FFXIV Q & A - G4 Live Blog Transcript

[sephir]

I will definitely be playing this. XI was a lot of fun and has some great memories but the games age really began to show in this last year or two. Even if this game turns out to be much like XI, I know I will still greatly enjoy it.

[Correction]

This worst thing about all of this is i know i'm going to be checking for new information every other day... for the next 6-9 months...

...in BG threads that grow by 10 pages of 'wtf' and 'me too' posts every other day.

[Auspice]

I'm going to be REALLY angry if there aren't Red Mages in some fashion or another. I don't care if they play anything like they do in XI; I just have to be one goddamnit!

[Ziero]

In every MMO I play I'm either a Warrior type or a Thief type. In FFXI the only 75 jobs i have ARE War and Thf. FFXIV will be treated no differently.

But at this point, we know all of jack dick about the game.

[Correction]

But at this point, we know all of jack dick about the game.

Except that it's a FF game, so we know the names of the spells and a good amount of the equipment in the game already.

[quannum]

I'd like to see them use the system from ff tactics A2:
40 or so jobs,
race-specific job trees,
setting any mastered ability category as your sub,
gaining ability points, but you'd probably spend them via a skill tree instead of spending them via your gear.

[Correction]

40 jobs in an MMO screams 'bad' to me. There just can't be that many roles to play when group sizes have traditionally not exceeded 6 in small-group scenarios and not more than 18 in well-tuned large-group scenarios in FFXI. Seriously, of those 40 jobs how many got used at the end of the day against the bosses of FFTA2?

[Katlan]

The one thing that I am mostly happy about seems to be one of the biggest things I've heard people bitch about. And that's not being able to transfer over characters.

I alrdy think it's lame that they are even enticing the idea of allowing ppl to transfer over their name from FFXI to FFXIV. I doubt it will happen for many diff reasons, but sucks to even think that an mmo can launch w/ hundreds of thousands of names alrdy taken due to possible name transfers.

and serious lol at somebody even desiring 40 jobs/classes in an mmo. go back to single player games

I'm going to be REALLY angry if there aren't Red Mages in some fashion or another. I don't care if they play anything like they do in XI; I just have to be one goddamnit!

It's a FF game... since when has there been a FF game w/o a RDM type class that debuffs/ect...

[quannum]

40 jobs in an MMO screams 'bad' to me. There just can't be that many roles to play when group sizes have traditionally not exceeded 6 in small-group scenarios and not more than 18 in well-tuned large-group scenarios in FFXI. Seriously, of those 40 jobs how many got used at the end of the day against the bosses of FFTA2?

it has more of a tiered-job system with something like 'soldier' at the bottom and parivir as one of the top tiers (for hume)

i found the tree, spoilered for table break

Spoiler: show

http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/ds/f...ics_a2_job.png

link to the pic, in case gamefaqs doesn't allow hotlinking, GameFAQs: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift (DS) Job Chart by Zaraf

[Correction]

it has more of a tiered-job system with something like 'soldier' at the bottom and parivir as one of the top tiers (for hume)

This would only work if there were no loss of abilities from tier 1 -> top tier, mostly because you cannot effectively design encounters around there being 40 unique classes in a game. From my time playing the old FFT, everything was 'bumrush the boss with your most overpowered classes' which is fine in a grindy single player game, but uninteresting and not worth a subscription fee for a multiplayer game.

Developer resources are finite, and I'd rather have 10-12 unique classes that play differently than 40 'one button' classes.

[Ramor]

I'd have to agree, I've done nothing but play FFTA2 recently and all I find myself using are Parivirs/Paladins (geomancy gogo), Ravagers w/ Sneak attack, Master Monks with pummel and a summoner with blood price/doublecastin rape-espers on everything

I don't even touch half the classes because they're supposed to be support or have quirky abilities that end up being completely overshadowed by abilities that can 1shot everything.

