1.19 - The "Monster Patch"

[Loony BoB]

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.

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).

[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).

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!


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...

[Del Murder]

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

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

[Marshall Banana]

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

[Loony BoB]

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).

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.

[Miriel]

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).

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.

[Rostum]

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

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

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.

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.

[Loony BoB]

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.

[Rostum]

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?

[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.

[Rostum]

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.

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?

[Loony BoB]

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)

[Rostum]

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

[Loony BoB]

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?

[Rostum]

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.