Famitsu has just released the most comprehensive guide to FFXIV we’ve seen so far, including baby steps like what HP, MP, and TP do, and we at FFXIVArchives.com would like to bring it to you to sum up everything we know about the game’s mechanics so far! Additionally, new pictures of the various classes have been released, and some of them are looking pretty great.
September 30, 2010 is the release date for PC. They’re aiming for early March 2011 for PS3.
Above, we see that the player has encountered two monsters. The battle director takes this time to explain the various parts of the screen for MMO beginners.
Guildleves, which are like the quests found in other MMOs, appear with their objectives at the top left.
The chat window appears at the bottom right. All combat messages and social chat will appear here, including damage dealt, damage taken, and spell effects. Remember that in a past interview there was talk of being able to create more chat windows!
The bottom center of your screen contains your three personal HP, MP, and TP gauges, as well as your action buttons. You’ll notice that abilities which are still waiting for their recast timer or abilities which cannot be used yet due to stamina, TP, or MP deficiencies are darkened. (Upper picture) Abilities with TP costs now have their TP costs listed under the button’s image. You’ll get 30 slots (3 bars of 10) in which abilities can be equipped, and it will be easy to change between them.
Party HP and MP will be displayed at the bottom right corner.
The stamina gauge will constantly fill up over time. When an action is selected, the amount of stamina inside the thick part of the bar will be consumed. Players may continue to perform actions as long as they have the stamina for them, barring other requirements (TP, MP, and recast).
The currently targeted enemy’s HP gauge is below the stamina gauge.
At the top right of the screen is the Area Map. This map is always centered on the player. Above the area map we can see our connection status (receive and send values) and to the right of the map we can see the current date and time in Eorzea.We then take a look at the step-by-step process of battle.
First, we target and lock on to the enemy. The dev team would like to encourage locking on, as they feel it makes it easier to move around the mob.
Second, we go into active mode. This has us draw our weapons and allows us to attack.
Finally, battle begins–we choose our actions, choose the pacing of our actions (whether to use them in a big burst of quick successive actions or to use them over time), and get the mob’s HP to 0.
After the battle, we’ll get loot and FFXIV’s version of experience points.
Some other points on gameplay mechanics:
- Positioning will be important! Some techniques will be more powerful when used from different positions. There will also be pieces of our enemies that we can break off or injure–for example, attacking an enemy from the rear may injure its tail. The battle director would really like for this to then have the effect of, say, disabling a tail swipe TP attack.
- Spells like Haste will probably affect the speed at which the stamina gauge regenerates.
- The devs understand that in the heat of battle, chat-based communication can be difficult. They want to implement communication icons so that the party leader could say, for example, “Let’s attack ○○” or “Let’s recover” with simple images.
The Famitsu authors take this time to report on the character creation process, with lots of pictures. One of the things they point out is that perspective is important when designing your character. Notice in the first comparison below, the nose changes are more obvious, and in the second comparison, the chest shape changes with an unrelated setting.
The Famitsu authors then tell us that the graphics have improved from Alpha to Beta, showing us images of the familiar opening sequence for Limsa Lominsan characters:
They then speak of Battle Regimens, describing it as a chain of actions between party members, before moving along to the newest shots of all the various disciplines in action!