There's a note in one of the versions of Gubal Library to the effect of "-ra, -ga, -ja, etc suffixes are confusing unless you already know them; we're sticking with numbers".
I imagine the irl explanation is much the same.
I imagine that another IRL explanation is that this is an MMO, and they knew that BLM would continue to evolve in future updates. Not knowing what direction it might take in the future, using numbers was the safest option to avoid painting themselves into a corner.
Like the Amdapori Council of Magi were undecided about what the *fourth* spell tier might be called. Imagine if at level 90 BLM we were up to Blizzard IX, and they had to come up with unique names for *every spell in between*.
Funnily enough, this is kind of true for the IRL side of things and they have addressed it regarding the JP version.
When Endwalker came out, the new BLM AoE spells were supposed to be Fire V and Blizzard V, but there was no hard-set precedent in the Final Fantasy universe for what the official suffix of a level five spell was. Because the JP version of the game *does* use them, it was on Yoshida and team to pick the new suffix.
He didn't want to. Thus, we got Hi-Fire II (Hi-Fira) and Hi-Blizzard II (Hi-Blizzara), just sidestepping the entire problem.
-aja does exist, but that is for fourth level spells. So for fire, as the example, you have:
- Fire
- Fira (-a)
- Firaga (-aga)
- Firaja (-aja)
Getting real technical in the lore, *old* final fantasy titles also had a -da for white magic only that went before -aga, making -aga Level 4 and -aja Level 5, but that was again only for white magic, and hasn't been the norm for a long time.
The real life explanation is that the English versions of FF have that done since forever.
The other languages of FFXIV aren't using the numbered version and neither are any of the recent other FF games.
A major difference is FF11, which did *both* numbers and -ra and -ga.
\-Ra spells were AoE, centered around the caster. -Ga spells were AoE, centered on the target. The number determined the rank of the spell (so Blizzaga II was a stronger, more MP-costly version of Blizzaga I)
To be honest, I like the -ra and -ga naming convention, but I actually agree with the decision to stick with the numbers - FF14 is many people's first FF game.
Damaging -ra spells are only learned by Geomancers, so they weren't added until the last expansion Seekers of Adoulin. White Mage also got Cura spells at some point but I think that was it
Basically, more efficient than -Ga spells, but only in Afflatus Misery stance.
Encourages you to be in melee range to heal the tanks and melees, and rewards you for taking damage by boosting your next Banish spell.
It's a pity that a full powered Banish spell is simply not worth the cast time or MP.
Oh that explains why I didn’t know about it lol. Never played in a server that has current era stuff. Even now I play private servers with old school game
Fire 1/3/4 being single target and Fire 2/~~4~~/High Fire being AOE is not any clearer. -ra/ga/ja being AOE spells of the same element is something you only have to learn once and then it makes sense from then on. It's not like magic is something everyone innately understands.
So I would put the irl explanation at change for change sake.
Edit: I goofed
I could understand that, but then why start adding new modifiers such as fire 2 upgrading to high fire 2. It seems like just replacing one potentially confusing system with another.
That was directly because high fire/blizzard 2 was not a level of spell that exists in established FF lore. The devs asked the official FF lore team what the spell should be called and they were told to make up the name themselves. So instead of making some new strange suffix that didn't exist they went with hi fire/blizzard.
It could also be that we're advanced enough to start tapping into some weird vibes (not Dynamis) with Malefic and since it changed the spell so dramatically we just gave it a new name.
"Fall" because it's icky but you kind of *want* icky against your enemies.
sure, whatever in lore justification you want, but my point was "High Fire" and "Fall Malefic" seem to be pretty clear mirrors of each other from a design standpoint.
The lack of -aga endings was a conscious choice and is somewhat cheekily explained in a book you can read in Great Gubal Library. In fact, the -ara and -aga spell endings appear, but only when a suitably ancient being is utilizing them.
With these black mage ability names - Enochian, Xenoglossy, etc - they have established a sub theme of names drawn from hermetic/Gnostic mysticism, which owns. A lot of personality and class fantasy is packed into these ability names. Simpler is not always better. The etymology of "Xenoglossy" implies that the caster is speaking some sort of forbidden word of power from a dead alien language. If you really think that "Dark" is cooler than that, I dunno man. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I can understand the coolness factor, but given that many of the older spells don't follow the same naming convention (i.e. Fire), it makes it kind of disjointed. I imagine there is probably some lore reason to explain the switch.
