1.19 - The "Monster Patch"

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Originally Posted by Yoshi-P

In an earlier letter, I believe I used the word “heavyweight” to describe patch 1.18. Well, patch 1.19 will be a veritable monster. To give you a rough idea of its size, we’re expecting the patch notes to be 3–5 times longer than 1.18’s.

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I'll try to summarise the long list of changes as best I can. Firstly the patch is due out late September at the earliest. This is their target date. Also, I'll skip the various "balancing of ___" stuff because that to me is an ongoing thing.

With that out of the way...

- IMPORTANT FOR WHEN READING THIS LIST: Physical levels are being abolished. Ranks will be renamed Levels. Skill Points will be renamed Experience Points.
- Simplified Opening Tutorials.
- Additional quests regarding the danger facing Eorzea.
- Additional supplemental quests.
- Additional Grand Company quests allowing 'full induction' into a Grand Company, including "speeches by the heads of state".
- Another event (predicting it's a Halloween thing)
- Ifrit Battle (and cutscenes) for both level 30 and level 50 characters.
- 'Caravan Escort' quests (level 20).
- Beastmen stronghold raids.
- A low level raid dungeon.
- Treasure chests in field areas (I assume this means 'free for all' chests as opposed to guildleve chests).
- Rental chocobos.
- Personal chocobos.
- Airships linking the three city-states.
- A system where you can accrue guildleve allowance so you can do more leves at the weekend.
- Ability to retry failed leves ("but not without conditions").
- Reorganising of systems such as the leve exchange system.
- Grand Company leves.
- Introduction of Grand Company ranks and exchangeable items.
- Introduction of supply and replenishment objectives.
- Diversification of the beastmen enemy types.
- More Notorious Monsters (for the low level dungeon, notably).
- Battle Regimens to be suspended while the foundations of the battle system are adjusted.
- New class-specific animations/motions for auto-attack.
- 'Link' system for enemies to be introduced, where they will call for reinforcements depending on player strength.
- Experience chain bonus for defeating enemies in quick succession.
- Experience bonus for defeating enemies that have linked.
- Change in formula for experience distribution.
- Classes to be made more unique. Notably, they will ask for player feedback to decide which actions should become unique to classes and which should be useable by multiple classes.
- Development of more unique motions for the various weapon skills etc.
- Addition of new recipes.
- Simplification of recipes.
- Materia system. This involves a large chunk of stuff, but to summarise, you can put materia into weapons/armor to increase their stats. You can remove materia, too, but this will lead to the loss of materia. Weapons and armor with materia in them can be turned into materia when certain criteria are met (ie, you 'level them up').
- Addition of spirit bond attribute to compliment the materia system.
- Stealth ability to be added for Disciples of Land & Hand.
- Config option to change camera movement speed.
- Implementation of a 'toggle function' for macro palettes.
- Ability to hide your primary weapon from view.
- Addition of a targeting mode that allows only engaged enemies to be targeted.
- Addition of new audio configuration options (e.g. muting all audio except BGM).
- Revised config mapping for gamepad and additional keyboard config options.
- New claiming system.
- Direct targeting of aetherytes etc. (for those who don't know, currently you have to select a nearby aetheryte using the menu).

And I think that'll do.

EDIT: It is worth reading over this thread in the offiical FFXIV forums for crafting changes. For the most part, I consider these changes glorious (and I say that as someone who has a weird love for crafting).

And with that I think FFXIV might be able to hang in there. Looks like a lot of good updates, and I'll be interested to see how they go with modifying the environments too (I read a recent interview that they plan on re-designing some and putting in more landmarks).

Can't wait to see it in action, but I most likely won't try out the game again until it's released on PS3 and it's P2P (as silly as that sounds).

The chocobos look freakin' sweet though!
http://static.finalfantasyxiv.com/to.../4d/1092_0.jpg

Edit again: I am really really really looking forward to FFXIV coming up to scratch. Memories of playing FFXI in its hay-day have me wanting something like it to dig my teeth in to and become attached to as I was back then...

I will call this the 'this all worked in FFXI and we should have included it from the beginning' update. :p

Looks pretty good, though. Starting to get hyped for this game again.

