Final Fantasy XI players can expect more good things to come their way in the next version update, aside from new equipment and new quests. As it turns out, there will be some added improvements to the battle system, such as the battle music, monster name display, and macro and marker data.

FFXI players may be familiar with the problem concerning the battle music: the tune can only be triggered by engaging an enemy using the Attack command. While it sounds alright so far, the problem is that the battle music doesn't play when the player uses other commands to attack monsters, such as magic.

The development team is now working on a fix to make sure that this gets rectified, with other improvements such as making sure the music gets triggered when a party mate engages with an enemy.

Square Enix has also added a small tweak to the monster name text color. In order to help determine which monsters are being fought by allied players, the developers changed the monster name text color to reddish-purple if it attacks an alliance member.

And lastly, since character and macro data is currently saved to computer hard disks only, players need to fiddle with their settings every time they switch computers. However, the developers made a great improvement on this system. The next version update will let players save their macro and marker data to PlayOnline servers, so that they can use their settings no matter what PC they use.

The upcoming version update for Final Fantasy XI this march certainly looks better and better. Keep tabs on this space for more updates!