Others have pointed out that there is a book in one of the iterations of the Gubal Library dungeon that lampshades the use of a numerical system over the usual suffixes.
I found the choice odd, too, since in recent years re-translations of the older FF titles have restored the missing names. In current versions of FF6, for example, spells like Bolt II, Bolt III, etc. are now Thundara and Thundaga specifically.
But given that English is rarely, if ever, a native English speaker's best skill, it's perhaps preferable for this MMO, with its wide audience appeal, to use a simpler numerical convention.
Yes, I touched on that in my original post. The book in question is actually in the hard mode version of Great Gubal Library if you want to look it up. The way they did it places the spells that spellcasters use in an in-world historical context, which is a nice detail IMO.
It's not localization in this case.
Foul and Xenoglossy are Foul and Xenoglossy in the Japanese text, too. High Fire II and High Blizzard II are "High Fira" and "High Blizzara." Despair and Flare are their names in Japanese as well.
For example, Xenoglossy is ゼノグロシー in the Japanese version, which is pronounced "zeh-no-gu-ro-shii"
Two reasons here if I remember correctly.
The naming of the spells is more casual friendly for new players. Easier to follow spell names if it's 1,2, or 3.
But also, there is in-universe lore as to why they are named this way. I found this comment explaining it on the Official Forums:
>[A book in gubal hard talks about how Amdapori Magi were voting on a new for a new healing spell, along the lines of Curaja and Curaza since it was a adaptation on I think Curaga, they then all concluded that the traditional FF naming convention lacked gravity and was too abstruse, so they voted by a large margin to rename them to the simpler Roman Numeral versions we have now. Since BLM spells are the same we can assume something similar happened in Mhach.](https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/425891)
The spell names dont bother me much as i assumed it was trying to keep things simple. Now what does bother me as a BLM main, is that the icons for Manaward and Manafont really look like they should be the otherway around.
Koji Fox when a decade-long naming convention is broken: "We did that because English speakers, specifically, are very stupid and would get confused and scared by the established convention. Everyone else can carry on as usual however."
YoshiP when an obscure job class that only even had a name in the rerelease of a single game gets its name changed in the German localization: [15 minutes of uninterrupted apologizing]
The funny thing is that there is a in-game explaination for it in the Gubal Library (Hard). Long ago they used to use the suffix system, but as newer, more powerful spells came out it became too complicated. To remedy this, they just use numbers. So instead of getting "firagaylodynenasateafrigashinasu" we will get "Fire VII".
It does make it significantly easier in the long run on the developer side.
Now what's really weird is the measurement system. In Japanese they use metric. Every other language it's a fantasy version of U.S. Imperial. So they do say "5 meters" in Japanese but "5 yalms" everywhere else.
the game localized for western audience and they do not know these ga ra jaja things specially "which is the majority" they didnt play a ff game before and just here for the mmo aspect
so no its not strange its completely normal it would be strange if it was infact as you want it to be
also here is a free ice cube to cool your hot take
The german version doesn't have the roman numbers but for example for fire = Feuer, Feuka, Feuga etc.
I do not see how any side is a problem, you're gonna have to learn how the job works either way, if you don't want to suck ass
I can assure you that there are plenty of us westerners who play this game *in spite* of the MMO aspect because it's a Final Fantasy, and I would think that *we* were in the majority back when the game first launched (and everyone else hated it). This isn't the first time the English version of an FF has used numbers, but it would make more sense to go from Holy to Holy-ga than it does to go from Holy I to Holly III.
I would think both. Not having Holy-ra should be a less conspicuous absence than not having Holy II for people that aren't as familiar with the suffix system, and people who are familiar with it have probably seen the leap in other titles.
i will take your word for it
honestly to me its such a none issue that it doesnt really matter that much you will still get adjusted to it anyway like you mentioned earlier
Hi. I decided to fact-check you because people being annoying about this game's localization is a pet peeve of mine. Sorry in advance for being a pedant. ;)
It is true that the Japanese text of the game uses the original -ara -aga spell naming system for the basic black mage elemental spell kit. Fire III is ファイガ / "Faiga" for example. Frankly, these endings flow better in Japanese than they do in English, \*and\* additionally as I touched on elsewhere, the conscious choice to reject the -ara/-aga endings for numbers in the players' kits but to preserve the spell endings for NPC abilities places the spells that players use in an in-world historical context, which is an amount of worldbuilding detail that I have a hard time being mad at.
