Spent a bit more time with the non-story aspects of FFXIV's 3.4 patch Soul Surrender today, so here's a few thoughts with that in mind.
First up, I finished my first Wondrous Tails journal, albeit rather poorly, so I have a good handle of what that's all about now.
Wondrous Tails is a new weekly quest where you acquire a journal from the adorable young Miqo'te Khloe Aliapoh. Khloe wants to hear all about your adventures, so you agree to help her out by filling in her journal with tales of some of your exploits. You are then presented with 16 different challenges for the week, nine of which you need to clear to complete the journal.
On the opposite page to the challenges you are to face is a 4×4 grid of blank spaces for stickers. You acquire these stickers by completing the challenges — one per challenge, though you don't get to choose which sticker you get. Fill a line in the journal and there's a reward separate from the one for completing 9 challenges. Fill two lines and there's another reward. Fill three and there's another still. These rewards are significant, at higher tiers consisting of Allagan Tomestones of Scripture, the current "top end" endgame currency, and even item level 250 armour which, while not the best in the game at the moment, is certainly pretty good.
They are not, however, easy to accomplish, as I've discovered this week. It's not completely random chance as to whether or not you fill some lines — by helping new players complete duties for the first time, you earn "Second Chance" points, which can be used in one of two ways: firstly, to mark a completed challenge as incomplete while marking an incomplete one as complete. This effectively allows you to do something again while removing the need to do something you don't want to do. You can choose the complete challenge to make incomplete, but not the incomplete challenge to make complete. Alternatively, you can spend two Second Chance points to shuffle the entire board of seals (including the ones you've already placed) in the hope that you will get a more advantageous arrangement. In order to make three lines with nine seals, you need their placement to be absolutely perfect — a horizontal, a vertical and a diagonal. As such, it's a bit of a gamble that you can't necessarily rely on.
I gambled and failed, ending up with no lines at all by the time I had nine seals — you can only use the shuffle option when you have between three and seven seals, so you can't just shuffle a completed board around. Still, I at least got the reward for completing the journal for the week, which is meaningful in itself, and there's always next week to try again.
Next up, I jumped in to the randomly generated Palace of the Dead in an attempt to finish my Aetherpool weapon and get something to take the place of my outdated i210 Anima weapon until I can finish the upgrade process. New to Palace of the Dead in this patch is the addition of the Accursed Hoard, a series of hidden treasures that can only be located by using Pomanders of Intuition, which last until you unearth a piece of the Accursed Hoard. Your party banks the pieces of the Hoard until you complete the tier of the Palace that you're on, and like everything else, if you party wipes you lose them.
Assuming you successfully completed a tier, each piece of the Hoard the party acquired will reward you with a sealed sack which must be taken to a new NPC in Quarrymill to appraise. There then follows a gacha-style appraisal sequence, during which you can anticipate how good the item you're about to get is via the animation that plays (or not!) during the appraisal sequence. There are some decent items available through this system — in my first batch of three sacks, I got a paissa minion, the expensive Thavnairian Bustier top and a firework. In the seven other sacks I acquired throughout the evening, I got more fireworks. It seems fireworks are the default "normal" draw, at least from the common bronze sacks, but there seems to be an above-zero chance of getting rare items from this, too, making Palace of the Dead a worthwhile activity for reasons other than acquiring the weapon.
There's obviously a lot of RNG in both of these systems that I've described, and some people don't like that, preferring a predictable goal that you can take aim for and always see your progress towards. Final Fantasy XIV has always been heavily RNG-driven, however, and so these two systems, while having the potential for enormous frustration, are firmly in keeping with what we've come to expect from the game to date!
Final Fantasy XIV patch day has come and gone, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts. I'm going to mostly talk about the Main Scenario quests in this post, so I'll put in a Read More link for those browsing the front page who don't want to accidentally see spoilers.
It's Patch 3.4 for Final Fantasy XIV tomorrow, so naturally any players of the game have been poring over the patch notes, which were released in their entirety today.
Different people have different priorities when it comes to MMO patches. Here's what I intend to get up to:
Main scenario
Whenever a new patch comes out, I always do the main scenario quests first, because these usually 1) unlock at least some of the new content and 2) mean that I can't be hit with inadvertent spoilers from loose lips.
In the case of Patch 3.4, it's an exciting time for the game, since we not only get to find out a bit more about the mysterious "Warrior of Darkness" — seemingly our dark counterparts, and possibly even something to do with the character used in all the game's CG cutscenes — but we also start the run-up to the next expansion, which is set to be revealed in the not too distant future.
The smart money is on us finally heading to Ala Mhigo in the next expansion, as it's a place that has been frequently referenced in the game lore, and which is of particular importance to Raubahn, who has been a major character in the entire storyline so far. Our visit to the Ixali region of Xelphatol in 3.4 would seem to indicate our overall "journey" heading in that direction, too, but ultimately the truth remains to be seen.
Dungeons
Since I'm probably going to romp through the main scenario stuff first, I'll probably complete Xelphatol first, with The Great Gubal Library (Hard) coming afterwards, since it's just a sidequest.
I enjoy Final Fantasy XIV's dungeons, but they're always a bit too easy for my liking. This is almost certainly deliberate, as a means to make them friendly to casual players rather than hardcore raiders, but it would be nice to have some new dungeons that the majority of the playerbase don't vastly outgear the moment they step inside.
At least if nothing else the new dungeons will provide some gear to help people "catch up" to the cutting-edge item level, and dungeon boss fights are always memorable experiences. I can't honestly say I'm hugely excited about either of the dungeons coming up in this patch, but I will reserve judgement until I see them for myself!
Sophia, the Goddess
A new Trial is always enjoyable, because although they're just single boss fights, they tend to be absolutely spectacular, with some of the best music and graphical effects in the game. The preview footage for the battle with Sophia looks to be no exception to this; hopefully it won't become another Sephirot, where people moan and complain every time it comes up in Trials roulette mere days after it being released. (I actually quite liked the Sephirot fight!)
