Comments from the Devs

[Toth]

From the SE TGS PR:

Set in the realm of Eorzea, 5 years after the devastating attacks from the Garlean Empire and the catastrophic events of the Meteor, FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn presents an adventure for players around the world to undertake epic quests and battle with familiar FINAL FANTASY monsters as they work together to help forge the fate of Eorzea.

There you have it. 5 year gap between the end of 1.0 and the time frame of 2.0.

[Charismatic]

Definitely thought it'd be longer... hm.
But, I guess this way they can keep the current GC leaders and all that jazz.

[Kurokikaze]

Wow only 5 years...? Thought it'd be longer. O_o

[miokomioko]

Sounds like the right way to purge the NPCs they don't need and keep the ones they want.

I guess lolclimatechange will just be attributed to those massive splinters that come out of Dalamud.

[Alkar]

Well if the aether is supposed to be like the Lifestream it makes sense.

[Niiro]

I think the giant meteor could easily take care of any NPCs they wanted to get rid of plot-wise.

Speaking of, I wonder if Louisoix will pull a Gandalf or if he'll be our hand to hold for the 2.0 starting point (or maybe a 5 years older Urianger).

Also wondering how new chars will be brought into the story, I would assume chars created in 1.0 won't be forgotten (unless they're purging way more NPCs than we all thought) but chars created in 2.0 won't have "saved" the world, which is kind of a big deal and would have some deep story implications. At the same time if the time skip is only 5 years they obviously had to have lived in 1.0 and been sent thru time along with everyone else.

[Gokulo]

I believe everyone will be treated as the "heroes", not only the people that played 1.0.

[Makwa]

All they'd really need would be two sets of beginner quests to start you off: one for new characters and one for legacy. Have the first 1-3 quests be "blahblah heres what changed" instead of "welcome new guy heres what you need to get started" Have them both converge wherever the main story picks up.

[Burningthought]

All they'd really need would be two sets of beginner quests to start you off: one for new characters and one for legacy. Have the first 1-3 quests be "blahblah heres what changed" instead of "welcome new guy heres what you need to get started" Have them both converge wherever the main story picks up.

This would be amazing.

[Waraji]

5 year gap

Thank fkin god. More Hildibrand.

[Niiro]

I believe everyone will be treated as the "heroes", not only the people that played 1.0.

Did they ever actually say this or are we just assuming?

I haven't been keeping up and all the new info.

[Gokulo]

That's just my personal guess,sorry about the confusion ^^;

[Adajer]

nvm

[Gokulo]

Only a dozen of times in multiple topics :D

[Hellfury]

I think the giant meteor could easily take care of any NPCs they wanted to get rid of plot-wise.

Speaking of, I wonder if Louisoix will pull a Gandalf or if he'll be our hand to hold for the 2.0 starting point (or maybe a 5 years older Urianger).

Also wondering how new chars will be brought into the story, I would assume chars created in 1.0 won't be forgotten (unless they're purging way more NPCs than we all thought) but chars created in 2.0 won't have "saved" the world, which is kind of a big deal and would have some deep story implications. At the same time if the time skip is only 5 years they obviously had to have lived in 1.0 and been sent thru time along with everyone else.

How about this for a plot-twist? Louisoix IS actually Urianger, from the future, he ported back from a future where things had gone from bad to worse to try to change things for the better. He looks so old because it took him a long time to perfect the necessary magic, and he ported back just enough to train us to fight massive foes and set the wheels in motion for the future, before throwing us a few years into the future to save us and put us at the point where he knew we would be needed the most. Urianger (young Louisoix) of course knows nothing of this. hah! Anything we learned about Louisoix' backstory was merely a ruse.
(no, I am not serious)

[Niiro]

As much as I usually dislike time travel as a story mechanic, that's actually not half bad.

[Gokulo]

I just hope they will stop at that, instead of using the time travel thing more often.

[vadre]

It also makes way for a future expansion where we go back in time to pre-dalamud and do battle with ours and a plucky cross-breed's alternate selves from the alternate timeline with the help of a small cat!

I am deadly serious. Deadly. Serious.

[Gokulo]

Actually, some stuff might be indicating we're not only traveling in time, but also to a parallel dimension ^^

[Cichy]

Server/ Engine

The lighting system is very advanced and allows for complex lighting effects, not only during the day but at night and in dungeons as well.
It was very challenging to port FFXIV:ARR to the PS3 due to low memory issues, but they did their best to optimize it the best way possible.
Load times and character movements are real time now, and the responsiveness of the game to the player’s actions has been improved a lot.
Multi Data centers: At the moment, there is only one data center in Japan, and all players are connected to it. Now they are making more data centers around the world to improve the server response. Players will still be able to play with everyone regardless of regions. This is just for the convenience of players not in Japan.
More flexible world transfers
Addition of communication support function
The engine can tolerate the new PvP design (It’s not forcefully done)
The servers can handle more players in one place as compared to before (was 400-500 players at a time, now around 1000). And for the mobs, it could handle 600mobs at a time and now it’s up to 2000. This will greatly affect the player’s experience, so they’re really happy about it.

