Limited Jobs in FF14 Just Became Even More Limited

Two weeks before Beastmaster finally launches as Final Fantasy 14's second limited job, Square Enix has decided to make the limited job category even more restrictive. According to a post on The Lodestone, the game's official news hub, patch 7.5 will prevent limited jobs from accepting most quests and lock them out of certain allied society quest chains entirely.

Starting with the patch's release on Tuesday, April 28, limited jobs will only be able to accept two types of quests: job quests designed specifically for limited jobs, and quests that are open to every class. On top of that, allied society quests that are quest-synced and require players to stay on the same job or class through completion will be completely off-limits. Square Enix is warning players to finish any applicable pending quests before the patch drops.

The timing here is what gets me. Beastmaster is supposed to be the big exciting addition in 7.5, a job players have been asking about for years. And Square Enix's move right before it arrives is to shrink the sandbox that limited jobs are allowed to play in. If you were on the fence about whether a limited job was worth your time, this isn't exactly a sales pitch.

The Community Response

Over on r/ffxivdiscussion, the reaction has been predictably frustrated. One thread simply asks "Why though?" and the top reply jokes that Square Enix is "putting the 'limited' in 'limited job.'" Another commenter went harder, arguing the devs "really don't know how to make content worth doing for more than a week." A separate thread captured a I've seen echoed across multiple FF14 communities: one player said they would have loved to try Beastmaster but won't even look at it because of the limited job restrictions.

I think that last point is the one Square Enix should be paying attention to. Blue Mage, the game's first limited job, has always occupied a weird space in FF14. It can't queue for duties through the normal Duty Finder, it can't participate in current endgame content at level, and its progression path is separate from every other job in the game. For a lot of players, that already made it feel like a novelty rather than a real part of their toolkit. Restricting quest access further just reinforces the idea that limited jobs exist in a walled garden that keeps getting smaller.

There is an amusing wrinkle buried in the community reaction, though. Multiple players admitted they had no idea Blue Mage could even do allied society quests in the first place. "I'm like 99% sure this is the first time the majority of the playerbase are even learning Blue Mage could do Allied Society quests," one commenter wrote. So, this change might affect very few people's actual gameplay. But the signal it sends is the problem. Every restriction layered onto limited jobs makes the next one easier to justify, and it makes the entire category less appealing to invest time in.

I've always thought the limited job concept in FF14 was a missed opportunity. Blue Mage had a fun core mechanic in learning monster abilities, and Beastmaster's pet-taming system sounds like it could be a blast. But cramming these ideas into a box where they can't interact with most of the game's content feels like Square Enix designing with one hand tied behind its back. Players shouldn't have to weigh whether a job is "limited enough" to bother leveling.

Patch 7.5 arrives on April 28 and also brings story content tied to a return to the Void, which is the update's actual headline feature. Fan Fest and the reveal of the 8.0 expansion aren't far off either, so there's plenty of FF14 news on the horizon. But for anyone who was planning to main Beastmaster, the message from Square Enix right now is clear: limited means limited, and it's only getting more so.