells, 4 replace your oGCDs, 2 replace your combos, 2 replace your debuffs. Slotting in Stool Pelt enhances bad breath, and gives the Blue Mage x% stat boost.

If people played FFXI then it's basically that but with a few more rules, to avoid blue mages without skills you need, and to allow OP unbalanced skills while also making it so SE doesn't need to balance 49++ abilities. Not that I'm saying the above is "perfect" or "easy". Just I strongly believe it could work.

As an FFXI player, I vote for this option.

Of culture I see . I know there have been a lot of moments but one of my more favorite was back when penta thrust gave way too much TP with Samurai passives and you could just penta for days lol.

[whiskeybravo]

There are solutions. Acting like there aren't shows a startling lack of faith in the devs and a weird inability to adjust new ideas to existing systems.

This line of reasoning can be used on both sides of the argument, though.

1. Rebalance it/water it down

A lot of people would hate this. The current blue mage is exactly like blue mage. If that gets changed people would complain like they did with Dark Knight and Red Mage.

A lot of people hate this "non-watered down" version already, so how are we determining whose hate is right or wrong, or whose hate is more important? There isn't any way. We all share our opinions and *hopefully* SE takes this into account and makes adjustments so the playerbase isn't at each others throats about what they think is good or bad for the game. I'm just disappointed that SE has taken this step towards releasing "limited jobs" because the tradition this game has established is that we get to play the game using our favorite jobs from across the FF franchise. I suppose it was a faulty assumption to think any future jobs that were to be released would be fully playable in all the content available. But, the lack of transparency from SE doesn't help. I understand they want to keep somethings a surprise for us but when there's something big like this we are all going to have a lot of questions. Withholding their plans for BLU, or the future of limited jobs in general, isn't helping the situation.

2. Give Blue Mage two versions. One balanced for solo play, and one for group play.
Nah. Not only would it be too much work, it wouldn't be pracitcal. Where would you learn how to use group blue mage? You wouldn't have the same rotation. Hell, at this point we don't even know if blue mage has a rotation at all? With different traits and abilities it will be like a different job you never played. You can't fight raids with a job you can't use. Or at the very least you shouldn't.

There doesn't need to be 2 versions of BLU. It already has a unique gimmick in learning abilities via fighting monsters, it just needs another playstyle gimmick to differentiate it from the other casters. Just something that pops to mind, they could accumulate blue magic energy (job gauge) via a standard type of rotation using core abilities and then use that blue magic energy to perform their various array of blue magics as the situation dictates. This could be accomplished in a number of ways, with stronger abilities consuming more resources. As for the inability to ensure every BLU has all their abilities, there are ways to mitigate this, but also let's take a step back for a second and think about all the things we've been able to accomplish without BLU. If a BLU enters a NM raid or Alliance raid, them missing an ability like Mighty Gaurd isn't going to prevent the group from clearing. We don't have it now and are clearing content just fine. Let's say they are missing their highest damaging ability, half the people in Alliance raids are AFK and getting carried through the content anyways. No loss. As for raid groups, any diligent raid leader looking to recruit a BLU would be sure they have the most important abilities. It would become a standard for BLU's seeking statics to have as much of a complete kit as possible. Another thing that SE could do is limit job quest advancement by gating them behind abilities. Level 5 quest you must have 5 abilities unlocked. Level 10 requires 10 abiliites, so on a so forth until you max them out. There are many solutions.

3.Just let it raid as it is now.

First thing first. I don't recall it ever being said, that Blue Mage can't raid. It can't use matchmaking and will have cap of 50 in 4.5. But it was never said that once it climbs to the same level cap as the other jobs, it won't be able to enter raids with premade parties.
Got that? Okay. Let us assume that it can't enter raids, because it is totally not balanced for that. Unbalanced can mean two things. Either it is too effective or too ineffective. In the former case, nobody would let it fight. It would just be a chain of votekicks till serios buffs come and it becomes OP. In the latter case it would be a necessity and other DPS jobs won't see play. In either case it would destroy the raiding meta.

It's damage needs to balanced with utility like all other jobs are (ideally). That's really all that matters. Given BLU's identity it would likely be a middle of the pack DPS with unique support abilities. BLU's value has always been in it's unique abilities, not because they are the most overpowered job in FF franchise history.

4. Make the other jobs broken as well.

This doesn't sound all that bad on paper. Every job unique, inbalanced and fun. There is just one tiny flaw with this. It would require the complete rework of every job/class plus every boss encounter. That is an insanely large ammount of work for something that does not increase the ammount of playable content. Doing this only for Blue Mage to get into raids is disproportionate.

Again, since when has BLU ever been a "broken" job in an FF game? It's always been a middle of the road option, you'd never built a party of BLU's except perhaps for lulz. BLU can be as powerful as they want it to be within it's sphere of BLU content, that doesn't mean it has to be equally powerful outside of it.

So I invite all those against limited jobs, to consider all this and come up with a solution that actually works better than the one we got now.

There you have it.