22 Feb, 2022
0Director and Producer for Final Fantasy XIV, Naoki Yoshida, promised to spare no expense in continuing the game’s service. Following Endwalker’s runaway success building off the previous successful expansions, Yoshi-P gave us quite a lot to think about with his promise. Then during the latest Letter from the Producer LIVE 68, he sat down with us over stream to tell us exactly what to look forward to. The broadcast featured real-time Japanese-to-English translations, typically reserved for the most important coverage of the game. During the broadcast, we received a ton of information about the next ten years of service for Final Fantasy XIV.
The upcoming ten-year mark is momentous. Square-Enix’s first Final Fantasy MMORPG, Final Fantasy XI, is still up and running to this day. The game launched in 2002 in Japan and later in 2003 in North America. Roughly ten years after FFXI’s release, we got our hands on Final Fantasy XIV 1.0, which launched to horrible reviews in September 2010. Another decade after 1.0’s disastrous launch and we’re not getting news of another Final Fantasy MMO, but instead promises from the devs to look forward to ten more years of dedicated patches and updates. The game is as popular as it’s ever been right now, so Square-Enix has every reason to keep things going.
Here’s an overview of everything announced during the LIVE Letter.
Enhancing Final Fantasy XIV’s Solo Experience with Trusts
First introduced to Final Fantasy XIV during the Shadowbringers expansion in 2019, the Trust system opens up several options for solo play. Queueing into a dungeon alone is possible with three other NPC characters powered by the game’s AI. While completing content with Trusts won’t be as fast as with human players, this route offers a more relaxed environment for learning fights, role-playing, or just exploring with your favorite NPC companions. Shadowbringers only had limited Trust functionality at first, with just the level 71-79 dungeons available and nothing else. The devs have since expanded Trust availability and have promised to keep on adding more functionalities.
- Trusts for more MSQ dungeons. This includes all story dungeons in the game. Throughout the 6.X patches, the devs will add more of these in stages, including story dungeons for all remaining expansions (A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood). Available Trusts will be lore-friendly, with A Realm Reborn focusing on Adventurer’s Guild NPCs, and special Scion members introduced earlier on wherever possible.
- Trust compatibility for 8-man trials will take a while. Trusts for these duties will primarily work for fights in 7.0 or later. They’re working on compatibilities for earlier fights, but it’ll take some time.
- Cape Westwind will instead be a solo-instance battle. No more getting this underwhelming fight during your daily Trials roulette in Duty Finder. The level 49 trial leading up to 2.0’s finale will simply be a normal solo duty.
- Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium will be 4-man dungeons, in stages. MSQ roulette as we know it won’t exist anymore. These two fights will be doable with Trusts. A certain boss fight toward the end of the Praetorium will be its own 4-man trial at level 50. The final battle in the Praetorium will become a solo-instanced fight.
First Graphical Update Scheduled for the Launch of 7.0
While Final Fantasy XIV does look nice, it’s starting to show its age these days. Relaunching 2.0 from 1.0, the quality of the textures and lighting took a massive hit for the sake of less intensive hardware requirements on PC. Even though the world is far more detailed than 1.0 was, there are other downsides. Some of the game’s colors are muddy and washed out, leading some players to download the usual Reshade mods to add more vibrancy to the game world. This looks to be the first of a multi-update to Final Fantasy XIV’s graphics, with the first part releasing during 7.0.
- Several improvements to visuals planned. These include better lighting, shadows, and animations. We can expect hi-res textures for hair, skin, armor, and so on. Character models will ideally stay true to how they are currently without too many changes. They will still be recognizable, just with better textures and such. Game environments, such as grass and reflective surfaces, will also receive an overhaul to keep in-line with the planned update.
- Minimum hardware requirements on PC will go up. If you’re running Final Fantasy XIV on an ancient rig, you might want to look into upgrading before the launch of 7.0. The minimum and recommended requirements for the game will naturally go up with this graphical update.
- PlayStation support will continue. The game just released for PS5 not too long ago, but PS4 support has been kind of up in the air. The devs didn’t end PlayStation 3 support until 2017 with the launch of Stormblood. If you’re interested in Final Fantasy XIV on console, getting a PS5 will be better for the long-run.
Planned Roadmap for Patch 6.1-6.5 Updates
In addition to the 7.0 plans, Yoshi-P gave us an overview of what to expect before the next expansion launches. We can look forward to what’s already been announced, such as the new Ishgard housing, the lottery system for purchasing houses, and the 24-man Alliance raid, Myths of the Realm, dropping in patch 6.1. There’s also the next Pandaemonium tier releasing in patch 6.2. But he did give us a few surprises as well, saving the majority of patch 6.1 information for the next LIVE Letter.
- New major patch release schedule. Yoshi-P let us know to expect a slight delay with the update cycle. Usually we’d have the big .X updates every 3.5 months. Due to the team’s increased work volume, they’ve had to push this back to every four months. Perfectly understandable considering the huge workload they have to deal with these days.
- Patch 6.1. The new PvP mode, Crystalline Conflict, will make its debut, along with tribe quests (name subject to change) set in Thavnair, the new Ultimate raid called Dragonsong’s Reprise, an Unreal trial for Ultima Weapon, the first Trust system update for A Realm Reborn dungeons, custom deliveries set in Old Sharlayan, new hairstyles for Hrothgar, and the first of multiple planned updates to the glamour system.
- Patch 6.2. The much-anticipated Island Sanctuary releases as the first in a series of updates. Plus we’re getting a brand new “criterion” 4-man dungeon, possibly as another form of challenging content. Some of the Heavensward dungeons will also get their Trust compatibility update at this time, with the remaining dungeons getting their turn in patch 6.3.
- Patch 6.3. Island Sanctuary should get another update. We’re finally getting a new Deep Dungeon after Heaven-on-High back in Stormblood. Hardcore raiders have their next Ultimate battle to tackle.
- Patch 6.4-6.5. Island Sanctuary will have yet another update. We’ll also see more of those tough “criterion” 4-man dungeons, Trusts for Stormblood dungeons., and plenty more planned for later on.
Final Announcements from the LIVE Letter 68
- More to come. Aside from the listed changes, the devs have much more planned than they’ve already announced.
- Job adjustments incoming. We can expect the usual balances changes, such as updates to Dark Knight’s Living Dead and Blood Weapon, among the most requested changes from the Endwalker media tour in October 2021.
- Free trials of the game are now back on. After having to discontinue sales of the game with Endwalker’s massive congestion issues, the devs had also paused free trial account creations. New players can now sign up for Final Fantasy XIV’s free trial at any time.
- Patch 6.18 brings Data Center travel. For now, we’ll only be able to travel to different data centers in our same region. If you’re in North America, you’ll be limited to other NA data centers. Same for Japan and Europe. The devs plan on expanding this functionality later on down the line.
- Female Hrothgar are still planned for 7.0. With the release of male Viera for Endwalker, the devs had promised to also release female Hrothgar to round out the selection for everyone.
- Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker soundtrack will be out Wednesday, February 23. If you loved the music from this expansion, support the devs and purchase the soundtrack. You’ll get a special in-game item as a bonus and a few other surprises.
- The Patch 6.1 LIVE Letter will be on Friday, March 4, 2022 at 3:00am PST. Yoshi-P will go over the first half of announcements for patch 6.1 at this time, with a part two broadcast scheduled for later.
That’s everything from the latest LIVE Letter about the exciting future for Final Fantasy XIV. If you want to check out the full stream, watch the archive linked below.