Quests and Main quests

A great number of quests have been added. The aim of these quests is to level, explore the world, story progression among other things.

Host: These quests are all good for you first class/ job, but what about your second and third? What if you ran out of quests?
Yoshi-p: Of course we are going to provide a large number of quests. But beside that we will keep on adding more, and there are other still unannounced contents, and others to be enjoyed with the public, such as NM’s, they are all being prepared. I hope that players don’t stay in one place doing the same things, but would rather they try many different contents and level in the process.
Host: But what about people who are already level 50?
Yoshi-p: They can look forward to the high level content we announced, and there are still some unannounced contents, such as raids, and new classes, chocobo raising, and other stuff. The amount of instanced dungeons is going to increase. There is going to be a level limit, but since we are adding level sync, which will allow level 50 players to go down to the required level of the content, players can group up with new players and do content together. And of course many high level dungeons are going to be added so please look forward to them.

For the main quests; it’s the same world but different. Since it’s now going through the 7th Umbral Era, and with the new game system, these have to be reflected in the game, and as a result it became completely different.
Parley has been taken out of the main quests (not sure about this one).
The general progression of main quests is, you do a couple of quests then fight a strong boss to be able to continue with your story. This will add a true sense of progression of RPG games. And with level sync this is going to improve the experience for all the players. Unlike currently in the game when people challenge the “weak” ifrit, it’s as if watching a cutscene and there is no actually fight.
A quest progression system has been added. And there is an “objectives” tab to make it easier to track you progression through these quests.

Sound/ Music

Quest cutscenes will have Japanese VO not only English. The players will be able to change the audio language to any of the languages. The languages supported are Japanese, English, French and German.
The way music plays is going to change.

Battle

The first thing you’re going to notice when you try out the battle system is the tempo, and how speedy it got.
Handling TP is going to change. In the current version the player had to fight to generate TP, but it changed to be similar to MP where you start the battle with full TP. The main reason to make it that way was due to PvP.
We have 3 types of actions: abilities, weapon skills, and magic. Currently abilities have a recast timer on them, while weapon skills and magic have TP and MP requirements respectively along with an added recast timer. However, in FFXIV:ARR the abilities will stay the same, while the weapon skills and magic will only require TP or MP. Obviously this will affect the speed of battle greatly.
Combos as well have been modified. Since in PvP it is going to be very difficult with the positioning requirements, players will feel like they are being punished for doing combos. So only the first move will require positioning (not sure about magic) while the rest of the combo will only require TP/ MP to be executed.
The parameters and stats and their formulas have been changed to be much simpler to understand. But still it would be very interesting so please look forward to it.

Fan Questions
Host: How will we fight together with our chocobo’s?
Yoshi-p: You call it, a menu appears, select “fight together”. That’s it.
Host: what about colors?
Yoshi-p: We are thinking about various things.
Host: We can jump now! But what about flying and swimming?
Yoshi-p: I am more towards flying at the moment. Since it’s a Final Fantasy, and having airships and going to the skies sounds like a really nice idea to me. But this is all too soon to talk about.
Host: Other than meteor what can we expect as limit breaks?
Yoshi-p: Tifa’s… Tifa’s… Tifa’s…
Host: Will Excalibur and Masamune appear as weapons?
Yoshi-p: Of course I’m thinking of addind Excalibur when the time is right, but Masamune will come when the Samurai or Ninja jobs are introduced to the game.

Arcanist and Summoner
It’s the same as what I posted in the relevant thread regarding both of them, but I’ll just add the little comments and teases they made.

Please look forward to the auto-attack motion. (Throws the book?)
The players will be able to craft the books and they will have recipes. The class that crafts them is of course… can’t tell right now.
Summoners will not have carbuncle as a pet, but they’ll be using the primals as their source of power. However, not the primals themselves but they’ll use only a part of a primals strength. “A pet that the primals power dwells in” are Matsui’s exact words if I wasn’t mistaken.
The summoners will be able to borrow the power of 4 primals (this is what is planned till now, and could be expanded later on). The ones that are confirmed right now are Ifrit, and Garuda.

Thank you very much and hope you enjoyed it

Someone translated bit from the 25th aniv