FFXIV 3.0 : Heavensward - Expansion Information and Discussion

[Alkar]

Your wishes for "moar overworld shit" got us The Hunt, stop it.

[Niiro]

I don't get why the outside world needs to be so dangerous. Warrior of light defeated by a level 99 Ahriman outside of whocares, so much for saving the world from primal gods when random mobs on the world map can 1-shot you.

If there's anything that makes exploration even more annoying it's monsters that can rape you without a second look. But hey, I'm sure they'll get the balance right, right?

Speak for yourself, I had quite a bit of fun MGS-ing my way to all the far corners of the world in 1.0, even after I had collected all the telepoints.

I don't expect that experience to return with 3.0, but exploration without any kind of obstacles isn't exploration, it's tourism.

[Toth]

Question for someone unfamiliar with level caps in wow-like MMORPGs: How will gear work once we hit 60? I mean, since current gear is up to i130 but lvl 50, will they just keep going upward in item level (ie. level 52+ gear being i140) or will all gear for lvls 50- 60 start at a new item level, like i50?

[The Stig]

Question for someone unfamiliar with level caps in wow-like MMORPGs: How will gear work once we hit 60? I mean, since current gear is up to i130 but lvl 50, will they just keep going upward in item level (ie. level 52+ gear being i140) or will all gear for lvls 50- 60 start at a new item level, like i50?

Assuming a WoW model:

the EXP/MSQ quests will hand out 120/130 gear as baseline (no good for the raiders, but good for the normal chump)
Vendors will probably sell 120 gear
and then we'll probably slowly inch to 150 gear at level 60 (for raiders, their gear should be good until level 55)
and go up from there until 200

*all figures are speculations
** alternatively, what WoW does in fact do is to blanket make the gear obsolete -- assuming by 2.53/2.55 since we know the release date and assume they release new content for us to play with, and assume the best gear we can possibly get is ilvl140 before expansion, then the starting quests/vendors will release ilvl150 gear

Case Scenario:

Shadowmourne, a legendary (relic) weapon at the end of the Lich King Expansion (and is similar to a Dynamis Relic, i.e. your team needs to decide who gets one, not the FFXIV type) that has an ilvl of 284; so not a lot of people would have one
Alternatively, the last boss on the hardest difficulty setting also drops ilvl 284 weapons (gear caps at 277, last boss drops no gear)

Starting quests in the next expansion rewards and sells 272 weapons and gear. And 2 odd levels later you dip into 300 territory gear.

[Eanae]

Your wishes for "moar overworld shit" got us The Hunt, stop it.

Oh man you're going to be disappointed lol. Working on transcribing Reseph and I's PAX interview now. Lots of juicy stuff but it's an hour long so it's taking forever to get everything down.

[Adajer]

I say they create new ilvl for exp, call it Hilvl

ilvl 120 < 130 < 135 < Hilvl 50

then go from there throughout entire exp pack til you get to hilvl 135 then repeat for next exp pack.

I really dont want to see ilvls going up to 2 and 3 hundred

[Lonely]

It was posted earlier but so many people missed it. Here's the important tidbits.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2015/...d-new-details/

Zones in Final Fantasy XIV are already huge — they’re designed to fit within 2km by 2km boundaries — but there are new scenarios to consider since Heavensward will introduce flying mounts (including flying chocobos and single-rider airships) for the first time. Flying mounts will get you around approximately three times faster than ground-based mounts, but Yoshida’s team is making sure to include surprising elements and discoveries within each zone to keep players exploring.

Yoshida estimates that there will be around 1.5 times as much area to explore in Heavensward’s new zones — while there may be fewer zones, there will end up being just as much traversable area in Heavensward at launch as in A Realm Reborn.

Looks like this will be the new 24 man raid, i'm excited.

“You might have noticed the Floating Continent in Heavensward, and I’ve always wanted to go to the moon (like in Final Fantasy IV). There are still many classic elements from Final Fantasy that we can incorporate, and we want to continue blending them into FFXIV for fans to enjoy.”

