June’s upcoming Final Fantasy XIV enlargement, Shadowbringers, isn’t simply going to deliver gamers one other fifty-odd hours of story to chew on, however overhaul a variety of the favored MMORPG’s fundamentals. Announced throughout a “Letter From The Producer” stream final evening (archived on Twitch here), Square Enix and producer Naoki “Yoshi P” Yoshida outlined a few of the massive modifications coming in Patch 5.0, whether or not you purchase the enlargement or not. They additionally launched a free benchmark instrument for the upcoming enlargement full with up to date character creator. You can find it here.
The benchmark doesn’t appear way more intensive than the earlier enlargement, Stormblood, and reckons that I’m properly geared up to play it at its highest element setttings. The benchmark additionally doubles as a real-time trailer, displaying off a few of the otherworldly new environments, massive new enemies, and culminating in a mock dungeon boss-fight. We get a quick take a look at what the brand new Dancer class can do (wide-area magical harm, it will appear, being a ranged DPS sort), and a peek on the adorably reimagined Nu Mou individuals, previously of the Ivalice sequence of Final Fantasy games.
Still, benchmarks are simply pores and skin deep, and after watching the Letter From The Producer stream, I really feel I’m going to need to re-learn the game virtually from scratch. Patch 5.Zero is bringing sweeping modifications for all gamers, together with the whole re-design of a number of lessons, in addition to some modifications to how character expertise work in any respect. As of 5.0, some expertise will have the ability to maintain a number of prices, and the beforehand customizable ‘role’ expertise will now be locked in, with a hard and fast set per function – tank, healer or melee, ranged and magic DPS. Magical DPS is the only at 4 additional actions, whereas tanks need to juggle seven.
Those magical and ranged damage-dealers will now have the job of interrupting enemy assaults. The UI ought to make it clearer when the enemy is winding up for one thing painful, and also you’ll discover your interrupt expertise amongst the set to your function, fairly than class. In normal, they’re making the previous MMO ‘holy trinity’ of DPS, Tank and Healer a extra elementary a part of the game – an odd name when each different MMO appears to be transferring away from it. Healers will not have to solid Protect on individuals, and are actually centered much more on restoring harm, as an alternative of stopping it.
The greatest modifications are coming to pet lessons, particularly Summoner. Pets are being closely reworked and can not be affected by enemies, so the times of tanking with Titan-egi (as my Summoner character does) are over. The pet hotbar is disappearing, summons are actually instantaneous, and their talents have gotten a part of your common talent pool. Probably essentially the most dramatic change is the Machinist class, which is nearly totally redesigned. Formerly restricted to pistols and little clockwork drones, they’ve now acquired Heat and Battery gauges, the previous limiting overuse of their new high-tech arsenal, and the latter charging as much as allow you to summon a cool humanoid robotic buddy.
That’s simply the tip of the iceberg for the upcoming patch modifications, and simply the stuff that’ll be common. The enlargement itself is making some modifications to levelling, with FATEs (open-world occasions) in Shadowbringers zones rewarding particular foreign money however no expertise, and side-quests all scaling to your present degree. I extremely advocate lively or returning FFXIV gamers watch the Twitch stream above to search out out what’s altering to your class of selection.
Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers launches on July 2nd. You can discover it here on its official page or on Steam for £30/€35/$40, and contains all of the expansions so far. The first enlargement, Heavensward, can be free until the end of June, though just for non-Steam gamers.
