Skill Name Change - Black Mage

I don't think I'm wrong when I say that in every Final Fantasy the elemental based skills were named Fira, Blizzara, Aero, Thundara. However in this Final Fantasy they are left with there "unfantastical" counter parts.

Why is this? When will this be changed?

Also names like cure aren't cura or curasa.

Am I the only one bothered by this?

We have this conversation often around here. tl;dr, the devs decided to use roman numerals in the English localization and that's just what we have to live with. It won't be changed.

From a UI/UX standpoint, a suffix system would work if it were like the one used in FFXI, where the suffixes were meaningful--

• Base spells: single target
• -ra spells: AoE centered on caster
• -ga spells: AoE centered on target
• -ja spells: AoE centered on target and reduces target's resistance to subsequent uses of the spell

--so they weren't just power indicators. In that system, they also used roman numerals to denote different power levels of spells with the same target scheme. If BLM and WHM spells used that same system, it would look something like this:

Current system >> Suffix system

• Fire » Fire
• Fire II » Firaga
• Fire III » Fire II
• Fire IV » Fire III
• Blizzard » Blizzard
• Blizzard II » Blizzara
• Blizzard III » Blizzard II
• Blizzard IV » Blizzard III
• Thunder » Thunder
• Thunder II » Thundaga
• Thunder III » Thunder II
• Thunder IV » Thundaga II
• Cure » Cure
• Cure II » Cure II
• Cure III » Curaga
• Medica » Cura
• Medica II » Cura II

However, still from a UI/UX perspective, if you wanted to just rename Fire/II/III/IV to Fire/Fira/Firaga/Firaja, then it would be no different from naming them Fire/II/III/IV except that then people would have to learn to associate --/-ra/-ga/-ja with the meanings of 1/2/3/4 or A/B/C/D, which would be an additional cognitive load on the user. Therefore, if we're not going to use meaning-bearing suffixes like XI uses, the more user friendly choice is just to number the spells.

Theres also a lore reason as to why spells are called what they're called

A book in gubal hard talks about how Amdapori Magi were voting on a new for a new healing spell, along the lines of Curaja and Curaza since it was a adaptation on I think Curaga, they then all concluded that the traditional FF naming convention lacked gravity and was too abstruse, so they voted by a large margin to rename them to the simpler Roman Numeral versions we have now. Since BLM spells are the same we can assume something similar happened in Mhach.

as for a IRL reason, who knows? Maybe they thought it would be too confusing for players and opted for a simple number system. Me i'd also prefer the traditional FF versions but I doubt they'll change it.

Well the lore bit was mostly a joke about it.
I think they went with numbers to make it easy to standardize across spells and classes. You got you cure 1/2/3 which is fine, but then you got medica (which already has "a" at the end). And then you got benefic on Astro and broil on scholar and those would likely sound odd with the suffix system. Ruin as well. So numbers are easily uniform

Laughs in German localisation where we have a mix of classic suffixes, numbers for the AST spells and prefixes for Broil

I think part of it is you have this population of players who have never played a FF game prior to trying out FFXIV. The naming convention for things like Fire, Fira, Firaga, etc would be lost on them and I think it would make it more confusing for new players.



I do think it would be cool if we could have the option to switch between the traditional names and the localized names though.

You already have players blasting out Cure III on a single target because “bigger number right?”
Using different suffixes will not help or change anything in these types.

I'll echo myself from the last time this came up:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

I just wish there was at least consistency across the board.

Sometimes IIs are an AoE (Fire, Blizzard, Miasma (RIP), Medica). Sometimes not (Ruin, Cure, Stone).

Sometimes IIIs are an AoE (Aero (RIP), Cure). Sometimes not (Ruin, Miasma).

New AoEs are always being added and taken away and the consistency just gets worse.

There are only a handful of times when a spell directly upgrades and that is a perfect time to use the numerals in my opinion. They show it's a stronger version of the same spell. Stone I thru IV works perfectly this way.

I'd really like it if AoEs were all hard consonant -ga/-ka(-ca) spells and all ST spells were soft consonant -ra/-ja/-sa spells.

Cure II > Cura, Cure III > Curaga, Fire II > Firaga, Fire III > Fira, Fire IV > Firaja, Thunder II > Thundaga, Thunder IV > Thundaga II, Ruin II > Ruinra, etc.

It would better show which spells are different from one another and which spells are direct upgrades.

So then we have Cure, Cura, Curaga, all representing different spells and spells like Thunder, Thunder II, Thundaga, Thundaga II all representing different spells and logical progression.

