Is FFXIV hinting Berserker, Necromancer, and Chemist next expansion?

[Shougun]

It's hard to find a source for his comment but yes, he's said that it wouldn't make sense from a storytelling standpoint to have the WoL, savior of worlds also be trained as and considered a Thief that robs people. Rogue is Thief in everything but name and lore but Rogues aren't Thieves and that's an important distinction to make.

And the problem with Necro is that it's not a "Final Fantasy" Job. Sure necromancers are a common trope in fantasy but when many people think of a playable Job or Class in Final Fantasy Necromancer is most likely never going to be on that list. We've had numerous encounters with different Necromancers on why it's never a good idea; even if someone were to approach your character to tell them that there's a way to do it 'safely' that just involves souls the logical answer based on your experiences would be a hard no. There's no feasible way to include a playable Necro that doesn't break lore or suspension of disbelief.

Going to need a source before I believe he said the WoL couldn't be a thief because it's too dark, meanwhile we can train to be killers. Seems like a made up quote, especially given context of other FF games. Further as I can source that he said Rogue is equal to Thief. That they didn't want to make a guild in a city called thieves guild because it sounded funny, that's more believable- but that's where we don't care anymore either because our jobs have not used a class in a long while. Doesn't need a guild. Also, robinhood, or the whole setup that is Limsa (you can steal though you're supposed to be doing it from Garleans, and up until recent time it was fine from other city states).. Or in context of Dark Knight "I only kill the bad guys" lol- yeah sure thief bad but killer good. Queue the eye roll, even if Yoshida did say it that would be my response (as it's potentially possible he said it, even if I doubt it, but I don't believe he said or at least meant it how it's being worded here- if thief stole from the corrupt like Dark Knight.. kills the corrupt.. lol then I doubt he'd said what you're suggesting that the concept of being a thief itself is just too dark).

As for your second point that's where you're lacking the desire for a creative solution. Like Blue Mage in FFXI they could apply something like that here (you basically, a bit non-consensually, break your soul lol), if they really wanted to add it. The question is if it would add enough to make that extra effort with it. Besides we've already broken the safety barrier a number of times, with our latest safety barrier being that we could have destroyed an entire shard. So yeah.. no. . . lol. As an aside I'd love to see more dialog about that sort of thing, I feel it's a fun point to discuss further- enjoyed that it made the scions uneasy in the recent event and would have liked to hear more 'debate' on that.

You're wrapping yourself up tightly in the lore without applying any creative solutions. "there is a problem" but then refusing to generate solutions. Of course there is a problem, I agree but just like with SMN there can be solutions. Can doesn't mean have to be, dev team, or players can still think it's totally not worth it, but that "there is no way to introduce this concept without retcon" I would say is dishonest, assuming your willing to get creative. Like when it was asked for a beast tribe that wasn't standard (in this case it was Tonberry) and the response was 'can't cause they're not beasts'- well look what happened where not only could they but they also did and they made a lore page in their book to explain how.

I'm glad the lore is loved, because its good, but there are too many can'ts that revolve around "until SE does it, it's not possible, it's impossible, infeasible, no logical way it can change, ever and ever, until SE does it at least and then I'll 180 my tune and ignore that I said it couldn't happen".

That they might not want to is believable, and so they'd say "yeah hahaha no we're not going to do that, besides our lore makes that a nono", but that they can't due to the story- well frankly just seems like a lie and an excuse to close conversations because of a lack of trying to create potential solutions.

Just for clarity I use the quotes not directly for your wording but more in the sense the vibe I read as a collective from people that use the lore to prevent things, and have on multiple occasions restricted themselves into the wrong path even though they said it as if it was an immutable fact.

Necro, at least relating to undead (humanoids in particular), is exceptionally unlikely due to china and the lore- sure, but that it cannot be done, especially if you go away from raising the dead (which isn't a requirement to be necromancer/necro like) and even more so if you inspire the vibes of necromancer without the title- well it's not a fact "that" can't be done.

Why is it necromancy is only talked about in the terms of raising the dead when a version of necromancy already exists in this game that we have seen in this very expansion.

Soul magic, while it wouldn’t be a hundred percent accurate depiction of a necromancer, you could work around a lot of the negative associations of necromancy by creating a job that uses soul magic, using raw aether to create constructs that amplify your own attacks (rather than summoner pets which i know is going to be brought up.) something more akin to Personas from the persona series. Not raising the dead so much as manipulating various souls and soul-esque energy to attack with.. just a passing shower thought.

