FFXIV: Limited Job and why it doesn't work

[TeraTyrantShadic]

MarsAstro

I'd suggest you give it a full read of it before forming an opinion about me. Blue Mage at the Moment is a Limited Job, however it is playing in normal content. I never said it wasn't up to par. I have explained that it has the capabilities of a normal job.
I can compare it to a normal job because we have the ability to play it with the other normal jobs in Party Finder except without the current content tier.

I wasn't even comparing them just by the content alone, it can be a normal job because it already has the playability of one. Masked Carnival is not Limited Job Content, rather it is a Blue Mage exclusive content. Same goes with the Blue Mage Log, Spells and Achievements. When you take all of the Blue Mage related content away from Limited Job, all you get is a job system framework based on using old content and restricting them from certain content. That isn't Limited Job being its own thing, that is every single jobs own thing. Limited Job has provided nothing unique or anything at all to the table. Blue on the other hand has. It is why I made a housing analogy. You'll still have everything as a Blue Mage while Limited Job is just a broken empty husk.

I didn't say I didn't enjoy the gameplay, I said I had fun while it lasted. Blue Mage wasn't flawed, Limited job was. It has never worked in any MMO because no MMO in their right mind would do it. What I am arguing is that Blue Mage can be a normal job and Limited Job as a system can be abolished. Yes I don't like it however I did provide facts to back up my claims. Rewards and gameplay varies between players reaction as for me I am more or less a completionism kind of player. We both have the same playthrough as we want to complete everything in the game.

I love Blue Mage, but not when it is treated like a mini-game content island. It already has shown that it can be a normal job already. It is why people have opinions or criticism. I want to help the game so I provide the feedback with constructive criticism.

Back to Mariel_Crystallie has said. Yes, I love Blue Mage with the passion of my heart. If I hated Blue Mage I wouldn't have taken the time out of my day to point out its flaws and trying to offer solutions or provide constructive feedback with criticism.

Fland

You don't even need to overhaul the entire job. Just move everything it has and adjust accordingly. What they have now is fine and all they needed to add was a job gauge and adjust it.

We don't have a caster that weaves so Blue Mage can be the caster that incorporates the play style of OGCD rotation weaving like SAM.

Radacci

Hence why I said it is better as a normal job. From a business perspective, it cost less to work on one system rather than two system at a time. As for normal content we have already seen instant death move doesn't work in raid or trial bosses. Not just that they took the time and effort to make basic instinct only work within solo play during a group play content. During the 50 and 60s it cannot fit exactly because it isn't polished enough to warrant a second look. With 70 now we can already see it has potential to be a normal job.

In FFXI they didn't need to balance much because skills that were in would already become obsolete as you grew stronger as a Blue Mage. However that is a different system and engine entirely. FFXIV we still have it, older skills from the past becomes obsolete as you gather more powerful and stronger spells. Not just that but some with the similar attack style but with different effects. So anything is viable because the potency is nearly similar to one another.

Arkdra

It all comes down to person preferences, if you don't want to use Blue Mage as your primary job when you raid. That is fine you have the right to an opinion. Others who want it, will want to play it as a normal job. It is feasible as I have stated in my video with issue

A. Let there be a spell amount requirement where they need to have at least a set
amount of spells before being able to participate in Duty Roulette.

As for issue B, that really isn't an issue cause it only takes 15 seconds or less in dungeons 50 and below to kill trash mobs asap without Blue Mage in the mix. Dungeons are there for sprouts to learn the simple mechanics of the boss fights and how to play their role. Not a contest of who is the faster or better DPS. Nowadays endgame is all about the boss fight immediately, COB and Alexander had corridors with trash mobs but now raids and trials are all simple shape arena with no barrier and learning more mechanics in a single fight. Simply put, mass AoE DPS is fairly easy to learn since they have now streamlined the jobs.

Endgame is now everything if we go by gameplay. but different strokes for different people. I prefer to play endgame and I have literally done everything in the game (PvP included) so at this point I can safely say I rather AFK at my house doing nothing or at least help some sprouts with their jobs and their on-goings in dungeons or other content if they ask.

Blue Mage doesn't invalidate the content and your last sentence contradicts what you say it invalidates. So literally you said, 'Blue Mage shouldn't do HoH/PoTD, but it should have its own separate leaderboard'. I already mentioned in this in my video and they can, the only issue I can assume is the group leaderboards which may be why they don't want it there yet.

