Final Fantasy XIV

[cyberdemon]

Only a few more days till fan fest. Can’t wait to see where they go with the next expansion

[MeoTwister5]

Everything points to Meracydia. Meaning we'll likely get a ton of Miqo'te content.

[cyberdemon]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

Everything points to Meracydia. Meaning we'll likely get a ton of Miqo'te content.

I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of the first as well considering all the void patches. Like maybe the focus is fusing the void into the first to counter balance the light and darkness. There’s not enough of the void left for an expansion. But using the first especially after Eden makes a lot of sense

As for jobs we’re definitely overdue for a new scouting job. Honestly surprised dancer wasn’t one

[Twi]

YouTube

https://youtu.be/onGE1-I2T6Y

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We going to the New World next year!

[cyberdemon]

That trailer wasn’t anywhere close to what I was expecting given the current void content. I’m surprised they pulled this new continent out of nowhere instead of go to Meracydia.

So a melee do’s and a magical ranged caster for new jobs and the only clue a tent shirt. I say judging by him using a sword without a shield, perhaps swashbuckler. And based on the shirt it uses the same scouting gear as ninjas. I could see them expanding on the fight scene and having the WoL pull out a gun as well.

[MeoTwister5]

Guess I'm wrong. Not Meracydia.

But this isn't technically an out of thin air continent, as this has already been previously mentioned as the "New World", which is conceptually similar to the Carribean.

This also has to be the chillest MMO trailer I've ever seen. Feels more like a Vacation expac. Fine for me though, would be nice to have an expac that doesn't have a universe ending Eldritch horror for once.

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by cyberdemon

That trailer wasn’t anywhere close to what I was expecting given the current void content. I’m surprised they pulled this new continent out of nowhere instead of go to Meracydia.

So a melee do’s and a magical ranged caster for new jobs and the only clue a tent shirt. I say judging by him using a sword without a shield, perhaps swashbuckler. And based on the shirt it uses the same scouting gear as ninjas. I could see them expanding on the fight scene and having the WoL pull out a gun as well.

This class has usually been called a Corsair. Combo sword and gun, like sword and magic for RDM. Curious to see what the 2nd class will be, and people are still trying to decipher what Yoshi-P's shirt means.

Also, that deadass silence when Phil came out on stage for the XBOX version reveal was hilarious.

[Tactics]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

This class has usually been called a Corsair. Combo sword and gun, like sword and magic for RDM. Curious to see what the 2nd class will be, and people are still trying to decipher what Yoshi-P's shirt means.

Corsair is coined by FF XI but using gun and RNG mechanic instead of wielding sword and gun.
Ability to wield sword and gun usually went to Sky Pirates being unique job class, even so what used by mainhand depends on who (sword for Vaan, gun for Balthier) rather than wielding both.

Yoshi-P shirt is TNMT. I'm guessing it refer to all TNMT are named based on famous painters.
New World is known for Blue Magic and in FF VI there's Pictomancer (Relm) which lore-wise is branch of Blue Magic and would fit Valigarmanda as FF VI boss adapted to XIV. Reminder that he only wear grim reaper shirt prior to Endwalker, so its not necessarily hint for two or three jobs like his Sam Raimi's Spiderman shirt prior to Stormblood.

Not sure if Krile will take the job, because her FF V counterpart is closer to Mage + Beastmaster.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

Also, that deadass silence when Phil came out on stage for the XBOX version reveal was hilarious.

Well, an audience of FFXIV players isn't, out of necessity, going to include a lot of Xbox-only fans right now. Definitely that whole section was much more for the media than it was for the players, as you could tell by everyone's very-deliberate speeches and the awkward photo op. Probably the most relevant part was Kiryu's comment suggesting they'd be working with Xbox on all their upcoming products/franchises, so certainly speculation that FFXVI is not going to wait that long after the exclusivity window is up.


All in all, I like the overall theme, although I'm sure that, inevitably, the "summer vacation" will turn into a lie when everything goes straight to hell, as usual. (I can already picture the "all I wanted was a nice vacation" closing scene, finally arriving on the beach at last as it cuts to credits. )

It's definitely a long gap, though. When I saw the timing of the final Fanfest I thought maybe March/April, but Summer means late-June (back to their previous schedule). I also thought maybe they'd break the pattern this time and add a .6 patch (with this current questline being disconnected), but guess not. The addition of Xbox will be one milestone and I'm sure they'll have some more collab content (FF16 seems inevitable), but yeah. Definitely a long wait.

Graphic improvement seems modest but on the whole will be a nice brush-up. Honestly, cleaning up the textures is probably the thing people notice/complain about the most.