Would also make sense with Alisaie’s new training with Beq Lugg (sp?)

Seems to be two parts, usually, one if it's not a desired job I think people are concerned it would take / threaten the slot of something they would want (and these slots are limited), and two people like to share their knowledge of the lore but it seems many will usually wrap themselves up in chains when they do so. It's happened a few times but I like referencing the SMN as the easiest and most obvious example, many who are big into the lore (because it's cool and good) came into SMN threads of those asking for some larger / more representative primal content and said "it's impossible" and other variations of "it can't be done". Now the lore does put some stop signs up, that is true, but many who were into the story took the stop signs as impenetrable walls and couldn't see outside of the box they put themselves into. Obviously we're all aware of the end result with demi, largely a very well received addition to the job (sometimes to the point some people want the whole job based around it).

Seems like an often feature of talking about necromancer where it's either 'ew' or 'can't fit' but neither group gave any attempt to or wanted it to actually make a fit, well because frankly they weren't interested lol. It could totally fit, if you play around with it- that question should be would it be a fun fit / worth it?

As you said, Necromancer is not simply raising the dead. And you said that we could focus on the side features as if raising the dead has to be the main feature in order to be a necromancer:

Necromancy (/ˈnɛkrəmænsi/)[1][2] is the practice of magic involving communication with the dead – either by summoning their spirits as apparitions, visions or raising them bodily – for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events, discover hidden knowledge, to bring someone back from the dead, or to use the dead as a weapon. Sometimes referred to as "Death Magic", the term may also sometimes be used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft.[3][4]

The word necromancy is adapted from Late Latin necromantia, itself borrowed from post-Classical Greek νεκρομαντεία (nekromanteía), a compound of Ancient Greek νεκρός (nekrós), "dead body", and μαντεία (manteía), "divination by means of"; this compound form was first used by Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century AD.[5] The Classical Greek term was ἡ νέκυια (nekyia), from the episode of the Odyssey in which Odysseus visits the realm of the dead souls and νεκρομαντεία in Hellenistic Greek, rendered as necromantīa in Latin, and as necromancy in 17th-century English.[6]

Seems to me, at least historically- outside of video games (lol), the most important part was speaking with / interacting with the dead and not strictly "raising" the dead as slaves. Now of course there are some historical expectation in video games so I'm not going to pretend that image doesn't exist, but just clearly to show for those who show interest you've got so much wiggle room and if you just give it another name but use the imagery of necromancer as inspiration you can effectively add necromancer into the game while also avoiding much of the other issues that might be associated. As you mention, the soul magic that we've seen recently could be a start.

So in other words the people who say no just don't want or don't care to try and fit it- the whole thing is a no and nothing can be done. Which is why I tend to call it out.. even though I'm not dying for necromancer (though I would love to see a dark theme job in general, a clearly taboo job, and if possible in the format of transformation). The point being something necromancer, or some image of it (like how Rogue is Thief, said by Yoshida himself), could exist (if SE really, really, wanted to lol- not saying it would be as straight forward as adding some other jobs).

It's that the effort is not worth what it would cost to them, like costing another interesting job, or making them feel uncomfortable that our hero might play with dark magic (even though we've had a few situations already that were pretty dark- I mean we could have killed an entire city with ease a few times in the recent story, yet we were packing that heat around cause no other choice or so at least what we told ourselves, that concept could be used for a job). Like I reference blue mage in FFXI, where you in effect break your soul so you can fill it with monster energy and eventually or so the game says all will end up as mind flayers. That's pretty dark and how the game sort of made it a bit consensual non-consensual allowed it to be both dark yet a thing you've done.

[GucciSan]

snip

He might have said it during a Fanfest Q&A or something like that so that's why it might be hard to find in print.

And while someone could get wrapped up in the moral differences between killing someone and stealing from them, what it comes down to is that every Job except a hypethetical Thief would involve using their skills to defend others. Training as a Thief would logically only be done for the sake of robbing others, and that's where the problem is. So they gave us Rogue which act as backalley enforcers of a code of law that is more or less morally sound.