Alexander
I've been underwhelmed by Alexander throughout the 3.x patch cycle, but then, I wasn't anticipating it to be particularly up my alley from the moment it was first announced. I'm not a big fan of steampunk and the comic relief that the Goblins generally provide in Final Fantasy XIV doesn't lend itself well to the sort of epic conflict that raids, for me, need to be truly exciting. Also the music in Alexander up until now is awful (although admittedly in keeping with the Goblin theme) and I hope to God we at least get some suitably epic music for the final battle.
All that said, I'm particularly interested to see how the Alexander cycle ends. We were promised some sort of interesting encounter involving time manipulation, so I'm very interested to see where that goes. Beyond that, I hope the team have learned some valuable lessons from Alexander's development and the lukewarm to poor reception it has had from the player base.
Squadrons
This content caught my eye when it was first announced, and it's probably going to be little more than glorified Retainer Ventures — i.e. wind up a minion, send them on their way to do something off-screen for 18 hours, then check the results when they get back — but I like the idea, nonetheless, plus there's potential for it to be expanded in the future. In fact, the developers have specifically said they'd like to make it so that players' Squadron members can be taken into dungeons, so that will immediately make this stuff worthwhile.
Wondrous Tails
I'm intrigued by this: a randomly selected series of weekly objectives with some significant rewards on offer for completing them. What I'm most interested in is exactly what content is going to be involved with this. Are we going to see something that expects us to do Extreme difficulty trials and The Binding Coil of Bahamut at its original difficulty level? (Or, at least, not unsynced with level 60 gear and stats)?
Mechanically speaking, Wondrous Tails sounds like a way to make old content relevant again, something which has historically been accomplished with the Relic weapon quests. Wondrous Tails is divorced from all other aspects of progression, however, so it can be tackled alongside whatever route you want to go with, be it raiding, Relic or a combination thereof.
Palace of the Dead
I like Palace of the Dead a lot, and it's getting some tweaks in 3.4, the exact details of which haven't been given. What I'm most looking forward to is it being extended to the full 200 floors in patch 3.45, with floor 100 being the end of its "story mode" and floors 101-200 being effectively a "hard mode". Palace of the Dead already offers some worthwhile rewards in the form of weapons; I'm interested to see what the deeper floors will offer.
Apartments
Since they're set to sell for just 500,000 gil, I'll likely finally get my own piece of personal housing in the form of an apartment. It's a pity you can't do gardening in them, since gardening is one of the key benefits of having either a personal or a Free Company house, but I'll enjoy having a space to call my own that I can fiddle around with and decorate.
The onward grind
I'm making decent progress on my Dark Knight Anima weapon, and will continue to do this throughout 3.4; hopefully the new additions to the game will make this process more varied and interesting.
Beyond that, I've been levelling White Mage and enjoying it, so I might try my hand at a bit more healing than I have been doing in the past, though naturally gearing WHM up will have to be balanced with gearing DRK, which is still my main.
Overall, I'm really interested to see where 3.4 takes the game, and especially interested to hear the first details of the new expansion when they finally arrive. Hopefully it won't be too much of a tease when it's revealed!
The first MMO I really got into was Final Fantasy XI. This was after a few previous aborted attempts including EverQuest and Ultima Online (over dial-up — not recommended, particularly EverQuest, which crashed every time I zoned) as well as slightly lesser-known titles like Dark Age of Camelot.
I never stuck with the earlier games because they never quite resonated with me for one reason or another — perhaps it was their clunky interfaces or their painfully slow progression. All I know is that Final Fantasy XI, despite also having a clunky interface and painfully slow progression, managed to capture my attention for a decent period of time before I finally moved on to something else — Final Fantasy X-2, as I recall — and never went back.
Just recently, some Final Fantasy XIV friends and I have been getting nostalgic for XI, so I thought I'd go check it out, given that it's been a number of years and several expansion packs since I last tried it. And while the game is still recognisable as what it once was — a steadfastly traditional MMO more in the EverQuest mould than the now more fashionable WoW mould — it's been considerably streamlined to make the experience much more friendly to new players and solo players. On top of that, players now have a hefty amount of options to choose from when they log in and want to decide what to do next. This is not something Final Fantasy XI was ever lacking in, but the additions and refinements that have been added to the formula over the years benefit both new players and grizzled veterans.
Take the Fields of Valour and Records of Eminence systems, for example.
The former sees you examining "field manuals" in each zone and taking on a training regime of your choice. Completing said regime rewards you with experience, gil and a currency called tabs that can be traded in for various benefits ranging from teleporting back to your home city — a godsend if you've been grinding several zones away, since fast travel isn't anywhere near as accessible as it is in XIV — to having temporary buffs cast on yourself.
The latter, meanwhile, is accessed through your Quests menu and allows you to assign yourself up to 30 objectives at a time from an extremely comprehensive list of possible challenges that range from "defeat 100 enemies" to "deal 100,000 points of damage in total" via "loot 10 wind crystals from enemies". Most of these objectives are repeatable, and all reward you with experience points upon completion.
Just the addition of these two systems, which support the existing style of play FFXI veterans will be used to, makes levelling a considerably less painful, time-consuming process. What once took weeks of grinding can now be done in a few hours — to put it in context, I played for about 2 or 3 hours earlier and made it to level 16. First time I played this took me several weeks to achieve; in several months of play I never got any further than level 30.
It's a bit of an adjustment to go back to XI after the tightly structured gameplay of XIV. XI, by contrast, is much more freeform; there is a main storyline to follow, but it's of considerable benefit to players to go out and level up a bit first before even thinking about tackling these missions. The story can even be ignored completely if you'd rather just go out hacking and slashing monsters, unlike in XIV, where it was an integral part of overall progression by gradually unlocking game features and challenges as you went through.
