The NicoNico Super Meeting 3 in Japan recently drew to a close and some interesting of tidbits of FINAL FANTASY XIV related news came to surface during the event. Producer and Director, Naoki Yoshida, was at the event and dropped hints about everything from upcoming classes, tweaks to existing classes, personal housing and even the marriage system! Read on for more.
A lot of the details have since been confirmed via the official forums, but for sake of reference we'll break the news down into "definitely happening," "maybe happening" and "please look forward to it" (aka it may or may not happen)
Definitely Happening
Classes
Black Mages (BLM) are currently felt to be somewhat weak in the Second Coil of Bahamut and may be buffed.
Summoners (SMN) will be getting at least one new pet, possibly two, when the level cap is raised. Right now it's still undecided whether SMN will be getting Leviathan-Egi, Ramuh-Egi, or both.
Information on new jobs/classes will be revealed soon - most likely at E3 this year.
A new system is coming for crafters that may allow some form of salvaging. More details are going to be revealed in the next Letter From the Produce Live on May 24th.
User Interface (UI)
There will be a UI function added to the PC and PlayStation 4 versions of the game to allow all 100 inventory slots to be displayed on screen at once, rather than on seperate tabs.
Players will be able to preview gear linked in chat/on the Market Board to see what it looks like when equipped.
PVP
Patch 2.3 will feature the new Frontline mode, which sees three teams fighting against each other for objectives with up to 24 or more players per Frontline.
Dungeons
Yoshi-P noted that most of the dungeons are, true to their nature, indoors and in damp, dark places. The next dungeon will be a bright outdoor area, similar to Brayflox's Longstop.
The next Hard Mode dungeon will be Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard) and popular April Fools character, Edda, will actually be involved.
Patch 2.3 will feature the next part of the Crystal Tower raid. There will be a lot of content based on older FINAL FANTASY games that will make longterm fans go "whao!"
The Binding Coil of Bahamut will see it's Echo buff raised to 20%, which will be the maximum, next week.
Housing
Rooms can be purchased in Free Company houses and will work similar to the Mog House in FINAL FANTASY XI. Players can decorate their own rooms and choose whether or not other players can enter. This will be introduced in Patch 2.3
Personal housing will come sometime after Patch 2.3. The size of the house is expected to be comparable in size to Inns. Price currently planned to be around 850,000gil though could potentially be lower.
The Ul'dah housing area is extremely unpopular with players and the landscape is going to be completely overhauled to provide a nicer night sky, less obstructions and nicer scenery.
Items
Novus Weapons, the continuation of the Zodiac Weapon Saga, will come with 2.28. Expected to have more visible progress tracking than the current Atma/Mythology grind. This was originally scheduled to go live with Patch 2.21 but was pushed back due to only a small number of players having completed the Animus saga.
Other Changes
Patch 2.28 expected to land in mid-May, featuring new hair styles and some content adjustments.
Phantasia will be available for purchase from Mog Central. All accounts will likely get another one for free with Patch 2.28 (this is not 100% yet)
Patch 2.3 expected to land end of June/early July.
Maybe Happening
Classes
SMN will also see changes to their existing pets, likely buffs, not nerfs, to make Titan-Egi and Ifrit-Egi more viable as right now Garuda-Egi is the only choice for endgame.
UI
Ability to toggle automatic Level Sync when entering a FATE
Marriages
Potentially coming some time after Patch 2.3. Ceremony will take place in East Shroud. Brides will get beautiful flowing wedding dress. Couples get a ring each, and destroying the ring or throwing it away will result in a "divorce."
Dungeons
The Whorleater (Extreme) and Thornmarch (Extreme) may be added to the Duty Finder
Other Changes
Content that is affected by weather, along with a weather forecasting system
Maximum number of Allagan Tomestones of Mythology will be increased, along with the amount that drops. Unconfirmed whether this will be in Patch 2.28 or 2.3
Please Look Forward To It
Gold Saucer
Stay tuned for details, a big reveal is coming soon.
It will feature some Chocobo related features, combat features and much more.
Mounts
Two-man mounts are currently in testing
New Chocobo content will be added. There will be a breeding hut that will be released in either Patch 2.3 or 2.35 that will let you train your Chocobo and possible change it's colours depending on what you feed and train it with.
Items
Primal Weapons (from Hard Mode Primals) may be used for something in the future, so hold onto them.
That's a lot of cool content in the works, and the development team are really listening to player feedback with some of the changes - such as additional Chocobo content and overhauling the Ul'dah housing area. It seems that player opinion is really something important to Yoshi-P, as he revealed in a recent interview with FOX News that A Realm Reborn was his attempt to restore faith in the FINAL FANTASY brand.
Quote:
With 26 years and 14 numbered titles, no movie, music, or video game franchise has ever had as long a history than Final Fantasy. I felt that the failure of the original “Final Fantasy XIV” was something that seriously undermined the trust toward the Final Fantasy series. If we were to continue with this series, I thought regaining that trust was something paramount; this is the biggest reason why I wanted to go back and revamp the game.
Hypothetically, if we had stopped service on “Final Fantasy XIV” immediately and rushed to release “Final Fantasy XV,” I have no doubt that fans would think, “I will never buy another Final Fantasy or Square Enix game again.” With “Final Fantasy XIV” being an MMORPG, in order to give back to those who went out of their way to spend a lot of money on a high-end PC so that they could play the original game, and also to expand on the franchise moving forward, I thought that regaining the trust on the very same title was the most effective solution.
SQUARE ENIX recently announced that FINAL FANTASY XIV had surpassed 2 million players, and the reception continues to be mostly positive. I'd recommend checking out the full interview over at FOX to get a deeper feel of the commitment Yoshi-P has to FFXIV.
