Gamescom time. We get lots more screenshots of 2.0 in action. We should also be getting live video of it within the next day or so.

Click for full size 1080p.
















There's also a lot of concept art available that I've omitted for now.

Changes of note I've spotted:

Jesus, the JPEG compression is set way too high on these screenshots.

Font size over-all seems to have shrunk compared to the last screenshots so they can fit more on the screen.

Chocobos can jump!

It looks like there's an "enemy party list" over on the left that fills up with the names and HP bars of enemies that you or your party has currently aggroed, for easy targetting. This is probably how monsters get their A B C tagging. Useful. The enemies all say "100" even if the bar (HP?) isn't full. Could be amount of enmity.

I'm guessing you can change the /names display per type now. There are some screenshots where party members have names but NPCs are missing them.

Inventory is /100 and not 200. They did mention that they would eventually take away the massive inventory extension we got. However, they were only going to do so once they fixed up how much inventory was needed for everything. For example gear sets were supposed to only take up 1 inventory slot (they called it the Mannequin system) in that you could equip the whole set at once. You can see a "gear set equip" button on the gear menu.

The party list always shows your own HP/MP/TP, but doesn't show the TP bar of any party members, boo.

Action bar rows seem too spaced out, I'm assuming these are movable (considering they had one vertical and on the left last time) and they put them that way for some reason. Having S1 and C1 so you can SHIFT+1 and CTRL+1 for stuff on each row is great, hoping ALT+1 is one too so we can technically have 4 rows including macros.

TP seems to cap at 1000 now with abilities using only 100-200 etc. Also characters seem to have 1000 TP out of battle and less in battle. It might be that you now start with full TP for encounters but have to slowly build it up during battle.

The characters, all currently at level 50, are gaining exp. They're killing like level 10 stuff so it's not moving much, but that exp bar is actually filling up. Incoming level cap increase.

And the new concept art:















EDIT: Oh and if anybody is wondering "Wtf happened to Garuda?" in the concept art above. It's supposedly Siren, not Garuda.

Quote from a Gamespot article:


Are they mis-interpreting Battle Regimen, or is there something else here we've not been told about?

You are right about the jpeg compression... holy shit. That's too bad, I wanted some screenshots that showed off the graphics at highest resolution... those just end up being way to piexelated... still the scenery is pretty badass.

Yeah, so, it looks pretty awesome.

Also, dat Party "Limit Break" versus the dragon at the end.

Wow, all of that looks really awesome. I'm glad I decided to start playing before this came out haha.

It looks so much better. I can't wait.

_________________

Tried to transcribe the entire thing as I watched it. Missed out some details if I'd already mentioned it before.

0:00 - Solo, Hyur, Lancer, Race RSE Gear

0:02 - Using Keyboard/Mouse Controls - WoW Style

0:33 - Clicked the gear slot blips near the inventory at the bottom right to open gear

0:36 - Inventory is 5x5 grid x4 "bags" = 100 slots. I recall them saying there'd be a "list view" too for classic people.

0:38 - Equips "Soul of the Dragoon" by dragging it into gear slot. Becomes Dragoon. No animation. Action bar resets.

0:43 - Equips Dragoon Gear by dragging it onto the character's silhouette instead of individual gear slots.

0:48 - Gear appears on character instantly. No "fading out and back in again" nonsense.

0:50 - Clicks blips again to close window instead of close button. Uses close button on inventory window.

0:57 - Tooltips for abilties appear in the bottom-right instead of above the action bar. Looks to be more detailed, but difficult to read.

0:58 - Character moves while using ability. Kind of slides along the floor, but is above to move.

1:10 - Attacks squirrel, links nearby squirrels and the treant. All mobs appear in new UI on the left.

1:17 - Kills squirrel. HP bar on new UI thing drops, mob disappears from list. Since the bar is HP the "100" must mean "100%" enmity compared to rest of party (he's solo).

1:25 - When mob is targetted you can see the person the mob is attacking (and their HP) at the top left of the target HP bar.

1:38 - Text appears in the middle. Can't read what it days. Could be loot or just a generic "ability not ready yet" error.

2:06 - Zooms really far out.

2:20 - Not sure where this is. It has no aetheryte but there are at least 3 quests.

2:56 - I think the german guy says this is an archery training range. They did mention possibly having attackable dummies you can use to test DPS on.

3:00 - Making use of jump to hop over fences and boxes.

3:28 - Player on the side of the road seems to be crafting. By the blurry animation I think it's a Carpenter.

3:35 - UI Layout Edit Mode. Able to see boxes for all the UI elements to easily move them around and place them.

3:40 - Hm. The chat window doesn't seem to have an edit box around it..

4:32 - Almost drags an action off his action bar here. Should remember to lock it.

