Suggesting Ideas for Blue Mage with feedback & Removing Limited Job Status

[Floortank]

Basing success of a job on whether people got the mount is bizarre. It could be a reaction to the Binding Coils and Alexander (Savage) as much as it is to the Job. Maybe people don't want to do that content, but love their BLU.

"BLU failed because people didn't do this content" is nonsense.

[TurtlesAWD]

The number of players with the Morbol mount (sub 0.1%) definitely isn't proportional to the development time put into it.

(truncated quote for space limitations)

I'd be a little annoyed if we lost our HoH/PotD, Hildebrand chain and a dungeon per patch, but then they waste their time on 70 BLU content for the 0.1% who stick to it.

I don't think this follows very well, for a few reasons.

- Additional blue mage content would increase the number of people playing the class. I think the very existence of ARR would be enough to support this, conceptually.

- The highest end chase item is not the best way to determine how many people are playing a class. It's a bit like estimating subscriber count by looking at how many people have cleared the most recent extreme trial.

- Different teams can be developing different content at different times - class/spell design can be on a different project than the hildebrand team though there's some overlap.

I think there's 2 things that would go a long way to encouraging people to play BLU:

More knowledge of what skills are good to get when would keep people from feeling stuck, rather than having people hit cap and feeling like they now have to go from solo open world to extreme raids before even setting foot in the carnivale. I think there's a loop people fall into where they'll think "I don't have the spells so I can't do any content, but I can't do any content because I don't have any spells" when really the primal spells aren't gonna make or break a BLU's ability to be effective enough in a dungeon group, or in a lot the carnivale. Though I think it would be nice if there was a reliable solo way to get either loom or diamondback before azulmagia.

Second thing to keep people playing blue mage would be access to a variety of content like PoTD or HoH, or eureka if they can go to 70. Eureka's already created more sandbox gameplay with Logos actions like Death L having the same function that bars blue mage from normal groups - if instant death abilities are fine for eureka players now, then it should be fine with BLU doing it too. Certain skills might be a problem, but I largely don't think they're a problem class, where the class triangle has already broken down a bit.

Content variety is good for all normal classes as well. I'd like to see blue mages be able to play that stuff while it's relevant to the current expansion, even though it seems like even the old content stays moderately active. Because that stuff always has an alternate levelling system, it would probably work to bump blue mage's up while inside it if necessary.

Also I want Blue Mage to get to level to 70 because just like Omega learned how to limit break from us, I think we should get to learn a Limit Break from them

[ReiMakoto]

Basing success of a job on whether people got the mount is bizarre. It could be a reaction to the Binding Coils and Alexander (Savage) as much as it is to the Job. Maybe people don't want to do that content, but love their BLU.

"BLU failed because people didn't do this content" is nonsense.

It is the only metric of measurable success other than feelycraft that is why it is being used. It represents people putting considerable time and effort into blu, something the other trackable stats to not.

But if we are taking feelycraft here, just look at any of the blu content discords, they were saying its been hard to find groups since week 2 of release, youll get 1 or maybe 2 posts looking for groups daily that take a while to fill. Pfs stay up for upwards of an hour just for skills, let alone blu log runs which take an age to fill if they fill at all. But thats all subjective feelycraft which other people can dispute with their own subjective experience (or fibs). This is why people try to use data.

Edit: btw, I am very much in the camp of loves blue mage but wont do morbol mount btw. And therin lies the issue. I find playing as and being a blue mage fun, yet one needs to jump through hoops and do years old content to get that fun. For someone like me there is nothing to do on BLU, i have no desire to run old content again sync'd and ive already done what the masked carnival had to offer me in less than an hour. So here I am, stuck with a class that I enjoy and nothing to enjoy it with (other than rarely helping my friends level)

[TurtlesAWD]

It is the only metric of measurable success

I think this definition of "success" is questionable. I haven't gotten the mount but I've played a number of hours of blue mage and I've had a good time. I would consider that, in some capacity, to be a success. And I think the claim that my fun was illegitimate because I don't yet have the shiniest horse would be arbitrary gatekeeping. Not that that's happening here, but it is the general thrust of the diablo-clone MMO is it not? An endlessly increasing number attached to the "hardest" available set of monsters to fight, completion of which becomes the only goal? The push for class streamlining meaning that anything outside the most recently developed 10% of content is literally untouched in favor of what is essentially a repeatable rotation simulator? Honestly I appreciate the class because it's a pushback against that, which is necessary, because MMO's can be more.

The availability of it as the only measurable metric is also untrue. Getting better data from a player end would require more comprehensive polling than anyone should put into the game, but the development team can absolutely measure how many people have completed the story, how many people have completed carnivale, the rate at which certain skills are learned or used, how often people do the weekly entries in carnivale or the log, etc.

