A Realm Reborn’s development has had a single, overarching theme: “change.” In what’s certainly a departure for the old guard at Square-Enix, the company has kept players in the loop through its Letter from the Producer series, highlighting upcoming features and balance tweaks.
This theme of change extends beyond rebuilding the game’s broken version 1.0 – Square-Enix is promising frequent major additions to the world of Eorzea. So what can players expect from A Realm Reborn in the near future? Simply put: more of everything.
Beyond 2.1
We don’t know Square-Enix’s longterm plan for FFXIV Power leveling, but suggestions continue to flow into Square-Enix from the player community – some of which have been explicitly acknowledged by the development team. The suggested items include the ability to stay active in Duty Finder when a chocobo companion is present (currently players in parties, including those with just a single player character and a computer-controlled companion, cannot be queued in Duty Finder), allowing chocobo companions to fill empty slots during dungeon runs, and a capability for resetting healer, DPS, and tank skills assigned to a chocobo companion.
Players have also requested the inclusion of several iconic jobs in the Final Fantasy series, including Red Mage and Dark Knight, along with additional base classes to support their inclusion into A Realm Reborn. Yoshida has mentioned a desire to include additional casting jobs like Red Mage and Blue Mage, as well as more stealth-oriented occupations like Thief and Ninja.
Player Housing
A Player Housing system is also being introduced in FF XIV’s 2.1 update. Eventually allowing players to purchase individual houses of three different sizes, at first this feature will be limited to Free Companies only. While rumored to be incredibly expensive, owning a home offers several significant benefits, including up to 380 different decorations, chocobo raising (of which very little is known about at this time), the ability to acquire various crafting and leveling buffs via housing structures, and more.
At TGS, A Realm Reborn’s Producer Naoki Yoshida mentioned that plans are in the works to implement common workspaces allowing players to work together to craft larger items (as opposed to just single-player equipment).
PvP
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s PvP implementation, known as The Wolves’ Den, will be making an appearance in the very near future. Designed for 8v8 and 4v4 battles and accessible through Duty Finder, both existing groups and matched groups will be able to battle it out for glory and in-game rewards. Specific gear will be available to wear during PvP matches, and the team is working on implementing equipment and other rewards that can only be earned through winning PvP skirmishes. How existing PvE gameplay systems will be balanced to support PvP is still not entirely clear, though Yoshida did mention that certain player skills will not be available during PvP.