Thunder advancing to Thunder III and Thunder II to Thunder IV is pretty darn confusing, especially when compared to Ruin's advancements. And don't get me started on Miasma upgrading to Miasma III even after they removed Miasma II from the game!

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In their efforts to "make it less confusing for English players" they only made things WAY more confusing. I'd happily do the renaming work for free to get some consistency going on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

I'll echo myself from the last time this came up:

Quote:

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Fire II > Firaga, Fire III > Fira

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In their efforts to "make it less confusing for English players" they only made things WAY more confusing. I'd happily do the renaming work for free to get some consistency going on.

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Ironically, the subquoted part would really screw up players who are familiar with Final Fantasy magic suffixes, as we expect Firaga to hit harder than Fira.

The roman numberals was the smarter choice because some year when we're up to FIRE IX we have to stop and think how many variations of Fira and firaga we couldve have gotten away with.

However if they were to make things more consistent I would say make single target spells be

SPELLNAME-NUMBER

and then AOE spells be

SPELLNAME-GA-NUMBER

I know in ff8 it was fire, Fira, Firaga.
In ff11. The sufix had to do with how the spell took effect. -ra radius of caster, -ga Aoe based on target. -ja was based on radius of target but compounded damage modifier of same spell cast on target.

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Originally Posted by Avyiur

I think part of it is you have this population of players who have never played a FF game prior to trying out FFXIV. The naming convention for things like Fire, Fira, Firaga, etc would be lost on them and I think it would make it more confusing for new players.



I do think it would be cool if we could have the option to switch between the traditional names and the localized names though.

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Exactly this.

Also speaking to when FF8 came out, I can say that at least I was VERY confused when they swapped to the different naming convention. Also it's not infinitely scalable before you have to start having to make up new suffixes no one is familiar with.

The numbering system has its own problems to be sure. But it appeals to OLD gamer nostalgia (like me) where we played all the old school games with numbered spells. And FFXIV is intentionally meant to be packed with various nods to older games.

Keeping in mind, of course, that this is an English thing not global (and possibly other localisations) given the Japanse skill names use the spell naming convention as is.
It also goes against what seems to be the common direction the games have gone given remakes of the older games have seemingly realigned spells away from the numbered convention.


I'd also say that the numbering system is actually worse than the suffix system for final fantasy newbies. That player group wouldn't be coming in with any preconceptions about what a suffix means so that's not an issue. However, a numbering system heavily implies increasing tiers of power rather than different use cases.

With suffixes for BLM... no suffix is the spells are your baby spells, -ra spells are your AOEs, -ga are powerful and costly spells that let you shift attunement, -ja are your spells that require enochian.
For WHM... Cure stays, Medica would be Cura, Cure II could be Curaga, Regen stays, Medica II would be Regenra. Cure III could follow Flare/Freeze and have a unique name (Medica would be open).

Thunder level can be solved by prefixing or, because they are higher tiers, you could use the number system to have Thunder I > II and Thundara I > II. Same with stone and aero.

It would actually give a pretty clear dileneation between "these are different spells that have different purposes" (suffix) and "this is a direct upgrade over this other spell but otherwise has the same purpose" (numbers)

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Originally Posted by Tridanite

I don't think I'm wrong when I say that in every Final Fantasy the elemental based skills were named Fira, Blizzara, Aero, Thundara. However in this Final Fantasy they are left with there "unfantastical" counter parts.

Why is this? When will this be changed?

Also names like cure aren't cura or curasa.

Am I the only one bothered by this?

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This is actually incorrect. The first FF game (that was translated into English anyway) to feature the 'ra/ga/ja' suffixes for spell names was FFVIII - FFI, IV, VI and VII all used "spell name + number denoting spell strength". And FFXI used both, leading to some silly names like "Thundaga V". It's no big deal to me.

It's clear SE will not be changing this, as Ferne made his choice, as Rongway said.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

This is actually incorrect. The first FF game (that was translated into English anyway) to feature the 'ra/ga/ja' suffixes for spell names was FFVIII - FFI, IV, VI and VII all used "spell name + number denoting spell strength". And FFXI used both, leading to some silly names like "Thundaga V". It's no big deal to me.

It's clear SE will not be changing this, as Ferne made his choice, as Rongway said.

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You're actually both correct in a way.

FFVIII was the first English game to actually translate the suffixes with them being present since the original in Japanese. (The only exception being FFII because of it's ability levelling system.)
However, looking across the ability name tables you can also see that, after FFVIII used the suffixes, the remakes of the earlier games have all used them instead of the number system. So it's entirely plausible for someone to have played every game in the series with the suffixes present if they've played the versions of them released after around 1999 or 2000.