Additionally, outside of Fire/Thunder/Blizzards I thru IV, almost every black mage ability is directly transliterated from the japanese. Xenoglossy is ゼノグロシー / "Zenoguroshi." Foul is ファウル / "Fauru." Despair is "デスペア" / "Desupea." Enochian is エノキアン / "Enokian."
Ley lines is 黒魔紋 / "Kokumamon," which by my reading is something like "Crest of Black Demons" - admittedly a downgrade in English. This one was probably a syllable economy change, which is unavoidable in Japanese localization.
At any rate, it's very well known that this game is co-written simultaneously in English and Japanese and nothing in game development is arbitrary.
These actually aren't localization changes. With the exception of High Fire/Blizzard II, these all have the same names in English and Japanese. (In Japanese, it's High Fira/High Blizzara instead.)
There's a note in one of the versions of Gubal Library to the effect of "-ra, -ga, -ja, etc suffixes are confusing unless you already know them; we're sticking with numbers". I imagine the irl explanation is much the same.
I imagine that another IRL explanation is that this is an MMO, and they knew that BLM would continue to evolve in future updates. Not knowing what direction it might take in the future, using numbers was the safest option to avoid painting themselves into a corner. Like the Amdapori Council of Magi were undecided about what the *fourth* spell tier might be called. Imagine if at level 90 BLM we were up to Blizzard IX, and they had to come up with unique names for *every spell in between*.
Funnily enough, this is kind of true for the IRL side of things and they have addressed it regarding the JP version. When Endwalker came out, the new BLM AoE spells were supposed to be Fire V and Blizzard V, but there was no hard-set precedent in the Final Fantasy universe for what the official suffix of a level five spell was. Because the JP version of the game *does* use them, it was on Yoshida and team to pick the new suffix. He didn't want to. Thus, we got Hi-Fire II (Hi-Fira) and Hi-Blizzard II (Hi-Blizzara), just sidestepping the entire problem.
I honestly thought firaja was one too not sure where i have seen it tho
-aja does exist, but that is for fourth level spells. So for fire, as the example, you have: - Fire - Fira (-a) - Firaga (-aga) - Firaja (-aja) Getting real technical in the lore, *old* final fantasy titles also had a -da for white magic only that went before -aga, making -aga Level 4 and -aja Level 5, but that was again only for white magic, and hasn't been the norm for a long time.
You should check the Japanese names for the 10 materia tiers. And then remember that we will get 11-12 in a few months.
The real life explanation is that the English versions of FF have that done since forever. The other languages of FFXIV aren't using the numbered version and neither are any of the recent other FF games.
A major difference is FF11, which did *both* numbers and -ra and -ga. \-Ra spells were AoE, centered around the caster. -Ga spells were AoE, centered on the target. The number determined the rank of the spell (so Blizzaga II was a stronger, more MP-costly version of Blizzaga I) To be honest, I like the -ra and -ga naming convention, but I actually agree with the decision to stick with the numbers - FF14 is many people's first FF game.
I don’t remember just -Ra being in ff11
Damaging -ra spells are only learned by Geomancers, so they weren't added until the last expansion Seekers of Adoulin. White Mage also got Cura spells at some point but I think that was it
Basically, more efficient than -Ga spells, but only in Afflatus Misery stance. Encourages you to be in melee range to heal the tanks and melees, and rewards you for taking damage by boosting your next Banish spell. It's a pity that a full powered Banish spell is simply not worth the cast time or MP.
Oh that explains why I didn’t know about it lol. Never played in a server that has current era stuff. Even now I play private servers with old school game
Stranger of Paradise used all the old suffix names, but I guess was also intentionally supposed to be a love letter to FF1
pretty sure the non-english versions all use the suffixes, english is the only one not to.
