Two Months of BLU: Discuss!

[JunseiKei]

All depends on how Blue Magic is implemented. If spells are easily accessed, and learn rate is 100% (like it is in every single FF game except for FFXI's BLU, and this one), the only excuse for not having a spell is because the player didn't take a few minutes to go and learn it. Learning Blue Magic doesn't HAVE to be a difficult and time-consuming process, and I don't believe it enhances the enjoyment of the job when it is. I certainly don't feel enriched by the seven-plus hour session I spent butting heads with Ifrit, back before you could learn it from Ifrit Normal.

In such a case, exclusion due to not having learned a spell would happen only to the most extremely lazy of Blue Mage players. We're talking a level of laziness far in excess of, say, a WAR who never learns Steel Cyclone because they're too lazy to do their job quests - and I doubt there's a player here that would have a lot of sympathy for a WAR THAT lazy! Learning BLU spells could (and in my opinion should) have been as easy as tracking down and fighting one or two of the appropriate mob, or possibly running a dungeon or trial exactly once.

No, concern about Blue Mages being excluded from parties for not knowing a spell is as much nonsense as Yoshi P's other excuses. Whether it's actually a problem or not depends on how the job is implemented, and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to find plenty of ways to prevent it from being a concern. Folks that criticize the "party exclusion" excuse are NOT kidding themselves.

The bottom line is that Yoshi P had a vision for Blue Mage that was frankly incompatible with the job structure in FFXIV. He felt he had to choose between compromising on his vision to make the job fit, or adding the job as a side activity that kept it safely removed from the game's major content. He went with the latter. The thing is, though, that Yoshi P's vision is only one interpretation of a job that has had a TON of variance over the history of the Final Fantasy franchise. Basically the only things that all Blue Mages have in common are that they use monster abilities and they have a collection of abilities to fill out. The latter is pretty flexible as to just HOW they learn the spells, as well - Quistis, for instance, could learn Bad Breath without EVER having fought a Marlboro (all you need is the drop, and she doesn't have to be in party to get it). Even the way we DID get BLU takes advantage of this flexibility - several of the spells learned are learned by consuming items!

I agree, Blue Magic doesn't have to be difficult and time consuming and it certainly wasn't fun trying to get someone's Glass Dance and still not getting it after 54 kills before that person just gave up. It also doesn't surprise me that the only other BLU incarnation from an MMO would be followed for ... an MMO (I'm mean the spells not learned at 100% rates). For the most part, I don't think the rates of learning most spells are particularly bad - just the chances of primal ones are absolutely horrendous.

I wouldn't compare it to doing job quests and getting the skill automatically. I'd compare it to ARR and HW's requirement of needing to level up a completely different class to learn a skill. Although it's not RNG, it still required a lot of time and effort to get something that would legitimately help make classes actually playable (because let's face it, invigorate was 100% required to play any melee in ARR at least and you lost so much DPS if you didn't have Blood for Blood, either and getting lancer to 34 was an actual chore). Yes, there were parties absolutely excluding players for not having skills, mainly because how necessary they actually were. If the past demonstrates a behavior the community is willing to abide by, you don't dismiss it for another case where you willfully present the same issue. That's called folly.

Again, this clashes with how people will define the job - you could make the learn rates 100%, but then what keeps you from stuffing them in a job quest to go defeat X monster and learning it that way? You know, the same way you learned Water Cannon. Quistis did learn Blue Magic uniquely. She learned them exclusively through items. Such a system could be mimic'd here in XIV thanks to the Walaqee Totems, but I doubt that would have been satisfying and agree with BLU fans. I still stand by this particular statement, though, especially seeing we have another job that often gets criticized for its implementation, despite being a fully functioning one.

Full job, limited job, it doesn't matter, there'd probably be just as much complaints because BLU ultimately wouldn't be something X person imagined it to be (looking at you SMN).

[Anesteria]

Again, this clashes with how people will define the job - you could make the learn rates 100%, but then what keeps you from stuffing them in a job quest to go defeat X monster and learning it that way? You know, the same way you learned Water Cannon. Quistis did learn Blue Magic uniquely. She learned them exclusively through items. Such a system could be mimic'd here in XIV thanks to the Walaqee Totems, but I doubt that would have been satisfying and agree with BLU fans. I still stand by this particular statement, though, especially seeing we have another job that often gets criticized for its implementation, despite being a fully functioning one.

It wouldn't have mattered as much because people wouldn't be complaining about the lack of the "limited job" system we have now, if it never existed, they would just be speaking about a different implementation that didn't foresee the "limited job" to exist as is. And if it's balance, it still doesn't matter because there will always be problems with balance in every game forever and ever.

In the end though, if it really didn't matter and people would complain anyway, there would have been no need to reduce an iconic job into a "limited job" only experience that goes nowhere.

Trying to reinvent the wheel has already bitten other games in the back, again look at WoW and the backlash it received for attempting to start over again just for the sake of a "unique" and "new" experience. BLU was supposed to be a "different experience" for the sake of it when that's not what people asked for. No wonder people are upset.

[ReiMakoto]

It wouldn't have mattered as much because people wouldn't be complaining about the lack of the "limited job" system we have now, if it never existed, they would just be speaking about a different implementation that didn't foresee the "limited job" to exist as is. And if it's balance, it still doesn't matter because there will always be problems with balance in every game forever and ever.

In the end though, if it really didn't matter and people would complain anyway, there would have been no need to reduce an iconic job into a "limited job" only experience that goes nowhere.

Trying to reinvent the wheel has already bitten other games in the back, again look at WoW and the backlash it received for attempting to start over again just for the sake of a "unique" and "new" experience. BLU was supposed to be a "different experience" for the sake of it when that's not what people asked for. No wonder people are upset.

