The fact that I want something in Final Fantasy XIV does not make it a good idea. There are dropped threads that the game has never picked up that might be worth addressing, there are mechanics that are half-baked and should be refined, and there are legitimate holes to be filled in. But there are also some things that I would like to be added to the game in one form or another that I don’t think are ever going to happen because they are legitimately bad ideas even if they would make me happy.
To be clear, with this particular column I am focusing on things that are not dropped plot threads or absent forms of content in any fashion; I am not presuming that we’ll never get such-and-such job or we’ll never get another update to Island Sanctuary or anything else that is, in the end, purely speculative. We’re talking specifically about stuff where we are long past the point when it would reasonably be added, and there is no further reason to expect that things are going to change on a fundamental level. Especially since, as noticed, most of these are bad ideas.
Explorable versions of missing 1.0 regions
There are a large number of places that we could see in 1.0 that are not here now. The obviously missing places are the Coerthan central lowlands, northern highlands, and southern lowlands, the western portion of the Black Shroud, a huge southern portion of Mor Dhona, and a large eastern region of Lower La Noscea. But that’s not even including the generally missing landmarks and regions throughout the game, ranging from villages to other areas.
Many people have said that they would love to roam around in 1.0’s maps, a sentiment that I agree with. Failing that, of course, several of those could theoretically make new zones. That would all be fun stuff, right? Why can’t we get that?!
Well, the main reason is probably that version 1.0 stored its map data in a very different fashion to 2.0, and even if you disregard polygon inefficiencies, the zones were built to not use specific zone connections like the game currently does. It would not be a simple task to just drop in 1.0’s maps for players to explore. (Never mind the reason why you could do that. You can come up with a reason. That’s not an impediment.)
At a bare minimum, you’d need to remake the old maps extensively. More likely, you’d need to make new zones for all of these missing areas while also reworking existing maps to account for these new connections, work that would definitely cut into the overall number of maps that already need to be developed for every single expansion’s life cycle. Given the choice, I think most people would rather go to Meracydia or the Void or even the yet-unseen parts of Ilsabard instead of “here’s another part of the Black Shroud you didn’t see before.”
And on top of that? You’d need to have a reason to go there, which means creating content for specifically those zones, and that’s an entirely additional stress. It’s easier to just… not. I’d love it, but I don’t blame the developers for not doing so.
Expansions to Grand Companies
It really seemed as if Grand Companies were going to be a big thing even moving forward all through Heavensward. There was a clear implication that Ishgard functionally had its own Grand Company with the Temple Knights and the existing ones kept getting new content and systems. And then… it stopped. We haven’t even gotten a new materiel container for Dawntrail, and several jobs do not have company-themed weapons of any sort. They’re not totally useless, but they’re pretty irrelevant.
Now, in theory, I’d love to have more Grand Companies for the many nations that we could affiliate with, complete with cosmetic gear to strut around in, along with rank systems and maybe even more squadron missions to go on. But the problem is that all relies, in no small part, on a direction the game has moved away from. If you want a group of NPCs to clear a dungeon with you? That system exists with Duty Support and Trusts.
But the big nail in the coffin is PvP. Frontlines are balanced around having three factions fighting in them. That means that you can’t have extra companies. That also means that increasingly, the expansion storylines either don’t have anything to do with the companies or involve all of the companies in equal measure; the relevance of this particular affiliation drops off a cliff once you progress further. And with the addition of rewards other than company seals from clearing FATEs, it’s clear that companies are… a relic. They’re just not going to be important the way they used to be ever again.
And this is honestly probably all right; it’s weird that your three cosmetic options are “loves nature,” “loves boats,” or “loves scales and being only partially clothed.” It’s all right that these things are not the future of the game, and we have other more interesting avenues moving forward that require less rigmarole for getting rewards.
More interesting raid wings
What’s the difference between a new trial and a new segment of raids in FFXIV? Themes and numbers, that’s all. Our raids are at least theoretically based around a single location, but you get four wings, and each of them consists of a boss arena that is ultimately no more or less elaborate than trial bosses. Alexander was the last time we had any sort of non-boss trash along the way, and even that dropped off reasonably quickly. Now it’s a jaunt to the boss and that’s it.
Of course, the reason for this change is that because you queue for raid segments individually, the trash is just there to eat up time and it doesn’t do anything interesting. The Omega quests also figured out that running through trash would ultimately just be fun if it tied into the story, and so the raids go all-in on that aspect of things and are laden with story beyond most trial series. It’s the same reason why alliance raids are structured to make their trash fights mini-encounters of their own, a single longer encounter you go on once per week.
As the game has leaned in hard on making sealed encounters the way that it is set up, the way trash fights work has had to change, and these elements have been discarded from raid series encounters because they’re… not interesting. That’s not the wrong answer. But part of me does still miss beating up goblins and mechanical soldiers on my way through Alexander, even if I know it wasn’t too efficient or worthwhile.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, obviously I’m going to be talking about the patch, and first we’ll be looking at it purely through a mechanical lens next week with as little story spoiling as possible. If you are hoping for my impressions of the fights in the alliance raid, you will be happy; if you want thematic considerations, you will have to wait a week longer. This is the custom.
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.
