[Stormblood Budget] Where all the money's gone ?

[Mikaeru_Umbranox]

Where has the money gone....

8) New breast tribes
.

that a cute typo :3

[Mydiel]

Well, for the cost of Stormblood, I'm pretty sure I heard it from Yoshida during the Stormblood Expansion announcement tho, same as the fact that they'll try to make one new race/ one new class per expansion pack during the Heavensward Expansion annoucement. I can't find any video related to that but, I didn't go on the internet looking specifically for the cost of Stormblood. It's a thing I heard during a Fanfest Video or Live Letter and which stayed in my mind.

I'm not even makin a discussion subject like that to complain but to understand why. Maybe there are great features but main of them which were annouced are not relevant to me... : /

[Shougun]

Where has the money gone....

1) TWO new zones that are (supposedly) each the size of Heavensward which are full of story.
2) New housing area.
3) Battle system refresh.
4) Expanded inventory.
5) New content types.
6) New jobs.
7) New raids (24 and 8 man).
8) New breast tribes and primals.
9) I can go on....

The money is being utilized, a good chunk of it will be in content, but a large piece will be in system renovations that are not surface-level items.

This is a nice list~

I was wondering where you got the first one. Iirc the expansion has about the same surface size of heavensward as in total and not per zone.

GameWatch: When looking at the map, the continent that will be implemented in 4.0 has much more surface area than Aldenard. Does that mean that the combined surface area of all the newly implemented areas will be comparable to the surface area of Ishgard and ARR areas combined? Also, will we freely be able to teleport between the continents?

Yoshida: The combined surface area will be about the same as that of Heavensward, but there will be diving and swimming and there are still unannounced areas, so the scale is quite big. And of course, you’ll be able to teleport. But, watch out for the teleport costs… (laugh)

[source]

Is there some other news on it?

Also for people who are looking for compilations of what SB will offer, since I think you are pointing out that some people don't really know all the things we "know" are coming as well as the fact there are things we havent heard about that of yet to be announced too.

Nice list: 1 , 2

[Voltyblast]

1) TWO new zones that are (supposedly) each the size of Heavensward which are full of story.
2) New housing area.
3) Battle system refresh.
4) Expanded inventory.
5) New content types.
6) New jobs.
7) New raids (24 and 8 man).
8) New breast tribes and primals.
9) I can go on....

1) Yeah two new zones...which will become barren as soon as people realize there's nothing to do in them. And considering HW did this too, I'm afraid nothing will change.

2) New housing area but with the same old system with 45 days of demolishing and still same ward system that still doesn't work to this day? What could possibly go wrong?!

3) Probably the only thing that could make me interested again in the game, is not even mentioned nor explained in detail this far except for "UI improvements" and such. Excitement at its finest...

4) Which was promised in HW too and never delivered?

5) What new content types then? I want to see, I want to be shown this "new content types" but if they don't show it, how can I be excited about the expansion? And I'm not saying with sarcasm: I want to be legit excited like when HW was announced!

6) Two new dps jobs, which will make the queue clogged for quite a while and increase the "mercenary" runs into dungeons. I'm fairly sure that wasn't planned...

7) Which I doubt it will change much: I'm fairly sure 8man raids will be the same "OHKO" stuff alongside DPS races, while the 24 man raid will be the usual catch up thing. I might be wrong here but meh, don't hope too much.

8) Nice...when are they going to drop? On launch? I ask because I'd like to do something else alongside the 2 dungeons at lvl 70. Also hope the primals are a bit better: I really disliked hw primals while loved the ARR a lot, even Ramuh and Moogle guy.

9) I can go too: how about a better relic system that isn't recycled from ARR and HW? How about a glamour log? An additional retainer? Changing the tome system into something different and more rewarding? And more customization on our chars? I mean ps3 is finally dropped: where is our improved customization?!

I hate to be pessimistic but I'm legit concerned because while some of my problems are relatively minor (I don't need a glamour log really), the stuff they are wanting to spend money seem to be rather flimsy. Glad they raised the budget but if the stuff we'll get is the same - hopefully not LESS - than HW or ARR, how good was this raise in budget to begin with?

I dunno, I'll be waiting a while before even entering the expansion. I just have too little trust on their methods.