[MeoTwister5]

I would suppose that the delay to summer release is in part due to further testing so that the XBOX version is ready for simultaneous release with Dawntrails. 6.5 is likely at most mid September, so 6.55 will likely be January of Feb, so May or June is the likely release window of 7.0.

[cyberdemon]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

This class has usually been called a Corsair. Combo sword and gun, like sword and magic for RDM. Curious to see what the 2nd class will be, and people are still trying to decipher what Yoshi-P's shirt means.

Also, that deadass silence when Phil came out on stage for the XBOX version reveal was hilarious.

Well the turtles are green so green mage

Everyone there are already ff14 players. The news isn’t that interesting as a result for those present.

[MeoTwister5]

Considering that people have been wanting the game to finally make its XBOX debut for years, you'd have thought that Phil Spencer suddenly and unexpectedly appearing at FFXIV Fanfest would be an instantaneous realization that XBOX players can finally get into Eorzea.

[cyberdemon]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

Considering that people have been wanting the game to finally make its XBOX debut for years, you'd have thought that Phil Spencer suddenly and unexpectedly appearing at FFXIV Fanfest would be an instantaneous realization that XBOX players can finally get into Eorzea.

Wasn’t the reason because Microsoft didn’t want crossplay servers? At this point anyone who wants it was probably just giving an exasperated “finally!” Rather than a cheer lol

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by cyberdemon

Wasn’t the reason because Microsoft didn’t want crossplay servers? At this point anyone who wants it was probably just giving an exasperated “finally!” Rather than a cheer lol

There seems to be a very long history behind it and various things were mentioned over the years. At one point, the issue of "double-subscription" was mentioned (having to pay Xbox Live Gold + FFXIV subscription; I wonder if that will still be a requirement here?). At one point, the issue of cross-play was mentioned; I think at one point there was a requirement for people to optionally choose to play only with other Xbox Live players, and that was against their philosophy. (Since then, I've seen other cross-platform games find other ways to handle this requirement.) And then, yeah, at various times they've said they just don't have time. Whatever the reasons in the past, with them starting a new arc this expansion the timing makes sense.

I am still wondering if, at some point in the future, we will get to a point where where they will give people a choice (without paying extra) of whether to start the game in Arc 1 or Arc 2 somehow. Obviously right now they are making people pay extra for that, but sooner or later it seems like the backlog will just get too long (even with all the single-player optimization they're doing to make it easier).

[cyberdemon]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

There seems to be a very long history behind it and various things were mentioned over the years. At one point, the issue of "double-subscription" was mentioned (having to pay Xbox Live Gold + FFXIV subscription; I wonder if that will still be a requirement here?). At one point, the issue of cross-play was mentioned; I think at one point there was a requirement for people to optionally choose to play only with other Xbox Live players, and that was against their philosophy. (Since then, I've seen other cross-platform games find other ways to handle this requirement.) And then, yeah, at various times they've said they just don't have time. Whatever the reasons in the past, with them starting a new arc this expansion the timing makes sense.

I am still wondering if, at some point in the future, we will get to a point where where they will give people a choice (without paying extra) of whether to start the game in Arc 1 or Arc 2 somehow. Obviously right now they are making people pay extra for that, but sooner or later it seems like the backlog will just get too long (even with all the single-player optimization they're doing to make it easier).

For something like that they’d need to purge all current characters. It works for wow because the expansions aren’t usually connected but every ff14 expansion leads to another. It would be difficult for ff14 because you have to keep explaining characters or outright replacing all of them to start anew.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by cyberdemon

For something like that they’d need to purge all current characters. It works for wow because the expansions aren’t usually connected but every ff14 expansion leads to another. It would be difficult for ff14 because you have to keep explaining characters or outright replacing all of them to start anew.

I don't know if it'd need to be quite that drastic. There are people today who start the game fresh after buying a story skip + level boost, and even though they are missing references (Endwalker would have been particularly tough since it was the arc wrap-up), most of the stories still make sense in broad terms, and that'd be even more so now that they're starting a new story arc. If you consider most of the previous expansions before Endwalker (HW, SB, ShB), I think the stories can mostly stand on their own even if you don't get all the references. Most of the important points end up being explained anyway.

But even besides that, people remembering 10+ years of past story is going to get to be difficult anyway, so probably at some point they will want to integrate something into the game to help people remember past lore connections. I wonder if the Active Time Lore system they developed in FF16 may be a prototype for something they could eventually add to FF14. Otherwise, they could start adding some optional "synopsis of past related plot points" content into the game to refresh people's memories (and for new people who didn't play the whole history). (Of course, they did add New Game+ as a way for people to go back and play the old content too.)

If their goal is to keep on attracting new players for the next 10 years, I think it just gets to the point where having this long backlog is going to get to be too daunting to people, even if it's mostly soloable.

