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[Valonquar]

Cleared all 12 paths...for a fucking fashion accessory version of the sleep mask W T F Yoshida???
1 mount locked behind 25 full clears of Advanced, 1 mount locked behind 25 full clears of Criterion (assuming you get unlucky on drops and can actually clear this shit...)
The Advanced mode bosses do not fuck about. Cleared the first one before gettin a bit tired of it for the day.

 

[Revolutionary]

FanFest mount and minion have been datamined. Potential hint at 8.0?

We do seem to be dealing with the planet's life force withering so I can definitely see the parallels already...

That said, we did get a few FFVII minions for Shadowbringers' FanFest that had no relevance to ShB, so who knows...

 

[Sevyne]

I could see this being the expansion to remove that fog off the map from Ilsabard and Blindfrost. Throw a Northern Crater over in Blindfrost or something, and Garlean tech isn't far off from that of FFVII (hell, they even had the "Weapons" for the ShB trial series), so it could be a reason to bring them back into MSQ in some form.

 

[Valonquar]

Advanced\Another cleared. Overall good fights, but still lame how they did rewards. They are really alienating the casual crowd that compromises like 80%++ of their subscription base.

Def expecting to see Sephiroth show up in some form in 8.0. Though they have done FF7 minons for fan fest previously so no telling.

 

[Revolutionary]

7.5 confirmed for April 28th, titled Trail to the Heavens

Tentative schedule:

Edit: Beastmaster finally revealed

No BLU update because they focused on BST lmao this fucking dev team

 

[Valonquar]

So trickled out slow as fuck over the next 9 months, for $117+Tax assuming cheapest sub:

2 new story dungeons (TT Card & Minion) (2 hours)
1 new trial & EX ver (TT Card & Mount & Chocobo Barding + Collect all wings mount) (2 to 5 hours)
Cut\paste delivery NPC & beastribe quest (2 hours cummulatively)
Hilibrand (30 minutes to an hour)
a level 50 BST job with achievement 4% of the population will do (let's say.... 5 hours, more if you are an achievement person)
final 24 man (weekly locked Glams & 780 to 790 upgrades, TT Card, Minion) (1 hour + maybe 4 to 6 of weekly repeats)
final copy\paste crafting planet leves (copy\paste relic tool steps) (6 to 8 hours)
2nd OC zone & Tower: Magic normal\savage (6 hours or so to max new handful of OC jobs, 3 to 12 hours for Tower normal\savage not counting achievement grind)
Easter, summerfest, rising, Halloween, Xmas 10 minute quests. (1 to 2 hours)
1 new PvP mount\minion\Glam set (5 hours of CC spam, or daily frontline queuing)
...and maybe more cash shop glams, 2 minions, 2 mounts

NEAT less than 40 hours of content if I'm being generous, and it's likely FAR LESS than that, especially if you skip cutscenes, or do not care about grinding out achievements, or can just buy rewards off the AH.

 

[MagiusNecros]

7.5 confirmed for April 28th, titled Trail to the Heavens

Tentative schedule:

Edit: Beastmaster finally revealed

No BLU update because they focused on BST lmao this fucking dev team

2 years and they are forcing Dawntrail Expansion(because the data is in a 7.x patch update) purchases to play a Limited Job that is locked into only playing ARR content all while delaying a BLU update because all their "resources" were on Beastmaster and you won't see BLU updates until 8.x.

Small indie company.

My thoughts are as follows

 

[Revolutionary]

It doesn't even make sense. Yoshi-P claims that Mr Ozma himself worked hard to bring Beastmaster to life, but then they don't have enough resources to work on the BLU update... is Mr Ozma the only person working at the studio? It almost feels that way lol

Also, the amount of people defending this decision on Reddit and Twitter because "I don't play BLU so I don't care" isn't particularly surprising, but it's a reminder of why this dev team gets away with underdelivering...

 

[MagiusNecros]

It's the cult like status and overwhelming Toxic Positivity that has long infected FF XIV so that's unsurprising.

Yoshida was glazing Ozma but let me tell you the battle design and the 2 minute meta have led to very streamlined and garbage encounters so him working on BST Crucible doesn't fill me with much confidence.

It's all looking like a retread of BLU launch. Which I think the discourse with BLU being lvl50 and everyone else being lvl70 was acceptable.

