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My opinion on the FFXIV Blue Mage reveal
7 years ago
General
Feel free to skip this one. What I am about to write is surely of no interest to a majority of my followers, as it related to Final Fantasy XIV, a MMORPG that I enjoy playing. A MMORPG set in the Final Fantasy franchise, utilizing a lot of jobs featured in other games of the franchise. One of my very favorites was Blue Mage, a unique job that used spells and abilities that originally belonged to monsters. Being an all rounder job, a lot of people assumed that the job would never make it into FFXIV, as the game works with concrete “roles”, and by that I mean: Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer. However when Stormblood introduced Red Mage, which always was a sword-wielding mix of white and black mage, many started to wonder if the developers wouldn’t think of a way to include Blue Mage. And yes, indeed, as the next expansion was teased at this year’s Fan Festival, it was revealed that Blue Mage was coming, and more shockingly, we won’t have to wait for it till the expansion, we’ll already get it in January 2019. It felt like Square Enix was giving me a birthday present. My beloved job enters the game!
However details about the job were revealed during the next day, and the whole entire playerbase seem to have been split in half over their opinion about Blue Mage, as one half is now utterly disappointed and upset, while the other remains optimistic.
To explain: They say that Blue Mage is “limited”. This means that Blue Mage won’t be allowed into Roulettes of any kind, Roulettes like the ones you do daily, where you’re matched with random players and go into dungeons or trials. It shall be a job leveled through soloing, with the EXP gained being increased significantly to make this a legit method for EXPing. It shall be the first combat job with a significantly different playstyle from the rest. Plenty of people do not like this.
I’d like to begin my opinion on this by stating a simple fact that has to be remembered: There will always be people that like an addition, and those who don’t. People being accused of other being dumb sheep who like everything, or dumb haters who are never happen. There is always a lot of drama about anything. If Blue Mage were to be a standard job, then whichever role you’d assign it, people would have reasons to complain:
-Tank? Bah, but it’s a mage! Blue Mages never wore armor! And just how many defensive spells did Blue Mage have?! This is so wrong!
-Healer? Come on! Not that many people play healers! Besides, Blue Mage only had a few supportive spells! Don’t waste such a classic on them!
-DPS? Damage Dealer? Yeeesh, we have too many of them already! Cut it out! You wasted such an opportunity, by turning an all rounder into a dumb DPS!!!!
The way I see it, Red Mage had the benefit of just being a mix of healer and damage dealer. You could easily just use a few offensive White Mage spells, and give RDM a cure and a resurrection spell, and bam, you got it!
Blue Mage poses a risk, where they are also known for some abilities of a tank. They are even more of an all rounder! Games like FFXI even made them out to be flexible, only given the ability to equip a limited number of spells at a time, and specific combinations giving you different passive skills, which made the job very unique, but also hard to balance, and during searching parties, you had little knowledge of what the Blue Mage that you might recruit will be like. Could be someone who learned all the spells, someone who knows the job real well and can utilize it perfectly, or someone who doesn’t have neither.FFXIV makes this even more of a challenge, given how higher level dungeons are locked out to players who don’t have strong enough gear, and that most abilities are obtained by leveling, only a few being behind the completion of quests. This gives players much more certainty that when a player appears, they’re at least fairly ok prepared, and got at least of their needed utilities. With Blue Mage, you’d have to question the player’s entire spell collection…. ESPECIALLY WHEN THE JOB LAUNCHES!
So here’s the 2 possible approaches to take with the job the way I see it:
-simplify Blue Mage as much as possible. Turn him into a blue colored Red Mage. Make it just another job. Ignore all the lore of the job, and just have it be another mage, and players can just feel like they are a Blue Mage based on the name and spells
-try to make it as true to the original idea of the Blue Mage as possible, and simply create balance by not allowing Blue Mage into regular normal parties with other players
They went with the latter, and I see 2 groups of people who hate this:
-people who did want Blue Mage in the game, had an exact image of how it’d work in the game (most likely a blue Red Mage), and this clearly does not match it
-people who may have not wanted Blue Mage, but hate the idea of this direction, of creating content for people who solo
To address the first point: I feel like wanting just another job, which is basically the same as another, but just with minor differences is a path that cannot lead us far. We have so many variants of jobs already. It’s becoming harder and harder to come up with something new, and so we got this bold new choice. One that could potentially solve a lot of questions about the implementation of other complicated jobs into the game.
I did actually meet a few people who were in agreement about this, seeing the benefit of this experimentation, however they claim that Blue Mage is not suitable for this role, and it’s something more suited for an Onion Knight. Which is a fair point, but for one….. I have not heard a single person clammer for an Onion Knight, nor a Mime… Blue Mage was actually requested, and does have that element of being flexible. So to me, it makes sense to have this be the guinea pig for such an experiment. Not Dancer, Time Mage, Geomancer, or… Gunblade-tank, whatever, but Blue Mage.
