Final Fantasy XIV has been going strong for over three years, with an expansion and steady patches adding more content for its more than six million playerbase to enjoy. We already know that the MMO’s second expansion, Stormblood, will be arriving on June 20th with a breadth of content including a level cap raise to 70, two new jobs, a new hub city on the Far East continent, and more.
Despite knowing a fair amount of what to expect, there is still a lot more we haven’t found out about the contents of the expansion, and what it will get through post-release updates. These are the things we hope to see in Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood.
Large Areas to Explore
As a set of interconnected areas with loading screens separating them, the 2.0 content for Final Fantasy XIV felt large enough on its own. We were then surprised by the massive, fully explorable and flyable locales in the game’s first expansion Heavensward.
We already know that Stormblood will feature not only the final piece of the continent of Eorzea called Ala Mhigo, but we will also jump across the pond to the Far Eastern land of Doma. Knowing that we are exploring two major countries as opposed to Heavenward’s Ishgard, this could mean we’ll see roughly the same size spread across the two countries, but that’s not what we want.
Ala Mhigo alone rivals the size of Ishgard based on geographical information we’ve been given for Eorzea, with Doma essentially doubling it. This means that we want to see not just the new hub city of Kugane, but Ala Mhigo have its own hub to explore at the beginning of the expansion’s story before sailing across the sea for the second half.
This will allow for the game to have more varied environments as well as expanding the world with unfamiliar locations to host all of the new content.
A Robust Underwater Element
Speaking of exploration, we now know that Stormblood will be adding both swimming and diving to the MMO. While we don’t necessarily know if this will be a barebones addition, we can always hope for it to be more substantial like in the case of Guild Wars 2.
Like the flying element added in Heavensward, underwater gameplay can expand the game in many ways. Whole locations like caves, coves, etc can provide access to a dungeon or quest objective. Treasure or collectibles can be hidden and ready to be collected by the most diehard players.
It would even be interesting to see underwater-specific mounts that you can ride on when searching the deep seas. Combat and skills exclusive to diving would add more strategy and variation. Lastly, implementing traversal or even combat underwater into dungeons would shake things up and surprise fans. There are countless scenarios, such as swimming over to activate a switch during a boss fight, that can add to the depth.
New Summons
The Summoner and Scholar jobs that branch out from the Arcanist class are the most unique jobs in the game, with not only their ability to level together, thus allowing the player to have both a DPS and healer class available, but being able to summon pets to assist in battle.
These beloved pets are so revered by gamers that Square Enix recently added the ability to attach glamours to them, much like armor, to change their appearance to that of a previous pet or even a different one entirely.
Being such an integral part of these classes, it is imperative that Stormblood features some much requested new pets to summon. Heavensward sadly lacked this addition, so the upcoming expansion could remedy that with at least one new pet for both classes.
The Summoner currently has a tank, ranged DPS, and melee DPS (does anyone even use this one?). A potential addition could be a pet with the ability to deliver some DPS, but whose primary role is to heal the Summoner and allies during battle. The Scholar pet could be a healing summon whose major ability is raising dead allies with a cooldown.
A New Healer Or Tank
The comments are probably already flaring up with “but they’ve already announced two new jobs!” That’s great, but Heavensward featured three new jobs that added to all three major roles: DPS, tank, and healer. The currently announced jobs are Samurai and Red Mage, both being DPS. This leaves an unfortunate void in the other two roles, both of which are already lacking in number compared to their damage-focused counterpart.
It would be in Square Enix’s best interest to introduce at least one tank and/or healer job during the expansion. Without this, Duty Finder queues are going to be nasty. Consider it important.
A Switch Version
A recent statement from Final Fantasy XIV’s producer, Naoki Yoshida, revealed that a Switch port of the MMO is a possibility. Obviously, this is up to Nintendo and whether or not it is willing to allow for cross-platform play with PS4 and PC, but it is in its best interest to do so.
The portable nature of the Switch allows for more options when it comes to playing Final Fantasy XIV. Gamers will be able to enjoy the MMO no matter where they are, whether it be going to a friend's house or playing at a local coffee shop. That's effectively never been done before, or at least not without an expensive laptop.
Dragon Quest X, another MMO from Square Enix, is already coming to the Switch later this year, so this is certainly a reasonable possibility. Releasing a version of Final Fantasy XIV complete with both Heavensward and Stormblood if and when it launches would be the best way to not only usher in a whole new group of players, but give great value, too.
These are our most requested features for Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood. Are we asking too much? Let us know and tell us what you want to see in the expansion when it releases on June 20th.