I'm curious to see how all of this turns out. A Halloween event sounds like fun, especially! Cocoa Puff is excited.

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Originally Posted by Rostum

I'll be interested to see how they go with modifying the environments too (I read a recent interview that they plan on re-designing some and putting in more landmarks).

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Yeah, we're all looking forward to this, although I don't think it'll be as extreme a change as some people think - and technically some could say there are alreay 2-3 landmarks in each area, so I hope they mean new ones. The areas are so massive that you could spend a very long time walking between a couple of small landmarks.

EDIT: Also, just found out they are hoping to get drag-and-drop for actions & traits for 1.19, and possibly also a system where when you change your class from (for example) marauder to gladiator it will change your action bar to whatever you had when you were last on gladiator. Basically it will remember an action bar layout for each class.

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Originally Posted by Rostum

And with that I think FFXIV might be able to hang in there. Looks like a lot of good updates, and I'll be interested to see how they go with modifying the environments too (I read a recent interview that they plan on re-designing some and putting in more landmarks).

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I'm excited to hear that. One of my biggest disappointments with the game was the it was just visually bland and unappealing to me. So I hope they really amp up the and visual styling of the game and make the new landmarks and whatnot pretty impressive.

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Originally Posted by Del Murder

I will call this the 'this all worked in FFXI and we should have included it from the beginning' update. :p

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You know what. I would have been happy with a FFXI-2, just with more refined mechanics and to have be heaps more rewarding.

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Originally Posted by Miriel

I'm excited to hear that. One of my biggest disappointments with the game was the it was just visually bland and unappealing to me. So I hope they really amp up the and visual styling of the game and make the new landmarks and whatnot pretty impressive.

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That and a new lighting system. Most of the newer games look awesome technically, because of the lighting. I think a lot of blandness comes from the unimpressive lighting in the game.

Personally, visuals have never been a problem for me - I just wish things were more alive, if you know what I mean. When I talk to someone for the 50th time, I don't expect them to continue to act like they don't know who I am. When I walk into the markets, I don't expect dead silence. When I walk around the world, I expect... some signs of random life that aren't either enemies or very distant birds in the sky. There are a lot of "life-signs" when you really look for them, but we shouldn't have to look that hard.

Yeah definitely would love to have the world feel more alive.

By the way, how are people who have got quite a few rank 50 classes feeling about the job system overhaul?

I don't know of anyone that isn't looking forward to the job system. You know the classes will still be kept, yeah?

We don't have that much info on the job system just yet - I think it's probably coming out in 1.20? I forget. But yeah, so far we don't know the ins and outs of it, if we level them up at all, etc.

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

I don't know of anyone that isn't looking forward to the job system. You know the classes will still be kept, yeah?

We don't have that much info on the job system just yet - I think it's probably coming out in 1.20? I forget. But yeah, so far we don't know the ins and outs of it, if we level them up at all, etc.

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I was under the impression that they were going to make the current classes more unique and also get rid of physical levels. That would certainly have a great effect on how the game is currently played, right?

Yup. But that's what everyone wants. But the people with rank 50 Gladiators will still have Rank 50 Gladiators after the job system kicks in, from what I understand. They will have to then go and unlock jobs relating to their classes via quests. I suppose you could see classes as base jobs from FFXI (eg. Warrior, Monk, etc) and jobs as advanced jobs from FFXI (eg. Paladin, Summoner, etc) when it comes to what you have at the start and how you unlock the new jobs.

But I'm unsure whether you can be both a class and a job at the same time, eg. You have the Gladiator class (to dictate your weapon type and, therefore, weapon skills) and then the Paladin job (which would increase vitality, defence, etc). We really don't have a huge amount of information just yet... but I think it'll work something like this. Still, I'm just guessing. :)

EDIT: Oh, wait, I think I get your original question. I thought you were talking about the new jobs that are going to come in, but you're actually talking about the physical ranks being removed and point allocations being made different. From what I understand, everyone is looking forward to the change and people seem fairly optimistic. No doubt a bunch of people will end up ragequitting the day of the change, but those with sanity intact will understand that it will take a little while to get right. As for making classes more unique, it seems a key part of this is restricting what skills you can use on other classes once you unlock them. They have stated they will (once 1.19 is live) be seeking a lot of fan feedback before they do this, so it'll certainly be interesting.