As for the second: Yes, I understand, it’s odd to see this kind of progression, and it feels kind of risky to split it up, where Blue Mages could be very restricted from participating in a lot of the content. Would the Devs be forced to create content for this job specifically, or would this in the end just be a job for solo stuff like Beast tribes, and no real use outside of it? A job to just do things solo, cause barely anybody would form parties with them?
I admit that my biggest concern is the prospect of someone trying to “main BLU”. Going through the story, you’d get a mission requiring you to go through a dungeon or trial, then you would have no other option than to use some other job. That is a worry of mine…. However that’s what it is: a worry. It’s not a fact, it’s not set in stone.
I see a problem with how fierce the arguments get, where both sides yell at each other, dismissing their arguments with “That’s just speculation! You don’t know that!”, which is extra silly for someone making loud remarks, cause….. IT’S ALL SPECULATION! We don’t know anything! It could go either way! You can’t dismiss something as a speculation, when your own words are speculation.
I admit, I’m slightly more positive on the issue, because I predict 4 possible Scenarios:
-The job gets made and proves to be good, fun, and played by many people, opening the door for more flexible jobs
-The job gets made, does… ok, but does get its restrictions on content removed, perhaps by specifically dictating that specific skills are for specific roles, and you could dictate what role you currently are, or some other means, which would dictate the direction of future flexible jobs
-The job proves to be bad, and gets turned into the stock mage that many people wanted from the start
-The job proves to be bad, stays that way, and nobody will play it
Only the last scenario is truly bad, and it’s …. Having a job that nobody plays. How does that hurt the game’s community? I feel like even that is not all that horrendous! Quite frankly, I feel like there’s even upsides to this, I mean people talk all sort of trash about content like Diadem or Eureka. A lot of talk about how nobody plays the former, and predictions of how nobody will play the latter in a few years. WELL, Blue Mage is designed to be soloed, so even if it’s a flop, if in 5 years someone decides to play it, they will be able to. They’ll be able to solo it. To me, even if it is to be trash, puts it in a better position than a lot of content.
Listen, I don’t want to take away anyone’s right to not like this change, but I know how much backlash this game got in the past after announcements of certain things (I mean… remember how White Mage was supposed to be DEAD with Stormblood????), and that made me remember to not judge things before they arrive.
TRUE, I won’t deny that my joy and excitement were now replaced by cautious optimism, but I see potential in this, as many others do. So I’m just saying “we’re going to have to live and see”. Could be good, could be bad, but even if bad, it could get fixed, and even the worst possible outcome is no end of the world. At least that will stop me making what-ifs on the possibility of Blue Mage coming over, heh.
That’s my 3 cents.
However details about the job were revealed during the next day, and the whole entire playerbase seem to have been split in half over their opinion about Blue Mage, as one half is now utterly disappointed and upset, while the other remains optimistic.
To explain: They say that Blue Mage is “limited”. This means that Blue Mage won’t be allowed into Roulettes of any kind, Roulettes like the ones you do daily, where you’re matched with random players and go into dungeons or trials. It shall be a job leveled through soloing, with the EXP gained being increased significantly to make this a legit method for EXPing. It shall be the first combat job with a significantly different playstyle from the rest. Plenty of people do not like this.
I’d like to begin my opinion on this by stating a simple fact that has to be remembered: There will always be people that like an addition, and those who don’t. People being accused of other being dumb sheep who like everything, or dumb haters who are never happen. There is always a lot of drama about anything. If Blue Mage were to be a standard job, then whichever role you’d assign it, people would have reasons to complain:
-Tank? Bah, but it’s a mage! Blue Mages never wore armor! And just how many defensive spells did Blue Mage have?! This is so wrong!
-Healer? Come on! Not that many people play healers! Besides, Blue Mage only had a few supportive spells! Don’t waste such a classic on them!
-DPS? Damage Dealer? Yeeesh, we have too many of them already! Cut it out! You wasted such an opportunity, by turning an all rounder into a dumb DPS!!!!
The way I see it, Red Mage had the benefit of just being a mix of healer and damage dealer. You could easily just use a few offensive White Mage spells, and give RDM a cure and a resurrection spell, and bam, you got it!
