Well, if you don’t want repetition, it’ll be hard since you’ll in an area for over an hour while the soundtrack loops every 2 minutes. Unless you want an hour long theme or new music being composed every week to take care of the old ones, there’s nothing you can do about it. Besides, by that same measuring stick, all games have repetitive music. There is nothing to stop the ‘repetitiveness’ of the soundtracks looping, and they'll all eventually get annoying. Just accept the music is there, you can't save it from looping.

Limsa Lominsa is no-way near peaceful. Pirates, bombings and a possible invasion? The storyline sure doesn’t show a peaceful coastal town. LL is more grand than the other cities, in fact, not to mention being a ‘busy’ port for ships. Navigator’s Glory fits LL enough, and it’s not as repetitive as the other soundtracks –cough Black Shroud cough-. Remember, the city is filled with PIRATES.

As per Jen, the battle music is fine. Rock has always been a favourite hobby of Uematsu-san, and IMO, it fits the feel of the current game set-up. FFXI’s starting battle themes were much much sub-par, and not even as much variety. La Noscea, Thanalan and the Black Shroud’s battle themes are just what they’re meant to be, setting you up for the battle. Go to Mor Dhona and Coerthas and battle there, and the music is much darker and faster.

Hitoshi Sakimoto was fine for FFXII, since Ivalice is quite mecha-based, so his percussion heavy soundtracks fit. They will fit quite well in FFXIV, but you also have the problem of the lack of orchestration, even more than Nobuo’s. And if anything, Hitoshi Sakimoto’s tracks lack some of the sophistication Nobuo Uematsu sometimes likes to plug into the tracks.

What I really don’t like is the looping of the soundtrack to the beginning FOR EACH TIME IT IS PLAYED. Take crafting for example; you hear the first 30 seconds repeatedly for each synth you do, and never actually get to the ending which is by far the better part of the track. Perhaps one of the least of the problems which are worrying the devs, but I never get to enjoy the full soundtrack because of that. Battle music suffers the same as well. In fact, the soundtracks which I do get to hear in full are the area themes and levequests. Storyline instances also suffer from the same looping to the front. If it’s possible, could the devs try something like FFXIII’s, where after each battle finished, the field music started right back from when it was cut off?

That's my short summary of FFXIV's music.

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As for orchestration, YES, please put Navigator's Glory in! I love the arranged version....so beautiful...

But we do need to think of the costs. There's no way Nobuo Uematsu can have 80+ tracks all orchestrated; not only will it take ages, the costs will be massive to pay for all the musicians for certain bombastic soundtracks like the Opening Theme, or Quicksand.

Oh and...

Quote Originally Posted by Elexia View Post
Nobuo also commented he wished he could have done a bit more with the in-game music, so you never know, they added music to FFXI in an update before, so we can log in after a patch and have updated music one day.
Do you have a link or source to where he mentioned it?