But classes being lvl100 and you are capping a new class at lvl50 and locking them down into ARR only content. Like BRO WHAT. And I know part of it is them being lazy and only making one AF gearset for BST.

And the last BLU update was PATHETIC. Lackluster rewards, excluded from Ultimates(can't even do it as a bunch of BLUs), largely pointless spells outside of like 6 of the 20+. Could have at least raised their level cap by 10.

I don't foresee 8.0 changing much so I don't think I'll be playing this for the foreseeable future.

They are really burning the goodwill big time here to the point all that's left is Raiders, players who invested too much or big time shills who will preach to the choir that the game is perfect.

Oh well it's been like 6 years of disappointment and it's very tiresome to not see much positivity to talk about.

 

[Zephyranthes]

Yeah, I'm probably unsubbing until 8.0. Not enough going on here to justify the cost of staying in, and none of my friends are playing anymore.

 

[Revolutionary]

I still have a weird attachment to my house so I can't unsub for longer than 45 days, sadly.

But what I will say is that I've noticed a lot more houses going up for grabs in my neighborhood over the past year. One of my dickhead neighbors that glitched housing items onto the street is finally gone so that's nice.

Anyway, the Live Letter memes have been pretty funny, so there's that.

 

[Celcius]

hmm, I'll resub when the OC North Horn and next relic grind are available
I don't see the point of making the beastmaster if it's only max lv 50

 

[Revolutionary]

Been neck deep in Crimson Desert so I completely missed that they posted the NA FanFest schedule a few days ago:

Presenting the Fan Festival 2026 in Anaheim Stage & Stream Schedule | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone

Presenting the Fan Festival 2026 in Anaheim Stage & Stream Schedule

na.finalfantasyxiv.com

Most important thing to note is the Keynote of course, on Friday April 24th, which is a week after the next Live Letter.

 

[Revolutionary]

FanFest stuff hits the Online Store early:


$30 for FFVII bike, $7 for Red XIII minion

and there's a Runway Walk emote that is sure to be popular with the AFKers

 

[Celcius]

Paying 30 real dollars for a mount just seems crazy to me

 

[Revolutionary]

The FanFest keynotes will be shifting from the traditional formula and are not necessarily just "the next expansion" but more "the longterm future of Final Fantasy XIV", they want to be very open with the direction the game will be going in both the immediate and distant future plans. He thinks it would take about five hours to cover everything, from stories to game mechanics, so NA FanFest will be the presentation of the games overall direction with EU and JP will be diving more into specific elements and details. This is on top of "meeting 100% of the normal expectations" eg expansion, jobs, etc etc presumably.


The interviewer compares all the things hes hinting at to a "second rebirth", or another ARR. Yoshi-P says that when you think of that, it's heavily associated with the brand new client and so on, so he wouldn't make a *direct* comparison to ARR himself but there are some similarities in the general idea.

 

[Zephyranthes]

The game definitely needs a fresh direction on multiple levels, but CBU3 has historically been very conservative in their approach to change. It's possible that this approach was guided somewhat by the game's success from 2020-2024 and a reluctance by Square to do anything that might disturb that success (especially when they needed FFXIV's profits to offset huge losses on Avengers and Forspoken). Now that its popularity is waning, Yoshi-P may have more of a free hand to change things up. I guess we'll see.

 

[Revolutionary]

7.5 trailer:


7.5 Part 2 is dropping 5 MONTHS LATER in September. I guess this is an attempt to stretch out content during the upcoming drought but man, that's a long time between Part 1 and 2 of the final patch.

 

[Zephyranthes]

7.5 Part 2 is dropping 5 MONTHS LATER in September. I guess this is an attempt to stretch out content during the upcoming drought but man, that's a long time between Part 1 and 2 of the final patch.

8.0 is really starting to feel like a summer 2027 launch. Three full years after Dawntrail.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Dawntrail launched about 3 years after Endwalker. Dev cycles are getting longer and you are getting less content per expansion overall. Game is stagnating or has been.

XIV would be in a much better place if they refunneled their profit back into the game instead of other projects.

Until they deviate from their spreadsheet formula they use for XIV it'll just be more of the same FOMO DoA style content that lasts a week or less. Which for 5 months of dev time....that's just unacceptable.

Game needs a full overhaul at this point.