One of the best additions to XI in recent years is the Trust system, which allows you to recruit "alter-ego" versions of various NPCs from around the game world after meeting the requirements to unlock them. Once unlocked, these "alter-egos" can be summoned at any time in the field for you to party up with, effectively allowing you the ability to take on considerably stronger monsters than you would otherwise be able to tackle solo, and all but eliminating the need for standing in Valkurm Dunes for hours at a time shouting "RDM LFG" in the hope that someone would pick you up to go and kill lots of crabs with.
One might say that the Trust system takes away from one of the key defining aspects of FFXI as a massively multiplayer online game, but in practice it's simply more convenient for many players. You still have the option to party up with other people, of course — and chances are they'll play their roles much better than the relatively limited AI of the Trust companions — but for those who prefer to play solo, Trust NPCs can form a formidable party with you once you've unlocked a few of them.
The other interesting contrast between FFXI and FFXIV is how it handles combat. XI's combat is relatively simple in the early levels, relying mostly on your auto-attack and occasional use of Weaponskills when your TP bar hits 1000 or greater. XIV, meanwhile, is much more active, demanding that you both dodge enemy attacks with telegraphed areas of effect and keep performing your class's combo or rotations as efficiently as possible, preferably without stopping. Both are considerably slower paced than true real-time combat, striking a good balance between a turn-based feel and actually allowing the player to feel like they are in full control of their character, but XI is even slower than XIV, providing you with plenty of time to pick abilities in advance from its traditional FF-style menu system rather than XIV's hotbars.
I've enjoyed returning to Vana'Diel so far; the experience contrasts well enough from XIV that the two games can sit quite comfortably beside one another in a gamer's collection, and the state they're both in in 2016 means that you can sit down for either a long or a short session with either and feel like you've achieved something.
Mostly I'm wanting to play through Final Fantasy XI to see its main story content, which is supposed to be good, but the sheer amount of stuff to do in the game — it's got over ten years on A Realm Reborn, after all — is more than likely to prove a bit distracting!
With it being Final Fantasy XIV's third anniversary it's only fitting that I take a look back at the reason I've been playing it since its closed beta — and why, even though on several occasions I've felt like I might be "done" with the game, I keep on coming back, time after time.
These memories are presented in no particular order, but it makes the most sense to start with this one.
Knowing FFXIV was going to be something special
I jumped into Final Fantasy XIV's closed beta after a casual discussion with a Twitter friend about Final Fantasy XI and how much I liked it despite never really getting all that far with it. Eventually I found myself with an invite to the testing period of the game, and I was immediately smitten with it. Everything about it felt Final Fantasy. The look, the feel, the music, the controls, the battles, the monsters — and yet, it had enough of its own unique identity to make it feel like far more than just series fanservice.
Specifically, Final Fantasy XIV adopts a somewhat "dark fantasy" tone throughout, clearly heavily inspired by works such as Game of Thrones and The Witcher in places. Sure, there are still moogles and chocobos, but there are also complicated political machinations, betrayal, murder and, technically, just prior to the start of 2.0's story, apocalyptic catastrophes.
I was immediately drawn into the world in a way that World of Warcraft never quite managed to enrapture me. NPC dialogue, although localised with more than a few liberties taken from the original Japanese, much to the chagrin of people who play with Japanese voiceovers, was beautifully written with an almost Shakespearean tone in places, blending old- and middle-English words and phrases with modern spellings to make it actually comprehensible.
The fact that Final Fantasy XIV placed any emphasis on its main story at all — let alone to the degree that it has ended up doing so — was a unique feeling for me. Even its predecessor Final Fantasy XI's main story had felt like a side activity you did when you had done enough level grinding to be able to take on the next mission; here, the main story was tightly tied in with your character's progression: you advanced through the levels and became more powerful both in terms of mechanics and narrative, until you eventually reached level 50 and took on your most terrifying challenges yet.
During the closed beta, I only played up to about level 20 or so, but that was enough to know that I wanted to keep playing — and to know that I wouldn't mind when the servers were wiped post-beta to prepare for the start of live service.
Making some great friends
My friend who had urged me to try out FFXIV was all set to assemble a Free Company — FFXIV's take on guilds — as soon as the facility became available, and many members of that free company, centred around the Giant Bomb video games website, became great friends. I even took a trip to PAX East to hang out with a bunch of them and had an absolute blast. And while I recently left said Free Company in favour of a smaller group who are more local to where my wife and I are, FFXIV's various ways of keeping in touch — as well as extra-game means of communication like Discord — mean that I'll never be far away from this band of loveable rogues.
Castrum and Prae keeping me up until 5am
When I reached level 50, I was proud. The only other MMO I'd ever reached the level cap in prior to that day was World of Warcraft, and I'd stopped playing shortly afterwards, as my lack of friends playing had made that game a rather lonely experience at high level — this was the days before its current Dungeon Finder system, itself inspired by FFXIV's Duty Finder.
I'd heard the final two story dungeons, intended to be done pretty much as soon as you hit 50, were quite an experience, and so I asked the Free Company very nicely to accompany me on my first run through them. This was — and still is — the best way to run these dungeons, since they're both full of cutscenes, and running with a completely preformed party means no risk of other people running ahead and starting boss fights while you're still watching dramatic scenes.
The experience of running Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium left such an impact on me that I immediately wrote about it on USgamer. It remains one of my fondest gaming memories to date, and it makes me a bit sad that people coming to it now will more than likely be partied up with a group of people who outgear it to such a degree that every boss fight is a complete steamrollering. Pro-tip, then — if you're just hitting 50 for the first time and you have 7 friends handy, queue up for Castrium then Prae and check the "minimum item level" option in Duty Finder in order to experience these two dungeons at their original difficulty level from shortly after launch.
