[REQUEST] Give Limited Jobs Evolved Forms!

[Tabbs]

Evolved jobs are the perfect opportunity to have the best of both worlds for limited jobs, allowing them to participate in msq and current content alongside other jobs while keeping their powerful, limited content in tact.

Have their evolved form toggle the spellbook or bestiary off in exchange for a skillset that is balanced for regular play (with possibly cosmetic exceptions, like choice of pet skin or spell skin). Then, let their reborn form retain its overpowered nature that exists as it is now, allowing them to do unique job content like carnivale or crucible.

Limited jobs are great in that they bring a fun form of side content, but i think not allowing them to have evolved forms is a HUGE missed opportunity to unite players who like blue mage or beast master but sit on opposite ends of the limited job topic.

All that said, fanfest was great and I'm looking forward to Evercold ^_^

[Hatori_Elric]

only limited job so far, until beast master releases, is blu and it is my understanding that blu's actions are severely limited unless you go farm for those off enemies. if the basis of evolved is shortening the list of actions to make it easier, blu than does not need an evolved form at all because there is not much to reduce from the base job (again i am not factoring in the abilities off an enemy but the job's basic abilities). so if you think about it, it has evolved mode by default as it is. of course if you add in the abilities off enemies it is a whole other story but not every player will get them all and i am sure they are doing things based off the average player and not those who are on the opposite side of that spectrum who would have them all.

[Tabbs]

only limited job so far, until beast master releases, is blu and it is my understanding that blu's actions are severely limited unless you go farm for those off enemies. if the basis of evolved is shortening the list of actions to make it easier, blu than does not need an evolved form at all because there is not much to reduce from the base job (again i am not factoring in the abilities off an enemy but the job's basic abilities). so if you think about it, it has evolved mode by default as it is. of course if you add in the abilities off enemies it is a whole other story but not every player will get them all and i am sure they are doing things based off the average player and not those who are on the opposite side of that spectrum who would have them all.

The idea is more so to give limited jobs a curated set of skills to allow them to play in regular content with everyone! I imagine your spell collection progress would remain unaffected by toggling evolved mode on, giving you automatic access to the spells you need for evolved mode. This would alleviate any concerns about needing to unlock spells before participating in normal content, or for people who want to bring blue mage into world first races and stuff!

[Hatori_Elric]

unless they completely throw away what everyone has done on blu, obviously than making a lot more people angry, i think leaving blu the way it is right now is likely for the best with what i stated above being the reasoning for. the blu class specifically is the way it is, not just from the perspective of ffxiv but its the way it is in other ff games as well. if you remove the need to gather these abilities, than it really is no longer blu at all in that case.

[Tabbs]

unless they completely throw away what everyone has done on blu, obviously than making a lot more people angry, i think leaving blu the way it is right now is likely for the best with what i stated above being the reasoning for. the blu class specifically is the way it is, not just from the perspective of ffxiv but its the way it is in other ff games as well. if you remove the need to gather these abilities, than it really is no longer blu at all in that case.

With all due respect, this is all addressed in the original post. They would not need to throw away everything done to blue mage NOR would they need to stop updating the limited element of it. Adding an evolved form would just be an alternate form of progression and playstyle! Spell collection would still exist in the reborn form and updates would still mean people get to have fun going back to play blue mage the original way.

[Shadowshinra]

Absolutely should do something like this, heck, they could help address the "less freedom" nature of the second skillset with the upcoming skill glamour system, lets say by default your main AOE skill for this version of Blue is Glower, however with the glamour you could make it Bad Breath if you've also unlocked that spell etc.

[Loggos]

I like the idea. They could pick a curated set of skills for evolve mode. If you have already collected them playing the limited version up to 8.0 you're good to go.
Switch to evolve mode and they're unlocked.

If you start fresh in 8.0 you'll have to gather the skills/beasts like you normally would. (If it's technically possible you could do it in evolve mode for evolve-mode-relevant skills. If that's too convoluted you could gather them playing the limited version and they'd automatically unlock in the evolved form as a consequence).

I don't think it would hurt the jobs if their progression to unlock their abilities differs from the regular 21 jobs.
After all collecting spells/beasts is the job fantasy, so why not also make it a premise in evolved mode and give it a little flavour.
Giving them gameplay/progression individuality in that regard, with an outcome that is still relevant for up-to-date regular content, could even be a selling point and intrigue more people to try them out.

Unlocking skills via means other than levelling isn't new to regular jobs either. Esp. when it comes to older jobs you had to unlock certain skills through job quests. So why not allow blu and bst to unlock their evolved skills via their own special path.

[Tabbs]

Absolutely should do something like this, heck, they could help address the "less freedom" nature of the second skillset with the upcoming skill glamour system, lets say by default your main AOE skill for this version of Blue is Glower, however with the glamour you could make it Bad Breath if you've also unlocked that spell etc.

Yesss! Exactly what I was thinking.

I don't think it would hurt the jobs if their progression to unlock their abilities differs from the regular 21 jobs.

Absolutely agree with everything you've said, but I do know that the devs had mentioned learning spells as something they see as a pain point if blue mage was considered a normal job. They specifically cited raiders playing as blue mage slowing their party down by having to learn spells (specifically on xpac launches) before they can raid.

Would love learning spells as flavor for the evolved mode too, but I would be okay with automatic unlocks if it addresses the dev's concerns or the concerns of other players!

[Loggos]

That's a valid point. Admittedly I don't know how long it takes to collect an individual spell. Is it a big time sink or is the process itself rather short?

Maybe this could be avoided by giving evolve mode only the same amount of new spells per expac other jobs get? When a new expac drops you'll have to level your regular jobs to the new level cap anyway.
And I assume, since evolve mode is all about button/skill efficiency, we will probably get fewer skills per expac than in the past.
So if you're in a raid group it would be on you as a BLU/BST to collect the skills on your path to the next level cap.
Since you only have to do this once and the level cap (and with that your number of max skills) stays the same for the next couple of years until the level cap is increased again, collecting spells shouldn't be an extra burden past the early phase of [Expac number].0?

[Nadda]

there's nothing to evolve with Blue Mage or Beastmaster. Beastmaster needs 60 more levels I guess. lol

But Blue Mage you mix and match spells you collect that's awesome and fun.
Beastmaster is tied to the Beasts you use... but we really don't know until we play it.