In other words, we’ve got a little more time before the patch, and there’s more to be seen about what it actually entails, so let’s talk about both our known unknowns and our unknown unknowns as well as breaking down some other bits that we haven’t heard about yet which are conspicuous for their absence. It’s worth paying attention to some of this; that’s my point here.
Omega: Sigmascape
Ah, an entire wing of Omega dedicated to fighting enemies from the Megaman X series! That’ll be fun. I honestly think that our lack of information about this one so far comes down to a matter of understandable secrecy more than anything, because thus far we actually don’t know how future installments with Omega are going to go, and giving us a boss layout ahead of time would have given us everything we needed to know.
See, the first installment of Omega brought in four bosses from Final Fantasy V. This is fine and entirely in keeping with the theme up to this point because Omega’s first historical appearance was in Final Fantasy V and it had a framing device that made sense. Omega isn’t the first boss we’ve inherited from that game, though; Gilgamesh and Shinryu have already gotten their own appearances in various forms, after all.
This all raises the question about what the next wave will look like. Will it be more bosses from FFV? Another four-boss sampler from a past game? Or something entirely different? All of the above are entirely possible, due in no small part to the fact that we don’t know at this point what the overarching theme of the Omega runs is going to be.
With Binding Coil and Alexander, it was obvious more or less from the start what was going on and what sort of enemies we could expect to see. Omega, on the other hand, provides less indication. More stuff drawing from the past makes sense, but more original things to us also make sense, considering that Omega itself is an entity out of time and space looking for challenges. I look forward to learning more about it on Friday; hopefully from there we can get a pretty decent picture of the upcoming content.
Eureka
While this isn’t slated for release until 4.25, we’ll likely see more previews of it, and part of me wonders with some amount of dread if this won’t serve as both the deep dungeon and the exploration region for this expansion. That, quite honestly, does not appeal. While Diadem had its issues and Palace of the Dead did as well, the two serve different design goals; working leveling content into an exploration zone feels like it might turn into an uncomfortable cop-out.
For the moment, however, it’s best to put that anxiety to one side and focus on the promise of a new take on the content. I think one of the things that Eureka needs to accomplish which Diadem had a hard time managing is to give people a sense of why this content should be run instead of something else; that doesn’t necessarily mean huge rewards, just offering something noteworthy and desirable that is also optional. New relic armor or similar enhancements would certainly fit the bill.
Expect to get the broadest sense of what this offers with this letter, then. Not all of the details, but some hints about it.
New gear
We have enough history to draw upon at this point that we can reliably estimate the new gear coming with this update. A new dungeon set, a new Omega set, a new tomestone set, and from the looks of it a new PvP set (although it’s possible that the last set is limited to the Feast, which would be stupid but has been known to happen). Right now, we’ve seen the new dungeon set, which appears to be a redeco of the Castrum Abania set. It’s a good choice; that set tends to get overlooked rather quickly based on where it comes in, and there’s some good design in there.
I expect that we’ll see the new Omega and tomestone sets with the live letter. There’s also the possibility that we’ll get a new crafted set, probably a dyeable version of existing sets; that might be held back until Eureka, though. It’d also be nice if this is when we get to remove the “antiquated” tag from our existing artifact sets to unlock dye options, although that in and of itself might tie into Eureka. Further bulletins as events warrant.
Last but not least, I wonder if we’re going to get our existing Ala Mhigan gear added to hunt vendors. That would be a nice change in and of itself, both for gearing up and just to even out the gear curve. It’s always nice to have new stuff to spend hunt seals on, and the addition of those sets in Heavensward made it that much easier to catch up with alts.
Other novelty
We’ll be getting new hairstyles. We always get new hairstyles, new mounts, and new pets. That’s just how the world works and it’s not changing now.
What I’d really like to see are some more darn egi glamours. We’ve moved beyond the point where all pets look the same, but the result is just that we’re all sporting Carbuncle instead of Ifrit and Garuda. Let’s see some more options. More egis we don’t have yet, even. Seriously, there’s the opportunity for some fun sidequests in there even for people who don’t main summoner, add in some cosmetic gear as a reward and we’re good to go.
I’m also expecting one or two additional little quality improvements here and there in addition to the new glamour dresser; that alone is a nice quality of life shift, but more is better. Stacking items to 999 helps, too. Maybe some unification of hunts seals like I’ve been agitating for? It’d be nice.
Housing
“Furthermore, we’ll be making changes to how plots are purchased. We’ll announce the changes right before additional plots are made available.”
Seriously, this feels like a dodge when we’re getting this close to more housing. Either there’s actually a serious change being rolled out… or there aren’t any real or substantial changes and it’s going to be another rush to be the first one to click in. Which is going to put the lie to this.
I really want to stop talking about this. Stop having it be so freaking bad.
As always, feedback is welcome in the comments or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, we’ll actually have our last batch of previews and we’ll be close to the patch… so of course, that’s when it seems like it’s the best time to talk about trials, raids, alliance raids, and how many styles of content we’ve got in the game right now.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