Entering the Coil
I happened to be up and about one night when some Free Company-mates were heading into the endgame raid dungeon The Binding Coil of Bahamut. At this point, the raid had been "unlocked" because better gear than it offered was already available, and so it was there for people to run just for the experience of the unique story it offered, as well as unlocking subsequent chapters.
Coil was a whole other level of the game for me. The encounters were much more complex, they demanded much more coordination and awareness of what was going on, and the unique story, music and enemies you fought in there made it feel like a truly "special" experience.
Forming LoCoBomb and tackling Coil proper
Loose Cannons, or LoCo, were Giant Bomb's neighbours in the Limsa Lominsa housing district of Mist, and they're now my new Free Company. LoCo is a tiny little group compared to the hundreds of members of Giant Bomb (many of whom are inactive players, but still) but we struck up a mutual friendship with one another, even going so far as to put together a rather casual, slapdash static for tackling The Binding Coil of Bahamut, a little later than much of the rest of the player base, but tackling it nonetheless.
Raiding together was a great way for us to get to know one another better, and we had a lot of fun times working out way through the first four Turns until we hit our first real barrier: Turn 5.
Toppling Twintania
Turn 5 of Coil was originally the hardest fight in the entire game, facing a party of 8 players off against the rather angry dragon Twintania. Accompanied by the fantastic piece of music Thunderer, this was a genuinely terrifying confrontation in which you really felt like you were battling against insurmountable odds.
Twintania was our first real encounter with having to properly coordinate raid tactics thanks to now-notorious mechanics such as Divebombs and Twisters. Taking her down for the first time was an incredible feeling, only to be matched by the time we finally bested the final boss of the Second Coil of Bahamut.
Nailing Nael
Turn 9 of Coil — or Turn 4 of Second Coil, if you prefer — quickly took over from Turn 5 as being the hardest fight in the game, mostly due to how unforgiving it was. The fight featured a wide variety of tasty instant death mechanics and even a few sections where careless play could wipe the rest of the raid without too much difficulty.
After a long slog through Second Coil — Turn 6 gave us a lot of grief, though the subsequent two went a little smoother — LoCoBomb persevered and were eventually victorious, however, and we still weren't sick of the two incredible boss themes Tempest and Rise of the White Raven.
This encounter remains, to date, my favourite boss fight of all time in any game ever. Ten character levels, over a hundred item levels and one expansion later and it's still not particularly easy to clear.
Phoenix from the Flames
A lot of people will note that Turn 12 — Turn 3 of Final Coil — is as memorable an encounter as the grand finale Turn 13, and I'd certainly agree with that. Resolving a large number of questions surrounding what really happened at the end of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0, Turn 12 sees the party facing off against the iconic Phoenix, accompanied by this magnificent arrangement of the game's main theme Answers. I still get shivers every time I hear it. And the recent The Rising event in the game now brought it out at the perfect moment to genuinely give me goosebumps all over my body.
The Final Witness
The final battle in Final Coil is appropriately spectacular. It wasn't horrendously difficult by the time we got to it — each subsequent patch had increased the amount of bonus HP and damage you'd be blessed with when you went in, theoretically allowing more and more people of lesser skill and/or gear to enjoy all of Coil's story — but it was still an immensely worthy absolutely, positively, definitely final boss. And it made incredible use of Answers.
An in-game marriage and a real-life proposal
(if the embed doesn't work, go here to embarrass me)
January 3, 2015: Amarysse Jerhynsson married W'khebica Qimi (now Wuckle Bunny, because no-one can spell authentic Mi'qote names properly). During this process, the player behind Amarysse Jerhynsson — yours truly — made a rather lengthy virtual speech that culminated in him proposing to the player behind W'khebica Qimi, who was sitting in her study upstairs from him at the time.
We married in June 2015. And who says computer games are antisocial?
Heavensward and beyond
The first full expansion for Final Fantasy XIV was an exciting moment, as it would take us to brand new areas, see us tackling brand new dungeons and battling fierce new foes. It was everything most people hoped for, with an excellent story — to some, better even than A Realm Reborn's at times meandering narrative — and one hell of a final boss fight.
While the long lull between Heavensward's release and the first major content patch finally arrived with us was, I feel, largely responsible for the fact that my former Free Company are no longer quite as obviously "active" (at least in public channels) as they used to be, Heavensward has, on the whole, been a great evolution of A Realm Reborn's base, even introducing a number of brand new types of content to the mix, with my favourite being the new randomly generated Deep Dungeon.
Heavensward's raid scene hasn't appealed that much — I'm not really a fan of steampunk in general, and the narrative set up around Alexander was feeble and unmemorable compared to the majesty of Coil — but there's still been plenty of stuff to do, and as we saw with the Live Letter yesterday, there will continue to be more and more stuff to do as we start the buildup to the second full expansion, set to be revealed for the first time in October.
It's not many games you can play almost continually for three years and still look upon fondly, but I guess anything you spend that much time in the company of eventually becomes something you really, truly can't ever let go of.
It's hard to get this across to people who haven't been on the journey I've been on, and it probably won't be quite the same for someone who starts right now, but I stand by my nomination of Final Fantasy XIV as my Game of the Year for 2013 over on USgamer, and given the number of hours I've played, it's probably my GotY for 2014, 2015 and 2016 too.
It's 5am and I'm still up because I decided it would be a really smart thing to do to stay up and watch the beginning of the 14-hour livestream to celebrate Final Fantasy XIV's third anniversary. It's not as if I have to get up for anything in the morning, though, so it's fine.
The reason why I wanted to watch at least the start of the livestream is because of the Live Letter from the development team, featuring a preview of the upcoming patch 3.4. These are always interesting and exciting, because they often reveal new game features and content, some of which ends up being a surprise to everyone.
