Final Fantasy XIV experienced tremendous success with the latest expansion, Endwalker, to the point where users were forced to experience extremely long queues (and Square Enix had to apologize, providing a free week of game time).
However, it’s now time for the developer to look forward to what’s next. Yesterday, the latest episode of the Letter from the Producer featured an in-depth look at the next few patches, though arguably the most interesting tidbits had to with the first visual update for Final Fantasy XIV.
Scheduled to go live with update 7.0 (which should mark the next expansion), it will coincide with a bump in minimum system requirements on PC, although the developers will try to maintain support for the broader possible configurations. PlayStation 4 support is also confirmed for 7.0, but not beyond that.
Here’s an overview from Reddit of the planned Final Fantasy XIV visual enhancements, followed by a few examples we grabbed straight from the video.
Character Appearance Updates including: higher-resolution textures for hair, skin, clothes, etc; improved visual quality for materials; and better lighting and shadow effects.
Player characters will have their overall appearance altered as little as possible (i.e. mainly just polished, but your character should not look fundamentally different than now)
Currently-existing NPCs will have their appearances updated through 7.x; however, not all old NPCs will receive this update.
Not all current gear will be updated for 7.0. However, it will be updated in stages with priority given to the most frequently used glamour gear and other equipment.
Game environments will receive a number of graphics overhauls including to lighting, textures, shadows, reflective surfaces, and improved auto-generated greenery (some really nice looking grass was shown!)
Possible updates to fog and other ambient environmental effects are being looked into as well.
During the same stream, director Naoki Yoshida (who’s also producing Final Fantasy XVI, by the way) also reassured Final Fantasy XIV fans that, despite the pro-blockchain comments made by Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda at the very beginning of 2022, there are no plans to add NFTs to this game.
