For one weekend only Frankfurt Germany became the Mecca for Final Fantasy XIV. Earlier this morning Square Enix kicked off their third and Final Fantasy FanFest prior to the launch of their newest expansion Stormblood. To get the celebration rolling Naoki Yoshida opened the event with his keynote speech after an expanded Stormblood cinematic.
The biggest news of the event was the announcement of the much anticipated Samurai job. The samurai will be a melee damage dealer. There will be no third job. “After Heavensward we realized it was just too much for us,” said Yoshida. He continued “we know that some of you will be concerned about introducing two DPS classes. With Heavensward we added both a tank and a healer. when looking at actual data we saw that players continued to play tanks or healers. We wanted to add new DPS classes and continue to balance from there. This does not mean we plan on neglecting tanks and healers. With the changes to battle system we hope to balance and optimization them like we did the Astrologin. We plan on making sure the balance for tank and healers will fit with these two new jobs.”
The samurai’s main weapon will be a katana. Each katana will have it’s own unique scabbard art. Samurai will have no starting class and tentatively begin at level 50. The equipment will be drawn from the same category as the monk. It is a pure DPS class. It will learn “Iai” and other traditional far eastern swordplay techniques. It will master the art of Sen and it’s three forces. Setsu(snow), Getsu (moon), and Ka (flower). Another distinguish characteristic is the energy gauge that once filled can be unleashed for devastating attacks. Learning when to unleash which attacks is part of the character design.
In addition to the samurai we learned about the new continent and an underwater city. The world of Eorzea has been greatly expanded. In Stormblood players will travel to a new far Eastern continent home of the Samurai. Players will be tasked with liberating Dom in addition to Ala Mhigo. Oh and players will get increased inventory capacity. They aren’t done with it yet but they plan on release in more details on the scope soon. If you use a 32 bit OS it’s time to upgrade to a 64 bit OS and they are ending support for the PlayStation 3. They will off free upgrade campaign.
There will be an all new player city Kugane. It is a port town on the island chain of Hingashi. Hingaish has an isolationist if policy and doesn’t have contact with outsiders. You’ll learn why later on during the story. However Kugane is the one exception open to trade with outsiders.
There will be new field areas in Othard. Featured was the Ruby Sea rife with pirates. It will be one of the first areas you encounter when you cross to the new area of Othard in 4.0. It is inhabited by the Kojin, a new beast tribe. They are skilled traders and welcome dealing with other races. They have settlements underwater. Adding it up I can imagine players will get to visit these new cities but they were only willing to allude to that in the keynote. Their main deity is the new all original primal Susano - Lord of the Revel. Ruler of the Ruby sea.
New dungeons were also revealed. One of which appeared to be floating sea hulk attached to a ghost ship. More details on the other dungeons are being held back until later.
Other field areas are Yanxia controlled by the Garleans and a third area the Azim Steppe. The later of which is the first expansive field area in the game.
Yugiri will be a major characters in 4.0 as well as a new character Gosetsu. She is wearing Ninja AF3 in the photo below. Gosetsu is a Samurai. Gosetsu will be introduced in in 3.5 part 2. Yoshida also wanted to crowd to know how impressed he was that players put together Sam Raimi and Samurai so quickly.
There will also be a fourth housing area located in Shirogane. It will be a far eastern housing area. The development team is hard at work not only at this far eastern themed housing but also housing items to go along with them. This new area will not be available right at the expansion's release. There will also be a moving feature for free companies to move their estates to this new area. On release of 4.0 however the capacity for furnishings will be doubled for all estates. Cottages will have a cap of 200, houses will be 300, and mansions will be 400. If you continue to use a 32 bit OS due to memory constraints you can still place all of these items you just may not be able to see them correctly.
There will be a number of events throughout the day. From Duty Roulette's to mechanical behemoth riding, think of a bull but only on a behemoth. There will even be a cosplay contest. I saw an amazing interpretation of chocobos while waiting in queue for the event.
Make sure to check back throughout the day as this is a developing event.
