There’s little doubt thatFinal Fantasy 14is at the top of its game as it wraps up its Hydaelyn and Zodiark storyline and moves on to a new adventure. That means a lot of eyes are on the upcomingDawntrail expansion forFinal Fantasy 14, and of course, that includes those of the game’s active roleplaying community.
Roleplaying is a very popular niche to explore in online games. Some games are better mediums for the creative pursuit than others, however, and roleplayers in any game are hungry for features that make their chosen platform more accessible for how they like to engage with its world. A new expansion like Dawntrail can promise new opportunities, both narratively and mechanically, for these storytellingFinal Fantasy 14players, and new details about Dawntrail were just revealed at the London FanFest in mid-October.
Among those looking for news from FanFest was Legaia, the creator of the new roleplayer resource The Kweh, who Game Rant recently spoke with. The news that shook the RP community was something simple, yet effective, for roleplaying inFinal Fantasy 14:Chat bubblesthat would appear over players, the same way NPCs in the game can communicate, are apparently in development.
“Preach asked Yoshi-P for chat bubbles and he replied with a ‘we’re working on it’ type of response. I don’t recall the exact details, but maybe we’ll get it for Dawntrail? Maybe? … Hopefully chat bubbles come soon enough!”
Chat bubbles would address one of the longest-standing issues facing roleplayers inFinal Fantasy 14. As a predominantly text-based roleplaying atmosphere, most roleplaying takes place in the chat box. This can become a challenge for roleplayers when at busy events or venueslike A Feast Reborn, where dozens or even hundreds of players might be using text channels to interact making a single conversation a challenge to follow. Chat bubbles appearing over players when they use the text chat feature in the game would allow roleplayers to separate a single conversation from the visual noise of the entire event.
There are waysroleplayers inFinal Fantasy 14navigate that issue now, Legaia explained. Using friend groups to place special icons by names in chat, hunting for posts by first initial, or using less common channels for roleplay like /party or /tell can also give a visual break for just the conversation a player is trying to follow. But improving the tools for the game’s chat is one of the most commonly requested features among roleplayers, according to the research Legaia did for The Kweh.
Something seemingly small like chat bubbles can mean a lot to a relatively niche community in a game likeFinal Fantasy 14’s roleplayers, yet Square Enix has shown a surprisingly keen understanding of that community in the past. Legaia highlighted a difference between the game’s English and Japanese manuals that, at first, looked like odd localization, but turned out to be a surprisingly nuanced understanding of the various roleplaying cultures within the game.
In English, the manual says the RP icon by a player’s name indicatesthey’re engaged in roleplaying, whereas the Japanese manual says the player “enjoys” roleplaying.
“The definitions for the RP tag are different in the game manual for English and Japanese. Initially, I thought, ‘Oh maybe this is just a translation nuance and nothing more,’ but as I conducted interviews with the Japanese-speaking community in-game, on Twitter, Discord, and even on my trip to Tokyo, I’m beginning to think this is absolutely intentional … In Japanese culture, it is quite normal to create a character in a world and you are that character. What we call ‘RP Lite’' is actually a constant state of mind in a game world.”
Across the over 100 interviews Legaia has conducted for The Kweh, it became clear to him that for Japanese players, both the style of English-speaking roleplaying and the tag associated with it is more to indicate ‘roleplay enthusiasts’ than the more firm delineation between in and out of character common in English-speaking environments.
Other exciting things to come out ofthe London and Los Vegas FanFestshyping up Dawntrail have included the tone the new story seems intent on employing. Some expansions have been more roleplayer-friendly than others based largely on how accessible the story would be to an individual person in the broader world. For instance, it was hard for a roleplayer not acting as the game’s protagonist Warrior of Light to interact with the expansion Shadowbringers, set entirely in another world.
“As long as we don’t ‘Throw wide the gates’ for a majority of content, then I think we’ll be good there! I’m really excited to see the new tribes and how those stories are going to be told. Things that are WoL-centric only can be hard for roleplayers to engage with. Of course, new expansions mean new stories, new items, new glams, etc. I hope the folks that have stories related to the New World are able to tell them the way they hoped to.”
More details will come out about the upcoming expansion at the final FanFest, held in January in Tokyo. But the full scale of the expansion’s roleplaying potential will be discovered in Summer 2024 when Dawntrail launches.
Final Fantasy 14 (2010)
WHERE TO PLAY
Begin your adventure in FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm RebornCreate your very own Warrior of Light and embark upon a quest to deliver the land from an eternity of Darkness.Take to the skies in FINAL FANTASY XIV: HeavenswardTake your first steps in the reclusive nation of Ishgard, locked in a seemingly never-ending struggle with dragons.Rekindle the fires of hope in FINAL FANTASY XIV: StormbloodJourney to the East and rise up against the might of the Garlean Empire.Become the darkness in FINAL FANTASY XIV: ShadowbringersTravel to a world where light ushers all unto oblivion. But hope is not yet lost, for where there is light there is shadow.Journey to the very stars above in FINAL FANTASY XIV: EndwalkerA great calamity has been building - a second advent of the Final Days. The Warrior of Light must journey ever higher and stand firm as hope’s last bastion.Set forth for new horizons in FINAL FANTASY XIV: DawntrailBlue seas, clear skies, and boundless possibilities await! Explore uncharted territories with familiar faces as hope’s light dawns once more.