I hope they keep the job system much like FFXI, in that they keep the same relative amount of jobs maybe getting rid of a few here and there or redesigning them to become more playable/viable on the whole. Hopefully we see a full return of the system a lot of people became fond of in XI, maybe with added perks or a few upgrades (though I can't honestly think of anything I'd really change about it offhand)

[LinktheDeme]

I'd have to agree, I've done nothing but play FFTA2 recently and all I find myself using are Parivirs/Paladins (geomancy gogo), Ravagers w/ Sneak attack, Master Monks with pummel and a summoner with blood price/doublecastin rape-espers on everything

I don't even touch half the classes because they're supposed to be support or have quirky abilities that end up being completely overshadowed by abilities that can 1shot everything.

I hope they keep the job system much like FFXI, in that they keep the same relative amount of jobs maybe getting rid of a few here and there or redesigning them to become more playable/viable on the whole. Hopefully we see a full return of the system a lot of people became fond of in XI, maybe with added perks or a few upgrades (though I can't honestly think of anything I'd really change about it offhand)

THE FUCKING DEFENSE FORMULA

/facepalm

[Correction]

THE FUCKING DEFENSE FORMULA

/facepalm

The whole combat system in XI should be discarded, because ultimately they ended up with bosses having full 50-75% damage reduction to make up for combat abilities that were 100% dependent on 3-4 stats out of dozens found on gear until merits showed up. I think we all know what that famously led to.

[guartz]

Mechanics aside, I really hope for more fluid animations/rag dolls. Damn MMOs and their static death animations. It's 2009 goddamn it.

[Fiye]

Here's my opinion of how FFXIV is going to play out.

Summer 2010 release (or perhaps Fall 2010).

E3 '09 - Revealing of FFXIV

TGS '09 - Revealing of ingame animations, world, etc...

Fall '09 - Screen shots, videos, interviews, etc...

Fan Festival - Either live video demonstration, showroom test, or beta key give away.

Early '10 - Delay to late Winter.

Summer '10 - More screen shots, video, and etc...

Fall '10 FilePlanet open/closed beta. Release of FFXIII

Winter '10 Release of FFXIV.

My idea how this will run.

[Kaelan?]

I can already see people asking 14 devs for abilities their characters had in 11.

So this begs the question...would you play the same job/class as your main in 14 or would you try something new?

Depends entirely on how the new job system and combat system work. I'm probably going to make one "test" character, play for a bit till I get a rough feel of the combat, then delete it and actually make a final pick.

Example: I loved playing Bard on Vanguard. You could (for the most part) be pretty self-sufficient when solo, even at very low levels you were always a huge benefit to parties, there were tons of useful buffs, you can still effectively kill things while being a supporter class and their bard song system was absolutely genius (and I mean FFXI Job system quality here), tons of fun to make your own songs out of dozens of possible components.

In comparison, you'd have to keep me at gunpoint to get me to play BRD on FFXI. Actually, probably not even then.

Edit: Also, the reason there's so many jobs in FFTA2 is because the vast majority of them either overlap or are direct copies of each other (i.e. almost every single hume job having an equivalent in a different race). A lot of them should have been a single job but got split into two because of the crappy "every race needs this many jobs" idea (arcanist, alchemist, sage all should have been skill subsets of other mage jobs, for example). There's also a few jobs which are meant only to be fodder or stepping stones to actual jobs, you're never supposed to be able to actually do anything with them (i.e. soldier). And finally, there's a good handful which are just gimmicky, completely useless jobs (most of the moogle jobs and at least one job in each other race).

[rekie]

I soo cannot wait for this!

[Norelco]

About name transfers...it's highly unlikely anyone would pick Norelco. =)

If they did, I'd just go with my other names or Nore.

[Elcura]

I wonder how much FFXI knowledge will help in FFXIV. The best part of MMOs is when you don't know shit, so everything is new and interesting and you wouldn't know a bad choice or mistake if it bit you in the ass (which happens).

But will knowing a good deal about FFXI ruin that? I hope SE changes game play and world aspects enough that everything feels fresh.

[Hyan]

Most likely it'll be like changing from WoW to WAR or something similar..