Questions and Feedback on the Future of FINAL FANTASY XIV

[Acydcross]

1) Can you tell us if you are going add more different weapon types? Do you have plans to give more optional weapons for the basic class with have now? GLA can use 2 weapons; swords and daggers. Can you add weapons to other class like: PUG can only use knuckles and katars (add dual weapon maybe? like 2 daggers? to make it NIN like or assassin type or probably a THF). LNC can only use spears (add scythe maybe?).

2) You always tell us you want more "grey" in this game by mixing hardcore and casual gamers, can you make the billing system to be this way as well? This will give no advantage to hardcore and casual gamers. And casual players will be more than happy with this system. Ex: Player need to pay $15-$20 for 30 days and that 30 days will run only when player is inside the game (online).

3) Can you tell us more about your plan and changes to "party search system"? And when can we have this?

4) You told us that we will have an option to change our Race, sex, appearance. How about our "guardian" and "Nameday"? And does it have any purposes?

[Delsus]

Looking at the screenshot of version 2.0, and myself being a laptop player right now the new graphics engine, while looking awesome, makes me a little worried about the required and reccomended specs of version 2.0, would you beable to tell us how the PC specs will change for version 2.0 will the be lower ie it will run better on low end systems or will they require a higer end system than we currently need?

The changes look awesome but I am worried how the game will run on my laptop (will only be 2 years old when version 2.0 is released) hopefully I will have upgraded to a PC by then but just incase :P

[KyegimyaAsura]

All I gotta say is WOW.

I too am concerned about the massive change and how it may affect PC player performance, and I'll repeat a question here...
- As others have said about the massive changes, are the PC specs required for PC users going to increase significantly? I have a decent PC for XIV, not the best out there, but it was affordable and plays the game fairly well (tho I can lag in heavily populated areas like Ul'dah).

As for the announcement about paying~ I'll personally be happy to pay to play and to support XIV's development. We've had the game free for almost a year, and the changes have been good. ^^;

[Kyitrai]

Welcome back to paid Beta! (sorry I had to; my only particular disagreement)

Overall though, I got pretty hyped last night when I saw the new teaser site, and I'm paying for it with a lack of sleep today. A year is a while to wait, but I'm looking forward to the transition as well and preparing to receive the apocalypse. With Yoshida in the lead I'm confident they're not going to make the same mistakes they did the first go-around. I just hope they can meet all the deadlines they've set out for themselves.

My input is going to be broad, as that's the scope of these recent announcements; large, global changes to the game.

1) First and most important to me: Get rid of Click & Buy. I am willing to pay, but I'm not willing to pay through them.
While I also don't agree with the timing, at this point it doesn't matter how many people are turned away by going P2P; its that much more SE will be taking in prior to this, and their expenses need reduction and offset. Those of you who go elsewhere are taking nothing away with you.

V) You stuck a bunch of (favorite) names from Ivalice in your mock-up - how about sticking a bunch of races from it in your plans as well!? (For Menphina's love get some Viera in there!)

3) Male Miqote look like they need a bit more bulk to them. More ... Tiger-like and muscular. Kinda like Woren (Early Breath of Fire). But that's just a matter of opinion. Oh wait, all of this is.

4) Those fonts for character names/titles on that mock-up battle screenshot are nice. Keep that! But much of that action interface is just too familiar. Don't keep that. Familiarity is nice but using a "Global UI Standard" just makes the game feel like many other MMOs out there, and can have a huge impact on FFXIV getting a feel of it's own. Referring to the console FF interfaces - they've been very unique and fun, while still functional, and give a strong sense that you're playing something different! I've played all those other MMOs and I don't want it to feel like I'm playing them again.

5) I'm really looking forward to the zone redesigns. I'll start to know where I am by the landscape around me and won't have to check the map to know which of the three identical brooks in the area I'm crossing. And the concept art of some of those new landmarks look quite inviting to take a walk through - I just hope I have a chance to appreciate the scene before being brutally pulverized by something immeasurably beyond my level.

6) The decision to break-off from the seamless world model is a moot matter - it wasn't truly seamless to begin with: Thanalan, La Noscea, Black Shroud, Mor Dhona and Coerthas all required "zoning", so we're not losing (or gaining) anything. And the time it took you to walk through those narrow corridors between regions in zones (Central/Eastern/Western Thanalan for example, this doesn't really make it seamless in my mind either) is the same time you'd spend loading a full transition. (...usually, some computers aren't as fast as others)
Not to mention, a lot of those invisible transitional borders were fatal. At one point you're walking through a 10~20 sort of area, cross a bridge, and suddenly you're face down in the ground with a message in your log reporting you've been critically struck from behind for 9999 damage by something that hasn't even been loaded yet (a Wild Boar in my case). Why is that something like that living right next door to a Lv10 rat?
I take it back. I'm gaining something from fragmented zones: survivability.