Yoshi-P is no stranger to doing interviews for sure, he was also recently interviewed by Famitsu magazine in Japan and shared a few cool little easter eggs and other tidbits. Thanks to Emilam over on the FFXIV subreddit for compiling this list:
There is a secret path near Camp Bentbranch that lets you in from the back (see screenshot). The "shortcut" was originally meant to be made impassable but a designer used this path frequently so it was left this way.
Rainbows can appear in the sky when the weather changes from rain to clear. However, they don't always appear and can depend on a number of factors.
Items that can be obtained from Retainer Ventures were originally not that great. But after Yoshida demanded that the rewards should be made better, the possible list of items ended up including almost everything that is not Unique-traited.
After completing the Crystal Tower questline, the NPC Rammbroes will provide information on the world setting in the form of reports when you speak to him in St. Coinach's.
The debuff cast by the Gremlin in the Lost City of Amdapor can be dispelled by performing the emote "Comfort" or "Rally" on the affected person.
Within the development team, there exists a group of people from various departments referred to as the Minion Alliance. The group consists of perfectly grown men gathered in the smoking break room coming up with ideas like making wolf pups and coeurl kittens fight with each other when they get close to each other.
The Manderville Dance was originally meant to be one of a series of planned race-specific dances. The Manderville was meant for Lalafells, but when it was tested on a Highlander it became very comical, so it was upgraded from a race-specific dance to a reward from the Hildibrand questline.
The Moogle Doll's seams were made too realistic and looked scary. This will be addressed in 2.3 (see screenshot).
If you place all of the instrument furniture items within your house and play them all at the same time, you will get the Haukke Manor's BGM.
If you approach the Miqo'te NPCs down at the beach of the Limsa Lominsa housing area, they will fan you with their leaves.
Gerolt, the NPC related to obtaining job-specific relic weapons, was designed to be a hated character ("as despicable as puke (puke = "gero" in Japanese)), and therefore was named thus.
The female conjurer Edda from the Main Story was originally meant to join the Scions later on in the story. However, due to her popularity, an even better scenario now awaits her. Edda is now planned to appear in the new hard mode dungeon in 2.3 (Tam-Tara?)
Hildibrand was originally designed to be a Lalafell named Ronan Cognan. However, due to his manner of speech as an "Inspector Extraordinaire" not matching his appearance, he was suddenly changed into a Highlander.
There is a passionate "fan" of Hildibrand's assistant Nashu. You can often see him in the background of the cutscenes.
The "shakiiin" sound effect made when a Duty Finder match is made was originally meant for Limit Breaks. But out of concern that a silent DF match would not be user-friendly, this sound effect was inserted as a temporary placeholder. However, this sound ended up matching the DF better than anything else, so it became official.
The treasure map texture in FFXIV was lifted straight out of the world map in Tactics Ogre, which itself originally came from a coffee-stained piece of copy paper sitting on the desk of former co-worker Yoshida Akihiko.
Many people play the PC version of FFXIV while browsing the internet. Setting the sound to continue playing even when the game is not the active application via system settings will allow you to hear that "shakiiin" even while browsing.
Turning off the option to change resolution via mouse drag/scrolls in system settings will prevent accidental changes to screen display size.
Turning on gamepad support in system settings will allow the game to continue to receive input even when the game is running in the background.
Right clicking job icons in windows where they are displayed (e.g. Party Finder) will allow you to select/deselect multiple jobs at once.
Clicking on the Gil icon will switch the display to GC seals. Tomestones may also be added to this display in the future.
If you set your computer monitor display to "portrait" mode, the game will also shift it's display accordingly. This can be useful in places like character creation when you want to check out your character's whole body without zooming in and out.
And that's not all! Attendees and FFXIV developers at NicoNico got together to produce a special, live action, version of the popular Eorzea Collection videos. Eorzea Collection videos usually show off the new clothes and poses coming in the next major patch. This live action one features a load of Cosplay, a Demon Brick minion and lots and lots of /dance
From October to November this year, SQUARE ENIX will be hosting a number of Fan Festivals in their three major territories: London, UK. Las Vegas, USA and Tokyo, Japan. Fans from around the world will be able to gather and show their adoration for FINAL FANTASY XIV amidst a host of stage events, activites, special guests, and more!
In true SQUARE ENIX fashion, details are currently sparse - so - Please look forward to it! We'll report any new details as soon as we have them. :)
05-05-2014, 02:02 PM
Loony BoB
This was a seriously interesting read for all kinds of reasons. Great collection of information, there, Aul!
I particularly am interested in things such as the marriage system, the weather-related content, the player housing and the list of 22 interesting things that people might not know. :)
05-07-2014, 01:58 AM
Shorty
Even though I don't play FFXIV, I look at the fan festival as a kind of FF-specific Comic Con! It would be super neat to attend one of these events.
05-07-2014, 05:37 AM
Ouch!
A point of clarification: the initial translation of the Yoshida's comments regarding the price of personal housing may be incorrect. The question was framed by the interviewer stating that he had 850,000 G after donating money for the Free Company house and asking whether that would be sufficient for personal housing. Yoshida said that it would not be enough but that it would be cheaper than a Free Company house.
More details on the translation here. There's a bit of debate about it.
Additionally, we know a little bit more about the two new classes which were teased at the event. Specifically, one of the classes will be dagger based (not a surprise given that the main story in Through the Maelstrom basically confirmed (SPOILER)thief and ninja) while the other will be gun based (not a surprise given that there has been a gun-based musketeer's guild in Limsa Lominsa since the original launch). Yoshida said that the gun-wielding class is "not what we think" which has a lot of people speculating that the job associated with musketeer will be chemist as a healer rather than the, perhaps more obvious, corsair.