[ReiMakoto]

I think this definition of "success" is questionable. I haven't gotten the mount but I've played a number of hours of blue mage and I've had a good time. I would consider that, in some capacity, to be a success. And I think the claim that my fun was illegitimate because I don't yet have the shiniest horse would be arbitrary gatekeeping. Not that that's happening here, but it is the general thrust of the diablo-clone MMO is it not? An endlessly increasing number attached to the "hardest" available set of monsters to fight, completion of which becomes the only goal? The push for class streamlining meaning that anything outside the most recently developed 10% of content is literally untouched in favor of what is essentially a repeatable rotation simulator? Honestly I appreciate the class because it's a pushback against that, which is necessary, because MMO's can be more.

The availability of it as the only measurable metric is also untrue. Getting better data from a player end would require more comprehensive polling than anyone should put into the game, but the development team can absolutely measure how many people have completed the story, how many people have completed carnivale, the rate at which certain skills are learned or used, how often people do the weekly entries in carnivale or the log, etc.

Nice strawman, I never once tried to claim that your fun was illegitimate. From the player end, right now, it is the only measurable success metric, that was what i was talking about, there hasnt been comprehensive polling and we are not privy to the devs data. That is all I was saying, that it is all we have to base success off of from a more objective standpoint. You cannot have an objective measure of fun, cos some people could find staring at bricks fun

Edit: what youve said doesnt really apply to BLU either, BLU is doing what other classes are doing as a "rotation repeating simulator" just theyre doing it in a older part of the game and they gave a larger variety buttons to make people feel like theyre doing something different. Fundamentally if youre not doing blu raids, youre just running dungeons with a beefed up class. Blu has a rotation its doing and repeating in this content with an illusion of choice of skills. So its only a pushback in the sense that the rewards are placed in existing content , not new content

[TurtlesAWD]

I'm not saying that you claimed my fun was illegitimate, that part was intended as a hypothetical. I tried to make this clear but it may not have come across that way. Most of that post was an extrapolation of the development path of other MMO's and where I think it's led and how it's impacted the community around it rather than being a direct response but I probably didn't differentiate where the response ended and that extrapolation began.

[SpiralMask]

Blue Mage is rad after the last patch swing. It will never work as a regular job without losing its identity. FF14 adheres to too rigid a paradigm for a flexible class to work without either being underpowered or at risk of displacing existing jobs, which would be a much greater disaster. It was disruptive enough adding a 4th tank, and just look at the arguably unresolvable situation around the idea of adding a 4th healer.

It's fun. Just play it for what it is.

Itwas the Sunk cost fallacy in play. The devs were working on BLU for awhile, but felt it impossible to balance while keeping true to its "spirit". And was close to be outright scrapped as a result, BLU as a limited job and GNB seem like the result of a compromise that wasamde to ensurethehard work wasn't wasted.

my small nitpick on both of these is that blue mage has historically had TONS of incredibly wide variance in playstyle, method of skill acquisition, and overall effectiveness across the series. the designers specifically chose this approach, despite being one of the more fundamentally-incompatible-for-this-system (harsh resistance/immunity mechanics, wholesale removed element system, reliance on instanced content over field content) versions as the "spirit/identity" rather than any of the other alternatives. if they feel this type is impossible to balance or will never be balanced, why did they choose it?

- - - - - - - - - -

on a more constructive and topic-relevant note (since this is about suggesting ideas rather than noting it's oddness/failures), imma change topics and try to expand on some of my earlier suggestions for the doc (as well as other's ideas that i like the sound of).

general QoL suggestions:
-BLU hunting log: add a small blue mask icon over a mob's head if they have a skill you can learn, like the little tomato icon for centurio hunt bills and the regular hunting log
-add a similar marker (or even just a blue exclamation mark or star or something) to instanced content and carnivale stages (or later PotD/HoH floor increments) that have a skill you haven't obtained yet.
-more robust queue and party finder options to account for BLU stuff (such as a specific role marker in PF)
-many utility (loom, diamondback, buffs, etc) and 'tanking' spells should probably be made instant-cast or an OGCD for the sake of ease-of-use.
-remove or reduce the mighty guard damage dealt penalty (as the lack of damage impacts aggro generation)
-as noted by others, a slightly larger variety of healing spells would be appreciated, such as a regen of some sort.
-a means to reset or momentarily bypass enemy resistances to status effects would greatly increase the utility of many spells (though would warrant duration or effect adjustments with this in mind)
-consider having some spells have alternative effects when under aetherial mimicry, such as mighty guard becoming a group damage mitigation/ "bubble shield" like traditional healers when under healer mimicry and so on

