Valence

You find jumping 100 meters high into the sky with a full armour suit and lance and all somehow less impressive than casting balls of fire? I mean, the only difference between a BLM and a THM is the scale of destruction...

That's... hard. Though... We kind of expected it. I mean, wasn't there a lot of heated debates around playing a dragoon before Heavensward came out? Then people eventually chilled over it, but the main concerns never really... got made moot, right? It was still a possibility.

One could indeed see Eorzean as a diverging 'japanese/doman' form, that's a good point. The point I'm more trying to make is that in such fantasy worlds, it's rarely a good idea to resort to IRL languages (with the exception of the narrative default language we use of course...).

It's rather easy to get any priority system in that game. It's another story to apply it well with time limits, GCDs, and hardpressed by stuff happening around. I am not extremely interested in savage fights and raiding as well (maybe the ex versions though, to play with friends and whatnot), for the same reasons. I like to improvise and adapt to what's happening around, so paradoxically, that's what you find in pugs, so yes, I understand the feeling. That's also why I spent so much time playing a healer, because there is always something that can go in an unexpected direction and it makes it less... linear than other jobs. I'm not going to lie and say that I don't agree that I would lean on even more tactical thinking and stuff, but what I appeciate in that game is the way jobs and classes are designed. They all have their distinct way to be played, and their own peculiar feel. But hack and slash elements in my MMOs? Thanks but... I'll pass I guess.

If they continue following the patterns for 2.0, we could also get an epic drama similar to the end of 2.5, introductory to the next expansion who knows.

I'm a bit concerned about the naming conventions for female Keepers of the Moon as stated in the lorebook. It seems to be completely contradictory to the naming conventions we have had until now, only for females. The males still follow the pattern of followed by the corresponding male offspring number letter for the first name, and sharing the last name of the mother. The old naming conventions said that the same way, females got their last names from their mother, and their first name is their own. The one exposed in the lorebook seems to say that the first name is the mother name, and the last name is the given name. Which makes absolutely zero sense, and as they pointed out in the lore panel, the book still contains bugs and mistakes. I'm inclined to think that way... Or I hope so. Source : it would seem they inverted Okhi and Nbolo...

From the fanfest:

So I thought this warranted a thread of its own. Lore panel and lore book seems to state that only the Xaela continue to speak the auri ancient tongue, but that the now sedentary Raen took the habit to speak the language of the doman Hyur. It would seem that a japanese/weeb language is out of the way for them.

Rather than painfully pasting here the whole script for the bard quests, go watch them on youtube or level them up, would be my best advice. You will see how the actual bard job in lore has absolutely nothing to do with gameplay and how it explains the songs. How true bards that can actually not just sing songs, but songs that ring true and hold many different magical powers. It is also true that the bard job has been more or less lost (like most jobs except ninja or the 3.0 ones), but was once created by legions of archers that transcended their simple nock and loose arrows tasks. It doesn't say however that you somehow have to be an archer to do that, just that it was created and used by archers in the past.

Maths. The amount of gear from launch to 3.0/HW is < the amount of gear from launch to 3.0/Hw to 3.x to 4.0/SB. I don't see how?

Well, I mean, at 256MB system and video you're practically guaranteed to go over-budget unless you take drastic measures to prevent that scenario (and, y'know, this is a modern MMORPG, so I'd bet the PS3 did so on a regular basis). Those measures are (thankfully) no longer necessary. Even integrated graphics these days have a much, much better memory budget even as they pull from system memory to do so. Operating on the assumption of gigabytes being available as opposed to a few hundred megabytes is obviously going to give them some more room to breathe. You would expect that, at least. At any rate, I refuse to be less optimistic about this scenario. I'm freakin' happy they dropped support for that ancient hardware and absolutely no one can convince that that isn't a very good thing for the game. I'm certainly impressed they manage to launch a game such as FFXIV with so low memory constraints. What I mean is that the physical memory problem will be solved and will probably be a big chunk of fresh air to remove all the silly constraints and limits that are so infuriating ingame (inventory room, housing, etc). But, we have to keep in mind that the lower end graphic cards are still stuck with specs like 512Mb of graphic memory. Granted, it's double the size of the PS3 yeah, but it's... very low compared to today standards, thus why I'm curious to see how high they are willing to go in that direction.