EDIT: RECIPE CHANGES: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/276 (thank God)

Ah I see. I must admit Yoshi is doing a brilliant job of getting this trout together.

I can't help but wonder if a game that was considered so far from good has ever been changed around to this extent. Any ideas of anything similar happening before?

Not that I know of. Most companies just let it die and try and make up for it elsewhere, or the company itself goes under. I think the only thing that comes close is APB, but I believe it ruined the company and it's another company that has picked it up to re-develop it (at least I think that's how I remember it, I can look it up later).

So definitely mad props for Yoshi to give it a good hard go.

Seems like SE is too stubborn to let a numbered FF installment die without having been profitable. It would be the first time in history after all!

Has the patch been dated yet?

Late September "at the earliest".

Here's a list of updates announced in release order:

List of changes

Synthesis Recipe Revisions
Materia crafting system
Abolition of Physical Levels / Attribute Point Revisions
Changes to Claiming and Engaging Enemies
Repair system problems
Letter from the Producer, XVII (09/01/2011)
Guildleve Revisions
UI Adjustments
Beastman Strongholds
The Direction of Armors, Equipments, and Weapons
Caravan Security
Chocobo's in action!
Letter from the Producer, XVIII (09/21/2011)
Materia Slots and the Future of PVP
Video of Beastmen Strongholds
Upcomming Jobs on Famitsu's front cover
Chocobo and Airships

Cool if you like ecort quests i guess :p

Well, it's just small content in a sea of what is to be the Grand Companies. I think I read somewhere that the more supplies delivered, the more it helps with events like Hamlet.

Hamlet defence sounds a bit like besieged, I guess. I like besieged.

I liked Besieged as well, except for the lag. Always took forever for players and NPC's to load though.

Well, it's not as bad nowadays because it's usually just at most 80 lv90s rather than 300 lv75s doing it. It's still sort of a challenge now and then though, cause I've got a feeling they buffed some of the NMs. A few days ago there was a lamia NM towards the end of a fight that had 4 elementals with her, each of them hit me for 400 damage regular attacks when i was a 90sam. And I had a bit of trouble evading gurfurlur on 90thf today too, ate quite a few skull snatchers for around 1000 damage each :p

Updated the list with a new video they released of the chocobo's in action - FINAL FANTASY XIV: Chocobo - YouTube. Pretty cool, but it would have been much cooler if they had the chocobo run from the side of the screen up to the player and then the player climbing/jumping on to the bird. Rather than it just fading in. Hell, even throw in some smoke or magic dust particles for the transition. Everyone loves particles.

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Originally Posted by Rostum

Updated the list with a new video they released of the chocobo's in action - FINAL FANTASY XIV: Chocobo - YouTube. Pretty cool, but it would have been much cooler if they had the chocobo run from the side of the screen up to the player and then the player climbing/jumping on to the bird. Rather than it just fading in. Hell, even throw in some smoke or magic dust particles for the transition. Everyone loves particles.

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I think it would have to materialise too far away for that to work, as that could mean stampedes of chocobos all over the map. In some places, mobs can appear pretty far away, so I imagine chocobos would have to appear out of an equivalent range. I do agree, though, that it would have been really cool. How did it work in FFXI? I can't even remember.

I look forward to all this stuff but the game will never feel complete for me until we can access Ishgard. It's been ages! They still saying we're not cool enough to enter? C'moooooooooon.

Yeah, I'd hope they'd surprise us with something like Ishgard.

In FFXI the chocobo's worked the same way, except when you got off your character actually jumped off and the chocobo ran off as it faded out. I'm guessing it'll do the same thing here.

Oh another thing that'd be cool is if there were emotes you could do whilst on the chocobo that also involves the chocobo. :)

I always really really hoped that they would set up two-person emotes like hugs and high fives, but I guess it would be pretty difficult considering the insane size difference between races.

I wish there were some two-person emotes too, but not the ones you mentioned...

Despite the racial size differences, it still could be done. It'd be a lot of animating though, which does take time. It would be really cool though.