7) Worldless Model: Not to be confused with a singular world in which we all reside (like the way EVE runs, for example); there will still be separate worlds ("・Party/content matching for players from different World servers"). Yeah. Most of us realize what this is emulating. For those that don't: a queuing system that builds pick-up groups out of those in the queue to run dungeon/instanced content. I've seen these systems go from non-existent to same-server to cross-server, and despite the wails and throws of those that didn't think they could deal with people from other servers, I've found them to be successful in their intentions. It's a great way to meet new people, and find out who really knows how to pull their weight. You also get some jackasses, but such is random social interaction. I have faith our collective culture is a little better behaved than most and we'll get along with each other just dandy.

X) I have a first generation PS3 with hardware PS2 emulation. I know that last bit's not particularly important, but its a relatively rare configuration these days and makes for a great testing platform. ...Right? Yeah, I just want to Beta test the PS3 version. I don't use it much otherwise.

I'm spent.

[Illy]

OK first I would just like to say this all looks incredibly awesome. Also those saying they should not be billing yet need to understand that the dev team needs this money to fund the development of what we have seen. The people who quit when billing starts won't be missed as if the game remained free to play they would not have been paying anyway. But the players who are willing to stick around will be putting money into the development of 2.0.

Now on to a few questions.

There is talk of putting the game on a new graphics engine. Is this a entirely new graphics engine or a new and better coded version of Crystal Tools? Further more Will this new graphics engine require more powerful PC's then now? Will it be more flexible allowing for in game graphics config? Will players in theory be able to make the game look better with the PC's they have now?

Is a Thief class ever planned? It is one of the key classes that are missing from the game and not just from a Final Fantasy standpoint. Nearly every game has a Assassin or Thief like class however the common weapon of a class or job like that is already part of a Gladiators class so will this be changed in 2.0 or are there no plans to have a Thief like job?

User made add ons are mentioned briefly in the PDF's given and I was wonder how exactly these will work and to what degree they can be part of the game. Many of the things people would like as add ons are already supported as part of the game itself such as seeing how long a effect will be on you and recast times and etc. Further more will SE be offering tools to allow players to make these add ons or are players allowed to just wing it and submit something to SE for approval? Also will things like modded armor and weapon appearance be part of these add ons or are they system related only?

Voice over is mentioned in the plans. How extensive will this voice over be? Will all future cut scenes both Story related and quest related be voiced? Will the voice work quality be more up to par with the quality seen in games such as Final Fantasy XII and XIII(sorry but the little voice work that is in the game currently is pretty bad)

That's it for now but I'm sure I will think of a few more questions for later.

[Meimei]

My primary concern is regarding a certain two aspects of billing.

Last I looked, it was $9.99/mo as a base fee with an addendum of $4 for every character slot purchased. I feel this is too expensive. Can we see a price reduction?

My other question is regarding the previously announced special discount for Final Fantasy XI subscribers who also have an FFXIV subscription, from one year ago. Are there any plans to bring this back at all, and hopefully continue it indefinitely?

Thanks.

[Shadow_Sama]

I notice that the armor on the Warrior Job Specific Armor has a flap on the helmet. Will we be able to open and close the flap on the helmet ? or will the helmet always expose our face ?

[Royal]

I am requested a lifetime subscription option when subscriptions are activated. I am going to stick around for years to come. I saw that option in DCUO and would love it here. Is that sometime you have considered?

[Hikozaemon]

Will our characters keep there current class levels ? will our $$$ be wiped out w/ new version??? Will existing gear all be carried over to new version or will we log into a new version 2.0 missing alot of what we worked for? This should have been addressed more in the PDF.

And will some NM gear truly be equal or in some cases better than crafted gear. I support crafting but i dont want to play ff14Crafters I wanna play a MMORPG

[Nakiamiie]

Question: Is it really impossible to have both seamless maps and diversity of areas in them (technology limitation or it simply does not exists yet)?

Question: I didn't noticed jumping in the roadmap of FFXIV 2.0, what happened to it?