E3 2010 Coverage – Final Fantasy XIV – Exclusive Footage
June 22, 2010 
FINAL FANTASY XIV @ E3:
-T- here! Here’s the report for FINAL FANTASY XIV at E3 2010! Lots of answers, and many leaked pictures that I forgot to post. I’ve explained the character creation and demo videos in detail. It’s basically just following along in the video. Notice that you can change the bust size in character creation…. more on that below in the character creation section! The YouTube videos are uploaded in HD, double click to view full screen!
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1) Overall Impression
2) Guiding through E3 Video 1 (character creation- bust sizes changeable?! read for more!)
3) Guiding through E3 Video 2
4) Questions and Answers I found:
5) Summary of Facts Tidbits from E3(ZAM compiled this)-ZAM article, click to read
6) Leaked Images- All Mithra/Miqo’te NPC’s, and most Alpha test monsters, and more.
1) My impression: The combat system is a lot faster than FFXI’s, but still needs some work. It is kind of slow, and somewhat laggy (it may be due to bad servers or something like that). The character customization is MUCH better than FFXI’s. I go into more detail below, but let’s say you can create a highly unique avatar with different bust sizes(look at Screen 4.Face paragraph). Overall, I am slightly disappointed with the battle system, but I only played as a lancer. I’m sure the experience would be different if I were to play a mage or some other discipline. Also, this is still early beta, so we’ll see how the final battle system will result later on. I do like the amount of variety of customization available. I believe that armor customization / dyes will also be available for clothing(ZAM website)..
2) Character Creation- There are several customization screens, all very smooth, for this process. In the face customization, bust-size seems to change too…
DIFFERENCE FROM FFXI: MUCH more customization, read on to find out!
Double click video below to see HD version.
SE set up all five races to choose from. I chose the female Hyur (Hume) because I was thinking of making one for myself later… I didn’t have time to go through the other characters though.
•Screen 1: Choose a race- each race has its’ own description. Like I said before, I chose Hyur.
•Screen 2: Choose a subset of Hyur- Choose between F/M Midlanders or a male highlander. I chose the female in the video.
•Screen 3: Choose a type- I’m not sure what this screen is for… I probably missed some details, but you can customize the skin tone/hair/height on the next few screens anyways.
•Screen 4: Skin/hair/voice/size- There are 3 voices you can choose from (I couldn’t hear any of them because there were too many noises). There are five different heights: Tallest/Tall/Average/Short/Shortest. There are many many shades of skin tones, from charcoal to vanilla. Already a huge difference from FFXI.
•Screen 4.Hair: There are nine styles of hair for the Female Hyur, I was hoping for more… They look very reminiscent of the FFXI styles, especially the female crew cut (style 5). I chose the Yuna-looking haircut.
There are 32 hair color types, the red one looked really nice, so I chose that one. The hair colors cover all the colors of the rainbow and more, quite impressive. You can also had highlights! Over 30 colors of highlights it looks like. From white to blue to purple and orange and red, there are even black highlights.
•Screen 4.Face(Bust?): Four types of faces, changes the chin length, eye depth, and for some reason… If you look in the video, at around 5:07, the bust-size changes for different facial types! Is this just me?
There are eyebrow types (all kind of look similar to me). Iris size, eye color (16 different colors).
Nose length and mouth (chin) also are options. They’re all preset, so no scrolling bars for these :(.
•Screen 4.Characteristics: These are the most interesting to me; FFXI definitely did not have this. There are 5 so far, they’re checklists, you can have them all if you want. There are scars, band-aids, a mole, a very cool tattoo, and etc.
•Screen 5: Disciplines: Here, you choose your discipline. There are Disciples of War, Magic, Land(crafting), or Hand(crafting). I chose magic.
Disciple of Magic >> Thaumaturge- looks more like a black mage. Conjurer looks more like a white mage. I chose Thaumaturge.
Screen 6: Birthday/Guardian- You can set your character’s birthday, but I’m not sure what this does for you in-game. The guardian you choose will likely have an effect in character growth or something of the sort (I’m sure even the representative explaining this to me didn’t know). Guardians are “The Twelve.” These are the twelve gods that take domain over Eorzea, I’m guessing. I’ve read that they act much like the Greek Gods.
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3) Combat/Demo- I’m playing as a lancer/melee. He seems like a dragoon, and he’s wearing blacksmith glasses?
Double click video below to see HD version.
Critiques: The combat system is a lot faster than in FFXI, but it’s still pretty laggy. Switching between Active/passive mode has a 2-3 second lag. The combat system seems a bit slow compared to many other MMO’s combat systems. However, FFXIV is still in early-beta. SE might change up the combat quite a bit.
A. UI (User Interface)- I was using an xbox controller to play this… I wonder if it’ll be ported over? Anyway.
•Left Analog moves character.
•Right moves the camera.
•R1- Switches in/out of Active and Passive mode. From what I’ve read, monsters can also be in active/passive mode. There are also preemptive strike bonuses for attacking monsters in passive mode, or something similar. The player is also vulnerable to these attacks.
•Y- Switches over to the attack options bar on the bottom of the screen. I used the directional pad to switch back and forth.
•Stamina Bar – this is new. Each attack seems to deplete the stamina gauge, but as long as you have enough stamina, you can continue attacking.
•TP (Tactic points) Gauge- is back. Special abilities now have icons! There are a couple TP moves that cost around 2000 TP. I think you still gain TP as you fight monsters.
•Menu- instead of having to tab through many examinable points on the field, all the “examine” points appear in your menu as long as they’re in range. You can pick what you want to examine.
B. Combat/Battle System/Guildleve: You examine the aetheryte to start a guildleve. There are a couple difficulties to choose from, and I’m thinking that rewards will vary depending on the difficulty. Guildleves are timed; I’ve read that if you lose, there may be an alternate reward somehow because making gil is still hard to do (apparently).
•Map- There are arrows on the map that point towards where your guildleve is. There is also a circular range of where your quest should take place; this is A LOT easier than in FFXI, where hardly any guidance is shown to you.
•Battle- The directional pad targets the monsters. There are icons next to monsters that relate directly to your guildleve, and only you can interact with these. Much better, you don’t have to worry about keeping your claim safe from outside interference! I had to run around to keep attacking the monsters, surprisingly. The screen doesn’t auto-zoom in on the monster like in FFXI, giving way to a little more freedom.
•Guildleve Completion- The aetheryte appears after you’ve finished, and you get a reward of gil or other items. It teleports you back to where you started.
•World map- The world map is huge, but it has color this time! The font is kind of hard to read/understand, but I suppose one can get used to it..
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4) Questions and Answers:
What platforms will FFXIV be available on?
PS3 and PC definitely. The Xbox 360 port is still out in the air, but SE did set up xbox controllers for us to use, so who knows?
Will there be auction houses/bazaars?
There will be bazaars, but I’m not sure about the auction houses.
Will there be separate servers for different countries?
Nope. There will be an autotranslate feature once more!
Will there be voice chat?
They aren’t planning to have voice chat because of “difficulties of having a single system work between PC and PS3.”
Male Miqo’te(mithra)?
Yes! They are npc’s, but they are not playable.
When is the Beta coming?
Sometime in July!
5) Summary of Facts and Tidbits: ZAM article.
Very good compilation of different E3 interviews with the FINAL FANTASY XIV PRODUCER! This ZAM article also has bullets of some new info. Go check it out!
6) Gallery of Leaked Images
-T-
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