During a Final Fantasy XIV Letter to the Producer stream during the weekend, producer Naoki Yoshida talks about the 7.0 update. Basically, it’ll be overhauling its graphics for the better.

The livestream detailed the game’s graphics overhaul with preparations for this running from 6.1 to 6.5. This will be increasing the MMORPG’s minimum requirements, but Square Enix will accommodate as broad a range as possible hardware specs-wise. The overhaul will feature:

• Animation and lighting system updates.
• Higher-resolution textures (hair/skin/gear etc.).
• Improved material qualities (skin/metal/fabric etc.).
• Better lighting and shadow effects.
• More environmental objects.
• Higher-resolution and variety of auto-generated plant life, including grass.
• Possible improvements to fog and other ambient effects.

Yoshi-P said that photorealism isn’t the goal, with the overall appearance of characters to be altered as little as possible.

Apart from that, Yoshi-P also said that the team and Square Enix have no intentions to put NFTs in FFXIV. 

“We don’t intend on incorporating any sort of NFT element in the game at this point. If anybody is worried or concerned about it, I can clearly state at this time that we do not have any intentions to incorporate that into the game.”

Having said that, he does believe that NFTs are an opportunity for a new business model and could potentially be something that makes a concept of a video game a little bit more interesting. However, it needs a specific game design to accommodate them.

For more on FFXIV, check out our review of the Endwalker expansion.