You could come up with a solution like they did with SMN, but it doesn't change the fact that messing with the dead is very taboo in Eorzea. They went as far as to bury Zeno's body in secret because they didn't want people to desecrate his corpse. Even messing around with souls and interacting with the Lifestream wouldn't be looked kindly upon. No matter how you'd spin it people's opinions of us would change fast if they knew we were using the dead in any form for our ends.

And ignoring all of that, again, Necro isn't an iconic Final Fantasy Job. So when you say people would be upset at what it would cost them, you're right, because I would want something with more long standing history with the series, rather than a Job that was added as bonus content for a rerelease.

[Shougun]

He might have said it during a Fanfest Q&A or something like that so that's why it might be hard to find in print.

And while someone could get wrapped up in the moral differences between killing someone and stealing from them, what it comes down to is that every Job except a hypethetical Thief would involve using their skills to defend others. Training as a Thief would logically only be done for the sake of robbing others, and that's where the problem is. So they gave us Rogue which act as backalley enforcers of a code of law that is more or less morally sound.

You could come up with a solution like they did with SMN, but it doesn't change the fact that messing with the dead is very taboo in Eorzea. They went as far as to bury Zeno's body in secret because they didn't want people to desecrate his corpse. Even messing around with souls and interacting with the Lifestream wouldn't be looked kindly upon. No matter how you'd spin it people's opinions of us would change fast if they knew we were using the dead in any form for our ends.

And ignoring all of that, again, Necro isn't an iconic Final Fantasy Job. So when you say people would be upset at what it would cost them, you're right, because I would want something with more long standing history with the series, rather than a Job that was added as bonus content for a rerelease.

Fair points (still want to see the source if anyone can find it, as I'm thinking at the moment it's along the lines of "Thal's Balls" - George Washington lol). My arguments might be close to splitting hairs but I see fairly frequently lore used as a bludgeon of 'factual' no, when it has regularly been shown to not even be true (not the lore, that the no based on lore didn't prevent changes in the future). Like if someone asked to see a person again someone might be like "impossible they're dead" and meanwhile FF is doing electroboogaloo 500 with a rebirth, so no it wasn't impossible lol. Then the conversation evolves into something better if people admit that it's not 100% true but they hope it is because they're sick of people coming back, then you know why they don't want it over just saying something that isn't actually solidified.

Generally seeing conversations shut down gets my hairs standing up (necromancer isn't even a main desire, just a "oh that could be interesting"), and then seeing people shut it down as a mater of fact "you've no ground here I'm 100% right, there is no way I can be wrong" sort of way really gets me shaking my head like "you're probably going to be right but you COULD be wrong, why are you acting like you're infallible?". Worse yet because I see this then spread where then even more start to say it as if it's 100% requirement god given law of nature... So I might occasionally hop in and post a few walls being like "no it's not, even if you're most likely going to be right you're not guaranteed to be". Also why I want to see that source if someone can find it, as I'm sure it's going to spread Yoshida said something and at least when I googled it I found nothing of the sort.

As for the lifestream part we do already have a soul mage that's on the good guy side, so that helps, could also put in stuff like you only use the aether of monsters or whatever. I get if people don't want it, or even if the devs are like y...ikes no thanks lol, but that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY, NONEEEEEE.. I have some words, many of them .

[Yencat]

Source?

We have source that he says Rogue is Thief. We also have ninja which is an assassin, so I think it be a bit silly that he would say that but I'm doubting he actually did say that as well.

It might be one of those things that's been repeated so much and no one remembers the source so it's become a "fact", I also remember seeing it mentioned somewhere years ago but like you I can't find a source. I did find this little tidbit though:

The Rogues were once thieves but through time they’ve evolved into their own respected guild. Why would a city allow a thieves guild? This is the reason they are not called thieves.

So while he's not calling them evil he's at least aware of the negative connotations and apparently feels like it wouldn't make sense for a city to host or welcome a thieves guild.

(source: https://novacrystallis.com/2014/06/f...announcements/)

So, to me personally, if something relatively benign like a thieves guild makes no sense to be operating openly in a city, then the WoL, hero of the hour, maybe the most loved and celebrated person in the realm, casually disturbing and raising the dead (but for good, pinky swear) makes absolutely 0 sense.

All the stuff about soul mages and communicating with the dead is very nice, but it's generally not what people are asking for with these threads. They want the Necromancer from Heroes' Gauntlet, raising the dead and using them to do their bidding.