The new jobs are unlocked at 30 but also might start at level 30, I think Eanae knows.

“We were actually recently deciding what to call these jobs that don’t have a base class, and we’ve decided to call them ‘Extra Jobs.’ Just like when you can switch to different jobs when you’re at level 30, that applies to these as well. As long as any class or job is at level 30, you’ll be able to access any of these three new jobs.”

I thought they said before you wouldn't have to do that 2.x series to do heavensward? Glad to see them do this though.

Q: Will we have to finish the main campaign or reach a certain level to access Heavensward's main content?

Naoki Yoshida: If you already own A Realm Reborn and you get Heavensward, you’ll be able to at least enter Ishgard. The new jobs added in Heavensward are not tied to the main story, so those are accessible as well. In terms of the story, if you want to enjoy the Heavensward story arc, since it’s tied to the upcoming 2.55 patch, it’s a prerequisite to have finished that content. If a player had stopped playing around patch 2.2 or 2.3, I’d recommend choosing one of the new jobs and leveling that up while catching up on the story, then transitioning into Heavensward.

Huh? Either there is going to be job action equip limit or he is talking about your hotbar setup and rotations, but the end makes it sound like the former. BYE Tri-Disaster/Freeze. Level 52 would imply 5 new actions, Cool.

Q:What changes are going to be made to existing jobs?

Yoshida: It’s tricky to say, but there will be changes applied to each job. One common change is that the job quest will continue from where it left off starting around level 52, so you’ll obtain new skills, spells and weapon skills. So when you go into combat you’ll have a wider range of selection in what kinds of actions you can take during battle. For example, if you play as a DPS job and you learn a new skill or spell, you can implement that into the command set you have built, or build a new one from scratch and strategize how you can apply these new skills. With some of the boss characters in Heavensward, you actually can’t fight them using your older skills — they might require you to know new skills that are only available after the level cap has been raised. This will create an opportunity for players to get together with the community to strategize how to beat these monsters. It’s safe to assume that you’ll be experiencing a new gameplay experience with the raising of the level cap.

In regards to the gear questions above there was another interview on massively.
http://massivelyop.net/2015/03/07/pa...naoki-yoshida/

Reward systems for gear in the expansion will remain similar to what currently exists; the team is working to make sure that the players pressing at the furthest edge of difficult content are rewarded adequately without making the rest of the playerbase else feel as if they can’t catch up. Yoshida was somewhat coy about when players might be replacing their current endgame gear, although he did stress that it will not be promptly at level 51 by any means.

[Shenrien]

I say they create new ilvl for exp, call it Hilvl

ilvl 120 < 130 < 135 < Hilvl 50

then go from there throughout entire exp pack til you get to hilvl 135 then repeat for next exp pack.

I really dont want to see ilvls going up to 2 and 3 hundred

That would just over complicate things.

[Katlan]

Assuming a WoW model:

the EXP/MSQ quests will hand out 120/130 gear as baseline (no good for the raiders, but good for the normal chump)
Vendors will probably sell 120 gear
*all figures are speculations
Case Scenario:

I would be very very very surprised if our current end game battle/land/crafting gear finds the way of the WoW model and becomes obsolete instantly. If you have the best gear then I expect that gear to last you until 60 (or close to it). FFXIV values gear too much for them to wipe it out instantly

[Niiro]

Reward systems for gear in the expansion will remain similar to what currently exists

[Edelweiss]

Reward systems for gear in the expansion will remain similar to what currently exists

[Elcura]

Speak for yourself, I had quite a bit of fun MGS-ing my way to all the far corners of the world in 1.0, even after I had collected all the telepoints.

I don't expect that experience to return with 3.0, but exploration without any kind of obstacles isn't exploration, it's tourism.

The obstacle is usually the terrain and 'quite a bit of fun' doesn't exactly say you want to do it all day everyday. Because waiting for 5-10 minutes for mobs to randomly create a path that won't kill you is excitement. My word, the things that pass for fun 'round these parts. That's a great endorsement for open-world mobs littering the map and annoying everyone for no good reason other than it's a thing now.

