Final Fantasy XIV Roundup: A New Year and Baby Behemoths

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It is now 2013, and so, as we previously announced, the Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 servers have been shut for good. Now we can only wait for the beta and the promise of the relaunch.

Naoki Yoshida, producer for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, posted a Happy New Year’s message today on The Lodestone. In short, he promises that no effort will be spared to make ARR a great game. He also urged everyone to mark Janaury 7th on our calendars, but would not say for what. Beta tester applications? The anticipated benchmark? A new trailer? All of the above??? We’ll have to wait and see.

Yoshi-P also threw in the following artwork:

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You might be wondering what that little purple thing is on the end. Well according to a new post on the developer’s blog, it looks like ARR will include baby behemoths – that are way less scary more cute than their grown counterparts. Here’s some more artwork from the developer’s blog:

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Aw, how cute! I’m sure it’ll be at least a year before this little thing could viciously slaughter me.

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Concept art for a new samurai helm.

The new year looks promising for Final Fantasy XIV, with the beta test to begin next month and more big updates on the horizon. Be sure to stay tuned!

omg baby behemoth ;-;

just found a reason to play this game.

That is adorable. XD I like that kabuto as well. :jess:

Omg, so cute. XD

Dude that thing is adorable!

That baby behemoth does look adorable!

I saw this over on IGN and been trying to keep up-to-date on this game via your posts. I'm definitely going to try this game when it comes out and I look forward to playing with anyone else who wants to from these forums.

On a side note, I can't decide between being a dragoon, or a hybrid Black/White Mage!

You will invariably level more than one class/job in Final Fantasy XIV, as utility is often the most desired asset when searching for party members. Before the servers for 1.x did their final save, I had white mage, black mage, and bard at level 50. Dragoon was next on my list, and I had already purchased gear for it.

To be clear, there is no hybrid black mage and white mage. There is, however, the opportunity for a hybrid thaumaturge and conjurer. The difference between classes and jobs in Final Fantasy XIV is that classes may borrow abilities from all other classes. This allows them to be more versatile, and allows them to lean toward jack-of-all-trades by supplementing a class's weak points by borrowing from other class skills (for example: thaumaturge using stoneskin, protect, and cure from conjurer to supplement their offensive spell repertoire). This is more useful in solo or small-group situations where you will need to fulfill multiple roles.

Jobs, on the other hand, are specializations of each class. Black mage is geared towards optimizing a thaumaturge's damage output by offering higher base intelligence and magic attack potency as well as additional, more powerful spells (freeze, flare, burst). This specialization allows them to better fulfill a set role (magic damage dealer) in group situations. The trade off for this specialization is that the number of classes from which a job can draw additional talents is limited to two predetermined classes. Black mage, for example, can only borrow abilities from archer and pugilist. As a consequence, the customization of jobs is significantly lessened by comparison. Consequently, most people will use the same cross-class abilities which compliment their job's specialized purpose. Take, again, black mage. You will almost always set Quelling Strike and Chameleon (both abilities from Archer that are useful for enmity mitigation) and Featherfoot and Second Wind (two support abilities from Pugilist useful to survivable in oh-trout situations). There is very little deviation from this as, for the most part, the number of useful cross-class abilities available to any given job are notable fewer.

All job specific abilities are exclusive to each job. Unlike class abilities, they may not be borrowed and are only available when that job's soul stone is equipped. While the specifics of this system are changing in A Realm Reborn (specifically, the list of abilities for each job has been drastically overhauled), the core mechanic is expected to remain the same. Classes will be flexible and able to borrow abilities freely from other classes. Jobs will be specialized to a specific purpose with flexibility and utility as the trade-offs. Note: not all class abilities are available to every class. Conjurer's cura, for example, requires conjury. While other classes may borrow cure, they may not borrow the stronger version. Expect this to remain a feature as well.

In case you were curious, white mage's classes are pugilist and gladiator, so they are unable to borrow class abilities from thaumaturge to do the same thing in the other order. I'm hoping the introduction of arcanist and summoner allows for a Disciple of Magic that can actually use abilities from the other magic classes while in a job.

tl;dr - Cross-class hybrids exist. Cross-job hybrids do not.

