Golden Saucer: My greatest hope for FFXIV.

[MageBlack]

I've been eagerly awaiting the Golden Saucer area since it was mentioned back when 1.0 was still live. Two things that it needed to do right (IMHO) were a card game and chocobo racing.

In the recent LftP:Live I went over the notes/translation cause I knew there was way more said than what was in the quick translation we got right away. I wasnt disappointed when I found this little nugget snuck in:

Yoshida: Sorry to keep you all waiting, but we are currently in the process of developing chocobo racing. Naturally that's not all we will be implementing. As Komoto mentioned previously, in-game systems can be split into two different categories. The first includes battles and monsters. This is what Gondai focuses on, which would be dungeons, raids, Frontline, the Hunt, and all the other battle systems. The other category is composed of crafting, gathering, housing, Gold Saucer, and other such systems, which are handled by Komoto. So although that falls into Komoto's category, he is not directly in charge of it. We've been talking to the planning team about chocobo racing and how we'd like to make it so you can use the chocobo you've trained and actually control it while racing. Additionally, we have one more plan in the works.

Komoto: I personally really loved FFVIII's Triple Triad card game and I played it a lot. We're planning to make it so it's not simply a card game, but also gives you the option to battle NPCs like Minfillia to collect cards. So we're looking into a game card based on this idea.

Yoshida: We're envisioning it as a game where you can collect cards, battle others, and hold tournaments at the Gold Saucer.

So excited to be able to race AND control our chocobos! That is a must for this content to succeed. I think I read it somewhere that they will do this but they also need to have chocobo stables in our personal houses and we need that content for a little bit before they introduce the races. Other than that, I'm happy to hear this about the racing, can't wait for more details.

Also the Card Game sounds like its going to be great! I can challenge NPC's and even the central characters?! Sweet! its a great way to build your deck and seek out those rare cards by battling people. My only extra hope for this that would just be the icing on the cake is to have the card game as a smartphone app. Something that I can access my cards, decks, etc and enter the tournaments without needing to be in front of my computer or Playstation. It sounds like there will be tournaments held at the Golden Saucer and being able to enter them when i'm on lunch break at work or stuck in traffic, would be awesome! I hope they can make that happen but I won't hold my breath.

What do you guys think of these systems and what we know of them so far? What would you like to see added to them to make them better? What do you think wont work well? Is there something else that you would like to see added as a mini game? Minion battles (Pokemon)? I know its still under development so I'm just looking to produce some "theorycrafting" for these systems. Might be able to inspire a dev or two

EDIT:

Chocobo Hot and Cold game was mentioned as well as these two well worded posts on content;

My Suggestions.

Minion Mini-Game: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Based-Minigame

Card Game: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ing-On-the-Old

Here is a bit more of that segment:

As for what we have planned, like I mentioned before, we will first start off with personal housing and the addition of new housing wards. Additionally, we're looking into more free company activities. We're drawing up plans at the moment for the crafting of free company airships and boats, which can be used to go on adventures and can also be reconstructed. Also, we're planning the Gold Saucer that everyone has been waiting for. Implementing this simply as a casino where players can spend their gil will not serve to stimulate the economy, so we'd like to make this into something where players exchange their gil into a different type of currency, which can then be used to play various games and gamble.

Though there are a lot of people who think that the Gold Saucer is similar to the casinos in Dragon Quest, it won't just be a casino and we're placing a lot of importance of making it an amusement park where you can have a great time and not just a place where you can make some gil.

I put in bold a few things that tell me its more of a Gil Sink than a fountain. There might be ways to earn gil but I would assume it would be based around things like slots where its "random". We will need to wait for more details but I don't think it will turn into something that takes over all other type of content like the Hunts and the way FATE's were at first.