Skill Name Change - Black Mage

[Tridanite]

I don't think I'm wrong when I say that in every Final Fantasy the elemental based skills were named Fira, Blizzara, Aero, Thundara. However in this Final Fantasy they are left with there "unfantastical" counter parts.

Why is this? When will this be changed?

Also names like cure aren't cura or curasa.

Am I the only one bothered by this?

[Rongway]

We have this conversation often around here. tl;dr, the devs decided to use roman numerals in the English localization and that's just what we have to live with. It won't be changed.

From a UI/UX standpoint, a suffix system would work if it were like the one used in FFXI, where the suffixes were meaningful--

• Base spells: single target
• -ra spells: AoE centered on caster
• -ga spells: AoE centered on target
• -ja spells: AoE centered on target and reduces target's resistance to subsequent uses of the spell

--so they weren't just power indicators. In that system, they also used roman numerals to denote different power levels of spells with the same target scheme. If BLM and WHM spells used that same system, it would look something like this:

Current system >> Suffix system

• Fire » Fire
• Fire II » Firaga
• Fire III » Fire II
• Fire IV » Fire III
• Blizzard » Blizzard
• Blizzard II » Blizzara
• Blizzard III » Blizzard II
• Blizzard IV » Blizzard III
• Thunder » Thunder
• Thunder II » Thundaga
• Thunder III » Thunder II
• Thunder IV » Thundaga II
• Cure » Cure
• Cure II » Cure II
• Cure III » Curaga
• Medica » Cura
• Medica II » Cura II

However, still from a UI/UX perspective, if you wanted to just rename Fire/II/III/IV to Fire/Fira/Firaga/Firaja, then it would be no different from naming them Fire/II/III/IV except that then people would have to learn to associate --/-ra/-ga/-ja with the meanings of 1/2/3/4 or A/B/C/D, which would be an additional cognitive load on the user. Therefore, if we're not going to use meaning-bearing suffixes like XI uses, the more user friendly choice is just to number the spells.

[E4EO]

Theres also a lore reason as to why spells are called what they're called

A book in gubal hard talks about how Amdapori Magi were voting on a new for a new healing spell, along the lines of Curaja and Curaza since it was a adaptation on I think Curaga, they then all concluded that the traditional FF naming convention lacked gravity and was too abstruse, so they voted by a large margin to rename them to the simpler Roman Numeral versions we have now. Since BLM spells are the same we can assume something similar happened in Mhach.

as for a IRL reason, who knows? Maybe they thought it would be too confusing for players and opted for a simple number system. Me i'd also prefer the traditional FF versions but I doubt they'll change it.

[Stepjam]

Well the lore bit was mostly a joke about it.
I think they went with numbers to make it easy to standardize across spells and classes. You got you cure 1/2/3 which is fine, but then you got medica (which already has "a" at the end). And then you got benefic on Astro and broil on scholar and those would likely sound odd with the suffix system. Ruin as well. So numbers are easily uniform

[swiss_Momo]

Laughs in German localisation where we have a mix of classic suffixes, numbers for the AST spells and prefixes for Broil

[Avyiur]

I think part of it is you have this population of players who have never played a FF game prior to trying out FFXIV. The naming convention for things like Fire, Fira, Firaga, etc would be lost on them and I think it would make it more confusing for new players.



I do think it would be cool if we could have the option to switch between the traditional names and the localized names though.

[Canadane]

You already have players blasting out Cure III on a single target because “bigger number right?”
Using different suffixes will not help or change anything in these types.

[MartaDemireux]

I'll echo myself from the last time this came up:

I just wish there was at least consistency across the board.

Sometimes IIs are an AoE (Fire, Blizzard, Miasma (RIP), Medica). Sometimes not (Ruin, Cure, Stone).

Sometimes IIIs are an AoE (Aero (RIP), Cure). Sometimes not (Ruin, Miasma).

New AoEs are always being added and taken away and the consistency just gets worse.

There are only a handful of times when a spell directly upgrades and that is a perfect time to use the numerals in my opinion. They show it's a stronger version of the same spell. Stone I thru IV works perfectly this way.

I'd really like it if AoEs were all hard consonant -ga/-ka(-ca) spells and all ST spells were soft consonant -ra/-ja/-sa spells.

Cure II > Cura, Cure III > Curaga, Fire II > Firaga, Fire III > Fira, Fire IV > Firaja, Thunder II > Thundaga, Thunder IV > Thundaga II, Ruin II > Ruinra, etc.

It would better show which spells are different from one another and which spells are direct upgrades.

So then we have Cure, Cura, Curaga, all representing different spells and spells like Thunder, Thunder II, Thundaga, Thundaga II all representing different spells and logical progression.

Thunder advancing to Thunder III and Thunder II to Thunder IV is pretty darn confusing, especially when compared to Ruin's advancements. And don't get me started on Miasma upgrading to Miasma III even after they removed Miasma II from the game!

In their efforts to "make it less confusing for English players" they only made things WAY more confusing. I'd happily do the renaming work for free to get some consistency going on.

[Rongway]

I'll echo myself from the last time this came up:

Fire II > Firaga, Fire III > Fira

In their efforts to "make it less confusing for English players" they only made things WAY more confusing. I'd happily do the renaming work for free to get some consistency going on.

Ironically, the subquoted part would really screw up players who are familiar with Final Fantasy magic suffixes, as we expect Firaga to hit harder than Fira.

[Zolvolt]

The roman numberals was the smarter choice because some year when we're up to FIRE IX we have to stop and think how many variations of Fira and firaga we couldve have gotten away with.

However if they were to make things more consistent I would say make single target spells be

SPELLNAME-NUMBER

and then AOE spells be

SPELLNAME-GA-NUMBER