Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXXV Update Thread

[Bayohne]

Q19: I’m curious to know if there will be any other underwater mounts aside from Syldra! Can you please let us know if there are any other mounts?

A19:
Falcon
This is a single person mount. It may have a protective barrier underwater... but it may not. The art doesn't show it, so maybe not...
*The dev. team followed up afterwards stating this mount will not have any barrier.

Tiger
This mount will be able to go underwater using the same protection that the Warrior of Light receives.

[Bayohne]

Q20: If there are any currently existing mounts that will be available underwater, please let us know.

A20: All flying mounts will be able to go underwater. We will gradually allow more ground mounts to fly.

Ground mounts will also be undergoing major changes, with the addition of two more levels of speed. The current speed will be lowest. Clearing each area’s main story quest will unlock the second tier of speed in that area. Afterward the third tier of speed will be available upon doing a certain something. Because it is the main scenario quest, players who are finished with the story up to 3.0 will automatically be able to use the second tier of speed in all ARR/HW areas.

Also, we will be removing the skill cooldowns for when changing classes in non-sanctuary areas. Additionally, sprint will no longer consume TP. Tanks and melee DPS will be able to more easily use sprint in raids.

[Bayohne]

Q21: We’ll finally be able to visit Doma, but will there be any Eastern-styled emotes?

A21: Japanese people pay respect, and so it’s important to show courtesy for anything, so we’ll add emotes related to this first. If you have any requests, be sure to let us know on the forums.

[Bayohne]

Q22: This year makes 30th anniversary for the FINAL FANTASY series. Are there any plans for a anniversary event in FFXIV?

A22: We’re planning to hold a FINAL FANTASY series projection mapping collaboration event with the city of Yokohama in June. The projection mapping for FFXIV will be done on the wall of InterContinental Yokohama Grand Hotel. This is a large-scale event, so if you have a chance to visit, please be sure to check it out. *Video showed slide with an image.

[Bayohne]

Q23: When can we expect a Stormblood benchmark?

A23: If we did have a benchmark, we would show it around now. We'll talk about it after the break...

[Bayohne]

Q24: The Aldenard region, where the adventures up until now have taken place, and Othard, the region including Doma, are very far apart. Will there be different time zones, similar to real life?

A24: From a lore perspective, there are time zones; however, we have Eorzean time ("ET") as the local time, so please think of ET as that area's local time when you teleport to that zone. Basically, don't worry too much about it!

[Bayohne]

Q25: During the Fan Festival, you mentioned that there are plans for PlayStation®4 Pro support, but is this planned for Patch 4.0?

A25: Yes. There will be two modes available.
One mode will retain the current resolution while increasing the frame rate. With this mode, you can expect a stable 60FPS even in scenes with many people.

The other mode retains the current existing frame rate but increases the resolution.

You will still be able to enjoying playing without a PlayStation®4 Pro, so please choose the best option for you.

[Bayohne]

Q26: In Stormblood, will there be additional options to increase graphics quality beyond what is currently available?

A26: There aren’t any particularly outstanding settings, but there is the PS4 Pro compatibility, so PS4 Pro graphics settings will be improved, and UI scaling will be enhanced as well.

[Bayohne]

Q27: In an interview, I read that the number of data centers for Japan may change. I'm currently gathering members to run the Omega raid, but are there any plans to change portions of the Elemental or Mana data center?

A27: For the Europe region, the Chaos data center population is increasing a lot, so we may open up one or two new Worlds. For North America and Japan region, we see deviation to the population on different Worlds. Instead of shuffling the players around to different Worlds, we’re considering to prepare incentives such as removing the gil restrictions for players that transfer to specific Worlds. We’ll make an announcement on the Lodestone at a later date.

[Bayohne]

Q28: There was an announcement regarding inventory slot expansion, but we would like to know which inventory (inventory/Armoury chest) is being increased and by how much!

A28: We received comments that the Armoury chest and inventory could not be expanded due to PS3 limitations, but the two are separate issues. When players move areas or go into instances, all item data is being moved along with the character, so if we were to add additional item slots without much thought, the amount of data being transferred could become ridiculous, network usage would skyrocket, and servers could go down.

With this in mind, in Patch 4.0 we will implement the first inventory expansion, take a look at the state of the servers, then prepare for additional expansions.

The Armoury chest will receive 10 extra slots for each category of equipment, while the item inventory will be increased by 40 slots.

* During the stream we showed off images of the updated UI.

I am also discussing with our server programmer Kasuga whether we can utilize other methods to efficiently increase inventory space.