- It felt an entire community in of itself.

So does Eureka, Bozja, Ocean Fishing and many other sub community within the FFXIV community. Like I have previously stated in my video, they WILL NOT remove any content regarding Blue Mage, should it become a normal job. You will still have the BLU community finding spells, completing BLU logs, BLU achievements and anything BLU related.

Notice how none of them are Limited Job related but rather job specific related. So if it becomes a normal job you'll still have that community and people who prefer to go solo. Best of both worlds, we get a normal job with its own exclusive content with its own community.

Going from personal experiences, it isn't a breath of fresh air. It the same as any Caster DPS. I have done every single endgame content Ultimates included. Even when I did savage Blue Mage, some of the mechs are cheesable but most of them aren't and really its just basically SMN 2.0 spam a spell and weave in your abilities (rotation) except without a pet. I even had a mindset of not following guides to make it out there without any, except when I did all BLU Savage raids. Regardless I managed to do it and it felt like it can be a normal job with its own exclusive community and this is what has been happening, Fellowships, Linkshells, Discords and Free Companies. They all have a channel or sub community related to BLU and if it becomes a normal job, they will still be there. Just because it turns normal doesn't mean a fellowship, FC, Linkshells (In-game) or Discord (Third-Party Communication) have to disband entirely. They can still
exist as they were already made and no one will delete an entire community (Unless there is some serious drama which may lead to it).

"If Blue Mage becomes a normal job we will lose every exclusive content to it."

You will not. The MMOs that has ever done this is Destiny 2. Case and Point, Destiny Content Vault. In the community's response they did not like the idea one bit.

I would count WoW but those were exclusive time events and it make sense why remove them but the general content is left there and now they have WoW classic meaning they have the old WoW class spec system.

FFXIV's case they have never done anything of this regard. I will not count events as they are doing what they are intended to do, give exclusive time event related rewards and when it is over you get to keep the items. Bringing up the cross class skill however it wasn't removed, it was simply replaced with the role skills to streamline the jobs. I am not going to even count job exclusive skills either cause they have removed spells and skills for the normal jobs in the past as well. No one got upset with that, though I do miss them but I didn't get upset with them gone.

a solo job.

Explain the new skills then. Explain the savage all BLU title. Explain with some skills being tied to needing another party member. Explain why certain skills can only be reached to its full potential when it has to be a specific mimicry role. Explain Blue Mage Log requiring a group instead of being able to complete it as solo (Not going to include Alliance raids as that requires 1 player per alliance to even que in undersynced). Explain why Basic Instinct only works only solo but doesn't work in groups. Explain why did the developers say this will give them more creative freedom when it is literally doing the exact opposite.

First off Limited Job is a failure, however it is separate from Blue Mage. The adaptation of Blue Mage is somewhat fine, however if they made it into a normal job it'll be perfect.

Just that Limited Job in of itself is a failure, because all we are seeing is Blue Mage exclusive content related. Limited Job is just using old stuff from the normal job system except we cannot do the current expansion's content and as of now and for the past 3 updates there has been no Limited Job exclusive content. You cannot say the old content is Limited Job exclusive content, especially it has already been done to death by normal jobs. You also cannot say the Masked carnival is Limited Job related because it is specifically related and linked to Blue Mage. No if(s) or but(s), the fact is that all of the Content Related to Blue Mage is exclusive to Blue Mage not Limited job. Sure you can solo, but I rather do it in a group as it completes the Blue Mage Log.

Wall to Wall pulls are still being done, if anything they stopped trying after stormblood. People to this day still do it because it is faster.

When does swapping a skill as a Blue Mage defines your role during Mid-Dungeon? This was done back in 2.0 where cross class skills was a thing. It didn't even change the role of the job. As I stated previously in my video. if they que in DF they stay as DPS. if they que in PF they can request a role by asking the party finder organizer. Changing spells midway is fine but doesn't mean they change roles midway. Their true defined role is DPS in any given situation, unless they are in a party finder group in that case they can be any role.