And of course if the story sucks(which it does) then they have nothing to keep you there as that's the main draw.

To be honest as more games adopt large single player offline experiences MMOS are an endangered species since MMOs as they are now do little to promote community-driven world building and progression.

Which in XIV's case is baffling since Square Enix has both FFXI and DQX to pull from.

 

[Zephyranthes]

Dawntrail launched about 3 years after Endwalker. Dev cycles are getting longer and you are getting less content per expansion overall. Game is stagnating or has been.

The dev cycle has gotten longer with each expac starting with Endwalker. Players were understanding about that one because they had a very legitimate reason for the delay (Covid), and because they delivered maybe the single best patch in the game's history during that time (5.3). It feels a lot less excusable now.

On top of that, the quality of content has been declining. Arcadion is imo the only really good major content since 6.0 MSQ.....6.x and onward MSQ, FFXI raids, Crescent, Variant Dungeons and Cosmic Exploration are all lackluster.

There's a lot riding on 8.0, and I think Yoshi P knows it.

 

[MagiusNecros]

For a while I've said that 8.0 will make or break XIV and what I am seeing especially with Beastmaster is no improvements or changes will be made. At least none that dynamically change the game. Game has a lot of problems.

 

[euroboi]

So trickled out slow as fuck over the next 9 months, for $117+Tax assuming cheapest sub:

2 new story dungeons (TT Card & Minion) (2 hours)
1 new trial & EX ver (TT Card & Mount & Chocobo Barding + Collect all wings mount) (2 to 5 hours)
Cut\paste delivery NPC & beastribe quest (2 hours cummulatively)
Hilibrand (30 minutes to an hour)
a level 50 BST job with achievement 4% of the population will do (let's say.... 5 hours, more if you are an achievement person)
final 24 man (weekly locked Glams & 780 to 790 upgrades, TT Card, Minion) (1 hour + maybe 4 to 6 of weekly repeats)
final copy\paste crafting planet leves (copy\paste relic tool steps) (6 to 8 hours)
2nd OC zone & Tower: Magic normal\savage (6 hours or so to max new handful of OC jobs, 3 to 12 hours for Tower normal\savage not counting achievement grind)
Easter, summerfest, rising, Halloween, Xmas 10 minute quests. (1 to 2 hours)
1 new PvP mount\minion\Glam set (5 hours of CC spam, or daily frontline queuing)
...and maybe more cash shop glams, 2 minions, 2 mounts

NEAT less than 40 hours of content if I'm being generous, and it's likely FAR LESS than that, especially if you skip cutscenes, or do not care about grinding out achievements, or can just buy rewards off the AH.

So wow, that is a lot. $117 being the "cheapest" option is just shocking.

 

[euroboi]

Dawntrail launched about 3 years after Endwalker. Dev cycles are getting longer and you are getting less content per expansion overall. Game is stagnating or has been.

XIV would be in a much better place if they refunneled their profit back into the game instead of other projects.

Until they deviate from their spreadsheet formula they use for XIV it'll just be more of the same FOMO DoA style content that lasts a week or less. Which for 5 months of dev time....that's just unacceptable.

Game needs a full overhaul at this point.

And of course if the story sucks(which it does) then they have nothing to keep you there as that's the main draw.

To be honest as more games adopt large single player offline experiences MMOS are an endangered species since MMOs as they are now do little to promote community-driven world building and progression.

Which in XIV's case is baffling since Square Enix has both FFXI and DQX to pull from.

We do need more community in the world.

And yeah, they would risk less profit if they don't improve the game to keep the players coming back.

 

[Revolutionary]

7.5 preliminary notes

Patch 7.5 Notes (Preliminary) | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone

Patch 7.5 Notes (Preliminary)

na.finalfantasyxiv.com

Interesting change to Chaotic Cloud: it's now possible to run unsynced, but if you do it with Minimum IL you get guaranteed drops in the clear chest.

 

[Revolutionary]

FFXIV: Evercold



January 2027!


Edit: Yoshi-P is wearing a Rhitatyn shirt... new gunshield job hint?

Edit2: Early mockup of new Adventurer Activity screen

Edit3: They're hitting all the right notes for me right now. They're going to revitalize zones, just as I've been hoping for. But we'll have to wait for next FanFest for actual details

Edit4: Switch 2 version announced

Pretty great keynote. I'm glad they've finally taken the feedback to heart and are shaking things up as many of us have been hoping for.