When do we get Blue Mage?

Forget blue mage. When do we get red mage?

That said, in the third Live Letter From the Prodocuer, Yoshi-P confirmed that second jobs for each class will be released at some point. The battle team has put its efforts into re-designing and re-balancing the existing classes and jobs, so they're holding off on adding more into the mix. That said, I expect that secondary jobs will play up their base class's abilities that the existing jobs do not. I expect the breakdown something like as follows:

Gladiator > Paladin (Tank) / Dark Knight (Damage Dealer)
Pugilist > Monk (Damage Dealer) / Puppetmaster (Pet Class)
Marauder > Warrior (Damage Dealer) / ??? (Tank?)
Lancer > Dragoon (Damage Dealer) / ???
Archer > Bard (Support) / Ranger (Ranged Damage Dealer)
Thaumaturge > Black Mage (Magic Damage Dealer) / Red Mage (Support/Debuff)
Conjurer > White Mage (Healer) / Geomancer (Damage Dealer)
Arcanist > Summoner (Pet Class) / ???

The paladin/dark knight dichotomy is too obvious to pass up. Puppetmaster was the top-requested job on the forum, and automatons already exist in the game. Black mage takes no advantage of thaumaturge's innate enfeebling magic passive traits, so red mage is likely there. It's also possible that dark knight gets pushed over to marauder, red mage to gladiator as more of a melee mage, and then have thaumaturge introduce green mage a la Tactics Advance. The bard/ranger thing seems pretty obvious. Given that conjurer gets water/earth/wind elemental offensive spells, geomancer makes good sense as the offensive alternative to white mage. Your guess is as good as mine for lancer and arcanist. I expect thief (another highly requested job) to come into play somehow, probably by first introducing a new base class. Ninja and samurai are obvious at some point, probably coming from a new base class such as ronin. Since they're moving ahead with arcanist, we may yet see musketeer as a playable class, eventually becoming corsair.

I don't know where blue mage would fit in, but I imagine a new class would probably precede that as well.

I like speculating.

Ouch!, thanks for all the info! One of the things you touched upon scared me a little though....

You mention 'A' class will always be using X,Y,Z to be effective. Is there little variation between every archer/gladiator/rest of fighters/mages? Will there come a point in time where I'll encounter any class and be able to know his skill bar without looking? Things like that really turn me off from MMOs...

I hope there are some outlier builds that may not be the 100% best at what they do, but offer a more varied and acceptable play-style in group play. If I end up rolling a Dragoon, and I get laughed at for using him, and then get laughed at again because i'm not using 'optimal' skills, I will probably quit the game and just stick to single player RPGs.

Thanks

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If you're asking whether dragoon is going to play just like monk because everyone is going to be choosing the same supplemental abilities from other classes, that is very unlikely. If, on the other hand, you're asking whether every dragoon is going to select the same supplemental abilities as other dragoons, then this is very likely.

Given that the game mechanics are being overhauled all the way down to how stats function, it's going to be a while before the community figures out optimum builds. That said, as in any MMORPG, the community will eventually settle on optimum builds for each job, and people will probably be considered gimp if they don't adhere to them. That's just a consequence of cooperative gameplay from MMORPGs to online multiplayer in a. Certain play styles or builds will be established as the most effective, and the community will adopt them and then pressure others to follow them.

Given that jobs have limited options to begin with, I wouldn't expect much (if any) variation. Part of the reason that every BLM used chameleon and quelling strike in 1.x was because two abilities that mitigate enmity are indispensable to a job that tends to deal a lot of damage and thus draw aggro. The other reason was because damn near every other ability they could take from archer involved a bow and arrow and was therefore useless to a job without one.

If you're playing as the base class without your job active, you'll see greater variation depending on the task at hand. However, this is only going to happen when you're flyin' solo. Group play will lean heavily toward cookie-cutter builds optimized for a specific purpose.