Blue Mage poses a risk, where they are also known for some abilities of a tank. They are even more of an all rounder! Games like FFXI even made them out to be flexible, only given the ability to equip a limited number of spells at a time, and specific combinations giving you different passive skills, which made the job very unique, but also hard to balance, and during searching parties, you had little knowledge of what the Blue Mage that you might recruit will be like. Could be someone who learned all the spells, someone who knows the job real well and can utilize it perfectly, or someone who doesn’t have neither.FFXIV makes this even more of a challenge, given how higher level dungeons are locked out to players who don’t have strong enough gear, and that most abilities are obtained by leveling, only a few being behind the completion of quests. This gives players much more certainty that when a player appears, they’re at least fairly ok prepared, and got at least of their needed utilities. With Blue Mage, you’d have to question the player’s entire spell collection…. ESPECIALLY WHEN THE JOB LAUNCHES!
So here’s the 2 possible approaches to take with the job the way I see it:
-simplify Blue Mage as much as possible. Turn him into a blue colored Red Mage. Make it just another job. Ignore all the lore of the job, and just have it be another mage, and players can just feel like they are a Blue Mage based on the name and spells
-try to make it as true to the original idea of the Blue Mage as possible, and simply create balance by not allowing Blue Mage into regular normal parties with other players
They went with the latter, and I see 2 groups of people who hate this:
-people who did want Blue Mage in the game, had an exact image of how it’d work in the game (most likely a blue Red Mage), and this clearly does not match it
-people who may have not wanted Blue Mage, but hate the idea of this direction, of creating content for people who solo
To address the first point: I feel like wanting just another job, which is basically the same as another, but just with minor differences is a path that cannot lead us far. We have so many variants of jobs already. It’s becoming harder and harder to come up with something new, and so we got this bold new choice. One that could potentially solve a lot of questions about the implementation of other complicated jobs into the game.
I did actually meet a few people who were in agreement about this, seeing the benefit of this experimentation, however they claim that Blue Mage is not suitable for this role, and it’s something more suited for an Onion Knight. Which is a fair point, but for one….. I have not heard a single person clammer for an Onion Knight, nor a Mime… Blue Mage was actually requested, and does have that element of being flexible. So to me, it makes sense to have this be the guinea pig for such an experiment. Not Dancer, Time Mage, Geomancer, or… Gunblade-tank, whatever, but Blue Mage.
As for the second: Yes, I understand, it’s odd to see this kind of progression, and it feels kind of risky to split it up, where Blue Mages could be very restricted from participating in a lot of the content. Would the Devs be forced to create content for this job specifically, or would this in the end just be a job for solo stuff like Beast tribes, and no real use outside of it? A job to just do things solo, cause barely anybody would form parties with them?
I admit that my biggest concern is the prospect of someone trying to “main BLU”. Going through the story, you’d get a mission requiring you to go through a dungeon or trial, then you would have no other option than to use some other job. That is a worry of mine…. However that’s what it is: a worry. It’s not a fact, it’s not set in stone.
I see a problem with how fierce the arguments get, where both sides yell at each other, dismissing their arguments with “That’s just speculation! You don’t know that!”, which is extra silly for someone making loud remarks, cause….. IT’S ALL SPECULATION! We don’t know anything! It could go either way! You can’t dismiss something as a speculation, when your own words are speculation.
I admit, I’m slightly more positive on the issue, because I predict 4 possible Scenarios:
-The job gets made and proves to be good, fun, and played by many people, opening the door for more flexible jobs
-The job gets made, does… ok, but does get its restrictions on content removed, perhaps by specifically dictating that specific skills are for specific roles, and you could dictate what role you currently are, or some other means, which would dictate the direction of future flexible jobs
-The job proves to be bad, and gets turned into the stock mage that many people wanted from the start
-The job proves to be bad, stays that way, and nobody will play it
Only the last scenario is truly bad, and it’s …. Having a job that nobody plays. How does that hurt the game’s community? I feel like even that is not all that horrendous! Quite frankly, I feel like there’s even upsides to this, I mean people talk all sort of trash about content like Diadem or Eureka. A lot of talk about how nobody plays the former, and predictions of how nobody will play the latter in a few years. WELL, Blue Mage is designed to be soloed, so even if it’s a flop, if in 5 years someone decides to play it, they will be able to. They’ll be able to solo it. To me, even if it is to be trash, puts it in a better position than a lot of content.
Listen, I don’t want to take away anyone’s right to not like this change, but I know how much backlash this game got in the past after announcements of certain things (I mean… remember how White Mage was supposed to be DEAD with Stormblood????), and that made me remember to not judge things before they arrive.
TRUE, I won’t deny that my joy and excitement were now replaced by cautious optimism, but I see potential in this, as many others do. So I’m just saying “we’re going to have to live and see”. Could be good, could be bad, but even if bad, it could get fixed, and even the worst possible outcome is no end of the world. At least that will stop me making what-ifs on the possibility of Blue Mage coming over, heh.
That’s my 3 cents.
