Rework Bluemage!

[TaiyoShikasu]

make blue mage the first hybrid class

a DPS if they want or a healer ... depending on what skills they have.

Even in other titles, Blue Mage was as much of a healer as Red Mage was. It could fulfill the need in a pinch, but a dedicated healer does the job better.

And BLU here is less durable than other titles and it doesn't need to be hit in order to learn skills.

[RadicalPesto]

no thanks its a blast to play and have something to keep me busy til 5.0. dont just want another same ol same ol dps that the only difference in combat is the skill effects

But a majority of Blue Mage's nukes are identical 130 potency aoes with no difference between each other but the skill effect. There's more meaningful difference between Veraero and Verthunder than between Flamethrower and Plaincracker. Blue Mage for the most part plays like a less interesting level 50 BLM. I don't think you've played many DPS classes.

[Kurando]

Your plan to make it a solo job to avoid people discriminating against it has failed, if not make it more hated. If people don't have the right spells for it, it's they're folt. You wouldn't let a level 70 gladiator join your PF so why is a Blu without the right spells any different? .

But that's Party Finder, the recruiter can have whatever restrictions they want it's their decision. Make your own parties or even your own LS to bring together BLU players that can do things together, don't expect everything to be done for you. SAM regularly gets locked out of high end content so let's rework that job as well shall we because clearly it's discrimation against it.

Virtually nobody is happy with BLU in its current beta-but-not-officially-beta-but-really-it-is-beta state.

This is not true, quite a number of players are happy with BLU. It's not good to blanket the population with a "virtually nobody" claim. This is the XIV iteration of BLU currently, although who knows it might change from Limited status in the future. For now no point fixing something that isn't broken, as this is what it was intended to be.

[NYCAcimStudent]

But that's Party Finder, the recruiter can have whatever restrictions they want it's their decision. Make your own parties or even your own LS to bring together BLU players that can do things together, don't expect everything to be done for you. SAM regularly gets locked out of high end content so let's rework that job as well shall we because clearly it's discrimation against it.



It's not good to blanket the population with a "virtually nobody" claim. This is the XIV iteration of BLU currently, although who knows it might change from Limited status in the future. For now no point fixing something that isn't broken, as this is what it was intended to be.

You are correct. I don't literally mean every single person. That is why I said "virtually". But I stand by my claim because the clear majority of Blue Mage enthusiasts fall into 2 camps, based on what I hear in-game and see on the forums:

1) Many people want this to be a real job. Did ANYBODY request that Blue Mage be a Limited job before it was added to FF14? If there are threads that prove this, please provide links.
2) The people who are happy with Blue Mage being a Limited, powerful solo job want more single-player content to justify its existence. Right now, BLU is essentially a minigame. If it is a minigame, SE will need to call it as such.

[Hasrat]

Eh. It was slightly fun up until about level 30ish. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad with the Ala Mhigan earrings or whatever other EXP boost items you can have up until 50, but with only the Brand New Ring helping me out, I felt things starting to chug along pretty abruptly.
Additionally, by that level range, I had already gotten pretty much every spell you can get on your own. Between Mighty Guard and 1000 Needles, getting the Mor Dhona and North Thanalan spells weren't too much trouble, and it's even possible to solo Ifrit for your first primal spell. But after that, you're basically just slogging through levels just to hit 50 and unlock the rest.

That said, I'm not really so sure I want the job to change all that much. Because, in my eyes, that exact combo is what needs the most attention, but it's what makes the early/mid levels somewhat satisfying. Mighty Guard for defense, 1000 Needles to get around the damage reduction.

[Kurando]

Well so a few things here. Unless you have alts on every datacentre and have gauged opinions from all players you come across, then what you hear in-game isn't always enough to give a clear picture. Same with the forums, only a small population of all the players in the game actually use this place, so again we wouldn't have enough to go on. Also it's easy for negative things to gain traction because if people are happy, then don't have much reason to complain. The updated TOS is a example of this, the Western playerbase is being very vocal (we have a thread nearly 30 pages) whilst the JP players are quite content with it (thread with a couple of pages in comparison I believe).