I'm interested to see where 3.4 goes because the story begun in Heavensward is now essentially over — patch 3.3 saw adventurers defeating the dread wyrm Nidhogg and saving Ishgard from another thousand years of war with the dragons.
Previous patches did, however, tease the existence of dark counterparts to the player's Warrior of Light, and it looks as if 3.4 and 3.5 will concern these individuals in the run-up to whatever the next full expansion will be. (We find that out in October.)
I'm watching a livestream with a concurrent live fan translation, so I'll just write some thoughts as I watch, then post the whole shebang in one go when it's done.
3.4 will be called Soul Surrender and concern the aforementioned Warriors of Darkness. It will also apparently feature a great deal of lore about the planet of Hydaelyn itself, where the game takes place. It will be out on Tuesday, September 27.
As usual, there will be new main scenario quests advancing the main storyline. It looks as if Alphinaud and Alisaie will finally be reunited after being apart for pretty much all of A Realm Reborn and Heavensward. Alisaie was the main NPC for the excellent Binding Coil of Bahamut raids in A Realm Reborn, and apparently this patch's story will make reference to Coil, even going so far as to change dialogue if you previously completed Coil. (Cue a rush on unsync'd Coil runs!)
There will also be new Scholasticate quests. These started a couple of patches ago and sort of tailed off without any resolution, but they had potential to be interesting.
And Hildibrand will be back. His content has been a little weak in Heavensward, lacking the custom boss fights of A Realm Reborn, but his quests have nonetheless remained amusing and well written.
There will be some tweaks to the battle system, including recast timers being reset when restarting battles — a godsend for raiders or people trying to clear new content for the first time. The changes will also include some changes to auto-attack — Yoshi-P mentioned he wanted to make some changes here in a recent interview with Famitsu, and it looks like we're going to get the first stage of that with 3.4 — you'll no longer have to worry about character facing, just be in range of your foe. In other words, this means you can keep moving around a target without worrying about losing auto-attack damage for those periods when you're not directly facing it. Good news for bards and machinists in particular, who are perhaps more reliant on auto-attack damage than most.
Some Extreme Primal fights will be added to the recently added Raid Finder. These Trials aren't quite full-on raids, but still have quite a lot of complexity, so it will be good to have a means to organise learning or clear parties other than Party Finder.
The UI will have a Countdown feature added. Exactly what this does remains to be seen, but it's apparently intended to be a replacement for macros that some players used, perhaps to announce when certain abilities come off cooldowns.
The final chapter of the Alexander raid cycle is coming this time around: Alexander, The Creator and a Savage counterpart. Last chance for them to get this right after a somewhat lukewarm reception from much of the player base.
There's a new trial that sounds as if it will be a second member of the Warring Triad, since it's called Containment Bay P1T6, much like the previous Sephirot fight. Apparently the foe this time will be Sophia, the Goddess.
New dungeons include Xelphatol, the Ixali homeland, and a Hard mode variant of The Great Gubal Library. Still just two rather than the three ARR got with each patch, though this isn't surprising any more.
PvP is getting a duel mode that can be done in the Wolves' Den in a new part of the map. You'll be able to queue for dungeons while dueling, which is nice, and there will be no time limit; matches only end when someone wins or leaves the duel area.
PvP will also get a Custom Match feature allowing two light parties to set up a clash against each other, and a Spectator mode. FFXIV's PvP is actually pretty good, so it's good to see it getting some love.
The roguelike-esque dungeon Palace of the Dead will get an update in patch 3.45, bringing it to 200 floors total. There will be a job-specific ranking system based on a score you build up as you play. Floors 51-100 will be about the same difficulty as the current floors and bring the dungeon's story to a close. Above floor 100, things get much harder but they'll be worth many more ranking points.
Grand Companies are getting an update after being dormant pretty much since 2.0. A new Grand Company rank will finally be available, Platoons will become available and have some sort of missions attached to them, and new gear will be available, presumably this time geared to level 60 characters.
The Platoon system looks to have something to do with raising NPCs, and you'll be able to go into content with these NPCs from the sound of things — you can make a team of one player and three NPCs.
A new game feature is Wondrous Tails, which involves helping a young Mi'qote girl create something by completing objectives in a book. No other details were given.
Gold Saucer is getting an instanced Triple Triad battle hall for each data centre, allowing you to find opponents from other servers and thus expanding the minigame's scope considerably.
RTS minigame Lord of Verminion will also be added to the Duty Finder, allowing you to queue up and find opponents that way.
Housing updates will include the introduction of the Apartment system, presumably functioning something along the lines of Final Fantasy XI's Mog House system. It looks as if there will be a public lobby in each building as well as instanced rooms for players, and there will be 1536 apartments per server, assuming 3 buildings (one for each of the Eorzean cities) with 512 rooms each. They will cost 500,000 Gil, so much cheaper than current housing. Hopefully they won't all get bought up to be resold!
A system called the Double Cross Hotbar will be introduced for controller players. It's intended for people who don't feel they have enough available buttons when playing with a controller and want to be quicker to get at certain abilities. You'll be able to double-tap a trigger to access the extra buttons, and it can be used in conjunction with the existing Expanded Cross-Hotbar for even more available buttons. Essentially it adds an extra 16 button slots, and you'll have the option to keep these visible on screen at all times, and adjust the transparency of the hotbar you're not using at the time to make it clear what actions you have available.
The Double Cross Hotbar stuff looks like a great quality of life improvement for the game. Is it wrong that this is one of the things I'm most excited about? It will certainly make more complex jobs more straightforward to play with controller. Apparently Yoshi-P and his team are pretty excited about it too, as I think they spent more time showing it off than anything else in the Live Letter!
The exploratory missions to The Diadem are getting some minor updates, including the ability to queue as a gatherer rather than having to change once you get there. It will also start dropping item level 235 gear, making it potentially worthwhile again. A brand new exploratory mission — hopefully with lessons learned from the Diadem — will come in patch 3.5.