Well I most of the time find the things we see in such cutscenes to be over the top and look totally silly/rubbish. But that's probably just me. I agree though that ingame where it looks less realistic and where you have to contend with gameplay and stuff, it's another story. Well, it looks and sounds neat and all, for sure, but that's a totally different genre/game then. Personally, it doesn't appeal to me at all. When I played most of the final fantasy titles, I didn't play them to feel like Star Ocean. Don't get me wrong, I find the things you find in such games mixed with hack and slash elements to be quite interesting and have their own charm, but that's not my thing. I play FF for its tactical depth, not its reactivity layer (and yet, there is one though, if you play a lot of DPS classes where it can still get rather frantic). I can agree that I would love to see more diversity in terms of crowd control skills, synergy, etc. But I disagree that in FF there is no team synergy. I'm always for more of it, sure, and I think they could do better with that, but there is actual synergy between classes and roles. The active participation you speak of is actually there in most of the extreme and savage versions of the fights. Mechanics are always way heavier and lethal than they are in normal mode (a joke usually), and they actually force you to participate in the system you are presented with. I find it a bit insulting to read that those games have a higher skill cap than others. They sure have a higher skill cap in terms of APM, yeah. They sure as hell also have a very low skill cap in terms of thinking and strategical planning. Now then, I'm not saying that the FF MMO have a high one either. I find FF to be rather demanding when you start to get into high end, raiding, content. You know, when you are trying to dish out as much DPS as the good players, or whatever. Some jobs are just a memorized rotation sure, some are priority based and require quick thinking.

I think you misunderstand. I'm not expecting to learn new things out of it. I'm expecting to see it creating hype. Which it obviously did for many people, but just not me. It looks totally bland and generic to me.

Out of curiosity from someone that hasn't played BaS, why would you choose its combat over FFXIV classical combat system?

Problem is not the RAM. RAM is almost irrelevant as long as you can launch the game without exploding your physical memory and not go over using the system swap. Problem will always be video memory, which directly contains graphical 2D and 3D drawcall assets. And on low end machines, its... well. Low. Maybe not that low though, which is an improvement. All depends how far they are ready to go with graphic memory usage.

From what we have seen Eorzea seems to be stuck in a pre steam age era, but with the small but progressively growing arrival of fancy stuff like Magitek and Garlond patented stuff. As any new and rare technology, this has to be quite costly. Now, add to that that cerruleum is super expensive and rare and you get an easy picture of how wealthy you have to be to actually have access to a 'modern day' equivalent life. Something I could see more common in Garlemald, but not in Eorzea yet. It's just starting to industrialize, barely. Now then, even on crystals, they are said not to be a standard, basic commodity either. Considering the emphasis on those on the story when it's said that getting a lot of them is rather arduous (in relation to fueling primals and whatnot), it's only logical to conclude that crystals as well, are not unlimited and seem to imply a certain wealth, especially if you consume a lot of those. The thing is with Eorzea, is that we often forget the capital importance of Magi in the every day lives on its inhabitants. Magi seems to impregnate everything (like technology does for us). They have magicked brooms, use small and punny crystals to convert into aspected energy to do various things, etc. I'm mean, it's not exactly wizards in Harry Potter, but not that far.

Before Heavensward came out, lots of new gear for 3.0, and lots of new tier gear for 2.4-2.5 and so on... How is that different?

I don't even know if we can call that a teaser... It's doesn't tease. We just see two random dudes doing generic danses on top of a giant statue... :c

If you really have to make a FC at some point, it's not nonsensical to go the route of a phoney company serving as a legit cover for your things though.

If Magi doesn't cut it, then just use Magitek >.>

Well at least Heavensward's writing was better than A Realm Reborn so... Progression I guess? I hope? I wish they fleshed out the WoL more. But they probably won't because they probably think that if they start doing so, they will create a character that will maybe not fit to the headcanon/vision some players have of them. They possibly want to give the player full liberty to make up their own vision of their WoL. Which is a bit baffling since there is literally very little, if nothing to work with to begin with. Damn, I'm close to go on a rant again against all the bad things with western RPGs... And make no mistake, what differentiates FFXIV from other FF titles is that it works exactly like a western classical RPG (arenas and hubs filled with quests givers).

I thought it was about crossclasses being splitted by roles and not by mandatory classes?

Am I the only one that really didn't like that trailer at all? Granted, it's super fan service and marketing oriented, but it did to me the exact opposite of hype...

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I think their horrible pacing (which is not new and already stems from 2.0, where you are put to sleep by the story for like 70% of the story until the end) is also due to their inability to put the story actually as a leading factor for development. I know it's not an easy thing to do, but like in a lot of (especially western) RPGs, the story doesn't dictate the pacing and the world around, but the world and leveldesign dictates the story and thus, constrains it. Working myself in the industry, it's pretty blatant to me that the story writers get two things to work with: the general idea and outline for the expansion universe and concept, and the world builders and gameplay developers also get the same outline. Then both will work on their thing, and the story writers will then get to work with many different places leveldesigned in a certain way for it to work as a MMO, and they will have to make the story stick and go through a general path making the player visit all those places, allowing him/her to access to all the sidequests around. Every time. Now try to write a story where you know that the first thing you will have to do is find something to do in Western Coerthas, then fucking Sea of Clouds... I'm sure they could have found more engaging than just helping those two Fortemps heirs, but I really can't help to see it any other way than that.