[monster]

My issue with giving a free option to skip the story is that it creates unnecessary pressure to skip. For in-game examples on a smaller scale, you have the MS roulette and the normal raid story, with two different solutions.

With the roulette, they decided to force cutscenes on everyone. With the normal raid story, they decided to delay savage release at least a week after normal. Both are attempts to negate the pressure to skip the story/cutscenes to keep up with other players.

I think the same type of pressure to skip will be present as well with the much bigger scale of the MSQ, especially for MMORPG players who may not be used to a mandatory story and/or may prioritize the endgame.

The current status quo is preferable as it still allows people who don't care to experience the story at all (as well as people creating additional characters who may not care to go through the full story again even if they enjoyed it the first time around) to make an initial skip via a one-time payment per character while also providing a natural barrier to skipping via that same fee, thus encouraging those who do not want to pay to go through the story (or master the art of button mashes to speed through dialog boxes and exiting cutscenes).

Of course, there are people who will quit if given only the option to go through the quests or pay a fee to skip the beginning part of it, but unless FFXIV changes the importance of story quests in the game (and I hope they never do), even people who are caught up will still have to go through it moving forward. So I think it's good for people who don't want to be forced to do story quests to get to the contents they want to do to just quit early on and not waste their time on the game.

One other thing: I do support any edit they want to make to the quests (and questing system) that will further improve the experience of new players, but I don't think it should go as far as just providing a free option to skip the the beginning of the story.

The only alternative that I would agree to is if they do another 1.0 -> 2.0 transition where every new characters start off at a new part of the story and everything before that is removed. If they're bold enough to go with that option and just have a new starting point for everybody (instead of simply an option to jump a latter part of the story) and make it work for the story such that existing and new characters can merge at this new starting point and continue forward mostly with the same story again, then I would be fine with that.

And in other news:

Images

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[Last Sinner]

From someone who played WoW for a long time - the moment you start giving people the option to ignore the initial story, you are permanently hamstringing your game. That initial immersion/connecting with the world is essential. The moment those got devalued in WoW, people only cared about how fast they could get to max level and that inspired lesser story/characters quality which cascaded to other aspects, which led to a worse community, etc.

If there are certain aspects later on that in FF14 that you could make 'Choose One of', then fair enough. But nuking the story never pans out well in the long run. Unless you really want a Classic mode...*cough*

I'd like to think FF14 won't kill the golden goose until Riot enters the fray around 2025. But...given Square Enix in general in the last few years...(Not a vote of confidence for Riot btw, they can't balance anything to save their life. But they have more 'goodwill' since they are less scummy than so many other options.)

[relentlessflame]

I definitely don't think they should "nuke" the story at all, to be clear. The story is arguably the best thing about this game and everyone should have the option of being able to play the "full experience." I do agree that they shouldn't create perverse pressure to skip. But at the same time, I just feel like it has to be balanced somehow with the increased burden of catching up. The free trial now including all the way to 4.x is obviously a helpful step, but part of the challenge is that if you ever purchased at any point, you aren't eligible for the trial at all, so it's that much more of a burden to bring back returning players.

Another related point I feel is getting a bit problematic is how the lower expansions have so few job skills (because they need to stretch the skill tree all the way to 90, now to 100, more later...) so the combat skill progression isn't aligned with the time invested. Some people complained how the combat in FF16 took ~8 hours to really open up, but in FF14 it's like 100+ hours for some jobs. The promise of "it gets better later" is a bit of a tough sell.

I guess maybe one thing they could consider doing would be to make improvements to the Unending Journey by adding a sort of "edited digest" version of any section of the story that strings together all the key scenes with some connecting text or narration (like a "recap episode").

Anyway, we'll see if they do something eventually. For now, it looks like the next expansion is just going to keep going as they have, although at least adding Duty Support to all the past main dungeons + expanding the Free Trial were definitely good steps.

[Tactics]

In one of radio talk with cast around ENW release, Yoshino Nanjo (Krile) asked if she will get turn doing action, which Yoshida affirmed she will have it after Endwalker, as writer team agreed that Krile's been on backseat too long. However when Nakamura Yuuichi (Thancred) asked if Thancred can get important role, Yoshida answered with he unsure if Thancred can have more screentime in future rather than saying his story finished by SHB or his screentime will be reduced compare to previous arcs.

Following that I'm guessing even the team seriously considered to end Scions saga as an option to let loose some weight and truly start fresh.
They can have Scions saga as Unending Journey Vol. 1 (14th Shard). They succeeded on rearranging story with SHB forced isekai with spice of timeskip and AU self; I doubt Yoshida unaware of it as story skip and job skip never disappear from "best seller of the month" starting from SHB. I expected to see their solutions about this after Dawntrail as by that they will be able to see how many people skipped even Endwalker.