How Blue Mage defies the Job system in FFXIV, yet is Loved for it!

good day my friends as we all know fall fancy 14 has never been afraid to change the formula of certain jobs and abilities over the course of its life some jobs feel like they get major overhauls almost every expansion making them look new and fresh every couple of years but deep down this has created a strange divide within the community on one side you've the players that love these changes as it keeps the material like the playable jobs from getting too samey or stale on the other side you've players that are confused or upset annoyed that their once favorite job now plays like something completely different for example one of the biggest early changes to a job would be machinist back when it was originally launched in heaven's word eventually its base concept was completely replaced by a new system which would receive additional changes in the future but instead of abandoning the original job mechanics they instead changed them into what would later become known as dancer within shadowbringers however then you have recent examples like that of summoner who has seen a tremendous amount of change with an end walker but it's here that you begin to see just as many people loving the changes as you have people hating it although there is one job in final fantasy 14 that has changed remarkably little and has only been improved upon as the game has been moved into the future i of course i'm talking about the only limited job in fall fancy 14 bloom age but what does this have to do with the jobs in 14 especially since bloomage is limited and can't be brought to standard content the answer is quite a lot actually as it defies everything that all the other jobs in this game stand for while the current jobs are always at the mercy of whatever patch or expansion changes them blue mage has never lost its creative versatility not even once and yet it turns out more people enjoy blue mage despite its limitations so let's talk about that and how blue mage's unique design is not as crazy as you think a quick history lesson for you blue mage is a reoccurring job in the fall fantasy franchise that stretches as far back as final fantasy v and its concept has existed in almost every fall fantasy game since then sure it's not as old and well known as white and black mage but blue mage is no slouch and is definitely a veteran of the franchise but what makes a blue mage these spellcasters are individuals that somehow learn mimic or even steal the abilities of monsters and sometimes that of other people a blue mage doesn't create their own spells instead they become an empty vessel that can eventually hold dozens if not hundreds of unique talents and skills from just as many unique monsters and animals at face value this might seem like a joke as all they're doing is copying the powers of other things but that's what makes blue magic so powerful indeed the true power of a blue mage is its versatility defensive skills offensive attacks and healing abilities are all things a blue mage can have at their disposal at any time if an enemy is weak to a certain skill or element then a blue mage likely has what their opponent doesn't want used against them so while blue magic will never be as intimidating as black magic when it comes to raw power its ability to adapt to any environment makes up for that in spades now that you know the history of blue magic within the franchise i hope it's easier to see why there are so many fans of it despite the fact that it's a limited job it has a rich history and during the heydays of final fantasy xi blue mage was well loved by those who mained it but i'm not just pulling random opinions out of thin air to get a limited estimate of the community's opinion of blue mage i held three polls in different locations to get a general idea of people's thoughts one poll was on youtube the second was on twitter and the third was from random people in the game itself even though this was a really quick poll i noticed something surprising between all three investigations there were two major similarities between each of them mainly that more than half of the players really enjoyed if not loved blue mage and the people that outright hated it were in the gross minority not only that people visibly wished there was more content involving it if not made a regular job so a big thank you to everyone who was involved and helped me collect this data but why did i go out of my way to get this information mostly to prove a point the point that most players want to try something completely different more often than you'd expect and as such blue mage was a breath of fresh air despite the core of blue mage never having changed since its conception most players still enjoy it and the common theme between all these people seems to be the blue mages namesake versatility you see volfac14 is a surprisingly rigid game when placed under a lens since most experiences are in fact standardized a warrior will ultimately play the same way as every other warrior every dungeon run is the same trash poles and bosses over and over and even end game material like savage and extreme content are just elaborate dances so long as you execute the steps of that dance properly you'll win but the dance will for the most part be the same every single time now this streamlining of content isn't necessarily a bad thing as it allows all sorts of different players to experience all sorts of material together but bluemage defied this system and was loved for it but why first of all your abilities are unique to you you don't gain spells by leveling up like every other job you have to go find them and it never matters what order you go get them in either you can start out with the easy spells on the world map or start with the hard spells if you wanted to water canon primals to death totally up to you not only that but whatever spells were on your hotbar are personal to you as well with there currently being 104 spells in 24 you can slot at any time there are hundreds of unique combinations now are some spells better than others yes but the beautiful thing about blue mage is that you really don't need a meta to have fun the reason for this being that blue mage spells are uniquely overpowered in their own right and you don't really need a meta to demolish enemies so right out of the box blue mage isn't like any other job one person i questioned even went as far as to say that blue mage reminded them of wizards from dungeons and dragons since you've got your little spell book and only a certain amount of spells can be prepared at any given time and in that regard they weren't completely wrong so already blue mage is offering players unique experiences in a way that no other job can and the more unique something is the more it stands out the more memorable it becomes to further drive home this point we have the mast carnival the carnival is essentially a set of unique trials that only you can participate in these can range from very simple fights to one-on-one battles that will challenge your skill as a player most of these fights can be very easy or very hard based on the spells you choose to take in while some players complained these fights were too difficult even more players said that they loved the challenge however once again there was a singular common theme almost all of those players disliked the few fights that demanded uu's specific abilities in very specific ways in order to win which makes sense from the word go blue mage was offering everyone a unique way to play with hundreds of options in front of you so for the masked carnival to suddenly say you must play a certain way in order to proceed to the next challenge it was stealing that sense of versatility away it was making blue mage like every other job this love of the unique is shared with other achievements that encourage players to take on difficult material like the binding coils of bahamut with only blue mages in your party while some mages must try to tank and heal all abilities after that is totally on the players and party and i never thought i'd see bahamut's last one of hp get removed by players spitting fish at him that's an l bahamut that's an l but these unique fights and silly approaches to material wouldn't be possible if blue mage was a regular job like all the others in order for blue mage to become standardized one of two things would need to happen option one the jobs in fall fantasy 14 would need to take a page out of blue mage's book and become more versatile which is next to impossible given how the developers have visibly stepped as far away from that as they can over the years meaning that the other option is the only one available the option that states that blue mage would need to be shackled to the same rigid system that every other job is currently in meaning that everyone learns the same blue spells at the same levels and that all blue mages would ultimately play the exact same way now to some people that would be just fine however it wouldn't be the blue mage people currently play it wouldn't be the job that more than half the people i questioned loved you don't want blue mage to be a regular job at least not yet if the developers could find a way to keep blue mage's versatility intact while also allowing it to play in modern material i think people would find a reason to rejoice but that would be a lot of work possibly too much work given how final fantasy xiv is currently structured so while blue mage might be a limited job and a meme to most people the players still love it despite all of that because it's a job that offers something that no other can an entirely unique player experience that breaks away from everything the rest of the game stands for and if they choose to create more content for it i know i'll be amongst the first in line to try it out [Music] thank you all for watching to the end if you enjoyed this video why not subscribe and share this with your fellow adventurers with your help i'll try to reach out even further and bring even greater stories to you although i'd be remiss if i didn't acknowledge my biggest contributors a grand thank you to rovakis potato burn my pancakes the yellow couch papaya cyan sage mouse vavalus oma cesani azeri and cat with an additional nod to the scholarships on screen links to things like my twitter and that of my channel artist caddy can be found in the description thank you all for your viewership as well as your support and i hope all of you have a wonderful day class dismissed [Music]

Channel: Synodic Scribe

Views: 15,325

Keywords: ffxiv, FFXIV, Final Fantasy 14, mmorpg, mmo, lore, gaming, educational

Id: Lg8x5tueaow

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2022