And while I definitely think it's a really cool idea in general and certainly nothing is impossible, with what we've seen of Necromancers in the game and our own role in the story it just feels like a really bad fit for us to be one.

[Shougun]

It might be one of those things that's been repeated so much and no one remembers the source so it's become a "fact", I also remember seeing it mentioned somewhere years ago but like you I can't find a source. I did find this little tidbit though:



So while he's not calling them evil he's at least aware of the negative connotations and apparently feels like it wouldn't make sense for a city to host or welcome a thieves guild.

(source: https://novacrystallis.com/2014/06/f...announcements/)

So, to me personally, if something relatively benign like a thieves guild makes no sense to be operating openly in a city, then the WoL, hero of the hour, maybe the most loved and celebrated person in the realm, casually disturbing and raising the dead (but for good, pinky swear) makes absolutely 0 sense.

All the stuff about soul mages and communicating with the dead is very nice, but it's generally not what people are asking for with these threads. They want the Necromancer from Heroes' Gauntlet, raising the dead and using them to do their bidding.

And while I definitely think it's a really cool idea in general and certainly nothing is impossible, with what we've seen of Necromancers in the game and our own role in the story it just feels like a really bad fit for us to be one.

Now that part makes sense, that the city wouldn't want a thieves guild (especially as their leader is trying to clean up the city, and it was far more pirate-y before)- but that's not the WoL which is where I was focusing on. Like the idea WoL must be evil if they're a Thief- doubt that he said that or intended that. Since it's also a job that's had major characters be part of it, honestly would be a slip up I feel to label thief an evil given the history of the other FF games. Of course having a thief 'job' would have been far easier to produce than a thieves guild which sounds kind of scummy. As I said, Robinhood could be a reference for a good 'thief' or it could be more secretive like some of our other jobs. Since it was a class and not a job though it had to be a guild, and as they had wanted to blend it into Ninja like they did archer into Bard. Like how Ninja was the advanced job of thief before.

That thieves are evil and therefore WoL cant be one I feel is a bit "...did he really say that? I'm pressing doubt right now, and I think you're stretching what was said or perhaps wasn't even said". Naturally that stretch can be accidental since it could be heard from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from no where but spread it because they thought it was real.

Agree on the unlikelyness in so much as at least the title and especially if it had to do with raising the dead :P. I just don't like people going hardcore 'matter of factly, I've got the goods as proof, you've no room to argue here' shutdown the desire, if someone so had wished to struggle through the hurdles that exist to make such a job a thing. I agree some people do want the bones of necro, but I've seen a few people ask for just the sort of nature of necro rather than the skeleton part. Even myself, for more of a fun experiment, suggested an eldritch / 'dark' healer with some inspiration from necromancer (doesn't raise the dead though, didn't want to deal with those hurdles lol). Even if you did bones though you might argue it was creatures or something, that's not the end of the issues but it certainly can start to pry open the problem (new issues like enter China, but yeah it might require multiple steps but I still don't believe it's "impossible" if someone had the desire to make it happen).

That there might be a dark job that uses some unusual tools I think is quite a bit more possible though, if they had wanted to deal with the dark nature without having to dance around raising dead people or the pre-written concept that necro is a bad man. Which is why I reference (FFXI) blue mage sometimes as an example of where you might have granted the players powers without them lore wise going out to do that weird bad thing. Or why I reference the point in the story we're very dangerous to everyone. That they 'could' write in such a way that you're not, at least in the beginning, intentionally using something sketchy (and even the intentional part could be a "better trained then praying I don't accidentally blow my top").

+1 for finding ancient sources, took me a little bit to find the thief one too lol (Yoshida saying Rogue is equal to Thief in concept).

I wonder if it's at all worth pointing out the Necromancer in Hero's Gauntlet is a summoned hero from another plane, implying it's possible to be a heroic Necromancer...

It is, like there have been other 'good' necromancers (not common but is a thing). Of course still the challenge of raising the dead in our own game, while I don't think the lore stops us from doing most things (like the lore for SMN didn't stop demi), I still don't want to bulldoze it so we'd have to be mindful of that lol (which is why I'm trying to move away from 100% can't be done to, 'if you want it lets figure it out, cause we're going to need to do some figuring here lol' :P).

[SaberMaxwell]

I wonder if it's at all worth pointing out the Necromancer in Hero's Gauntlet is a summoned hero from another plane, implying it's possible to be a heroic Necromancer...