Update: Looks like a 30th release date for patch 1.19. Updated the list with the next Letter from the Producer.

You going to get a bit of playtime when it's out, man? ;) You've been keeping up a lot, it seems, although you still haven't got a character to rank 20 in anything! It's very easy to rank up these days so I'd suggest getting at least one up the ranks so that you can enjoy the increase in content you get as a result.

Yeah I wanted to wait until this mega patch is out first, and I'm two ways about keeping my Lala or going for a Roe - I like both! I'm almost tempted to wait until the new jobs come out if it completely changes the way the battle system works though!

Some more stuff released:
Upcomming Jobs on Famitsu's front cover
Materia Slots and the Future of PVP
Video of Beastmen Strongholds

If you like PVP, apparently Lalafell is the way to go. :p I love my Roegadyn though. =] There is only one downside to it that I can think of, and that's the camera angle. When yer head is that high up, it can make for awkward first-person viewing when you are in a fight. You often end up looking directly downwards at enemies who are at yer feet. I imagine the problem could be the opposite with the Lalafell, always looking up! If you prefer third person viewing, though, then I imagine it wouldn't really matter at all. Personally, I favour tanking, so I like being a big neo-galka. You look the part, you feel the part... and it's easier for people to select you when healing. ;) Although most good healers just tend to avoid using the mouse and prefer using macros / keys for that end, at least, Danielle does.

I like the look o the beastman strongholds. If that music is the music for each stronghold, I'm beginning to consider putting the music back on for FFXIV. I've had it off for ages, but with the chocobo music, the Ul'dah music (I'm unsure if it's always the way it was during the fire festival, but if it is, that's awesome) and whatnot... the music seems to just keep getting better. Maybe it's just the Thanalan music I didn't care for.

Well I do prefer third person view. Hmm, hard decision.

I am unsure about the look of the beastmen strongholds. It looks like the same recycled landscape but they threw some buildings on top and a bunch of mobs.

Chocobo and Airships

Looks like we won't be able to actually run around the airship until a future update. Hmm, what is the incentive to take the airship over just using anima to warp?

Maybe if you're out of anima, or low on it.

I know this isn't FFXIV but it's related, as in why couldn't FFXIV's environments be as rich and colourful as these? This is just the first zone - Blade & Soul - The Dragon's Forest Zone Tour HD - YouTube

SE go employ the environment artists from Blade and Soul prz.

Don't you go pulling another thread off topic like last time! Keep B&S in General Gaming. But seriously, make a thread about the game there because I'm pretty sure everyone who views that video will be wanting to talk about the game.

You say "Why can't FFXIV designers do this?" - has any MMO ever looked even remotely close to as good as that, ever? It's like Crysis quality graphics, but an MMO. That's insane. My question isn't why the others have done it, but (probably closely linked) how they have done it. Because playing that game as an MMO, with that quality graphics... what kind of a machine do we need, how will load times work, etc? Is this game designed purely for South Korea's ahead-of-the-curve network & technology? It's incredible. But yes. Uhm. Back to patch 1.19 now. Post something about B&S in General Gaming so I can post this reply there. :D

AVAST, YE LILY LIVERED LANDLUBBER! Sorry I couldn't help myself. Believe it or not but you don't need a computer half the requirement that FFXIV needs to be able to at least play the game. Anyways, I'm more talking about the design over the tech. Technically FFXIV has higher-res textures and normal maps, and other cool shaders to get their unique lighting effects, but the overall design is bland. (See Tera, GW2 and Aion in terms of design without the tech)

Anyways, I am not sure what else about 1.19 there is to say unless Yoshi has more stuff to reveal. Already there is a lot.

Aye, it already seems like talk in the FFXIV forums is turning towards the upcoming job system for patch 1.20 or 1.21 or whatever, mostly due to some random concept art being released. Including the transforming bow that turns into a harp or something like that, cue the new word being thrown about: "Barcher" :P

Oh I forgot to write, they delayed the patch until the 5th of October.

Sorry to double post but this was really interesting:

[patch1.19] Patch 1.19 Notes

It's such a huge patch. I don't think I've ever seen one so big for an MMO. Especially not one that's been losing money for the last year.

