Sometimes vibes just turn kinda bad. It just happens. Despite my natural state of things these days, I also have good days and bad ones. There are times I just get up on the wrong side of the bed, and I think we culturally all can relate… and that’s as true for Final Fantasy XIV as it is for literally anything else on the face of the planet. So it’s a good thing that we’ve got a new live letter to discuss, and while some people are just going to still be hopeless, it does kind of help to re-center the discussion.
Obviously, the first letter doesn’t give us a whole lot to go on just yet, but there’s still plenty of interesting stuff to discuss. And to start with, I want to dredge up a disagreement between a friend and me (not an argument; we disagree, but we’re still tight) that both means nothing and everything: Is the new trial part of the MSQ or not?
Let’s recount the evidence on both sides. On the side of “yes,” the arguments to be had are that the boss fight is clearly based on Beatrix from Final Fantasy IX and the arena seems rather Alexandrian, while the new dungeon is also very clearly Alexandrian. The obvious inference is that the two are linked in some fashion. More to the point, we did not get the fight listed as part of a new trial series.
On the side of “no,” there’s the fact that in Endwalker our MSQ-linked trials were not spoiled beforehand for the first two patches, and just because we seem to have an Alexandrian theme for both doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re linked (there’s a lot going on there, after all). And more importantly, the structure of 7.1’s MSQ certainly didn’t imply that we were following the Endwalker template of starting a totally new arc, which is what would really suggest something other than a trial series.
Yes, that’s really the question here: Will we have a big conclusion in 7.3 or 7.5? There’s no way to know here, but I think there are a lot of possibilities either way, and I don’t think we currently have a decisive answer in either direction. Still, it’s fun to speculate upon!
Speaking of speculation, there’s the whole “phantom job” situation, another case of not having much information beyond this being a good system on the face. There are basically two things that we need to know about “phantom jobs” as a concept. The first is whether or not the jobs are leveled separately or just drop you all of the job-related abilities straight off; the second is what sort of abilities they confer. But the broad strokes of the idea are solid because one of the consistent issues with abilities in Bozja specifically was the fact that they weren’t directly unified.
Don’t get me wrong – the thematic idea was there – but in practical terms your stances and abilities were just there as an added set of things to equip. Reworking it to be a single suite of abilities makes perfect sense, and it also allows for the same basic fun of “now your Dragoon is the main healer” when you’re out on the field.
Are these meant to be a testbed for the next expansion? I don’t think so, but I also don’t think they’re not that. Realistically, the most likely outcome for the next expansion is another ten levels on the cap and all that goes along with that, but I also don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion. It wouldn’t exactly be inconceivable that phantom jobs are a chance to test-drive some of these ideas even if they don’t wind up being used.
Beyond that, it’s going to be interesting to see how Shades’ Triangle shakes out as a whole. The promise of letting people use either that content or other content for relics is a good one, but the split there was not terribly well-handled with Bozja, with certain steps that were just much harder to do in Bozja proper. I don’t mind having the option and think it’s a good thing, but I do think that it should have closer parity, especially before people decide to just not bother with most of the exploration content for relics.
And, y’know, I’m hoping that it’s better than Bozja in general. I’ve written about the content as a whole before now, but as always, that doesn’t mean “give up on the idea” so much as “you need to do something else to fix these issues.” Hopefully that’s what we’ll get! I would like to see it be better.
Meanwhile, Cosmic Exploration sounds… fine? Like, I don’t mean that to sound dismissive, I’m going to be diving into it with gusto, but it hasn’t really gotten much that changes my opinion about it beyond “all right, so this is our crafty thing for the expansion.” I’m sure it’ll be good and interesting. Mostly I’m just hoping it doesn’t port over the competitive aspect of Ishgardian Restoration, but beyond that it sounds broadly similar. That’s fine.
The fact that we’re getting Mamool Ja as the gathering society also fills me with joy. I know I’ve said before that it would have been weird if there wasn’t a society line with the Mamool Ja, and I’m glad that we’re getting one and that it’s not combat-related. Especially because the obvious plot thread is right there about living in their weird environment, and that’s honestly more interesting than going off to beat up other Mamool Ja. We’ve beaten up lots of Mamool Ja in this expansion and will probably beat up a few more, even.
Is there more to think about? Absolutely. There are still some obvious big question marks on the list from what we know so far, even disregarding the big MSQ questions that weren’t even hinted at having answers just yet. But that’s also the nature of the first live letter; it’s a tease to whet our appetite with a lot of questions still to be answered ahead of time. It’s meant to get us speculating and curious about what happens next.
And yeah, there’s room for speculation about what we think is going to happen rather than just what could happen, but I’ve kind of been inclined to let this particular expansion play out in the manner it wants to a bit more often, and so I’m doing that once again. I don’t know what’s going to happen in this patch, and while I could guess about the phantom jobs as a whole, I’d rather have more information before doing so. It’s a good first preview. Let’s see what happens next.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I want to talk about Hard-mode dungeons again while trying to both be honest about what the time that would have gone into them has gone into instead and evaluating how much of the trade has ultimately been worth it… which is a lot more complicated than it seems at first glance. And not just because we don’t actually know how much of it has been shifted around.
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.
