10 Ways Evercold Is Looking To Remake Final Fantasy 14

Final Fantasy 14 just held its latest Fan Fest in Berlin, Germany this weekend, and revealed a slew of new changes for the upcoming Evercold expansion.

Not only did we learn that we’ll be getting the new twin-shield-bearing tank job Bastion, we’re also set to receive a number of changes to quest progression, gear, and our dear Chocobo companions.

While we’ll have to wait until Tokyo’s own Fan Fest taking place on October 31st to hear about the last remaining details for the upcoming expansion, director Naoki “Yoshi P” Yoshida has already shared enough that Evercold is shaping up to be one of the most transformative expansions yet.

So, without further ado, here are 10 ways Final Fantasy 14: Evercold is looking to reinvent the award-winning MMO.

10

Combat Mode Changes

Evolved vs Reborn

With the release of Evercold, every Job in Final Fantasy 14 is set to receive new combat styles to help with the games ongoing button bloat.

Reborn Mode will retain the same feel as the system right now. This mode will build on existing job actions and mechanics, so that veteran players can play the game how they’ve always played it.

However, after 8.0 releases with Evercold, every job will get to switch to the Evolved Combat Mode, which looks like it’ll be the preferred way to play in the future. Yoshida has gone on to clarify that this mode isn’t a simplified version of Reborn Mode, but instead aims to accommodate busy players and newcomers who may be unfamiliar with complex control setups.

To me, this does sound like a simplified version, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. As someone who rotates through Black Mage and Red Mage, I wouldn’t mind some streamlining as executing my opener is starting to look more like playing the piano than anything else.

We’re yet to hear more details about this system, which will be rolling out over the next few months, in a four hour keynote later this year. As of now, we know that the hotbar will be streamlined to 16 buttons, and that it’ll include new, unique action rotations. Bastion and the upcoming Physical Ranged DPS job will also only be available to play in the Evolved Mode.

9

Chocobo Dungeon Changes

Bring Your Chocobo Into Dungeon Content With a Friend

The Chocobo has long been a good friend to the Warrior of Light, and with the release of 8.1, we’ll now get to bring them with us to clear dungeon content.

Over the post-release content of Dawntrail, the team at Creative Studio 3 have slowly been refining the single player experience of the game, so that players can tackle content by themselves. Now with the upcoming expansion, the studio are reworking the Chocobo ally system to allow players to bring their Chocobo to fill a role in the party finder to cut down on queue times.

In the Live Letter, Yoshida pitched this idea as letting yourself and a friend queue up with your chocobo’s to fill out the remaining slots. Which sounds like a nice solution to getting your friend to try out the game as a DPS without having to endure up to 20-minute queue times for some of the more obscure dungeon content in the game.

As part of this update, FF14 will also be revamping its Gysahl Greens system and how you summon your chocobo as well. They also promised that players who have maxed out their Chocobo companions levels won’t need to do so again, and this system will be additive to the Chocobo experience.

8

Branching Paths In Main Scenario Quest

Choose Which Islands You Visit

Final Fantasy 14 has teased this before, but with Evercold, the expansion is looking to give players more freedom in which order they want to tackle content.

With the upcoming expansion promising to have up to five main airships to travel to, the team have teased we’ll be able to choose which order of specific airships we’ll get to explore first. This will let players experience the story in a different order from others.

Yoshida would also clarify that this will affect players’ levels in different areas, as some might be higher or lower depending on which route they take. To accommodate this, enemies will scale to your level, so players don’t feel as though they made the “wrong” choice, and like they have to play catch up when they cross over with other players on raid content throughout the main story quest.

It’s an interesting experiment, to help shake up the usual main story progression. Whether this will be a feature that sticks around for future expansions remains to be seen.

7

Daily Quests Changed To Weekly Rewards

Friendlier To Your Schedule

In an odd change, Final Fantasy 14 is instead choosing to mix up its usual daily tasks and is instead replacing it with a weekly progression system. This will now instead highlight available acitvities like clearing dungeons, completing side quests, or advancing the main story, which will reward activity points. Some of these tasks can be repeated, while others are one-off completions.

As you build more activity levels, you’ll get to unlock new gear tied to this system. The idea here is that this will move players away from the overwhelming (and often tedious) Allagan Tomestone system, which would have players grinding out the same dungeons to maximize the amount of Tomestone’s they could get per run.

Now, you won’t need grind every day just so you can turn these in at a specific vendor for best-in-slot item levels. Instead, you can complete these changing weekly missions on your own schedule. Which I appreciate, as trying to play catch up when a new raid drops felt more like busy work than actually enjoying the content.

6

Item Level Upgrades

Save Time On Grinding Equipment

This expansion is continuing to be immensely player-friendly, and one of its most impressive changes will be how it approaches items.

In this new system, you’ll now be able to copy the gear with the highest item level from one job to another, letting you reduce the amount of time it takes to put a job set together. This also won’t change a gear piece’s parameters, so you can still influence materia for that specific class.

