althea_valara: A screenshot of Alisaie from Final Fantasy XIV. (alisaie)
Althea Valara ([personal profile] althea_valara) wrote in [community profile] finalfantasy2021-02-05 10:15 pm
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FFXIV announces next expansion!

It's called Endwalker, and will release this fall. Some highlights that I can remember from the (very long) showcase announcement:


* Warrior of Light is a Paladin in this expansion.

* two new jobs: Sage (a barrier healer class featuring weapons unique to XIV) and a melee DPS class to be announced later

* Sage confirmed to start at level 70, no class requirement. You unlock the job in Limsa Lominsa

* healers are going to be divided into classical healers (i 'm not sure that's the word they used but it gets the point across) and barrier healers. AST is getting an adjustment due to this new division, and it sounds like duties might ask for a particular kind of healer (this was implied, not firmly stated)

* story will end the arc started way back in patch 1.0. This arc will end with patch 6.0, and patch 6.1 will start an entirely new story arc that should last for years to come

* Yoshi-P is *not* leaving FFXIv. He intends to be around for a long time.

* there will be two new cities. The first announced is the smaller, Radz-at-han. This excited me because the city is mentioned in the Dancer job quests, which I just unlocked. The larger city couldn't be teased as it would be too much of A spoiler.

* the story of 6.0 will take you to the moon

* Alphinaud will be changing jobs to Sage, but you'll need to play to find out why

* Estinien added to the Trust system. When they showed this slide someone said in the stream chat, "Estinien took a shower!" His hair did look glossy! (I once laughed with my linkshell over a retainer named Estinien'needs'a'bath, so apparently this is a common fan thought). Yoshi-P said you'd need to play to find out why a lone wolf such as Estinien decides to join forces with the Scions.

* Some new beast tribes, I already forget the name of the one they showcased (should have taken notes!) but they are reminiscent of elephants

* new enemies to fight, but I can't remember any of them, alas

* Anima! I assume she will be an eikon to fight but they didn't specify

* one of the areas visited is Garlemald, the capital of the Garlean empire. It's in really rough shape, which had the chat going wild shouting "SUCH DEVASTATION!" (for those who've never played, the bad guy of A Realm Reborn says this during the final dungeon of the base game)


* online fan festival coming in May. Two days, free of charge, but they will be selling digital items: the Lunar Whale mount which can hold 8 people (!!!) plus the minions Edge, Rosa, and Rydia. The festival is going to include live music; these segments will probably not be archived so we were urged to tune in to the stream if we want to see them.

* PlayStation 5 version beta starting in April. It will be free of charge to anyone who owns the PS4 version, and have two modes, a 4K version for beauty and a 2K optimized for frame rate. Should have much faster load times than PS4

* Big news that upset a lot of the chat: they are down scaling numbers. As a person with programming in her background I totally understand why, but everyone was crying NO MY CRITS! sigh. Yoshi-P gave an example of a Black Mage spell that does 50k damage currently might do only 10k afterwards. He stressed that this does not mean your characters are getting weaker; content will be adjusted. But, as a result of this change it might be more difficult to do duties with undersized parties, something they are aware of. The reason for this change has a lot to do with limitations of programming. There were some overflow issues that were causing bugs, and if they had kept on their current pace, more bugs would likely occur. It was stressed that this is partially for the future health of the game, and that in ten years that might have to make a similar adjustment.

* level cap raised to 90, as expected

* removal of belts as equipped items (chat said they were de-Nomura-ing the game). Inventory slots will be given to weapons and rings, with five slots to be saved for a rainy day. Any belts equipped (including on retainers) at launch of 6.0 will be given to a Calamity salvager. But we were warned to remove any materia we wanted to keep in advance.

* Island Sanctuary, new area to relax in. Lots of comments in chat about Animal Crossing/Harvest Moon. The Sanctuary is not just for crafters/gatherers.

* as expected, housing in Ishgard. When expansion drops you can visit the new housing areas but won't be able to buy a house until 6.1

* New role quests, crafting quests, and gathering quests

* new 8 person raids (not crossover events) and Alliance raids. One of them, I believe the alliance raid, is called Pandemonium:
teaser showed someone who looked exactly like Lahabrea. Yoshi-P and translator sang "lala hee!" But didn't confirm for sure it was Lahabrea.

* expansion of The Gold Saucer. Chat all yelled "Blitzball!", was not confirmed what it will be

* new PVP content that should make it easier to find matches.

* data center world travel! Yes, now you will be able to visit other data centers! It sounds like you'll have to log off and log back on to do so, and there will be some limitations to it. They are aware players think this might crash world economies, but they said (a) that didn't happen when then started the world visit system, (b) they will monitor the situation

Trailer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc7fEmS6gIA

Official Site: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/endwalker


If I think of anything else I'll edit this. It was *long*.
dorchadas: (FFIV Cecil Kain and Rosa)

[personal profile] dorchadas 2021-02-18 03:51 pm (UTC)(link)
I was so excited about going to the moon and the WoL going Dark Knight to Paladin that I end up having to explain the end of FFIV to my girlfriend (who skipped IV through VI). It makes me glad I have a paladin ready to go. To the moon!

She gave me an IOU for the Lunar Whale mount for Valentine's Day. Now I just need to make eight friends in the game...

I'm curious what they'll do to Nocturnal Sect if they're removing the barrier aspect, since it's woven into the AST questline.

I got lucky and got a house when demo timers came up again, and I'm looking forward to getting a bigger FC house when everyone moves to Ishgard, but I really wish they had finally done instanced housing. Like, "Thank you Warrior of Light for ending a millennium-long genocidal war, here's your personal Ishgardian estate."

I'm very curious to see what plot points come up in Garlemald. We've been waiting years to go there!
dorchadas: (FFIV Edge vs. Rubicante)

[personal profile] dorchadas 2021-02-24 03:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I've only played the DS remake, which I heard was a much more difficult take on the game compared to the SNES game. I want to go back and play the original game, which I've only seen friends play part of and have never played myself. Well, the PSP remake, anyway. It's like 17bit graphics and doesn't have the voice acting (which was okay, but not my favorite. Maybe I would have liked it better in Japanese but I didn't know any Japanese when I played it).

I only started playing August and I'm most of the way through Stormblood, but I keep getting sidetracked by all the content. I haven't done a main story quest in a couple weeks because I've been leveling the jobs I haven't gotten to 70 yet and exploring Eureka. Sometimes you just want a place to mindlessly grind when listening to podcasts.

I'm really curious about the Island Sanctuary too. I also assume it'll be instanced and maybe a place to garden for people who don't have housing plots, but I'm not sure if they'll put in the furniture and decoration aspects. There's so many ways they could solve the housing crisis and they just...don't.

Dancer (and Gunbreaker and Monk) are the three jobs I haven't even touched yet, so I'm really curious to see the stories! I had better get to it before EW drops.