SE, the concept of "Limited Jobs" is a really bad idea, turn back now

[Kitfox]

Hello,

Lynn Nuvestrahl, the salty Machinist theorycrafter here. The highlight of yesterday was the Q&A where Machinist and White Mage job issues were recognized, thank you Square-Enix. Our voices were heard. Please hear me out again because the day was all downhill from there.

I wanted to bring attention to the concept of Limited Jobs from yesterday's LLP. TL;DR:

This is an extremely bad idea. Please cut your losses: adjust the new class for group play and never introduce another Limited Job.

Dear Square-Enix, yesterday you announced the concept of Limited Jobs and "the first" limited job Blue Mage. From the slides presented, the concept seems to imply that the job will exists "outside" of the normal jobs used group content, a solo job if you will, because it would break the balance or somehow not fit into the normal gameplay. The notion of "first" gives me the chills because that would imply there's others on the way.

The reasoning was that Blue Mage has many game breaking abilities that wouldn't work in an MMO and you couldn't have the class without those abilities in order for it to be fun. This is absolutely false. Many jobs have been greatly adjusted to fit into the FFXIV system, such as Summoner, which is nothing like its offline counterparts. You can absolutely balance Blue Mage for group play if you wanted to. Look at all the CC effects that don't work on bosses, for example.

Furthermore, just as you can't have balance breaking abilities in an MMO, you also can't have a solo-only class in an MMO, because it's literally pointless if you can't play the rest of game with it. The initial response from the raiding community has been overwhelmingly negative. While I'm sure a solo-oriented player here and there might be happy, personally I wasn't even looking forward to this class and I was still let down, because instead of fixing current job and balance issues, a massive amount of resources was spent on this elaborate... mini-game. FFXIV is an MMO, not a solo-player game. People want more options and aesthetics to challenge the content in game with. Making a job unable to participate in said content basically makes it dead-on-arrival for most people.

It also sets a dangerous precedent where great job concepts might get shoved into the Limited category, a category that nobody wanted. What about Puppetmaster? Beastmaster? Dancer? Suddenly we don't know if we'll ever get a working FFXIV version of interesting jobs from previous games. If you want to have unique leveling experience and skill acquiring mechanics, that sounds like a great idea, but please make sure all the jobs can be used in regular battle content.

Limited Jobs are a terrible concept. Please, reconsider. I'm saying this now so that we don't have another disaster like the current White Mage Lily system, a problem that was called out before Stormblood launch but has remained an issue with no solutions throughout the whole expansion.

This is that call out. Don't repeat history.

[Valdegarde]

Please consider incorporating this feedback prior to Shadowbringers release. Trust in your playerbase, if there needs to be a certain amount of skills and levels necessary to use Blue Mage in parties normally, then let that be something for Blue Mage fans to look forward to achieving, and have the unbalanced extra abilities be something to play with in the Masked Carnival. This way you can incorporate what the development team considers to be integral to the Blue Mage ability learning experience while respecting it as an actual job for players to play in FFXIV.

[Elerus]

I wanted to make a post summarizing how I felt on Blue Mage, then I read yours and realized you said everything I thought about the class and system in a nutshell.

The current implementation of Blue Mage is like getting half a product. Nothing in the word "limited" implies fun or fulfillment. I could go on but Kitfox, you said it best.

[EusisLandale]

Solo focused, not solo only. It still needs groups to get some of its stuff. You're getting things wrong right off the bat, and you repeatedly get that point wrong.
You also argue that because it's not what raiders would want it's a waste of resources that should've gone into making them happy. Not everything in an MMO is raiding, so no not all content needs to be for them.
The only "dangerous precedent" would be caving to this kind of tantrum.

[Roda]

Like they even said they expect people to take time out of their day to carry a bluemage around unrewarding open world content so that the blu can not be totally useless... to themself...
Like how did this get past the pitch?

[EusisLandale]

Like they even said they expect people to take time out of their day to carry a bluemage around unrewarding open world content so that the blu can not be totally useless... to themself...
Like how did this get past the pitch?

Abilities learned through "combat, quests, and other means but not by leveling". They're not going to need to be carried through open world content.
Higher end 50 Trials maybe, but odds are pretty good they'd be able to pull their weight in there too if they've been actually worked on.

[Belhi]

I would prefer BLU be something that worked in current content. That said, I don't see the BLU as people traditionally think of it surviving such a transformation in the way some people want. Any class needs functional class mechanics to work in group play and the ability to synergise in a balanced fashion. That by its nature means that class mechanics and abilities are heavily restricted. Conceptually the gameplay style of BLU never really fit FF14's gameplay structure.

While I personally could enjoy a BLU Job that was a role based job that was thematically and narratively based of the BLU concept, I don't think that what it would be in delivery would be what people really wanting a BLU were after in the same sense as RDM isn't really the same as RDM's from other final fantasies. To make a car that can fly your going to end up turning it into a plane. It won't really be a car anymore even if it started as a car and still kind of looks like one.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Solo focused, not solo only. It still needs groups to get some of its stuff. You're getting things wrong right off the bat, and you repeatedly get that point wrong.
You also argue that because it's not what raiders would want it's a waste of resources that should've gone into making them happy. Not everything in an MMO is raiding, so no not all content needs to be for them.
The only "dangerous precedent" would be caving to this kind of tantrum.

And it can only group in pre-mades, thereby forcing people to rely on randoms in PF or hoping their friends are both online and able to help. Regardless, this will likely be treated akin to Wondrous Tales where you unsync everything—a scenario where BLU is utterly worthless since a level 80 WAR can pull every single mob and go AFK. No matter how you spin this, the emphasise is on solo, which isn't going to work well in a MMO setting.

[Penthea]

Solo focused, not solo only. It still needs groups to get some of its stuff. You're getting things wrong right off the bat, and you repeatedly get that point wrong.
You also argue that because it's not what raiders would want it's a waste of resources that should've gone into making them happy. Not everything in an MMO is raiding, so no not all content needs to be for them.
The only "dangerous precedent" would be caving to this kind of tantrum.

I raid. I'm disappointed that blu won't be part of the raiding scene...but I admit the game mode it's bringing sounds really cool.

[EusisLandale]

And it can only group in pre-mades, thereby forcing people to rely on randoms in PF or hoping their friends are both online and able to help. Regardless, this will likely be treated akin to Wondrous Tales where you unsync everything—a scenario where BLU is utterly worthless since a level 80 WAR can pull every single mob and go AFK. No matter how you spin this, the emphasise is on solo, which isn't going to work well in a MMO setting.

So because it would require actual interaction, because it can rely on people stronger than it if people don't want to fully do it at level, it's not MMO like? Human interaction? THE HORROR!