As for the last part. There is literally no solo content achievement (Other than Masked Carnival) and they are more towards driving players to play as a group of Blue Mages, this has been shown with the new spells, Blue Mage Log and Achievements. Limited Job are outside of the content? Well sorry to burst your bubble, but we are playing within normal content already except for certain content.

[Gramul]

Explain the new skills then.

That's pretty simple. They're trying to make it into a BLU man group thing. I think that's a mistake due to the lack of long term rewards that would encourage enough people to play at the same time, and the overall lack of resources available to have a reliable structured party around it. If there's anything that needs to be fixed, it's the fact that it's straying in that direction. It restricts the possibilities of more creative setups by trying to shoe-horn in a more typical play structure.

And for your other point, I don't really see how any of that makes Limited Jobs as a concept a failure. The whole idea is to have jobs not suited for regular play due to balance, so they keep it restricted to content outside the latest expansion. It's meant as a fun distraction. Trying to make it a normal job would defeat the purpose and demand major re-balancing

[ReiMakoto]

That's pretty simple. They're trying to make it into a BLU man group thing. I think that's a mistake due to the lack of long term rewards that would encourage enough people to play at the same time, and the overall lack of resources available to have a reliable structured party around it. If there's anything that needs to be fixed, it's the fact that it's straying in that direction. It restricts the possibilities of more creative setups by trying to shoe-horn in a more typical play structure.

And for your other point, I don't really see how any of that makes Limited Jobs as a concept a failure. The whole idea is to have jobs not suited for regular play due to balance, so they keep it restricted to content outside the latest expansion. It's meant as a fun distraction. Trying to make it a normal job would defeat the purpose and demand major re-balancing

the problem is outside of a handful of problem skills they are pretty suited for normal balance. The only things that a super out of order are the % skills, DPS mimicry and self destruct (and the fact that none of the skills have level requirements). Remove dps mimicry and BLU's output in a raid is very similar to that of other level 70 jobs trending slightly above (nothing a small balance adjustment wouldn't fix). The fact that we can't use this version of BLU in standard raids is just maintaining the illusion that it is different.

[Mariel_Crystallie]

That's pretty simple. They're trying to make it into a BLU man group thing. I think that's a mistake due to the lack of long term rewards that would encourage enough people to play at the same time, and the overall lack of resources available to have a reliable structured party around it. If there's anything that needs to be fixed, it's the fact that it's straying in that direction. It restricts the possibilities of more creative setups by trying to shoe-horn in a more typical play structure.

And for your other point, I don't really see how any of that makes Limited Jobs as a concept a failure. The whole idea is to have jobs not suited for regular play due to balance, so they keep it restricted to content outside the latest expansion. It's meant as a fun distraction. Trying to make it a normal job would defeat the purpose and demand major re-balancing

I personally think if they keep making half-baked content "Limited Job" as reason to make it as "Fun Distraction" , I will be pissed off. As you said about resources , They better throw up the resource for 3rd Ultimates instead at Stormblood or even something else that not half-baked content that you only do once like now.... that's the more reason Limited Job should put to stop...

[Canadane]

BLU being limited gave it more content to do than if it weren't limited.

[Mariel_Crystallie]

BLU being limited gave it more content to do than if it weren't limited.

You mean , more "dead" content? ... I agree that BLU on release having so much content , but once all done for one time. what's next?... remember I said "ONE TIME" ...

[Radacci]

snip

Well ofc we want to get powerful skills from powerful enemies, therefor we party up to kill more current content, or solo it later with higher lv.

Only way i can see it working as a normal job, is if they split up roles as with SCH/SMN.
The job is too dependant on accumulating/using proper skills, and always having to swap loadouts, so it's not realistic to have that as normal job. It's a balance nightmare to put it as a proper job. I can't really see it working in normal raids, since it only have a few shared CD skills, that you can buff up, and cast every 2-3min, then spam sharp knife or whatever. Like moon flute, then you can't do anything for 15 seconds. So what is BLU supposed to add to raids in that case?
Basic instinct/mimicry exist to solo - you just go find a role in town, mimic them, then go run a dungeon/EX by yourself.



If they made BLU ofcd caster, they'd have to rework it again.

There's a few bosses you can doom, duno if they patched that.

Most jobs aren't that interesting during lv50/60.
Every time they release new expansion with new skills, i wonder how i enjoyed the jobs before, because they bring something new and fun.