The new Allagan Tomestone endgame currency will be Tomestones of Scripture, and the gear they purchase is rather Sharlayan in its look, particularly the Dragoon's rather fetching robe and hat combo.
An online status for role-players will be added. FFXIV doesn't seem to have that many RPers in my experience, but that doesn't mean they're not thete, so having a means for them to find each other will be good. You'll also be able to use hyphens in character names at last — no more errant apostrophes!
Finally, The Rising event starts today. Last year this was an awesomely meta event in the game where you could warp out of Eorzea and visit the writers' room to meet the development staff. It was an extremely cool moment, and gave the feeling that the FFXIV team love and are grateful for their players.
Exciting times ahead for the game, then, and I'm well and truly back on board after my short break from it. Events like this remind me why I can never quite quit it.
Talking to some of my Final Fantasy XIV friends today, I realised quite what an impact XIV's predecessor Final Fantasy XI had on me, even though I never really got that far with it in the long term.
As with many other things throughout my life, the thing that has stayed with me for the longest ever since I played it for the first time is the music. (Incidentally, the music is, more than anything, the reason why I find I can't stay away from Final Fantasy XIV for long, even when, as I did recently, I think I'm "over it".)
Final Fantasy XI's music is not as well known as many of the other soundtracks in the series, primarily because XI itself is not as well known as the other Final Fantasy games that have been released over the years. It's not as technically accomplished as XIV's diverse soundtrack, and it's not the work of series veteran Nobuo Uematsu (who hasn't been quite as involved with the series in more recent years) but it is nonetheless made up of a selection of rather lovely pieces of music.
Here are a few that make me feel suitably nostalgic every time I hear them.
This music, simply called Ronfaure after the area in which it plays, is one of my favourite pieces from Final Fantasy XIV, because it pretty much sums up the overall atmosphere of the game: vaguely melancholic and rather traditional.
Final Fantasy XI is — at least, from what I remember — one of the more traditionally-set Final Fantasy games, with an emphasis on good old swords, shields, magic, orcs and goblins. Its soundtrack reflects this, and is a contrast to XIV's diverse track listing, which reflects the diversity of XIV's world itself.
The first character I played in Final Fantasy XI — and the only one that ever got anywhere to date — hailed from the Federation of Windurst, and thus his starting area was Sarutabaruta, which featured this wonderfully calming piece of music to accompany your exploration.
Sarutabaruta was a land of grassy meadows and sunshine; a thoroughly pleasant place to have a stroll, were it not for the monsters wandering here and there, of course.
One of the things I liked most about Final Fantasy XI, even after I played World of Warcraft for the first time, was the fact that it had a battle theme. Well, actually it had several according to your progress and whether or not you were in a party, but this one was likely to be the first one you heard as you stepped out of the gates of your starting city for the first time and prepared to have the shit kicked out of you by a small bumblebee. (FFXI was an MMO designed in the EverQuest mould, in comparison to FFXIV's rough adherence to the World of Warcraft formula, and consequently was brutally difficult, particularly at low levels.)
I always particularly liked that the battle theme for FFXI actually sounded like a Final Fantasy battle theme.
Final Fantasy XI's character creator was simple compared to those that came in later years, but one of the things I always liked about it was that each of the several races you could play as in the game had their own "theme tune" and even had their own signature animations to show you what they were all about while you were deciding. The Mithra, FFXI's take on the catgirl, were exactly how you would expect them to be from a game designed by Japanese people, and their music reflected that nicely.
Final Fantasy XI's group content was structured rather differently to XIV. It wouldn't be until about level 25 or so that you'd encounter your first real "boss", marked by a "Burning Circle" that you had to enter with a party of companions you'd previously gathered — no Duty Finder for you here.
Confronting said boss was A Big Deal, in other words, which is why I can remember it vividly: battling a dragon and his Ahriman companion, accompanied by this stirring soundtrack.
I never got far enough into the story to get properly into the expansion packs for FFXI, but I did visit some of the areas, because they were good for level-grinding.
I think, for once, YouTube comments sum up what I feel on hearing this piece of music better than anything I could say here:
"And here I am, 8 or 9 years later laying in bed listening to this music, wondering what ever happened to the people I considered my closest friends. Time is cruel, and one by one we each took a break from the game and never returned. If youre in a guild/ls/free company now, these will be the days that you someday look back on 😀 Dont let your friendships disappear, get on Facebook/Discord/Guildwork and keep in touch with them."
"Makes me tear up… I miss my old ls. r.i.p. Saints"
"comments like these make me wanna cry ;-; chemistry like this is so hard to find now. social life is so fast now"
Quite. For all their faults, for all the assholes who play them and all the whining that inevitably goes on around them, MMOs are, at heart, about people finding and connecting with one another, then sharing unforgettable experiences together.
I had my first Dragon Quest experience recently. As a big fan of RPGs, particularly those of the J-variety, Dragon Quest was a gaping hole in my knowledge that I'd never gotten around to filling. Until now!
I've been giving the DS remake of Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen a go first of all. (Technically I've also played about half an hour of the Game Boy Colour version of the very first game.) So far my feelings are a little mixed, but overall leaning in a positive direction, though I will happily admit I am very early in the game so far and thus haven't had an opportunity to see all its systems at work.
From what I understand about Dragon Quest from speaking to others, its main distinction from its longstanding rival Final Fantasy is that there's less emphasis on characterisation and plot — at least as far as the main playable characters are concerned — and more in the way of mechanical and strategic depth. Thus far in my time with Chapters of the Chosen this would at least partially seem to be the case: the game features a number of different chapters focusing on an individual or small group of characters before the plot "proper" gets going in the final chapter, and these playable characters never speak a word. Nonetheless, you do get a decent sense of who they are through a combination of their character art and the way other people react to them.