Yoshida said that this will better help players fill different job roles. This not only spares having to spend hours grinding best-in-slot pieces over various jobs just in case you have to fill, it also means trying to learn tougher content on different jobs will be far more plug-and-play friendly.

5

Character Action Skins

New Animations For Teleporting and Other Skills

We’ve finally got Fortnite emotes, baby.

These new character actions skins are promising to replace existing animations for certain actions, such as emotes, field actions like teleport, and even some job actions. We’d get our first look during the Live Letter, showcasing some nifty looking new teleport effects to help shake up the usual animation we’ve all seen for the past few years.

Job actions remain the biggest tease here so far. Yoshida hinted that, over the years, the game has gone on to remove specific animations from the game. With this new system, it’s possible for some of these to return.

These job animations will roll out gradually starting in patch 8.1, with more actions being added in subsequent patches. Given that we’ve had a lot of the same animations for over a decade at this point, this system seems pretty neat, and harmless in the way of cosmetics.

4

World Raids

Bringing Content Like Eureka Into Older Locations

Some of Final Fantasy 14’s strongest content has been isolated in locations like Bozja and Eureka, uniting players in massive world events. Sadly, after grinding through enough levels, this content ends up feeling a bit redundant, and therefore, these areas become a bit of a dead zone.

Well with the release of Evercold, Yoshida is promising that this content to come back and take place in lesser-visited locations across Eorzea and The Shard. This content still seems to be heavily under development, as there wasn’t much the eccentric director was able to share at the event.

If I had to speculate, this content is likely to be reminiscent of Guild Wars 2 meta-events, where large groups of players will need to coordinate around big zone events which will require a bit more effort than your standard FATE encounter. If these are tied to the next round of Ultimate Weapons, I honestly wouldn’t even be mad. Bozja’s events made for some of my best memories with the game, so I’m keen to see this explored in future patches.

3

New Difficulty For Raid Content

A New Difficulty to Onboard Players To Savage Content

Raid content makes for some of Final Fantasy 14’s most interesting and complex content. Sadly, according to Yoshida himself, only 14-20% of players end up clearing their highest tier Savage raid content.

That’s why in Evercold, the game will be receiving a new difficulty in between the Normal and Savage tiers of raiding which aims to help onboard players hoping to refine their skills and dive into tougher raids. Yoshida clarified that this new tier will be akin to the Extreme versions of Trials, but will be under a different name.

Admittedly, in my entire time of playing Final Fantasy 14, I haven’t had the chance to learn and co-ordinate with a group to clear Savage content consistently. I’m not too sure if this will fix the overall issue of this content being niche, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

With this new change, new item incentives will also be added. Players who clear raid content on this new difficulty will receive seasonal gear they can upgrade. Meanwhile, players who complete Savage content will receive new raid gear as a direct reward, which is likely to be some of the best gear available.

2

Same Region Matchmaking

A Solution To Long Queue Times

In the lead up to Evercold’s release, it’s been confirmed that we’ll be getting same-region matchmaking, which will hopefully alleviate some of those lengthy party finder queue timers.

This new system will roll out in Japan first on October 12, and will have a 24-hour testing period. After the team iron out the experience and fix any issues, this will be rolled out in North America, Europe, and China. It’s unclear when (or if) this system will reach Materia as of now, which hurts my poor Australian soul. Because if there’s any server that could use some help reducing queue timers right now, it’s us.

1

Auto-Travel Confirmed For Older Content

Skip The Journey and Arrive At Your Destination

Final Fantasy 14 is set to receive auto-movement, which may end up being one of the more controversial additions to the game.

Yoshida himself admitted it was a feature he was reluctant to add to the game, given that he believed that the journey of exploring the map from quest giver to quest giver was part of the experience. But, the team now want to respect player’s time more, and have offered an auto-travel feature.

While footage wasn’t shown, Yoshida said that this feature will transport players to their next quest giver without them needing to travel to it themselves. Meaning if you want to take the time to do some laundry, make a meal, or do anything else in between running from point a to point b, you now can.

I’m unsure if this will alleviate some of the biggest issues players have with quest structure, which is “walk to place, talk to NPC, maybe fight a wave of enemies, walk to place, turn in quest”. Sure, you’re alleviating the walking part, but I’m not sure if this is the fix to what is sometimes a pretty bland experience.

Overall, it seems like the main theme for this expansion is refining Final Fantasy 14 to be more player-friendly than ever. Already, we’ve seen new features that’ll let players pick up the game any time during the week without stressing that they’re missing out or letting down their raiding party for daring to have another hobby.

There’s still one final Fan Fest left this year in Tokyo, Japan before Evercold releases in January, 2027. There, we’ll learn about the upcoming second job coming to the game, and the Fourth Shard we’ll be travelling to.

Released

August 27, 2013

ESRB

Teen / Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact

Developer(s)

Square Enix

Publisher(s)

Square Enix

Engine

Originally the Crystal Tools engine, but currently it’s a custom engine using parts of the Luminous Engine.

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