team side-content suggestions:
-move the majority of skills to field-only: perhaps by shifting the focus from getting skills from dungeon bosses to getting skills from Hunt monsters (like moving sharpened knife from wanderer's palace to the tonberry hunt monster in upper la noscea) this would help both give BLU a focus for fieldwork like it was first pitched as, and help add some more new blood to the hunting scene. some of the tougher spells could easily from the various 'world bosses' like odin, the behemoths, ixion, etc. (i have a sneaking suspicion this could be what they do with beastmaster if that gets added, but that's irrelevant to this discussion)
-the rare instanced-content exceptions being exclusively for things like primal skills and raid skills (from coil/alex/etc) as a sort of "chase/challenge" reward, being more powerful but harder to obtain. soooort of treating BLU spells like equipment, since their actual gear is so limited

team full-class rework/suggestions:
-flip the base/role actions setup: the class comes with a narrow selection of spells out of the box via levels, class quest rewards, whalaqee totems or whathaveyou, with a large number of optional/selectable spells from the book that you can go out and obtain yourself, or by making those "core" spells mandatory to obtain before advancing the class quest (a mechanic already present).
-pare down on some of the 'samey' spells (8 flavors of aimed elemental/physical/unaspected cones, another ~6 flavors of 'short-cast' ranged AoE spells) or increase their variety with sub-effects or utility.
-"damage-only" spells could be made more interesting by having a 'flow' to them like other classes, such as elementally debuffing the target and allowing you to "combo" with an opposing elemental spell (following the existing elemental weaknesses in BLU content and eureka) to emulate the elemental resistances system without having to have it injected piecemeal into specific content.
perhaps comboing opposing elemental spells builds up a BLU meter that is spend on the various buffs/OGCD spells (moon flute etc) or primal spells (noted below)
-on the above, perhaps some spells' utility effects could be made element-sensitive, like inflicting paralyze on thunder-debuffed targets, allowing BLU to have many combo paths (rotating through all 6 elements, or starting with a specific one to combo into a status effect) and variations without having to add or alter new skills (other than the debuff check)--the carnevale elemental weaknesses could be adjusted to note that those monsters begin combat with an associated elemental debuff or are weak/not resistant to that element's associated status effect (such as paralyze, deep freeze/"chill" (slow), blindness, etc)
-primal spells could be treated as an elemental "finisher" of sorts, that costs BLU meter and removes the associated debuff for their stronger effects.

[TeraTyrantShadic]

I would also like to share that it is time for the Maiden's Rhapsody Event, go on and do the event and maybe try doing it as a Blue Mage ;3

[Liam_Harper]

Basing success of a job on whether people got the mount is bizarre. It could be a reaction to the Binding Coils and Alexander (Savage) as much as it is to the Job. Maybe people don't want to do that content, but love their BLU.

"BLU failed because people didn't do this content" is nonsense.

You can't win with these forums.

If your thoughts are based on facts, the facts aren't good enough and don't represent enough people. If you go by impressions, it's not good enough because you don't have statistics and facts.

No one in my FC plays BLU. No one on my FL or linkshells play it. There are 0 groups in PF right now. There are 0 BLU mages beside the carnival NPC on my realm. Why do we need to pour development resources into this because a tiny handful on the forums who also have zero statistics (and probably don't play BLU much either) think it's doing ok?

[TeraTyrantShadic]

You can't win with these forums.

If your thoughts are based on facts, the facts aren't good enough and don't represent enough people. If you go by impressions, it's not good enough because you don't have statistics and facts.

No one in my FC plays BLU. No one on my FL or linkshells play it. There are 0 groups in PF right now. There are 0 BLU mages beside the carnival NPC on my realm. Why do we need to pour development resources into this because a tiny handful on the forums who also have zero statistics (and probably don't play BLU much either) think it's doing ok?

This thread isn't about winning a side, this thread is to suggest ideas and come together as a community to help give creative and constructive ideas for the developers and Yoshida to work with. If they will ever see this thread. However I can agree with your statement on that we don't have the statistical data to make a clear judgement weather or not that Blue Mage is a successful idea.

Hearing your personal experience disheartens me, but I agree not many are playing as Blue Mage. As of this posting they are used to cheese Aurum Vale for the Irregular Tomestones and when that is over Blue Mage will be down to either a small handful of players or to no one. I am not sure who said it was in an ok-state, however I have to say it does prove a point in my document. When it uses the hype Blue Mage's popularity soars through the sky, but overtime after a month or a week the activity of use such class will die down. Which is why I think either making 2 separate Blue Mages is good as a few on this thread have suggested or removing limited job status altogether and from then on developing proper full jobs allowing them to run in current general content. Not everyone will be pleased or happy. However it is these times where we need to come together and solve the puzzle together and lend our ideas and creativity to developers to solve their vision of Blue Mage without altering too much that it loses its identity. We don't decide weather the developers will be pouring development time into it, but it never hurts to try.