4:51 - Chocobo time. Called by pressing the Chocobo button on the action bar. Same old music. It's not actually a Grand Company chocobo though, there's no flags on it.

5:06 - Chocobo jumping.

5:14 - Resetting UI layout back to default.

5:20 - Text appears as they cross the bridge. Possibly the name of the place they just arrived at.

5:50 - Invites players to party by right clicking on them with his mouse and selecting from a context menu.

6:04 - New looking Aetheryte Crystal. I guess this is a camp then. Looks a lot more elaborate than camps with have now, with features and buildings.

6:14 - Delivery Moogle. Doesn't actually interact with it.

6:37 - Chocobo stables nearby. nice and big and elaborate and not just an NPC standing by a fence. Even a quest in there.

6:47 - Using Emotes placed directly on the Action Bar. They could also be macros set to do emotes.

7:45 - Arrive at what looks like some kind of dungeon entrance. Possibly an instance since the gates look shut and there's an NPC nearby.

8:55 - Party Battle Trailer versus some kind of dragon thing.

9:02 - New White Magic casting animation, looks really nice.

9:16 - PLD can very briefly be seen here with a similar new casting animation.

9:23 - Party Limit Break. One person at the back seems to have initiated it, could be the party leader, don't know.

9:25 - Entire party animation for the limit break.

9:29 - Meteor! Boom.

9:40+ - German/Japanese Interview. Can't understand.

12:30 - RSE Cosplayers. Handing out T-Shirts and Beta invites I believe, hence the massive rush of people.

looks pretty damn good lol

I'm impressed, wasnt expecting too much due to the history of the game, but after seeing this, I cant wait!

Sirennnnnnnn yayyyyyy I loved her in ff8. They might be adding in less powerful primals to give the SMN job, since we already know SMNs won't get to summon the main primals themselves (only free company or whatever)

_________________
No sig because 3 sigs in a row people make me change my sig and I refuse to have a pony sig!

I have a feeling that the limit break is going to be job based, at least I hope so. It looks like the BLM started that so you get meteor... maybe if it's a DRG, you get a dragon coming down.

Shit looks sweet, gotta get some more stuff to 50 with dusticle before this is released lol

_________________

looks as though 2.0 will be later than i was hoping. I guess they said beta wont be until winter 2012. i dont think winter technically even starts until the end of december so we may not actually be getting 2.0 this year after all. that could be a huge let down

_________________

Oh, that's interesting. I thought Ket said 2.0 was like September, or something.

_________________

http://kotaku.com/5935273/final-fantasy ... -necessary

thats where i pulled my info from. I think ket was just speculating about september but im not sure.

i just got done reading that this morning though, i was pretty dissapointed

_________________

I've read several articles today and they all seem to give different dates. I dunno where the discrepancy is coming from, maybe they're asking different people.

Kotaku says "Winter 2012"
MMORPG says they were told "Release Next Year, Before Christmas" (??)
Gaming Examiner says "PS3 Beta is November, This Hasn't Changed From Before"
Massively (Joystiq) says "Both PC and PS3 release this year"

Baring in mind this information is supposed to come from a press release, I'm amazed there's such a mess here.

I've also heard a site say that we're allowed to use our current characters in the Beta, whereas I was under the impression that the point of having the beta when it was was that they needed time to transfer our characters and they wouldn't be available.

Going by the slew of non-matching information, my guess here is that they're calling the entire period before the game goes "2.0 Retail" the "beta". They're going to get all the current 1.0 players into the game, and then hold back the retail relaunch until they deem the game "ready" for it.

I'm just happy they weren't bullshitting us with the UI changes, etc. when they showed everyone the concept screenshot a while back. I'll definitely be giving FFXIV another shot, especially after they've done so much work revamping it and actually trying to live up to their promise.

i, as stated before, am very pumped.. must finish skyrim quick and fast like.

_________________
Aldy™
Kicker of Ass™

Hmm winter release. Playing Tera ATM n GW2 till 2.0 hits.

_________________

I should have got the goobue mount :D

_________________

I regret not getting the goob mount for my mules. It took a whole 2 seconds. The chocobo is much harder to obtain haha (just lengthy really).

_________________

FYI, this should clear up some confusion about the beta:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/08/16 ... unch-a-re/

We get to keep our current characters for the beta. I think that means they won't be converted into 2.0 characters for the beta, not sure how that'll work.

Also, the kotaku article that references the 4gamer article... has a different tiemframe according to google translate... "Announced that in conjunction to implement the β test server load test of this work, in winter 2012 to autumn 2012."

Sounds like they are still planning for having the beta very soon.

lol I so knew Ridere was going to say that.


Overall Im very impressed with what has been shown. I dont think its possible for me to be more excited.

This is starting to feel more like the FFXIV that Yoshi would have given us from the start. Its making 1.0 really look like a beta.

_________________
COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh