NA FanFest Expectations?(Idea, or Hopes?)

[Xeronia]

Realistic predictions: View into graphics reworks and small tease of future job roles. Possible announcement of Female Hrothgar.
Unrealistic/What I want: Cross region data center travel and changing grouping for DF/PF to be per region and not per data center.

[NanaWiloh]

The long awaited striptease of Yoshi P.

Long as we can spray him with Realm red.

[XianRo]

All I want, the one singular thing I want, is h/v hats. Even just new hats coming in 7.0 (though why in under god they didnt freaking bother to make new crap in shb work is just, and always will be, utterly baffling). Im so tired of incomplete glam plates and this frankly should not be such a huge deal like say making two additional sexes. It should really super not be hard for squared enixes most moneymakingest game, this crap shouldve been done for 6.0 for gods sake.

[Hyperia]

I'm going into this with very muted expectations.

I do believe we will see the new area we will be going, which is probably Mericydia, some graphics overhaul screen shots, maybe a demo of the new graphics. As to the new jobs, probably one silhouette but that's it.

The one thing I am going to go out on a limb and speculate is that they are going to have a soft restart of the game in 7.0, which would explain why the post 6.0 content is so minimal as they are making a new launch experience. Veterans will get a different experience from the new players similar to the return from 1.x experience, we will still have to work the new newbie zone, but it will treat us differently.

[Nezerius]

I'm expecting the reveal of the next expansion, a teaser trailer, and a general overview of what's coming in the expansion (zone names, 8-man raid, etc). Job reveals are generally saved for the 2nd and 3rd Fan Fests.

Based off the last fan fest, we aren't getting any 7.0 news if it follows suit. Not even the expansion name. The first fan fest last time was all about 5.5. I think the only thing we might have gotten was the Sage reveal, I certainly remember that happening, but the archives said that came later.

It sounds like you're mistaking the February 2021 Announcement Showcase/Live Letter for the first Fan Fest. The showcase revealed Endwalker (+ teaser trailer) along with Sage, while the Live Letter was about patch 5.5.
All three 2020/2021 Fan Fests (NA, JP, EU) were cancelled due to covid-19 restrictions. They were merged into one Digital Fan Fest that covered the majority of the Endwalker info, which happened in May 2021.

[Reap00]

I hope we get some hints about what 7.0 might be about, although am not entirely convinced we will considering the 6.X series isn't done yet.

We will 100% get plenty about 7.0 including the 1st teaser trailer. That is the point of having the fan fest.

[Ath192]

They really need to hype up this fanfest. The game is in a state of maintenance for sure. If all this hasn't been for something worth staying for then this game is gonna fall hard. I'm looking forward to a really good graphics rework and for the next locations to be much more interesting than most of the throw away zones we get every expac.

[DiaDeem]

I really wanna see what the visual upgrade will have in store. I made a thread about it, but to summarize, I have a small wish list:

Better Lighting: Current lighting in the game is just horrible. I can't stress enough how good lighting can make or break the visuals of a game. What we currently have was good... for PS3.
Better AA: Anything other than just FXAA, which is just post processing, and is just not great
Better Textures: Even AI upscaled would start to make the game look much better. Mass Effect Legendary used AI to upscale and then people to touch up any weird leftovers. XIV is long overdue for an overhaul.
Better Models: No more sausage fingers, no more N64 feet.

Not that there aren't mods that can improve both models and textures, but we're a Christian forum, always pure and morally correct and we would definitely never use mods hehe.

Also, any type of new content, upgrades to character customization and maybe the return of of HM dungeons (or just any form of more midcore content) I'd really like to see.

[PEANUT]

I really wanna see what the visual upgrade will have in store. I made a thread about it, but to summarize, I have a small wish list:

Better Lighting: Current lighting in the game is just horrible. I can't stress enough how good lighting can make or break the visuals of a game. What we currently have was good... for PS3.
Better AA: Anything other than just FXAA, which is just post processing, and is just not great
Better Textures: Even AI upscaled would start to make the game look much better. Mass Effect Legendary used AI to upscale and then people to touch up any weird leftovers. XIV is long overdue for an overhaul.
Better Models: No more sausage fingers, no more N64 feet.

This person on another website, Paul Zanes, made this comment which I thought was very exciting if they move to physical based rendering for ray-tracing in the future if they ever drop PS4 support hopefully. He said...

"The particular example at the top of the article is specifically of Material rendering and production changes. The team is swapping to (from my understanding) a PBR or Physically Based Rendering system. This means that materials won't be produced with certain lighting and color expectations predefined in them, and instead be made as a neutral surface for various lighting conditions to act upon. This dramatically increases the realism of an object or character when it is placed in a variety of different lighting conditions instead of requiring specific lighting conditions to look best. The reason the second image has a background is because that background is casting colored light information onto the character which is being used to inform the character shaders. This is a huge step up. It also allows them to swap to a ray-traced lighting pipeline somewhere down the line if they want to and see even greater gains.

This isn't the only change they're making, it's just the one chosen for the example. They're also increasing world detail significantly (much more props and foliage apparently) and are going to be increasing texture detail significantly from where it currently is. Certain gear sets are being remade to look much nicer, character models and textures are getting upgraded (cross your fingers that they give characters actual feet instead of cheese blocks) and I wouldn't be surprised if they reimplement physics for tails and hair. The latter would be really big for allowing more freedom when designing hairstyles and gear because hair could rest naturally on gear and not clip horribly the way it currently does. Right now we're restricted to primarily short hairstyles for this reason."