It will be very interesting to see what the game will be like after patch 1.20. Almost something completely different to when it was released. But only time will tell whether it'll be worth playing.

Damn that's a lot of stuff.

That patch is actually pretty damn impressive. I might want to play a bit now. With updates like these I am also feeling more inclined to actually pay for the game.

I for one will definitely be checking this out when the much hyped PS3 release actually happens.

I think the PS3 release will definitely be worth checking out and most likely will get in a lot of players if they market it right. I'm still slightly inclined not to play just yet until the new job system is put in. Still unsure exactly what they're planning with it.

Okay, so the patch went live last week and, during the weekend just past, Danielle and I have spent a lot of time playing FFXIV. And by a lot, I mean pretty much all weekend. The game definitely feels a lot better - well, the parts I've played so far. I still need to do a bit more in the way of battles, although we've held our own for the most part.

Battle: My understanding is that it is now a bit more difficult for solo players to level. Levels are much more realistic when it comes to guaging enemy strength. My personal experience of this is fighting an enemy one level above me as a gladiator and getting my butt kicked. It used to be that I could defeat something a fair few levels above me without difficulty. I can, however, annihalate things just a few levels below me with ease. So basically close to your level = good. I've experienced links and chain bonuses which are a lovely thing. Especially when Danielle was playing mage to my tank. We dealt with enemies pretty effectively and got up to 80% chain bonus, which was very nice, naturally. I can only imagine that with a large group, you could really rack up experience quickly.

Grand Companies: Danielle and I have joined the Immortal Flames, the Grand Company of Ul'dah. The game forces you to do every 'initiate' quest of all three grand companies before you choose and I can see why. Before doing the quest, I was without question going to sign up to the Immortal Flames, as was Danielle. We were annoyed that we had to do the other GC quests. However, upon completing them, we were genuinely reconsidering. The game forces you to do this but it is with excellent reason. The three companies have very different outlooks and we had a very difficult time deciding which to go for. All three appealed to us for different reasons. We eventually 'eliminated' the Limsa GC and had to pick between the very nice Gridania scenery, leader, NPCs and general 'cause' vs. the convenience of Ul'dah and their respective 'cause'. The convenience swayed me in the end and I opted for Ul'dah. Convenience being that I have Ul'dah set as my permanent home point so I can Return (teleport) there for free. I am sure that someday, some year, they will allow us to do the quests of the other GC's so I can experience them myself, however for now, I am happy that my anima can be spent a little slower.

Quests: We've done one instanced dungeon now along with a number of quests relating to materia and the grand companies. The instanced dungeon was alright. I don't see the massive appeal of instanced content, to be honest, but then again this dungeon was simply that: A dungeon. Going by the map and the fact that there was no boss of any sort, I suspect that there is a massive amount more to do in the dungeon that we have not yet done and that will be touched upon in further quests. But yeah, no big deal for me. The quests for the grand companies, overall, were alright. It's a shame that they were relatively repetitive when it comes to the quests for each of the grand companies. You could predict exactly what was to happen. Given that the entire set is compulsory before you join a grand company, I think they could have done a lot more to balance things a little less evenly. At least the storyline behind them was different, it was just the enemies you faced, the result of each of the quests, etc. - all the same, really. But on the flipside, they are just one-off initiation quests and therefore not of great importance. Also, they take no time at all to hammer through if you're a pair of level 32 characters, since the mobs are all around level 19-23. :p

Crafting: Oh man, has this been improved. Not by what you do, but by the additions to it and the simplification of recipes. I spent pretty much an entire day doing crafting leves, learning about the materia system, turning my equipment into materia, crafting and buying new gear with Danielle, collecting dyes with her as well so we could turn the equipment into better gear (I'll note further on this soon) and making use of the extra 100 inventory space by setting up two different sets of gear - one for crafting and one for fighting. The end result is that I am now awesome. I have yet to level up my crafters enough to fit materia into my own high level fighting gear, which is annoying to say the least, but I'll find someone who can help eventually and then go from there. Crafting is a very effective way to level up your gear, I've found. I look forward to seeing the materia economy grow/evolve.

