Hello,

We've been receiving a lot of feedback lately with the influx of new content in regards to difficulties joining parties, the ability to accomplish things solo, and other requests to make the game more enjoyable. I'd like to share the below comment from Producer Akihiko Matsui in response to this feedback.

Quote Originally Posted by Akihiko_Matsui View Post
Matsui here.

Thanks for all the feedback. Looking over everyone’s thoughts and opinions, I feel that there are three groups of players: those that want solo growth elements, those that want to join parties more easily, and those that want a way to be able to practice and learn content.
  1. Reaching item level 119 gradually by spending time solo
    As there are a variety of different play styles, I understand that there are players who are not able to join parties, and as such we are currently looking into a route that will allow you to reach item level 119 solo by gradually spending time working towards it.

    Before we do this, we’d like to make some adjustments to wildskeeper reives. (However, please don’t take this as we will be adding item level 119 equipment to wildskeeper reives.)

  2. Difficulty joining pick-up parties
    Due to the nature of pick-up parties, there is a trend of increasing the requirements for joining so that the success rate can be boosted, and I feel that this cannot be avoided.

    One role of linkshells and other forms of community is for situations like this so the players that are ahead can help support the players that are behind. I think the best thing players who feel it difficult to join parties can do is to play together with like-minded friends if you are trying to challenge content geared towards parties.

    While it’s a bit in the future, we are currently looking into enhancing linkshell features and other ways to support communities.

    As we are still in the planning phases I cannot say at the moment exactly how we will be doing this, but the development team feels this is something that needs to be addressed. Communities are not something that can only be built with a system, so we would appreciate your help and cooperation to make the game even more enjoyable.

    Besides this, we imagined job points to be content that would be enjoyed by parties, so with the addition of chain bonuses and other adjustments, I think the opportunities to form low barrier parties will increase.

  3. Not enough opportunities to practice and learn content
    This is an issue closely tied with what I was mentioning about community.

    To start out, we will be making it so you can use Trust alter egos in party settings and we will also be increasing the content where you can utilize alter egos. With these adjustments, I feel it’s the first step towards making it easier to challenge low-difficulty content with groups that are just short of 6 players.

    We’ve also been receiving a lot of feedback about the high costs associated with entering content, and we will be looking into reducing entry costs gradually for content after a certain amount of time passes from implementation.

We’ll continue to focus on making Vana’diel even more enjoyable.