[Renathras]

I feel like we will get a few hints, but there are three Fanfests. NA, then EU, then JP. Each one traditionally gives a little more information than the prior ones.

Usually the NA one kind of recaps the current state of the game some, gives some hints about the X.5/X.55 patch, and gives a brief hint at the expansion in the form of a super truncated teaser of the cinematic that pretty much reveals nothing but sets the entire community buzzing with rumors and theories for months, as well as people trying to read into Yoshi P's sometimes very esoteric clue T-shirt that hints at one of the new Jobs (like that time he war a Spiderman shirt because the producer of the latest Spiderman movie was named "Sam Rami" [or something like that] to hint at "Samurai" being added in SB; because I'm kinda dense, I personally prefer the more blunt ones, like when he war a Batman shirt to hint "Dark Knight"). So NA is mostly going to be 6.5/6.55 stuff, talking about the culmination of the expansion and it's story, a super sneak peak of the next expansion, and stuff like that. Oh, and probably something about the graphical upgrade. And maybe some stuff like a teaser of the 24 man and final dungeon/MSQ (though not likely much)

Meaty stuff, but mostly meaty stuff about the current expansion with a few teases to get people thinking about the next one.

EU one should be a longer trailer (though not the complete one) and a Job reveal...probably (unless they decide to only add 1 new Job this expansion, though they'd at least teas it here, one would think). We might also get some reveal on Fem Hroths here or at JP. There'll also likely be discussion of Job/Role changes in the coming expansion, possibly with a few examples (though this can go either way) and maybe some talk about the DRG/AST changes for 7.0, though that'll probably be JP for the more guts of it. We might also get a first look at a zone from the expansion.

JP one will be the full cinematic trailer for the expansion, the other Job reveal, definitely a zone (like for EW, Yoshi P played around with the target dummies in Thavnair), Yoshi P previewing a fight of some kind where he dies to the first big attack on his fem Lala BLM, possibly riding around on one of the Ex mounts, and usually somewhere in here there'll be more discussion of Job/Role/combat system changes for the expansion and probably where they'll talk more on major Job changes planned.

I don't remember if the Benchmark is before or after this (I think after), and I don't remember if the Job Actions trailer is before or after this (I think maybe before?), but any of those things before this they'll discuss, and I think they show the Benchmark trailer at the JP fanfest as well (the one of Derplander and a bunch of random players flying around on various mounts through the skies of the expansion's zones so you can get a really quick look at them, then some contrived fight panorama that shows off a bunch of new Job actions in passing, like the EW one showed a RDM cast Verthunder 3 and a MCH use Scattergun, etc), with the Benchmark being released for public download after that reveal. The media tour will have been by this point, and the NDA lifted, so all that info will flood the internets as well. It's an exciting time to be alive at this point as the hype builds to "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!" levels.

The JP or EU ones might also show a few sneak peek pictures of gearsets and stuff, though the EU one probably does more for 6.55 than for 7.0.

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As an unrepentant introvert, I have no desire to go to these things, I just love watching streams and stuff of all this, and I love people posting videos like the trailer reveal. The ShB one still gives me goosebumps listening to the crowd go nuts when Derplander swaps from Archer to WAR.

Super hype and exciting every time. I love FFXIV and enjoy playing it live right now, so this is just the crescendo of the expansion cycle excitement to me, and I love the buildup. If anything, I wish they'd show more earlier, but I love it anyway.

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As for Jobs, I have genuinely no idea. It really depends on where they want to go, as that tends to play into what they add in at least some way. Lots of people think Meracydia, but I have no idea, and I'm not sure what Job would thematically fit that for a new Job. SMN might fit, but we already have it (and it could be Derplander's Job for the trailer - despite "common" belief, Caters can be made to look epic, especially if they're flinging Primals around at people). So I'm not really sure what the Job reveals might be for new Jobs. I feel like one will be a Caster because we haven't had one of those in a very long time (SB was the last time a Caster was added - even BLU was added at the end of SB, not in ShB). So if they add only one Job, I'd think it would be a Caster. If they add two, I don't honestly know.

And as to what the Jobs are, I have no idea. I'd personally love Time Mage since I think they could do cool stuff with TIM, and I'd LOVE if they added GEO(mancer) as a Stone/Wind/Earth DPS Caster branching from CNJ like how ACN does with SMN/SCH, but I know they never will (they might add GEO someday, but not with the Class system). Green Mage as a DoT mage could be possible, but I feel they want less DoTs in FFXIV's future, not more. They may do some kind of reverse RDM for a Job that is more melee but swaps to caster, but that in practice would probably play kind of like NIN or PLD, so...

Yeah, not sure, honestly.

I don't really buy the "we need another Scouting Job", since they could just combine Aiming and Scouting armors (they already do now with right-side accessories) and nothing of value would be lost. But they could have done that with DRG and MNK/SAM (who share the "of Slaying" right side) and decided to add RPR instead, so I honestly have no idea there. Too many question marks at the moment for me to offer much speculation.

Yoshi P did say something about mostly making new Jobs for FFXIV instead of old ones, but RPR is a variant of Sice's class from Type-0, and SGE took the name and KIND of lore-ish of a classic FF Sage Job (scholar with advanced wisdom and knowledge) but gave it a completely new playstyle. So I'm not sure if that means "no classic FF Jobs" or "we may use classic FF Jobs but with unique FFXIV spins on them", but that's been true of even staples like RDM. I feel the reality is more like "we'll use what we feel like", so people probably put too much stock in that quote.