You are right no one asked specifically for Limited Job, but it had also never been done before so you can't really ask for something we knew nothing about. Players wanted BLU to be added, but the devs decided that could only do it one way and that's what they did. Though as I said this might change in the future, but for now they are experimenting with the "Limited" tag to see how it works as an in-game feature and take feedback from the players. We might see more Limited Jobs or maybe none at all with BLU become a full Disciple of Magic job, it's still early days.

BLU isn't a mini game per say because it still has access to a degree of content just like all the other jobs, except currently there are certain limitations to which the Masked Carnival is probably supposed to fill that void. If players wanted more solo content to justify its existence they would just wait for the Trust system in 5.0 where players can do duties with NPCs, they have no reason to expect BLU to be the provider of more solo activities (it can still do things in parties after all). Right now BLU IS a job but with restricted options available to it (hence "Limited"), stating it's a mini game would be a lie, you'd find those in Gold Saucer.

[redcurrant18]

BLU isn't a mini game per say because it still has access to a degree of content just like all the other jobs, except currently there are certain limitations to which the Masked Carnival is probably supposed to fill that void. If players wanted more solo content to justify its existence they would just wait for the Trust system in 5.0 where players can do duties with NPCs, they have no reason to expect BLU to be the provider of more solo activities (it can still do things in parties after all). Right now BLU IS a job but with restricted options available to it (hence "Limited"), stating it's a mini game would be a lie, you'd find those in Gold Saucer.

The Masked Carnival may as well be a gold saucer mini game. I'd have had so much more fun if I had been able to do normal dungeons through duty finder with Blue Mage instead of wandering around the overworld alone and having to be carried by level 70s to get the dungeon spells. This isn't a job, it's a weak time-wasting gimmick that didn't last 2 more than 2 weeks for me.

[NYCAcimStudent]

Well so a few things here. Unless you have alts on every datacentre and have gauged opinions from all players you come across, then what you hear in-game isn't always enough to give a clear picture. Same with the forums, only a small population of all the players in the game actually use this place, so again we wouldn't have enough to go on. Also it's easy for negative things to gain traction because if people are happy, then don't have much reason to complain. The updated TOS is a example of this, the Western playerbase is being very vocal (we have a thread nearly 30 pages) whilst the JP players are quite content with it (thread with a couple of pages in comparison I believe).

True. I concede that you have an excellent point. I might just be hearing an echo chamber from 10% of the gaming population. But it is 1 loud chamber, though! Can we use total amount of active Blue Mages as a good gauge of popularity? 3-month mark, then 6-month and then 1-year mark?

[Kalise]

The updated TOS is a example of this, the Western playerbase is being very vocal (we have a thread nearly 30 pages) whilst the JP players are quite content with it (thread with a couple of pages in comparison I believe).

We have several threads with 10-58 pages on BLU.

Also, JP have a thread with "A couple of pages" only if you consider a couple to mean 54

With dissatisfied opinions in the JP thread reaching 40-100+ likes.

That doesn't seem like "Quite content" with it.

I haven't checked to see if there are any more threads in the JP section about Blue Mage because I rely partially on Google Translate due to my Japanese not being that fluent (Then apparently Blue Mage sometimes comes out as "Green Monster Man" according to Google...)

Still, it is hard to say about "Majority vs Vocal Minority" but we can at least say that a sizeable portion of the playerbase is not fond of the current BLU implementation in one way or another (As we also can't infer if people are unhappy because it's Limited or if it's because BLU can't solo dungeons and EX Trials needed to learn its spells and to justify its Limitedness)

[Kurando]

We have several threads with 10-58 pages on BLU.

Also, JP have a thread with "A couple of pages" only if you consider a couple to mean 54

With dissatisfied opinions in the JP thread reaching 40-100+ likes.

That doesn't seem like "Quite content" with it.)

The couple of pages example was specifically to do with the updated TOS threads going on (that JP seem content with it), wasn't talking about the BLU threads. I was merely using it as an example that forums can not always be used as a general source of gauging opinion. And no in comparison to the English section, JP has no where near the number of threads unhappy with BLU. Granted there are probably more English speakers hence more activity on these sections, but languages generally don't stop a group from being vocal about something.

I'm more interested in seeing how things pan out with the job come the next expac. A lot of attention will be turned to new things, perhaps players won't care so much what improvements come to BLU or it might get something we never expected.