The first real chapter of the game focuses on a soldier called Ragnar who is called in by the pseudo-Scottish king to find out what's been happening to a number of children that have gone missing recently. The actual solution to this issue isn't all that complicated, but Ragnar's roughly hour-long quest acts as a good introduction to what Dragon Quest appears to be all about. There's a bit of world map wandering, a bit of dungeoneering — and Dragon Quest dungeons aren't at all linear, featuring numerous branching paths and secret areas filled with treasure — and lots and lots of fighting.
So far so RPG, though I did find Ragnar's quest a little lacking in mechanical depth: as a straight fighter-type character, he didn't have access to any interesting abilities whatsoever and his main role in the party appeared to be exclusively confined to hitting ATTACK every turn and dealing damage. Things got mildly more interesting when he recruited a friendly Healslime called Healie into the party, but there still wasn't a lot to it.
I understand that the "chapters" of Dragon Quest IV are primarily intended to act as an introduction to the characters and their mechanics, but starting with the barebones simplicity of Ragnar isn't the strongest of openings. Combat wasn't interesting with just Ragnar and the entirely automated Healie in the party, and boy is it frequent in Dragon Quest; for many people I can see that being a turnoff. That said, it's worth remembering that we're essentially dealing with a remake of an NES game here, where the main overhaul the DS version received was with regard to its visuals rather than mechanics.
I'm also not one to write off a game after an hour of play, either, so I fully intend to continue my Dragon Quest adventure; I'm just hoping the characters that come after Ragnar are a bit more interesting to play, and I'm confident that once all the characters are together in one big party with the "real" protagonist, things will get a lot more interesting.
Mixed feelings aside, it's been an interesting experience so far. It has a markedly different feel to Final Fantasies of the same era, giving it its own distinctive identity. There's a pleasant air of whimsy about the whole thing, helped along by a humorous localisation featuring lots of regional accents and dialects. And the focus on the ongoing story — as compared to the focus on the main characters as in most Final Fantasies — is a noticeable shift in perspective.
I'm looking forward to getting to know the series a bit better. I feel it may have a slightly stronger barrier to entry than Final Fantasy, but I also know that people who love Dragon Quest really love Dragon Quest, so I'm intrigued to see what gets them so passionate about this long-running series.
Final Fantasy XV was originally due to come out at the end of next month. Today, director Tabata officially confirmed the rumours that have been swirling around the Internet for the last couple of days: the game has been delayed until November 29.
Tabata announced the delay in a video on the game's official YouTube channel.
His reasoning behind the delay was that, although the team had finally completed the "master version" of the game, meaning a version that was feature-complete and that they would be happy releasing to consumers on disc, they had already started work on some additional content and adjustments that would normally be distributed as a "day one patch" to be applied automatically when a Final Fantasy XV player had their console connected to the Internet.
The trouble with day one patches, though, is that they're not part of that master game experience. They're not on the disc; they're reliant on an Internet connection. And while the "not everyone has an Internet connection" argument is rapidly losing steam as broadband becomes more and more affordable and ubiquitous, there's still a fundamental problem with them from an archiving perspective. In other words, if someone interested in the history of gaming were to become interested in checking out Final Fantasy XV some twenty or thirty years down the line, it's doubtful the PS4's PSN servers would still be up and running to allow them to download the patch, and as such they'd be left with an inferior — although, in this case, still complete — version to explore.
In some cases, day one patches contain essential bug fixes that actually get the game working, meaning the game is unplayable straight from the disc. And in others, they fundamentally shake up the structure of the game — the day one patch for No Man's Sky is a good example of this latter instance. There are very few cases where they are desirable, although sometimes developers are left with no choice — if a game is rushed out of the door to meet a deadline, for example, or if in last-minute testing after the game has been duplicated several million times, a major problem is found.
With Final Fantasy XV being such a big project, though, it seems that Tabata and his team have been given the flexibility to hold the game's release back until it meets with their high standards, however, and Tabata himself notes that he is uncomfortable with releasing a disc-based version of a game that isn't the very best version it can possibly be. He's not ruling out future patches and DLC — and the existence of a "Season Pass" for the game confirms that there are going to be a number of substantial add-ons for Final Fantasy XV — but he wants that initial day one experience to be as smooth as possible for all players around the world, regardless of whether or not they have an Internet connection or are able to download the day one patch.
This, ladies and gents, is how you make a video game. It's what we used to expect from previous, non Internet-connected consoles, and it's something that we have lost sight of in the modern age, where attention-deficient mobile game-playing audiences bray and whine if games don't receive "updates" every two weeks, even where none are necessary. While it's disappointing that this no longer means I'll be playing Final Fantasy XV next month, I respect Tabata and his team enormously for wanting to make their game the very best it can be before it gets into the players' grubby little hands.
I guess that means I have time to play through Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force before Final Fantasy XV after all, then…
Square Enix is on a roll with the mobile games at the moment; a few months after Final Fantasy Brave Exvius hit the market, we find ourselves faced with a brand new free-to-play Final Fantasy game for mobile devices in the form of Mobius Final Fantasy, a game that has been shrouded in a considerable amount of mystery for a while, but which is finally available to play for both iOS and Android devices.
Let's get one thing out of the way first: this is a distinct experience to both Final Fantasy Record Keeper and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, and has a very strong identity in its own right. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that despite it being based around the usual "gacha" core of drawing and upgrading cards to progress, it is one of the most distinctive, original mobile games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. And if you know how much I hate 98% of mobile games, you'll know that's high praise indeed from me.
Mobius Final Fantasy casts you in the role of (insert your name here), who finds himself drawn through time and space to the ruined world of Palamecia, which appears to have been laid waste to by the malevolent force that is Chaos. Alongside the other "Blanks" who appeared in Palamecia alongside you, you must begin a journey to determine your worthiness to become the Warrior of Light and defeat Chaos once and for all.
