Beastmaster: Can it work?

[aveyond-dreams]

snip

You can do PvP whenever you want as long as it's not the Feast, which remains the least-touched content in-game specifically because FFXIV players largely reject fomo and other limited content.

Crafting and gathering is also something that anyone can do at their leisure. However, the content drought in Shadowbringers was exacerbated by the frontloading of crafter/gatherer content towards the beginning as opposed to battle content which we were practically starved for until patch 5.35 gave us Bozja.

Nothing in Gold Saucer has ever been time-gated except for the Yokai Watch and FFXV events, both of which gave players ample time to complete and then went on to return.

This philosophy however cannot be applied to something like a job. Older content already has enough "life" in it given that roulettes reward people for going back and doing it to help sprouts, and if I want to grind for something with a lot less headache involved then the most obvious choice is to bring a max ilvl 90 job. Not a job that is permanently stuck 10-20 levels behind. All the "unique!" abilities in the world can't make up for the lack of practical things to do with Blue Mage and Beastmaster simply has no reason to suffer a similar fate. A limited job roulette would be pointless, only yet another source of poetics as if we didn't already have enough of those, or allied seals which have barely any use at all.

You claim to play Blue Mage more than any of the other regular jobs, but I have to tell you that outside the bubble that some Blue Mage fans seem to speak from, most people try and level a variety of the normal jobs in addition to whatever their main is. However, Blue Mage not only suffers from a bad levelling experience as the only viable way to do it is to have a max level character kill things for you, they also have over 100 hurdles to jump through learning spells locked behind instances. Waiting in party finder for 10 hours to learn primal spells does not a fun experience make. As for Bozja, relic content is intended to be widely approachable and was largely successful when compared to Eureka. However, the initial fate grind for it can be done on any job, and it would be an unreasonable waste of time to level Blue Mage and grind out their spells just for fate grinding.

As others have mentioned, pets in this game have largely been a waste of resources and more trouble than they were worth for the past 8 years. Pets as old SMN had them failed, while "pets" in the style of Reaper's avatar still capture a decent feel for the class and are functionally better overall. Reaper originally was going to have multiple avatars and instead settled on just the one, and so far it seems most people are ok with that. In any case, why should Beastmaster be added as a way to update the companion system when there's hardly anything to even do in the overworld with it in the first place? And if taken into dungeons, there is no way a companion would ever outclass a normal player, and I struggle to believe they would outclass trusts.

Like it or not, normal jobs appeal to and are more widely accessible to most people when compared to limited jobs. A normal job Beastmaster would likely go on to be embraced by a significantly larger amount of people and be used in more content than another chocobo trainer. With the only job remotely close to a "hunter" currently being Bard of all things, I do not believe that we should lose out on the real deal in exchange for a limited job with even more limited uses than Blue Mage, as far as I can tell.

[BaconBits]

Limited jobs bad mmkay.

[Imoen]

Limited jobs bad mmkay.

I second this, I still weep for Blu every time I see it on my job list, I do a little inaudible grumble. lol

Edit: Oh right, and ya beast is cool, they could do it.

[SeverianLyonesse]

In addition to expanding limited job content, Beastmaster could also provide an avenue to upgrade another area of the game. Companions.
What if, instead of being the same sort of pet job as SMN used to be, it instead simply served as an expansion of the Companion system?
Beastmaster could tame new companions that use the same system as the companion chocobo, and could bring them into duties and issue them commands to execute unique moves. Meanwhile outside of Beastmaster, you could summon any of those new companions in place of the chocobo, but have them act functionally the same as the chocobo, just with visually different movesets.
You're now enhancing your gameplay with all of your other jobs, by playing the limited job.

This is probably the best way they could implement the beastmaster fantasy. The companion system is already deeper on a per-beast basis than we would likely get from a BST job, limited or not. And by that I mean your Chocobo has an ability tree of some 30-ish nodes and four role settings, which is a sight better than capturing beasts with 2-4 abilities each. The companion system also already exists, is proven to work really well in open world content and is a very solid framework begging to be expanded and refined.