[wereotter]

It's as Yencat said. It was a comment made in passing on a Q&A some time back wherein he dismissed certain jobs as being too dark or nonsensical for the Warrior of Light to fill.

I'm attempting to find it, but considering how the statement was made, documentation is hard to come by (espeically when we're trying to look through seven years of his comments and interviews to try to find one comment) I'll update if/when I can find it. But as it goes, I would venture to say that dark knight is about as far as we're going to get in this direction.

Also it's not that thieves are evil, but there was a distinction between a thief and a rogue in that rogue uses stealth and the same types of abilities you'd associate with being a thief, but doesn't exist to steal from other people. But Rogues, they can act as spies and covert operativevs of the Lominsan government (much like how the marauders and arcanists also work for the government there) Ultimately with thief/rogue the outcome is the same, and it's just a matter of semantics when people say they want thief.

I wonder if it's at all worth pointing out the Necromancer in Hero's Gauntlet is a summoned hero from another plane, implying it's possible to be a heroic Necromancer...

The necromancer there was a direct reference to Lenna Tycoon from FFV. Necromancer was a bonus job in the re-release of the game on GBA and if you compare the models it's wearing exactly her same outfit from that game. (Also the first boss was Locke from FFVI)

Necromancy might work different on the world of V, but we do already have lore about how it works in XIV and that makes it inherently a destructive act.

[Rosenstrauch]

I would like to point out that, technically speaking, the WoL has already practiced necromancy in an unwitting fashion.

Dark Knight questline spoilers, natch:

Unlocking the Dark Knight Job requires interacting with the corpse of Fray Myste, and his sudden liveliness is the result of the WoL subconsciously manifesting their newfound power within his corpse so that "Fray" can act as a mentor figure. This ends up getting the WoL into trouble with the Temple Knights at the end of the 30-50 questline, culminating in "Fray" trying to kill everyone in Whitebrim Front and the WoL having to stop them.

The 60-70 questline also involves another manifestation of that power, "Myste", creating aetherial constructs of the recently deceased that behave more or less how their friends and family expected them to in life. "Myste" even uses this power against you in the level 70 quest, using multiple simulacrum to fight you in the same manner that a Necromancer would use skeletons, zombies, and so on.

That's not to say I think they're going to make a Job out of raising the dead. Accidental necromancy is one thing—making a living out of the living dead is another. I don't see us ever being able to willfully summon voidsent to do our bidding, either. But a Darkness-themed Healer would be a cool idea, I think. And maybe Chemist could be a ranged DPS, instead of a Healer like everyone is expecting. Potions do more than just heal, after all.

[wereotter]

Dark Knight questline spoilers reply:

So might be interpretation of the quest, but the Warrior of Light never actually raises Fray from the dead to train him. The Temple Knights accuse him of talking to a corpse in the 30-50 quests, implying more that the warrior of light kind of went a little crazy and as carrying around Fray's dead body and thinking it was training him/her. Or at least that's how I always understood what was going on in the quests.

[Shougun]

I would like to point out that, technically speaking, the WoL has already practiced necromancy in an unwitting fashion.

Dark Knight questline spoilers, natch:

Unlocking the Dark Knight Job requires interacting with the corpse of Fray Myste, and his sudden liveliness is the result of the WoL subconsciously manifesting their newfound power within his corpse so that "Fray" can act as a mentor figure. This ends up getting the WoL into trouble with the Temple Knights at the end of the 30-50 questline, culminating in "Fray" trying to kill everyone in Whitebrim Front and the WoL having to stop them.

The 60-70 questline also involves another manifestation of that power, "Myste", creating aetherial constructs of the recently deceased that behave more or less how their friends and family expected them to in life. "Myste" even uses this power against you in the level 70 quest, using multiple simulacrum to fight you in the same manner that a Necromancer would use skeletons, zombies, and so on.

That's not to say I think they're going to make a Job out of raising the dead. Accidental necromancy is one thing—making a living out of the living dead is another. I don't see us ever being able to willfully summon voidsent to do our bidding, either. But a Darkness-themed Healer would be a cool idea, I think. And maybe Chemist could be a ranged DPS, instead of a Healer like everyone is expecting. Potions do more than just heal, after all.

On Dark Knight topic you perform Lich-lite powers with your Living Dead skill. Pretty close to necromancy lol, but on the self only.