If all this sounds rather familiar, you'd be absolutely right; Mobius Final Fantasy draws heavily from the very first Final Fantasy game in terms of thematic ideas, even going so far as to include a number of characters with the same names — most notably Garland and Princess Sarah of Cornelia. It remains to be seen whether these individuals are actually the same people as in the original Final Fantasy — Palamecia was the name of the empire in Final Fantasy II, not the original, so it's entirely possible their resemblance and nomenclature is pure fanservice — but it's a nice touch if nothing else.
Gameplay-wise, however, Mobius Final Fantasy is entirely original, although its overall aesthetic is somewhat similar to Final Fantasy XIII in terms of character and interface design.
Playing Mobius Final Fantasy involves traversing a node-based world map, with each node housing a number of different battles and perhaps a stronger boss to fight. Most of the nodes represent your journey across the ruined world of Palamecia, but some are dungeons that have several floors to clear and sometimes even an area you can explore freely at the end. Unlike many free-to-play mobile games, after just a few short hours of gameplay, Mobius Final Fantasy opens up and starts to give you a considerable amount of freedom in where to go and what to do. There's always an obvious place you should be going next to advance the story, but in some instances you'll be presented with a path that won't open until you clear a particular quest — and you'll have to find the target for that quest yourself by exploring.
You don't freely explore the areas (thankfully, since controlling free movement in mobile games using just a touchscreen is horrid) but rather advance from battle to battle, defeating enemies and earning rewards along the way. The emphasis, in other words, is very much on fighting.
So it's fortunate that Mobius Final Fantasy has such a fun, interesting and original battle system. Rather than reskinning Brave Frontier as Brave Exvius did, or taking the retro approach of Record Keeper, Mobius Final Fantasy has its own take on how you fight. You're alone, for starters; no party members to back you up here, but you are able to take a number of different "cards" into battle, each of which has an ability attached and an elemental affinity.
The flow of combat is relatively straightforward, though takes a little explaining. Normal attacks deal damage and also draw out elemental orbs of four out of five possible types: fire, water, earth, wind and life. Each Job can only draw three of the elemental types plus life orbs, which are drawn at a much lower chance than the others. These elemental orbs are primarily used to trigger the abilities on your cards, each of which have a requisite number of a particular element before you can unleash them.
The card abilities have two main functions: to exploit elemental weaknesses of enemies, and to make their "Break" gauge vulnerable. This latter feature is somewhat akin to Final Fantasy XIII's "Stagger" system, whereby if you empty an enemy's gauge, they will become significantly weaker against your attacks along with being unable to hit you for a short period. If you can Break an enemy, in most cases you'll be able to press the advantage right up to victory before they're able to get back on their feet.
But what if you don't draw the right elemental orbs to use your abilities? Well, here's the other use for them: you can absorb them, which removes them from your stock and gives you temporarily increased resistance against that element (or, in the case of life orbs, heals you). That's not the only effect, though; absorbing elemental orbs in this way shifts the balance of elements, making you less likely to draw that type from enemies for a short period and consequently more likely to draw the others. In this way, you can absorb an element an enemy is strong against, which in most cases will make you strong against the enemy's attacks, and increase the likelihood that you draw orbs suitable for unleashing abilities that will damage the enemy to a greater degree.
I don't feel like I've explained that all that well. Let's give a practical example.
Battle begins. You're faced with an enemy that has a wind affinity. You're playing a Ranger job, so your normal attacks will draw water, wind, earth or life orbs — no fire for Rangers.
You attack three times, the standard amount you are able to do in a single turn. In doing so, you draw a bunch of wind orbs and a couple of earth, though not enough to use an earth ability. A wind-element enemy would be weak against earth abilities, so it's in your interest to get one up and running as soon as possible.
The enemy attacks. You take a bit of damage, though nothing to worry about.
For your first action, you absorb the wind orbs you drew last turn. This gives you temporarily increased resistance against wind attacks — i.e. any attacks the enemy will throw at you. It also makes you less likely to draw wind orbs for a few turns.
For your second action, you attack. This draws enough earth orbs to attack an earth ability, which requires four orbs to use.
For your third action, you unleash your earth ability, which causes the enemy's Break bar to turn red and become vulnerable. Your turn is over.
The enemy attacks. You take a bit of damage again, though a bit less this time thanks to your increased wind resistance.
Next turn, you throw out three normal attacks, which are enough to empty the vulnerable Break bar of your opponent. It enters Break status, and you get another turn as it topples to the ground. You throw out three more normal attacks, which are now significantly more effective against your downed foe, and defeat it. You win! One step closer to Warrior of Light-hood.
What all this means for Mobius Final Fantasy is that it's by no means a glorified clicker game with boring, automated combat like so many other "card battle" games on mobile. There's depth and strategy here, but it's presented with such glorious visual panache that you can't help but be drawn in to this strange ruined world, particularly as the exciting battles are punctuated with fully voiced cutscenes (with dual audio, for those who prefer Japanese speech) and some beautiful sights.
I'm relatively early in the game so far, and the game as it stands only features two "chapters" of the main story so far (plus a special region for grinding XP and other resources against the clock) but it's already clear that Mobius Final Fantasy is something quite special. And that's the last thing I ever expected to say about a mobile game in 2016.
I'm very interested to see where the game goes next and how it expands on its already solid mechanics over time — and I'm invested in the story, too; I want to know whether or not this actually is Final Fantasy I's world — which is plausible, given that part of Final Fantasy I's plot dealt with Chaos creating a time loops, and "Mobius" can be used to describe the characteristic "infinite loop" symbol — and, if not, what on Earth happened to allow Chaos to ruin it as comprehensively as he did.
Find out more about Mobius Final Fantasy at the official site; there are links to download it for iOS and Android devices there, too.