[Alleo]

@Malzian: We are also paying the price of a full new game to get these. So if they would not include these standard things in their expansion than this would be quite bad for them. This is not a new patch but a whole expansion. And having some new continents to go on might be nice but I am quite sure that a lot of people would not just buy an expansion for that.

The problem, and with that I kinda agree with the OP, is that at least right now it looks like its the same as HW. We get new dungeons (that are not harder if we can believe Yoshida), we get some new places and other stuff. At the same time they already said that its not truly a revamp of our battle skills, we get one job less than HW, we dont get a new race and also its seems that we wont get better customization for the existing races and they will also keep their old housing system..really if you look at that it truly feels like we get less than HW...this might not be the case in the end but they are not posting stuff that makes me feel different. I really hope that they can awe me with SB. But they have to do more than just creating pretty places because those wont keep the people subbed.

[Arutan]

Where has the money gone....

1) TWO new zones that are (supposedly) each the size of Heavensward which are full of story.
2) New housing area.
3) Battle system refresh.
4) Expanded inventory.
5) New content types.
6) New jobs.
7) New raids (24 and 8 man).
8) New breast tribes and primals.

1 is wrong, the total will be the size of HS.
So basically what they will do with 3 time the money is 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 which was also added in HS, knowing that:
- 1 will be pointless after the last msq quest because no reason to go there
- 5 will probably be another of those grind content nobody like and/or die after 2 weeks or so which will lead to a later patch to waste ressources for it to die again
- 6 is hyped too much, just like was the dead MCH
- 7 same cycle as ever with probably a difficulty lower than what we had until now
- 8 will be abandonned once everyone reach the last rank because it doesn't offer anything else than mount and minion

This leave us with those 3 real new points:
- 2 which doesn't bring more to the game but a new ambiance when you get outside your house
- 3 which will aim to make the gameplay more simple, and I hope for them that it will no end doing 1-2-3 on every job
- 4 which they should have done a long time ago, and imo a glamour log would be more useful than an inventory expansion

But even that I'm not sure this use 200% money more than HS. Plus there's 1 job less.

[Riardon]

I don't know if the reports of the supposedly triple budget over HW are true.
But it doesn't matter for us the users in the end. What matters is what type of content we will get, the quality of this content and the features.
For now the features are less than those of HW and less impressive.
Maybe we will get better voiced cutscenes and story and better quality maps and dungeons who knows.
Customization needs a huge overhaul and lots of improvement. It's laughable and one of the poorest in the market right now.
They are still shooting down the community requests for a glamour log. Because you know you can buy extra retainers...........
No new tank and heal is bad thing for me. PoTD ain't teaching anything about how to play your job in a real group formation and real boss fights and dungeon queues will be a hell.
Won't comment on the "battle overhaul" because it is not an overhaul. It's just a skill merge and deletion of unnecessary skills nobody ever uses because they are totally useless. It's a good thing they do this but they had to do it unless you wanted a skill bar wall which could blind you.
Graphics need improvements as well (namely the awful low res textures we have) and fix the already broken ones like the shadow flickering which already acknowledged and perhaps implement AA methods cause FXAA is trash.
At least we are getting a proper open city without silly teleport zones.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Man,yall are such killjoys lol.

A lot of the budget will go towards hardware for the NA datacenter move, and the inventory increase. This is also the budget for the entirety of 4.0, not just what we get on launch day. If you guys are ecpecting them to turn this into an entirely different game, you will be severely disappointed.

[Iromi]

I'm with you on this one OP. Feeling zero hype for stormblood, the story seemed very anti climatic and with only those two jobs announced (no dancer) I just don't care. Also for those asking about the budget, it was in the Vegas fanfest paid stream keynote where Yoshida said the budget is much higher.

No new character customization too. I thought it would at least get expanded upon a little, like being able to use more then one face paint but nope. No new content has been announced or shown, just the same ol stuff. When the Frankfurt fan fest happened and I saw exactly what I predicted; going to othard, samurai, only two jobs...I was like yeah this is....very boring. Then that new housing area...ugh , I was hoping for one that is like bora bora, instead we got Japan, which is fine if people like it..personally not I. Just more disappointment.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Bora bora already exists. Its called eastern la noscea. I personally find beaches and tropical islands boring as hell, but i grew up in florida, so maybe thats why.

Not sure why you dont like othard, wed be going there eventually no matter what, its a natural order to the progression.

Maybe the game just isnt for.you anymore.