Heavensward panel PAX 2015

10:16 AM Astrologian , Dark Knight , expansion , FFXIV , Final Fantasy XIV , Heavensward , Machinist , MMORPG , PAX East 2015 2 Comments

To those viewing this post, I'm updating the pictures, my grammar and other additional information as I go by, so please bear with me and with the ever holy wise words from master Yoshida, please look forward to it!  

Edited and finalized @ 3.44am +8GMT

Heavensward New Trailer

Alexander & Au Ra



The Heavensward panel started off with the new dungeon Alexander, a dungeon aka new form torture chamber that sounds like it will haunt me for many days to come that involves players having to go into the body of the primal and fight off part by part down. Interesting.

The panel then went to onto what may seem like the highlight for some players, they introduced the new race Au Ra and their movements such as the smiling gesture, the uncontrollable jubilation, walking etc. Master Yoshida claims it's a very customizable race, especially in regards to the female ver. that is able to appear adorable, seductive like a succubus or beast like according to what the players desire. The team is also planning to release a sort of benchmark software that involves FFXIV graphics, and they are at it's final stages. Apparently with this software you can try out the character customization. Does this mean that we are able to tweak more of our character's body and facial structures? Hmm..

New Tank, DPS & Healer
For the Dark Knight the team are really sticking to it's roots: Utilizing MP instead of TP and gaining power from the darkness. To me the skills are rather nice and flashy as you can see below, rather befitting for a Dark Knight!





As for Astrologian, Yoshida described the class's weapons which are star globes and diving cards. Apparently the Astrologian is able to switch between 2 sort of stances and the cards are rather unique. I noticed during the video presentation shown the Astrologian's Cure sort of has... flowers???? around the aura as compared to WHM and SCH's dreary green colour aura.




The Machinist too has flashy skills and is able to use sentries and other gadgets. Apparently there are two variations of the class, one that is less reliant on the sentries and the turret type machinist that is able to debuff enemies or support allies with buffs. This turret-type Machinist plays more of a support role as compared to his other counterpart.




Next on the panel there was a question asked by the host on how the team selects the jobs among Final Fantasy's numerous classes. Do note that the below is a summarized version of what Yoshida mentioned!

Q) How do you choose the jobs?

A) There are 5 steps. We consider how each classes will perform in game play and in a party formation. For example how do we incorporate new and exciting game-play?  Before we determine a job what should the role encompass? etc.



Step 1) Deciding the roles: We decide what kind of role this job is going to take on etc. as mentioned earlier. And creating a job requires a  lot of development effort. Not only is the battle team handling this development process, there are other permanent members involved in this process as well. So for the dev team to add one single job it takes a good year for this to happen. Battle team's take on the expansion : WE DON'T WANT TO DO THIS AGAIN


Step 2) We think of what is currently available in FFXIV, and we think about how to differentiate and how to do this job. So we finally ended up going with the Dark Knight. As you can see the dark knight as compared to his current counterparts utilizes MP. You have to learn how to manage your MP and your dark powers just as well. MP is important and you do not want your dark powers to run out on you.



Step 3) This is where we start taking in the feedback of the players and the design of the new job . Especially for the tank role we felt conflicted due to the overwhelming response of the Samurai, that was meant as a new tank job. However we went with Dark Knight instead. It does not mean that it the Samurai may not come in the future thus your patience is appreciated and we hope you try out the new Dark Knight. Your feedback is very important to us so please keep them coming.




Step 4) *This section goes through the process of the concepts being passed onto different departments.The battle section has the rough concepts drawn out first. Here Yoshida explains and speaks of his different teammates that goes over the concept first, and represents the team member as a cute character here.* In addition all teams involved actually go in like real players and test out the mechanics and have a discussion over it.


Step 5) The last step focuses heavily on the implementation of new weapons. Once all those have been determined so we decide what kind of weapon the character is going to wield. The Dark Knight faced no major issues but the team struggled with the Astrologian because they were unsure of what weapon to go with. (Pictures above show very rough concepts and preliminary ideas)

In terms of the weapon it has to look good and visible. They came up of a lot of different ideas for the Astrologian, such as how should the player flaunt the cards and retrieve the card back in the player's "relaxed" form? The same went for the guns and bag designs for the machinist.

The next question...

Q) I maxed everything, so what do you have for me as a maxed out player?

A) Maxing the level cap from 50 to 60. Of course in the new expansion there will be exciting and action packed content added, unfortunately we are unable to say too much but for the Disciples of the Hand, they are implementing a new system called the specialist tier. As for Disciples of the Hand, they are creating a new system whereby you can gather your materials.

Next, Yoshida here finally unveils the key visual and three types of the new expansion you can purchase from : 



Left: Collector's edition, Yoshida recommends everyone getting the collector's edition ( for obvious reasons )

Centre: The standard edition for players who are not so keen on getting a physical edition.

Right: The All In One, where new players can get both A Realm Reborn and Heavensward packaged together



The preorder date for these items begins on March 16 2015. Prepare your wallets!




Yoshida also announced that FFXIV is coming to Mac. As a die hard Windows enthusiast, I cannot express the amount of excitement emitting off from me. ( -.- ) Props to Canadian gaming company Transgaming for making the Mac friendly ver. avaliable.
 
Yoshida then moves onto talking about the new presumably visual enhancing software by releasing a set of maps and dungeons(?) in Heavensward. And they look stunning. Really stunning.






Gear for respective classes
I didn't take screenshots for all classes, was getting quite tired. >w<

  
                                                                           Summoner

                                                                              Bard
                                                                              Paladin
                                                                             Weaver
                                                                           Fisher

..............................................And this monster hunter lookalike first cut scene was shown. Not really sure what to make of this but the mounts look really nice here.
 



And finally what everyone has been waiting for............

Release date:



Personal opinion: Was a bit disappointed with the release date as there's only raid and gear upgrades that's keeping me in FFXIV. I'm going quite dry at the moment and I can only hope that chocobo racing will still somehow manage to retain me here, as I find it kind of hard to earn gil especially since I'm too lazy to craft and whatnot. Nevertheless I still feel excited for the expansion, and god praise the FFXIV team. Well done.



Dat face just about sums up my uncontrollable jubilation for the expansion. And finally an expansion date! Yay!