This is what always Baffles me. They said they added Blue Mage due to popular fan demand, but then they added it like this. It was a popular fan demand because fans wanted to play their favourite class as their main, no one was demanding it be a shitty minigame.

[JunseiKei]

It wouldn't have mattered as much because people wouldn't be complaining about the lack of the "limited job" system we have now, if it never existed, they would just be speaking about a different implementation that didn't foresee the "limited job" to exist as is. And if it's balance, it still doesn't matter because there will always be problems with balance in every game forever and ever.

In the end though, if it really didn't matter and people would complain anyway, there would have been no need to reduce an iconic job into a "limited job" only experience that goes nowhere.

Trying to reinvent the wheel has already bitten other games in the back, again look at WoW and the backlash it received for attempting to start over again just for the sake of a "unique" and "new" experience. BLU was supposed to be a "different experience" for the sake of it when that's not what people asked for. No wonder people are upset.

IMO, limited jobs shouldn't adhere to whatever "balance" that is currently put forth into BLU. I was lead to believe it was limited because of how unbalanced it was supposed to be; you know, strong unbalanced. Not quirky and just not adhering to the trinity unbalanced.

Eh, yet players here on the forums are constantly asking for the XIV team to shake it up, from there patch cycles to requests that have lead to Eureka. Again, I'd still point out that when players first started asking for BLU, it was mentioned that they didn't think it would fit with how XIV functions. Players persisted. I don't wholly place the blame on the XIV team trying to 1) adhere to a job's identity (because due to AST chances and the majority of players not accepting AST was fine after the first balance chances, they effectively stripped WHM of an identity) and 2) tried to implement a job they didn't feel would fit into how they want to design their game but still fulfill some degree of player demands.

Just so I'm not being misunderstood, I don't agree with what was done with BLU. I just understand or sympathize with the XIV team's decisions.

[Kalise]

players here on the forums are constantly asking for the XIV team to shake it up. I'd still point out that when players first started asking for BLU, it was mentioned that they didn't think it would fit with how XIV functions.

I just understand or sympathize with the XIV team's decisions.

Well... The thing is, that there's a massive difference between "Shaking things up" and introducing pure garbage to the game.

Like, if they stopped and put in some thought about how to make BLU fit into XIV instead of just going "Whelp, I can't copy/paste every other class. Better just add a crap mini-game instead" they could have made something unique that would have shook up the status quo and fit into the game.

Literally, if they released BLU with the following:

* Experience gains from overworld increased.
* Locked from Duty Finder until level 50 (Upon learning a base set of skills, which could have easily been dictated by job quests on levels 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50. That's easily 10-30 skills right there. 1 per quest from a "Come talk to me when you've learned X", 1 per quest from fighting mob X during the quest and 1 per quest from "Hey, have this Whalaqee Totem to learn a spell")
* Learns skills from enemies. 100% learn chance.
* Balanced around a subset of skills (I.e. Ones you get told to learn/learn from job quests plus any interchangeable ones)
* Has Masked Carnivale content where there are unique mechanics involving BLU skills as side content for the job

This would have been "Different". It would have shaken things up, by being a job that not only doesn't level through the standard "Spam Duties/PotD" method, as well as having to go out and learn skills. With a unique feature that due to the different progression system, they're temporarily locked out of certain content until certain requirements are met (I.e. Someone has unlocked their core skills)

Even their bullshite excuse about BLU not being able to blast through the MSQ and start doing duties with all their skills like other classes can be countered. Simply by making the new "Mandatory" skills show up within the MSQ itself. If not required/attained through job quests. If not also making new content being more about obtaining Traits than outright new spells (Such as might be the case when button bloat starts to be designed around) with BLU merely getting new spells as its collecting side-content with some level of customization of what it uses.

At the end of the day, there have been numerous posts made with different takes on BLU and how it could have been implemented to work within XIV's systems. All of which stay true to the (Very diversely depicted) job.

All it took was spending a few minutes thinking about how to make something fit into XIV's systems. As opposed to crying about how it has to be different to other jobs and then intentionally implementing it in a crappy way out of what seems to be spite against the players who kept asking for the job.

[Anesteria]

Just so I'm not being misunderstood, I don't agree with what was done with BLU. I just understand or sympathize with the XIV team's decisions.

Fear not, I did not misinterpret your position. If anything, I didn't mean it as if I were criticising you personally, if you thought that to be the case, I apologise.

As Kalise said, the implementation could have been way better.
People like Rei, Valde, and many others who offered their input, have come up with a solution that would please the vast majority >at this point< where all that would truly be necessary would actually be for SE to put in the effort.
The only reason one could take away for the current situation, let me be plain here, is most likely laziness on the part of SE. Although Kalise suggested "spite", well it's possible if Yoshida and a couple of other devs had their personal reservations.

To me it seems like BLU was just, and pardon my expression, spat out for the sake of cheap content (and cheap it was since it didn't last a second) so close are we to Shadowbringers and they bring BLU out to advertise it.

There are things that you simply can't do much about, achieving the perfect balance is impossible and both playerbase and companies need to stop going for an all-or-nothing on this regard.
In the same vein, if a business plans to keep adding classes (whatever the genre, MOBAs come to mind) these are going to have their impact and the more you add, the harder it is going to be to make everyone fit WITH their own identity.
Which is why I find it quite appalling that they decide to bring in the Gunbreaker as a FULL job, and then SE complains about the balance and class identity, when they're simply digging their own grave further by adding yet another job, following their own logic.

Nevertheless, BLU's treatment was 100% avoidable regardless. In this case, when things can be avoided, then going into them half-heartedly (limited job) can only hurt.

In essence, their excuses are a lot poorer than they appear.