Final Fantasy 14’s latest Letter from the Producer Live went into detail about some of the offerings from Patch 7.1, titled “Crossroads,” including an unveiling of the newest trailer for the patch.
The previous Live Letter, which took place at the Tokyo Games Show, unveiled the bulk of the content. However, with time being limited by the nature of a live in-person event, this Live Letter was able to get more into the nitty-gritty of what’s to come.
The biggest change for both new and returning players will be the huge upgrades to the Hall of the Novice. These new challenges will show off mechanics that show up throughout the game, including tank buster blaster markers (whatever we call those), stacks, AoE markers per player, proximity lines, and much more.
The new 24-player “Chaotic Alliance Raid” was given a brief preview with its new bonuses. There’ll be rewards for helping new players finish, with tokens “in proportion to the number of alliance members” who haven’t beat it yet, as well as timed events with extra bonuses for entering during certain periods.
PvP gets substantial upgrades too, the most important of which will be that PvP ranked matches will only be held in one region’s data center at a time. This will be Primal in NA, Chaos in EU, Gaia in Japan and Materia in Oceania. The next most important is that supposedly, the team did a lot of work on how the server ticks are hitting versus how the actions appear on the screen. Plus, a lot of maps have more “objects” to be concerned about, and some classes will see major changes.
The team also promises some major UI changes, including but not limited to, very vitally, fishing animations. The camera controls in Group Posing will be relative to the screen now, and not how the actual camera itself is posed, meaning you won’t have to crane your head sideways to adjust the camera as needed. (Future updates will likely include the “chat bubbles” and raid “whiteboard” previously promised; it’s mentioned here, but not for 7.1.)
Gameplay snippets of other areas were shown throughout the Live Letter, including for the new Final Fantasy 11 Alliance Raid and the “Futures Rewritten: Ultimate” raid.
Plus, FFXIV’s timeline for 7.1’s updates was shown off with the varying raid and content timings. The new Ultimate Raid will go live on November 26, and the Chaotic Alliance Raid will go live on Christmas Eve; other pieces of more approachable content will also be released along the way.
The previously-published special minisite for 7.1 has been updated accordingly with new information. Patch 7.1 goes live on November 12, with timings for other content shown below.
(Also, the Shadowbringers Ultimate Raid really makes the whole ordeal seem a lot more romantic between the main NPC protagonists. Nice.)
The full new Live Letter is available to watch on YouTube, but primarily in Japanese.