The new stuff at 70, are mostly long-CD skills, so it doesn't really change the 200-220potency basic skills line-up. The powerful skills are situational or long CD.

Yes it's normal content, but for ppl who might enjoy solo play, more. Or catch up with old content, if they have been away a while. Can be difficult to find groups for stuff like that, outside of the community around it.

Achievement doesn't define a job, it's just an achievement - even if it's intended as solo job, doesn't mean you can't do an achievement for it.

There's no new content, for the same reason other jobs don't get new skills - it's added every new expansion. Limited job is for old content, not new ones, so what content do you think they should add, when there isn't any new old content?

Also i think it's a bit of an RP job, since it has different skills for different elements, which really only matter in carnival, but outside it, you can run whatever 28-skill setup you like, from growing list of skills.

Not sure if i'd mind it being s normal job, but i don't see how it would work without getting convoluted and just bothersome. Every time i want to join a party for some difficult content like Alexander, i need to sit and swap out entire skill-set, depending on if i want to dps/tank/heal - i'd rather just try to solo stuff.

If we could do current content, then what use would there be in any other jobs, since you could just solo everything?

[ReiMakoto]

Not sure if i'd mind it being s normal job, but i don't see how it would work without getting convoluted and just bothersome.

Take its current optimal dps setup for raids and turn it into a duty set (its almost balanced as is) and leave the limited job content for people who want to do it. If they were feeling really spicy they could do a tank and healer "duty set" too, but it would require a bit more work than the basically already complete DPS one (I have some ideas on how they could do a tank set, but it would require adding a job gauge similar to whms blood lily).

[TeraTyrantShadic]

Trying to make it a normal job would defeat the purpose and demand major re-balancing

They were meant to be rhetorical, but I'll play along.

They are trying to make BLU playable with groups, so far this is the right step in the direction. This is a MMO after all not a single-player game. I have to agree in terms of the lack of rewards, however straying from being a solo content is better than just being a solo job in of itself. It just means Blue Mage is slowly but surely becoming playable and somewhat balanced for groups, which also means a possibility of it becoming a normal job. If you want to find the ones responsible for restricting the possibilities, look no further at players who love to optimize jobs and rotations. For developer side of things, no matter how you look at it there has to be a limit. In MMO there has to be a limit before it breaks the game entirely. Look at what happened with Yokai event, people were frustrated with Blue mages who instant killed everything. As for rotation, there is already one for Blue Mages and you can thank optimizer for that, but who is to say you can't play your own load out. Oh yeah, Aetherial Mimicry spells that requires specific roles. In all honesty that actually helps Blue Mage preventing it to be an all in one role job in a single instance, this also means they are actively looking to balance Blue Mage. So if anything that is a good sign of progression and direction, also this means Blue Mage is once again slowly being balanced for group play and we may eventually see it become a normal job.

Well think of it this way, separate Limited Job and Blue Mage. Imagine that Limited Job is its own thing and Blue Mage is already a normal job with its exclusive content coming along with it. Do you see the problem here? The problem is that by essence Limited Job has provided nothing of value. While Blue Mage has provided a lot, ergo Blue Mage has provided content not Limited Job. Limited Job only provided the space for Blue Mage to exist. In theory it would worked where the framework would provide exclusive content, however in a practical sense it didn't this is due to the fact that how they executed it and the fact the content at the moment is Blue mage exclusive. Blue Mage was meant to be a job and obviously the masked carnival can be a fun distraction even when it is a normal job. As I have repeated Limited Job is just a space, move everything to the category of a Normal Job and you'll still have your fun distraction that being Masked Carnival and Solo dungeon plays. While it also satisfy the player base who want to use Blue Mage as a Normal Job. It is a win-win, everything will still be there alongside its content included and the people who want to raid as Blue Mage can do so as they please.

As for the rebalancing, they are already doing that as of now. Basic instinct only works when you're alone. Most of their high potency spells is strong as one of Black Mage's spells. They now need a specific role to gain the full use of a spell/skill with aetherial mimicry, preventing Blue mage being all roles at once in a single instance. All that is left is a job gauge for it and removal or adjustment of certain spells.

[Mariel_Crystallie]

then what use would there be in any other jobs, since you could just solo everything?

of course when BLU become normal job it will rebalance the skills and wont be super OP on current content...