Skill Name Change - Black Mage

[Ordoric]

I know in ff8 it was fire, Fira, Firaga.
In ff11. The sufix had to do with how the spell took effect. -ra radius of caster, -ga Aoe based on target. -ja was based on radius of target but compounded damage modifier of same spell cast on target.

[wereotter]

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.

Exactly this.

Also speaking to when FF8 came out, I can say that at least I was VERY confused when they swapped to the different naming convention. Also it's not infinitely scalable before you have to start having to make up new suffixes no one is familiar with.

The numbering system has its own problems to be sure. But it appeals to OLD gamer nostalgia (like me) where we played all the old school games with numbered spells. And FFXIV is intentionally meant to be packed with various nods to older games.

[Sairys]

Keeping in mind, of course, that this is an English thing not global (and possibly other localisations) given the Japanse skill names use the spell naming convention as is.
It also goes against what seems to be the common direction the games have gone given remakes of the older games have seemingly realigned spells away from the numbered convention.


I'd also say that the numbering system is actually worse than the suffix system for final fantasy newbies. That player group wouldn't be coming in with any preconceptions about what a suffix means so that's not an issue. However, a numbering system heavily implies increasing tiers of power rather than different use cases.

With suffixes for BLM... no suffix is the spells are your baby spells, -ra spells are your AOEs, -ga are powerful and costly spells that let you shift attunement, -ja are your spells that require enochian.
For WHM... Cure stays, Medica would be Cura, Cure II could be Curaga, Regen stays, Medica II would be Regenra. Cure III could follow Flare/Freeze and have a unique name (Medica would be open).

Thunder level can be solved by prefixing or, because they are higher tiers, you could use the number system to have Thunder I > II and Thundara I > II. Same with stone and aero.

It would actually give a pretty clear dileneation between "these are different spells that have different purposes" (suffix) and "this is a direct upgrade over this other spell but otherwise has the same purpose" (numbers)

[Enkidoh]

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?

This is actually incorrect. The first FF game (that was translated into English anyway) to feature the 'ra/ga/ja' suffixes for spell names was FFVIII - FFI, IV, VI and VII all used "spell name + number denoting spell strength". And FFXI used both, leading to some silly names like "Thundaga V". It's no big deal to me.

It's clear SE will not be changing this, as Ferne made his choice, as Rongway said.

[Sairys]

This is actually incorrect. The first FF game (that was translated into English anyway) to feature the 'ra/ga/ja' suffixes for spell names was FFVIII - FFI, IV, VI and VII all used "spell name + number denoting spell strength". And FFXI used both, leading to some silly names like "Thundaga V". It's no big deal to me.

It's clear SE will not be changing this, as Ferne made his choice, as Rongway said.

You're actually both correct in a way.

FFVIII was the first English game to actually translate the suffixes with them being present since the original in Japanese. (The only exception being FFII because of it's ability levelling system.)
However, looking across the ability name tables you can also see that, after FFVIII used the suffixes, the remakes of the earlier games have all used them instead of the number system. So it's entirely plausible for someone to have played every game in the series with the suffixes present if they've played the versions of them released after around 1999 or 2000.