Gear: Okay, one downside to the above. Square-Enix have cocked up by making it so that gear, upon being dyed in a certain colour, will have it's stats improve in one direction or another. This is really annoying for those out there that want to just colour up their gear the way they want without having their stats affected one way or another. To be honest, this doesn't include myself all that much, but the community is pissed off. I can see the upsides and downsides, but overall it's mostly one big downside. If they want to have the gear be improved at a risk of losing the gear, they have materia and they can always just upgrade the overall gear, but they shouldn't have to change the colour at the same point. As someone has pointed out in the forums, at level 50 it's generally expected that people will all have the same colour gear purely for stat reasons, which is stupid.

Other: It's nice to see the story evolve a little more, even if I have yet to get to the higher level main story quests. I'm getting a decent amount of lore and storyline info so the game feels a bit more real now. I've yet to try out Ifrit but I understand that even a few days after release nobody had managed to get him lower than 8% health, and I've not heard yet if anyone has managed to finally best him. Everyone is challenging him constantly to try to be the 'first'. I look forward to having my lunch break so I can see if anyone has finally managed. :) Oh, and it's nice to see some goblins and whatnot, and to be forced into new areas. Speaking of which...

Maps/Landmarks/etc: I'm discovering landmarks I did not know existed. All this time I was going "Man, why don't they have landmarks in FFXIV like those windmills in FFXI?" and they have windmills - they are just off the beaten track. You're forced into seeing them during one of the GC quests. Say what you like about how FFXIV is boring and exploration is boring because the landscape is boring... it's quite the opposite. You have to explore if you want to find the interesting bits. There are still more obvious landmarks being put in all the time, like beasttribe strongholds and little orchards and camps (not aetheryte camps - other camps) and whatnot, but there is much more to be seen if you actually make the effort. I would be spending much more time exploring if Danielle had her way. Unfortunately for her, I'm desperate to improve my Armorer to the point that I can make gear for my Gladiator, so it may be a little while yet! She'll probably force me eventually. :p

I'm liking a lot of the improvements that they made in the patch, but my Archer definately packs less of a punch. Which at first I didnt mind, but my cure ability has gotten weaker as well (Not while I'm a conjurer though). So anything on the same level as me to three levels below has a good chance of doing me in. I cant see why Archers lack a method of self healling. They're not like gladiators, they cant take a beating.

They do - Cure, Second Wind, etc. They work with Archer, and therefore are in some ways an 'Archer ability' because an Archer can use the ability. To say that every weak character should be able to heal a lot would make the game very boring very quickly.

Archers were overly powerful before the recent patch (I don't know this from experience, I'm just going by what the masses were saying on the forums) so I can only imagine that this was a balancing act. It should be noted, though, that gladiators do not pack much punch at all. They can take a lot of hits, but they are surprisingly weak in attack.

So long as you are using Cure and have gear that is suitable for your level, then you should be able to kill an enemy that is of the same level as you. I do think, however, they are definitely trying to make grouping more and more attractive. While I don't group very often at all, I think this is a good thing... the more the community is forced into working together, the more the game will feel like an MMO. I think people should have the ability to solo, but it should not mean that they get the same amount of experience from soloing as they do from grouping. Hopefully it will force Danielle and I to get to know a few more people, too. =x

Archers would, however, benefit greatly by stopping the 'long range' attacks that pretty much every single mob has. I hate how this is the case and really do think that archers should be able to attack from a longer range or that the range in which mobs can attack back should be lowered. The point of an archer is to remain out of range from attacks from the enemy, but at the moment this is not really the case. You can never really outrun an enemy.

Yeah, Archers definitely need more range, but thats impossible to get when your going solo. Although I find that the range is fine after the initial, start battle, shot. I don't know why, but i always have to get a lot closer to land that first hit. And if I'm on a hill then I pretty much have to be on top of them.

Going back to the patch. Has anyone found a random treasure chest yet?

I think so... not sure if I was on a leve or not, though! I'm pretty sure I was around Camp Drybone looking for quarry points and passed a chest and got something. I forget what, I think it was just money. But yeah, yay for random goodies.

I think archers just aren't a class that is designed for solo. I don't know about giving them a healing spell, one thing that might make a little more sense is making them more likely to be able to evade attacks, but I thought that would already be the case.