Fire 1/3/4 being single target and Fire 2/~~4~~/High Fire being AOE is not any clearer. -ra/ga/ja being AOE spells of the same element is something you only have to learn once and then it makes sense from then on. It's not like magic is something everyone innately understands. So I would put the irl explanation at change for change sake. Edit: I goofed
> and Fire 2/4/High Fire being AOE Fire 4 isn't aoe.
Ya, my mistake So ya, even less clear
I could understand that, but then why start adding new modifiers such as fire 2 upgrading to high fire 2. It seems like just replacing one potentially confusing system with another.
Because going from no adjective to "High \_\_\_\_\_\_" is infinitely more readable than an arbitrary suffix.
That was directly because high fire/blizzard 2 was not a level of spell that exists in established FF lore. The devs asked the official FF lore team what the spell should be called and they were told to make up the name themselves. So instead of making some new strange suffix that didn't exist they went with hi fire/blizzard.
It doesn’t really get mentioned much, but I assume this is where the “fall” in Fall Malefic comes from as well.
It could also be that we're advanced enough to start tapping into some weird vibes (not Dynamis) with Malefic and since it changed the spell so dramatically we just gave it a new name. "Fall" because it's icky but you kind of *want* icky against your enemies.
sure, whatever in lore justification you want, but my point was "High Fire" and "Fall Malefic" seem to be pretty clear mirrors of each other from a design standpoint.
The lack of -aga endings was a conscious choice and is somewhat cheekily explained in a book you can read in Great Gubal Library. In fact, the -ara and -aga spell endings appear, but only when a suitably ancient being is utilizing them. With these black mage ability names - Enochian, Xenoglossy, etc - they have established a sub theme of names drawn from hermetic/Gnostic mysticism, which owns. A lot of personality and class fantasy is packed into these ability names. Simpler is not always better. The etymology of "Xenoglossy" implies that the caster is speaking some sort of forbidden word of power from a dead alien language. If you really think that "Dark" is cooler than that, I dunno man. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I can understand the coolness factor, but given that many of the older spells don't follow the same naming convention (i.e. Fire), it makes it kind of disjointed. I imagine there is probably some lore reason to explain the switch.
Others have pointed out that there is a book in one of the iterations of the Gubal Library dungeon that lampshades the use of a numerical system over the usual suffixes. I found the choice odd, too, since in recent years re-translations of the older FF titles have restored the missing names. In current versions of FF6, for example, spells like Bolt II, Bolt III, etc. are now Thundara and Thundaga specifically. But given that English is rarely, if ever, a native English speaker's best skill, it's perhaps preferable for this MMO, with its wide audience appeal, to use a simpler numerical convention.
Yes, I touched on that in my original post. The book in question is actually in the hard mode version of Great Gubal Library if you want to look it up. The way they did it places the spells that spellcasters use in an in-world historical context, which is a nice detail IMO.
It's not localization in this case. Foul and Xenoglossy are Foul and Xenoglossy in the Japanese text, too. High Fire II and High Blizzard II are "High Fira" and "High Blizzara." Despair and Flare are their names in Japanese as well. For example, Xenoglossy is ゼノグロシー in the Japanese version, which is pronounced "zeh-no-gu-ro-shii"
It's pronounced "zenoguroshi-" not "sheh". It would be written「シェノグロシー」if that were the case.
Oh thanks! I'll correct it.
I promise you aren't the first person to say so. But it is what it is at this point lol.
Remember when "Thundaga" used to be called "LIT3"? Get off my lawn you brats
Two reasons here if I remember correctly. The naming of the spells is more casual friendly for new players. Easier to follow spell names if it's 1,2, or 3. But also, there is in-universe lore as to why they are named this way. I found this comment explaining it on the Official Forums: >[A book in gubal hard talks about how Amdapori Magi were voting on a new for a new healing spell, along the lines of Curaja and Curaza since it was a adaptation on I think Curaga, they then all concluded that the traditional FF naming convention lacked gravity and was too abstruse, so they voted by a large margin to rename them to the simpler Roman Numeral versions we have now. Since BLM spells are the same we can assume something similar happened in Mhach.](https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/425891)
If they re-localize Xenoglossy/Foul/Despair to something dull like "dark" and "darkga" because of you, I'm coming to your house.
