I can’t believe that after we’ve gone so many different places, at long last, Final Fantasy XIV is going to have Soken do a musical crossover with Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Admit it, now that you’ve read it, you really want it to happen. But even if we don’t quite get that potential crossover that I just made up, we know what our next patch is going to be, and it’s sending us into what seems like the obvious plot coda direction.
Obviously we’ve only just had the first preview, so I’m going to do what I always do with these first looks and try to organize the disconnected thoughts I have in a vaguely entertaining fashion. I don’t find myself having a lot of strong feelings just yet about some of the obvious elements, but I am curious about where some of the developments may lead in the future. So let’s go through it frame-by-frame.
First and foremost, it looks pretty clear to me that we are back in the mode of storytelling most FFXIV expansions have gone with wherein our first three patches serve as a coda to the previous story. A shot of Zoraal Ja, a look at Gulool Ja, and the new dungeon taking place around Heritage Found all implies pretty strongly that these patches are dealing with the major lingering question of what Gulool Ja is going to do with Alexandria now that he is, technically, the sole ruler of the kingdom.
That’s not to say that this is going to be our one overarching plot thread; indeed, I suspect it won’t be, precisely because a lot of the conclusions seem foregone. No one believes Gulool Ja is going to continue the war on Tuliyollal or anything; that’s just not realistic. My guess is that much like in the Shadowbringers quests, the Alexandrian question will likely occupy a patch or two with another secondary threat that rises in prominence and becomes our main concern in 7.3. These may very well be linked threats in some fashion (Yoshida has hinted that Sphene’s presence will still be felt), but that’s my main guess for the general direction.
When it comes to the chaotic alliance raid as a concept, well, I’m a bit more mixed on this particular development. On the one hand, I’m not really a huge fan of this tier of content, but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with it; indeed, there’s a precedent for the designers playing around with 24-person fights at a higher difficulty, and we even have the heretofore convention-only Ozma (Savage) as a proof of concept. So all of these parts? Good things! I’m curious to see how tuning will work out, but I am on-board for all of that.
But then there’s the fact that this is going to be a fight against the Cloud of Darkness herself, and I feel my interest start waning a little bit again. Not because the team doesn’t design great boss fights, but because this is taking another form of content and turning it into a chain of boss fights. At this point trials and raids are functionally identical, just boss fights in a fixed arena, and while I definitely understand wanting to make harder 24-player content into just a contained boss fight based on the game’s structure, I would be lying if I said it didn’t wear on me a little bit. Trash pulls can be fun, too! Pacing!
Ah, well, it’s a minor complaint. Still gets to me, though.
Meanwhile, we know that our first allied society quests will be for the Pelupelu, who are serving as our combat allied society. On this one, let’s get the negative out of the way first. I definitely think that the Pelupelu are the least interesting out of the various societies that we could be exploring, so that’s a bit of a bummer; making it even worse is that all of the screenshots we’ve seen are not in Urqopacha, but in Kozama’uka with the Hanuhanu. That makes it less likely the quests will have anything to do with the Yok Huy, who are pretty high on my list of societies I want to know more about!
However, there’s also a lot to be positive about. For one thing, having these as our combat quests helps further dispel the idea that we’re using the Pelupelu as another attempt to do the Namazu again, which is a mercy. Rather than this seeming like an extended joke, it looks like they’re trying to expand what the Pelupelu are overall, and I can get behind that.
New capstone quests for the role quests and delivery quests looks pretty much like what we expected and also fairly low-stakes, but I hope there are some better rewards waiting on the other sides of these. The capstone for Endwalker’s role quests felt like answering a question that wasn’t really all that interesting, and while I’ve gone on record saying that I generally like these role quests better, I’m hoping that we get a reward beyond “here’s a little extra questline.”
Outfits? Minions? Mounts? I don’t have a particular preference here, just make it something fun.
I haven’t said much about the features like the new Final Fantasy XI raid or the new dungeon because at this point, there’s just nothing to say. I like FFXI, I like FFXIV alliance raids like 90% of the time, I like FFXIV dungeons like 90% of the time, they will feature some neat bosses, and I will probably like this. At this point we don’t have any idea what those bosses will be or how they will relate to the content, and so speculating would be premature.
The housing changes that we’ve had hinted at will need to wait for an entirely different column, there’s some interesting stuff to unpack there.
I will say that I’m not a huge fan of what has been said vis-a-vis job changes because I suspect I’m not alone in thinking Pictomancer needs some tuning. Not because it’s underperforming or anything, but rather because the job’s burst remains insane out of the gate. It’s a problem because this does make the job of outsized value, especially since that burst ties directly into how long a fight takes, which in turn is kind of Pictomancer’s weak spot. In other words, Pictomancer gets more balanced the longer the fight goes on, but its big burst opening makes that fight that much shorter. Some dials still need to be tuned a bit.
I’m glad to hear that Frontlines will be getting a big update, but I would be more enthusiastic about changes to Rival Wings, which is currently basically nonexistent. Maybe the two will roll together. I’m generally not a huge fan of the PvP anyway, but I’m glad to see it’s still getting updates and being made at least compelling for players like myself who are not huge fans.
Feedback, as always, is welcome down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. As a minor aside, I’ve gotten a few very nice letters recently, which I do really appreciate; I’m sorry I haven’t been as good about replying to email (I usually try to), but I do always read it. Next week, I want to talk about the housing update we know we’re getting, as well as the big one that Yoshida has teased that hints at finally, finally addressing a really big problem with housing. Or a really small one.
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.