Reddit Keynote summary:

 

[Celcius]

Glad to see that they took all of the community feedback to heart. I'm looking forward to continuing the journey in 8.0 Evercold!
Looking forward to seeing the Kefka Ultimate as well.

 

[Zephyranthes]

Gotta say....I'm pretty pleased with the direction they're going with a lot of this stuff. I've been watching the dev panel where they explain a lot more about the new Evolved Mode for job action rotations.

• Firstly - and most importantly - synergy actions for buffing party damage are being removed, effectively eliminating the 2-minute rotation meta. Not only does this give more freedom towards job design and how players can play them, but it also allows for more flexibility in encounter design, since it will be no longer required to have enemy behavior tied to the 2-minute meta.
• Jobs will have a greatly reduced number of inputs, with a maximum of 16 (thus fitting on one cross-hotbar for controller players). This will be done in a few different ways:
  • Having most combo actions share a single input, which is already being done in some cases like the Paladin's Confiteor combo.
  • Having certain actions be context-sensitive. For example, Provoke and Shirk will share an input that changes based on if the target is an enemy or ally.
  • Removing actions and adding their effect to a different action which is used for the same basic purpose. For example, Low Blow will be removed, but Interject will gain its stun.
• Individual jobs will have mechanics which both emphasize job identity and encourage skillful play. For example, Paladin will have a counterattack when using shield-based skills to block incoming attacks, which becomes more powerful if timed well. Dragoon jump actions will have more unique effects, including one where the character lingers off-screen and gains a massive damage reduction while in the air.

I think there's more that can be done, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

 

[Revolutionary]

Evercold teaser site is up.

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Evercold

The official site for FINAL FANTASY XIV: Evercold.

na.finalfantasyxiv.com

There's nothing that wasn't shown at the keynote but we got a better look at some concept art and, most importantly, this guy:

 

[Robot Carnival]

I'm laughing so hard I'm crying . EVA really is in EVERYTHING .

 

[Revolutionary]

I'm laughing so hard I'm crying . EVA really is in EVERYTHING .

Nier EVA

The two most collaborated IPs, and they're both in this game

 

[Celcius]

You know, I was listening to Dawntrail music today, remembering the beautiful environments, reminiscing a bit and you know what... I had a lot of fun in Dawntrail. It's not the best expansion but perhaps I was a bit too harsh on it. I really did enjoy my time and had tons of fun.

 

[Valonquar]

1 hour to clear everything but the EX trial >_> I think I am done with this game.
*edit* Guess I was pretty cranky that morning

 

[Arsic]

Will likely jump in this summer to finish up all of dawntrail so I can be ready for next year.

The combat revamp sounds great.

I'm curious what is the new job supposed to be for the new expansion? Showed the hero in that trailer as a reaper at the end?

 

[Valonquar]

They won't reveal those til 1 at Tokyo and 1 at UK fan fests. All we know is it's a tank and a ranged dps. Highly suggested that the tank will be a double shield tank like the one ARR dude.

 

[Revolutionary]

I've been slacking so hard in gearing up these past few months that I was nearly getting one shot as a DPS in The Third Walk... and yet I was still topping the emnity chart somehow. It was fun though, and the story was nice as a former XI player. I really want the Shantotto emote but I'm not gonna farm it since we have like 9 months until Evercold lol
Edit: nvm I just bought it off the mb

Also MSQ was interesting but it's brought up a lot of questions in terms of lore... seems some people are taking umbrage with the idea that Hydaelyn may not have known about the Solstice.

 

[Mondai]

I got PvP series level 25 glam already Just grinded CC all day Tuesday and yesterday morning.

 

[Revolutionary]

Switch 2 version targeting 30fps according to IGN's interview with Yoshi-P:

Final Fantasy XIV will target 30 fps on Switch 2 and include Joy-Con mouse controls, director Naoki Yoshida confirms.

Naoki Yoshida confirmed Switch 2 technical details during an interview at FFXIV Fan Fest alongside the Evercold reveal.

www.ign.com

Looking forward to seeing "NO SWITCH 2" descriptions in PF

 

[Valonquar]

I am okay with this

 

[Mondai]

I am okay with this

So jealous , I'll probably get them 3 years from now