Series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi has a plea for Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida: "do Beastmasters!"
During an interview special for Final Fantasy's 35th anniversary, Sakaguchi and other members of the development team reminisced over the creation of the various jobs (classes, in the parlance of any other RPG series) for 1992's Final Fantasy 5. That game saw the introduction of the Beastmaster, a job that essentially lets you capture low HP monsters and use them to fight in future battles, Pokemon-style.
"I would like these in FF14 too," Sakaguchi said. "Do Beastmasters, Yoshi-P!" While Sakaguchi was certainly joking - at least mostly - the idea of bringing Beastmasters to Final Fantasy 14 has sparked some spirited debate among the MMO's players. The arguments are not over whether Beastmasters should be added at all, mind you, but rather how expansive their inclusion should be.
There's a sizable contingent of players who believe that Beastmasters should be limited jobs, in line with Blue Mages. Limited Jobs are a special category of FF14 classes that are barred from the regular content that makes up the MMOs progression and are essentially allowed to be wildly unbalanced. Blue Mages - currently the only Limited Job in FF14 - can steal spells from enemies to build a massive spellbook far beyond what any other class is capable of, and that blueprint makes a lot of sense for Beastmasters.
"I’d honestly prefer BM to be a Limited Job," as Reddit user Davajita says. "The collection aspect is what would be most appealing to me. And if they did it with a whole mini-game attached like BLU that would be amazing content." But some fans would prefer Beastmaster to be job they can use in normal content.
"People asking for it to be a Limited Job makes me want to pull my hair out," mendia argues. "I get that some people enjoy Blue Mage but I just hate Limited Jobs as a concept and would hate to see a job I want like Beastmaster end up as one. Just make Beastmaster a physical Summoner or something, it can work without being forced into the Limited Job void."
You can go read the whole discussion thread for yourself if you want to enjoy the debate, but the relevant thing to know is this: Final Fantasy 14's next job is liable to be revealed, or at least teased, very soon. An FF14 Fan Fest is kicking off on June 28, and it's likely to host the first details on the game's 7.0 expansion. Going by historical precedent, it's also probably going to have a fairly on-the-nose teaser for a new job. The speculation over the 7.0 jobs was already rampant even before Sakaguchi's recommendation, but we'll likely have more to go on very soon.