FF XIV has already shown me that I can have *any* job equipped and have a chocobo fighting alongside me. I can have *any* job equipped and enjoy the BST-adjacent fantasy of having any number of animals as a mount or minion. In XIV, our ability to befriend and team up with animals is *job-independent* and transcends the need for a particular job stone/weapon limitation. I would be peeved if they pulled that back and limited me to sitting on the sidelines spamming 1-2-3 axe/whip swings just to have any animal other than a chocobo, when prior to that *my character* could have been whatever job I wanted it to be. I would also be peeved at the design decision to make a *fourth* animal companion system on top of mounts, minions, and companions--instead of utilizing and consolidating what we already have (like, imagine being able to use some of the already existing mounts and minions in battle--give you more incentive to collect them). There is absolutely no reason why having beast companions should be tied down to a single job, with how XIV is already designed.

"BST job" is a dumb, outdated idea. I am all for something BST-like and expanding the options for animal companions. I am all for any amount of beast collection content similar to BLU. I want the companion system to be improved and better utilized *and* I want players to have the most comprehensive animal-companion fantasy. But I would rage if the devs wasted resources making an entire job with such a regressive design sensibility.

[aveyond-dreams]

Lvl 90 max ilvl job > usually a faster and less stressful clear than when using a Blue Mage, especially for farming old EX/savage fights.

Dungeons see above.

Fates? If I want an easy time with those I just do them as a tank. Blue Mages cannot do any current fates worth grinding at the moment.

Lastly Aetheryte tickets mean nothing to me given that I'm sitting at 10mill+ gil spread out across my characters.

There is no functional use for limited jobs outside of moogle events, and that's if a player doesn't own all of the (old) rewards or wouldn't already obtain any new rewards by just playing the game normally. Like I often say, at least Gacha limited events have the bonus of being able to take your temporary pull reward into any content you want, Blue Mage cannot even say that.

That job aside, I struggle to think of a reason as to why Beastmaster should be limited to outdated content and why they cannot play with others normally. No monster in this game is so powerful as to outclass a player or even be viable to use against other monsters via taming. It just doesn't make sense to apply the same restrictions here.

[WiccaP]

I dont understand the aversion so many players and the devs have against pet classes. Numerous other MMOs utilize them effectively and in a balanced way. a lot of players enjoy that style of class and they can work. i would love to see a beastmaster as a regular full job. I would stick to FF lore and previously they have used whips. I would love that

[MagiusNecros]

Matsuno told Yoshi P if he ever decides to include Beastmaster that he would help him make it work. And Limited Jobs aren't the answer. As is I see no reason to not let BLU run whatever it wants. Letting BLU run stuff like Palace or Eureka/Bozja won't kill the game.

Personally BLU is still the most fun job to play. Tied with Fisher.

[Xiaoki]

I dont understand the aversion so many players and the devs have against pet classes. Numerous other MMOs utilize them effectively and in a balanced way. a lot of players enjoy that style of class and they can work. i would love to see a beastmaster as a regular full job. I would stick to FF lore and previously they have used whips. I would love that

Have to have functional pet AI before you can have pet based classes.

That's why FF14 got rid of their only pet based class and other MMOs have had pet based classes for years and years.

[Grimoire-M]

Have to have functional pet AI before you can have pet based classes.

That's why FF14 got rid of their only pet based class and other MMOs have had pet based classes for years and years.

After getting functional pet AI on the other one.

Personally I think Summoner should support it via Carbuncle as a persistent ranged pet while Beastmaster is held in reserve to make use of a persistent melee pet. Most of the AI breaks are unfortunately due to pets not having the range to function properly, so melee pets definitely still need more attention. Every example XIV has cheats in some manner with infinite dashes or is actually a ranged pet in practice.

[CKNovel]

In a case of a limited job, if they rework the limited job into a more interesting content and allows queueing.
In a case of a non-limited job, pets should be like the avatar of RPR or Egis from SMN. Only visuals.

Pets don't work in this game. And there is already 3 cases of pets:
-The dumb one, does its things then execute your order. Removed from MCH and SMN, limited to SCH.
-The Dot one, press and forget. Unfun and frustrating at times. MCH and DRK.
-The animation one, critically acclaimed, SMN and RPR.

Also, lore, weapon, relic name... It's alright to have ideas but is it really a priority?
Square Enix will make the choice about these, like how they decided Sage would be a gundam.