You thought those non-lethal mobs were annoying well guess what we made completely lethal versions of those to make exploration even more of a hassle. What's that? You want me to do quest that repeatedly has me running through zones with deadly monsters? Well sign me up jimmy because that sounds like quite a bit of fun.

[Eanae]

The new jobs are unlocked at 30 but also might start at level 30, I think Eanae knows.

Just finished and posted everything I know.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ew_with_naoki/

[Damane]

add deleveling

you want to instakill dutyfinder lol?

[Lucavi]

He just wants XI. It still exists! Go have fun!

[Destinye]

He just wants XI. It still exists! Go have fun!

Nah, since it existed in more MMOs than XI..even far severe lol, e.g corpse runs where you could literally lose everything aside hard progress.

[Lucavi]

Nah, since it existed in more MMOs than XI..even far severe lol, e.g corpse runs where you could literally lose everything aside hard progress.

Oh I know. They also had corpse retrieving and hilarious greifing tactics: all things that shouldn't exist in ARR. Can you imagine raiding if you had to retrieve your corpse every time you wiped?

[Adajer]

Penalty for wiping endgame content? brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrppppppp delvl

[Niiro]

The obstacle is usually the terrain and 'quite a bit of fun' doesn't exactly say you want to do it all day everyday. Because waiting for 5-10 minutes for mobs to randomly create a path that won't kill you is excitement. My word, the things that pass for fun 'round these parts. That's a great endorsement for open-world mobs littering the map and annoying everyone for no good reason other than it's a thing now.

You thought those non-lethal mobs were annoying well guess what we made completely lethal versions of those to make exploration even more of a hassle. What's that? You want me to do quest that repeatedly has me running through zones with deadly monsters? Well sign me up jimmy because that sounds like quite a bit of fun.

All of the actual deadly mobs in 1.0 were far off the beaten path, putting them in frequently traversed areas is both stupid and uninteresting.

But now you're talking about different things, if a quest repeatedly takes you through a given area, that's not exploration.

[Karbuncle]

The obstacle is usually the terrain and 'quite a bit of fun' doesn't exactly say you want to do it all day everyday. Because waiting for 5-10 minutes for mobs to randomly create a path that won't kill you is excitement. My word, the things that pass for fun 'round these parts. That's a great endorsement for open-world mobs littering the map and annoying everyone for no good reason other than it's a thing now.

You thought those non-lethal mobs were annoying well guess what we made completely lethal versions of those to make exploration even more of a hassle. What's that? You want me to do quest that repeatedly has me running through zones with deadly monsters? Well sign me up jimmy because that sounds like quite a bit of fun.

I imagine if they did add hard enemies they'd still have a leash mechanic, so getting caught won't be a death sentence if you're lucky. Also harder enemies are usually far outside your normal path. I think we need a balance of what we have now and what XI had. I don't want monsters that will just completely murder you without you having a chance to defend yourself well, but I also don't want enemies that are background decoration, or as described better, basically tourist attractions. Would it be terribly difficult to make it to where enemies felt threatening but not overpowering in the open world?

There's a lot good from an open world like XI's. It actually had reasons to explore and not just "oh look pretty". I mean, basic examples are NMs, HNMs, Treasure Chests/Coffers, finding exp spots others might not know about and such. I know a lot of those won't come back and weren't fun for everyone.... and HNMs bring a baste taste to a lot of peoples mouth thanks to how they were implemented in XI. I also don't see NMs/HNMs coming to XIV in any meaningful way because the armor system, pure Item level, doesn't leave any room for creative armor/weapons to drop from NMs outside of Vanity... so the open world is pretty much doomed in XIV in terms of being actually meaningful. Hunts we're just... almost good, but missed by a far mark.

So long as they keep everything in the game focused primarily around token farming for charity gear until you can get the endgame raid armor, there's no room for improvement in their systems.

I get that not everyone wants what i want, but I have to believe none of you want this progression system forever, and right now it seems like its going to be it for the foreseeable future.