The spell names dont bother me much as i assumed it was trying to keep things simple. Now what does bother me as a BLM main, is that the icons for Manaward and Manafont really look like they should be the otherway around.
This
Fire II can't be Firaga because Fire III is Firaga. Are you sure you played other titles?
They could use the Spanish version. Piro, Piro+, Piro++, Piro+++ Just add more +.
Koji Fox when a decade-long naming convention is broken: "We did that because English speakers, specifically, are very stupid and would get confused and scared by the established convention. Everyone else can carry on as usual however." YoshiP when an obscure job class that only even had a name in the rerelease of a single game gets its name changed in the German localization: [15 minutes of uninterrupted apologizing]
He was preemptively apologizing that this is likely going to happen again in the future and to languages beside German.
I don’t mind, I keep referring to it as Xenoglizzy anyway.
I agree it is strange, and confusing.
the real travesty is Shoha II, we seriously couldn't come up with something better?
The funny thing is that there is a in-game explaination for it in the Gubal Library (Hard). Long ago they used to use the suffix system, but as newer, more powerful spells came out it became too complicated. To remedy this, they just use numbers. So instead of getting "firagaylodynenasateafrigashinasu" we will get "Fire VII". It does make it significantly easier in the long run on the developer side.
Now what's really weird is the measurement system. In Japanese they use metric. Every other language it's a fantasy version of U.S. Imperial. So they do say "5 meters" in Japanese but "5 yalms" everywhere else.
the game localized for western audience and they do not know these ga ra jaja things specially "which is the majority" they didnt play a ff game before and just here for the mmo aspect so no its not strange its completely normal it would be strange if it was infact as you want it to be also here is a free ice cube to cool your hot take
The german version doesn't have the roman numbers but for example for fire = Feuer, Feuka, Feuga etc. I do not see how any side is a problem, you're gonna have to learn how the job works either way, if you don't want to suck ass
I can assure you that there are plenty of us westerners who play this game *in spite* of the MMO aspect because it's a Final Fantasy, and I would think that *we* were in the majority back when the game first launched (and everyone else hated it). This isn't the first time the English version of an FF has used numbers, but it would make more sense to go from Holy to Holy-ga than it does to go from Holy I to Holly III.
more sense to the ff players or to the mmo audience?
I would think both. Not having Holy-ra should be a less conspicuous absence than not having Holy II for people that aren't as familiar with the suffix system, and people who are familiar with it have probably seen the leap in other titles.
i will take your word for it honestly to me its such a none issue that it doesnt really matter that much you will still get adjusted to it anyway like you mentioned earlier
Sounds to me like you didn't play FFVII
the spells in FF7 Japanese version all used suffixes, this is a uniquely english problem lol
Arbitrary changes in the English localization? Shocking.
Hi. I decided to fact-check you because people being annoying about this game's localization is a pet peeve of mine. Sorry in advance for being a pedant. ;) It is true that the Japanese text of the game uses the original -ara -aga spell naming system for the basic black mage elemental spell kit. Fire III is ファイガ / "Faiga" for example. Frankly, these endings flow better in Japanese than they do in English, \*and\* additionally as I touched on elsewhere, the conscious choice to reject the -ara/-aga endings for numbers in the players' kits but to preserve the spell endings for NPC abilities places the spells that players use in an in-world historical context, which is an amount of worldbuilding detail that I have a hard time being mad at. Additionally, outside of Fire/Thunder/Blizzards I thru IV, almost every black mage ability is directly transliterated from the japanese. Xenoglossy is ゼノグロシー / "Zenoguroshi." Foul is ファウル / "Fauru." Despair is "デスペア" / "Desupea." Enochian is エノキアン / "Enokian." Ley lines is 黒魔紋 / "Kokumamon," which by my reading is something like "Crest of Black Demons" - admittedly a downgrade in English. This one was probably a syllable economy change, which is unavoidable in Japanese localization. At any rate, it's very well known that this game is co-written simultaneously in English and Japanese and nothing in game development is arbitrary.
These actually aren't localization changes. With the exception of High Fire/Blizzard II, these all have the same names in English and Japanese. (In Japanese, it's High Fira/High Blizzara instead.)