Beyond that, we also got our first gander at patch 4.4, even if it felt like only the barest of glimpses. So the point is we have plenty to look forward to in the near future, and even more in the more distant future. So let’s start talking about it, starting (rather obviously) with what we know most about already.
Big monsters, moderate rewards
The most interesting thing about this particular crossover to me, at least for the moment, is the idea that the higher difficulty is explicitly the version with only four people.
That’s not to say that I’m not looking forward to the event; unlike the Yo-Kai Watch crossover it seems less like something no one in the world would want. There’s not a massive gulf between the conceptions and designs for the two different games, and it doesn’t take much to entice me into doing seasonal stuff for new gewgaws. (I am predictable like that.) But in a way, that sort of works against the event, because it doesn’t feel particularly novel.
Functionally, it looks at a glance as if this will be a big arena fight against a snarly dragon monster. That’s all well and good, but it’s also not exactly a new format of content and probably doesn’t actually incorporate much of what makes MHW its own entity. (Not that it could, really; the games are very different.) So in terms of interesting novelty, the most unique part is that the developers are just making the higher-challenge mode the smaller one.
This goes somewhat counter to “established” wisdom, where content with more people is presented as the challenging option. This has never really sat quite right for me; it’s always struck me that having more people in a fight makes it less challenging. Even just in Trials, having two healers to recover from mistakes tends to make things easier than having just one. So this is a curious but welcome choice.
Not that much will come of it, of course, because this is a crossover event and thus is not meant to be the most challenging content; it’s unusual that we’re having the event pushed to level 70 only, but it seems unlikely that we’ll get a particularly unapproachable battle at either challenge level. I like what it portends, though, or at least what it brushes against unintentionally.
Beyond that… well, it looks like we’ve got gendered armor rewards, which already rubs me the wrong way. (It’s possible that they’re both unisex styles, but that seems less plausible.) Some minions, always nice. A new mount, which is nice but doesn’t really alter the pile of mounts I already have. An outdoor furnishing, that’s neat.
Overall, it looks fun and like it fills in some gaps for the game’s options, but it’s that change in group size that gets me the most. I’ve no doubt I’ll do it on at least one character, quite possibly several. Cosmetic armor is nice.
Beyond the Burn
It seems pretty clear, based on what we’ve seen of the MSQ, where we’re going for the next dungeon and how it ties into the story. We’ve been told that the next dungeon is The Burn, and as it so happens, we know exactly where that is.
See that big waste to the west of Doma? That’s the Burn. It’s been labeled there for a while, and it also appears to be where the last scene of the last patch’s story seems to be taking place. So it’s an obvious place to go, but it feels like it also offers some hints about our overall trajectory.
There’s little reason for us to go through the Burn. It’s an inhospitable wasteland that no one wants to be in. There’s a reason it was the site of an ambush and what amounts to a tacit assassination, because no one’s going to go looking there and it’s generally an untraveled waste. It strikes me that if we’re going there (and we are), it’s not as a journey to somewhere, it’s to get something out of there.
You know, like a group of people who never really intended to be there in the first place, if you get my meaning.
I’ve been vocal about my feeling that we’re not going to be heading to Garlemald with this next expansion, and to me this feels like even more support of that particular theory. There are obvious people to recover from the Burn, but if we were heading that way next we would likely meet up with them in the Empire. That doesn’t mean that this isn’t quite important, though; the history of the Burn is also intimately tied to both Garlemald and the Garlean fear of primals. We don’t know all of the details about what happened there, but we know that it was bad enough that it basically informed the Imperial edict against these creatures.
Heading there on a rescue mission is a big deal, and it continues to make me think we’ll be seeing more about the genesis of the Empire before heading off in a different direction. The news about finishing out Omega and such is barely even news yet, just like we always knew that Suzaku was going to be on the deck for our further trials, but finding out that we’re venturing into the Burn proper has some pretty far-reaching implications.
Of course, we’re not going to actually explore those implications until September, but that’s part of the fun.
It does strike me that the timing for this impacts the fan festival a little bit more; while last year didn’t have much space between 3.4 and the expansion reveal, this year gives us a couple of months between them. Part of me wonders if as a result 4.4 is really going to serve as the “reveal” for the expansion, with Las Vegas going into more detail when we already have a fairly clear picture of where we’re going. Speculative, I know, but it would make sense.
Or it’s just how the dates shake out this year.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I’d like to talk about some of the limitations to the game’s housing system that should really be addressed at some point in the near future, other than just the simple issues of space. (That’s a perpetual thing.)
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.
