Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn producer Naoki Yoshida has held his sixth Live Letter from the Producer to answer players’ questions. You can find a full list of the Q&A here. Additionally, an intrepid FFXIV player has condensed the recorded version of the Live Letter to only include the parts where gameplay or concept art was shown:
Now, onto the highlights from the Live Letter.
Yoshi-P gave us a lot of new details about housing. The housing system will include possible additions called towers. Setting up these towers at your house will give you and your free company certain benefits, such as bonuses to experience and gil acquisition rates. Players will also be able craft furniture for houses, as well as buy, sell, and trade land use rights. I’m quitting once e-lawyers get involved. It’s also currently being planned to allow the ownership of multiple houses, though it’s not clear if that will be possible right away.
There was also some new info on dungeons. ARR will include 16-18 new dungeons, all instanced. But the static 1.0 dungeons are not being removed, and FATEs will occur in them. Some of these new dungeons, such as the Crystal Tower and Great Labyrinth of Bahamut, will include some fantastically powerful weapons. The relative strength of new weapons will roughly be as follows: primal weapons < Crystal Tower weapons < Great Labyrinth weapons. And while as of launch, you won’t be able to enter instanced dungeons with chocobos, but there are plans to allow them later!
A lot of people have been asking about the new materia system over the past few months, and it has been completely overhauled. Equipment in ARR will have materia sockets, much like in Final Fantasy VII, and anyone can add one materia to one socket without failure. Adding more materia to a single slot (“multiple melding”) is “forbidden,” but it’s possible – though if you fail, you won’t lose the equipment, thankfully. More information will be released in the near future.
Chocobos will be a big deal in ARR, and you’ll be able to train your chocobo to certain classes, such as tank or healer. Chocobos will level up with you and acquire skill points; these points can be used to obtain skills that are suited towards a specific class (e.g., healing skills). It will apparently be possible to change a chocobos class anytime. And in previous updates, we discussed how chocobo armor will have stat bonuses on them, but Yoshi-P announced that that plan has been scrapped. Chocobo armor will now only have aesthetic value.
Crafters will have a larger role in A Realm Reborn, though they’ll have their work cut out for them. Every piece of equipment will be assigned an item level, and instanced dungeons will have both player level and item level requirements that must be met. Item levels can be satisfied with recovered items or crafted items. And some new recipes for equipment will be unlockable only be completing game content.
Quick hits:
• A LOT of new features will be available in phase 3 of the beta: free companies, guildhests, limit breaks, more FATEs, early stages of the main story, and more dungeons.
• Lots of new weather for ARR: sunny, cloudy, rainy, and even things such as sandstorms and blizzards for certain areas. Weather may also impact fishing.
• Players will be able to change the color and otherwise customize the fancy new Magitek armor.
• Primal battles will essentially be the same as with 1.0, though the primal will have a larger role in the main story.
• It will eventually be possible to move items between characters on the same account, but this feature will not be available at ARR’s launch.
• Coerthas and Mor Dhona will be high-leveled dungeons, and within them there will be dragons!
• There will be a 4v4 and 8v8 PvP coliseum, and it will eventually be possible to view PvP matches as a spectator by seeing the fights through the cameras of the PvPing players.
That’s all for this Live Letter. New beta keys for phase 2 have already been sent out, so the beta is steadily progressing. Of course, everyone is still eager to get to phase 3, which marks the beginning of the PS3 version testing as well as a lot of new content. We are still months away from a launch, but things continue to look promising. Stay tuned!
04-08-2013, 04:27 AM
KH-Cloudy
Ah...thanks for the highlights & summary! I look forward to the housing system and seeing how the materia system plays out. As well as customizing the Magitek armor.
