Revelations from EU Fan Fest (October 2023)

[Yuella]

The secret area

[Rannie]

The secret area

[MikkoAkure]

Just 1 more week until Japan Fan Fest. Has it snuck up on anyone else? Does anyone have any specific predictions or hopes?

They’ll definitely showcase the other new job, speculated to be Green Mage. I’m hoping that it’ll be a DoT/debuffer in the vein of old SMN. I liked that gameplay but didn’t enjoy the clunky pet and did t feel like it fit the job fantasy. I think they can fix it here.

My initial prediction during NA Fan Fest was that the different cloud cover patterns that showed a bit of the ground beneath meant regions that were going to be uncovered for Dawntrail and that we’d be getting the very south of Tural and Meracydia. The region revealed in EU Fanfest doesn’t seem to be either of those so I don’t know where the next one shown off will be but stranger things have happened and I could be right and we could get a South South Tural pampas, and the 6th, standard expansion secret zone could be Meracydia.

[Cleretic]

I'm still not sold on Green Mage as either plausible or interesting, because not only does it have very little established character to work with, that character itself is also not really something the game does well with; it's largely focused on non-healing buffs and debuffs, and those have been realized to be a bad idea for a job focus in this game. Maybe a DPS job whose entire focus is that stuff would do better (AST being a healer was the main reason the cards didn't work, and SMN's DoTs were always a bit superfluous), but I still don't have a lot of hype in me for it. Pictomancer's still the floated idea that's really fun to me.

That said, I did see someone point out recently that Green Mage would be allowed to be its full weird self in PvP, where a lot of those tools are still on the design table, so that'd be hilarious.

And oh god, don't cram Meracydia into a single zone in an expansion mostly based somewhere else, none of the Tural fans want that and none of the Meracydia fans want that!

[Eisi]

I'm not explicitly a Meracydia or Tural fan but as a FFXIV fan I want both of those continents (!) to be done justice for the sake of the game! So no single zone bullshit plox. Also Ilsabard should have been done in the expansion before Endwalker and after Shadowbringers called Ironhearts, where the alliance would have been joined by former Garlean satellites now freed striking into the heart of their oppressor who now fights a desperate war for survival even against themselves with a manic nihilist drawing the strings behind the scenes and there would be voices that plead for the complete extinction of Garlemald and who just wanna see them suffer and who are racist against Lucia because she's Garlean and friendly to Garleans and we have to mitigate and understand everyone and without being moralistic and shit and generally just expand on what was lightly teased as a thematic possibility in the Garlemald section of Endwalker but be more international and try to get the best outcome that will lead to a better future like the Warrior of Light would ♥. After this chance was missed I see no point in ever going to Ilsabard anymore other than for some Variant dungeons so that ship has sailed. And it has sailed cause they didn't give Ilsabard the expansion that it deserved. Don't do that to Tural/Meracydia plox ♥.

[MikkoAkure]

I'm still not sold on Green Mage as either plausible or interesting, because not only does it have very little established character to work with, that character itself is also not really something the game does well with; it's largely focused on non-healing buffs and debuffs, and those have been realized to be a bad idea for a job focus in this game. Maybe a DPS job whose entire focus is that stuff would do better (AST being a healer was the main reason the cards didn't work, and SMN's DoTs were always a bit superfluous), but I still don't have a lot of hype in me for it. Pictomancer's still the floated idea that's really fun to me.

I lean towards green mage since that's the only job in the series that is represented with a clover. But it could very well have nothing to do with anything in the series at all and could be a symbol for the guild of a completely made up job new to the series like ritualist or something.

But it's not like all the other jobs match their series counterparts so I think they have wiggle room there. BRD is traditionally a buffer and has nothing to do with DoTs or bows, DNC is traditionally a debuffer and not a buffer, and DRK was traditionally DPS and not really a tank class.

SMN had its DoTs taken away and I really liked the DoT mechanics and spreading (wish BRD could do that) and exploding them. There's also the Saboteur spells from FFXIII like deprotect and deshell that I could see getting wrapped into DoT spell effects as traits. That's a gameplay I would really like to return and now that they're not shackled down by a pet and trying to shoehorn ACN gameplay into a SMN I think they can do interesting things with it. DoTs are a staple of mage classes across all RPGs and now BLM is the only one left with a DoT and that feels more like a tacked-on piece of gameplay.

And oh god, don't cram Meracydia into a single zone in an expansion mostly based somewhere else, none of the Tural fans want that and none of the Meracydia fans want that!

Fair enough. I think when I was typing that I was wanting my cloud theory to be right more than I was thinking about how it would be in-game. Still, I wonder how they'd make it more unique. Especially since this expansion has even more jungles and arid landscapes.

From HW until EW when we already knew we were going there, I had been predicting the moon as the 6th zone of every expansion ever since we saw Ascians on it so I don't really have another guess for that one. But then again except for SB they're usually way off-the-wall and slightly wacky out of context so we'll see.

The Tural main city is positioned at the very northern limits of what is so far shown to be accessible so I wonder if they'll have some zones north of it in Northern Tural where the BLU tribe is.

Also Ilsabard should have been done in the expansion before Endwalker and after Shadowbringers

I think at this point we needed a break from Garlemald and all the other factions that have been in the game the past 13 years and Dawntrail will be a welcome respite from that. Besides, I think after giving Ilsabard some time to cool down and for things to settle post-Empire over there will make that setting more interesting. I can see us getting information on the state of the continent if not in the MSQ then in the patch content.

[Denishia]

Sign me up as another thinking the Caster will be called Green Mage - but have as little to do with previous FF iterations as Sage- and ideally be the other DoT-heavy job. So my BRD-main has truly the Magical DPS to complement my Ranged tastes.

As much as I loathe The Tempest as a zone, my pet bugbear is the giant canyon-like rift splitting North and South Tural and how it screams Final Zone/hidden important lore secret, so I have a feeling diving into it will be entire the final sixth zone or the location in patches for one of the raid series or Deep Dungeon/exploration zone. But please oh please have all of Dawntrial's new zones be in Tural- and leave some of Tural/North Tural for a followup expansion.