Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXII Digest (08/18/2015)

Greetings, everyone!

We're pleased to present the full digest from the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXII! If you missed the live stream, or if you just want to watch it again (and again), check it out below!

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*Don’t forget to select the 720p option to watch the video in HD!

0:02:00
We would like to ask a favor from everyone running a FFXIV website or blog. The latest patch is now available for download, and there are those who are beginning to analyze and mine the data. This leads to spoilers for other players looking forward to the game. We will be administering warnings for those that are doing so maliciously, and we would therefore ask everyone who has this type of information posted online to remove it immediately. Extracting data in this fashion is also illegal, so we would truly appreciate everyone's support regarding this.

0:02:56
As a countermeasure to relieve congestion at the start of early access, we'll be implementing field instances on some of the Worlds with the highest population. We're anticipating initial congestion in Coerthas Central Highlands, Coerthas Western Highlands, and the Sea of Clouds, so we'll be making these three areas into instances. These areas will be separated into different instances, such as Coerthas Western Highlands 1, 2, and 3. For example, if players need to progress through a main scenario quest which occurs in Coerthas Western Highlands, we can disperse the crowd without everyone being focused in one area. To use instanced dungeons as an example, just as a large number of players undertaking the same instanced dungeon cannot see players in other instances, players in Coerthas Western Highlands 1 and 2 won’t be able to see each other. However, you will be able to communicate with each other using tells.

When teleporting into these instanced areas, party members will automatically be assigned to various instances and may not end up in the same one, which may cause some inconvenience; but, you’ll be able to select the instance of your choosing if you move into these areas on foot or by mount. It’s somewhat inconvenient, but we would appreciate everyone's support as we work to ease congestion.

We've already decided on which Worlds we'll be applying this to, but we’ll be keeping an eye on the state of congestion and may this to other Worlds depending on what we observe. We may also apply instancing to other areas. More information will be available before the start of early access. We wanted to avoid this as it may cause some inconvenience and minor difficulties; however, we decided that such a measure was necessary in order to ease congestion.

* Review details regarding congestion prevention for Heavensward release.

0:09:08

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If you’ve pre-ordered the digital download version of the PlayStation®3 or PlayStation®4 version, your early access entitlement will automatically be registered, so you won’t need to do anything else.

If you’re watching this now and haven’t pre-ordered, but would like to join in on early access, you’ll need to go directly to a retail store offering Heavensward pre-orders, confirm that you can still pre-order the game with early access, receive a physical early access code, and register this code immediately. Alternatively, you can pre-purchase the digital version of the PlayStation®3 or PlayStation®4 version.

0:12:46

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Even if you don’t have early access, you’ll still be able to party together with─or use the duty finder with─players who are playing new jobs such as dark knight.

0:14:34
* The video shows off gameplay of company workshops.

The company workshop is accessible from the same door that you use to access your private chambers within your free company house. The workshop will cost less than 1 million gil to build.

The workshop also features one of the many new music tracks that Soken has been hard at work creating.

In the workshop there is a schematic board, which you can use to draft up new crafting recipes. There is also a flight control panel where you can give your airships orders to go on exploratory voyages. The fabrication station is where you perform free company crafting. When selecting it, a company crafting log will be displayed, and you’ll be able to craft aetherial wheels, airships, and house exteriors. When you select the type of item you wish to craft, for example housing exteriors, it will display a list of the recipes and the required materials. When selecting a recipe, a hologram of what you'll be crafting is displayed in the fabrication station. Crafting these items will require the cooperation of several members of your free company.

Next, let’s take a look at airships. Right now there are only a few recipes, so we’re limited to the Tiny Bronco-type. Airships are made up of four different parts: hull, rigging, forecastle, and aftcastle. You assemble your airship by crafting each part individually. So, for example, if you were to start working on the hull, you would start by crafting it with dragon bone. The item that was just displayed in the fabrication station was the finished product. Crafting is broken up into multiple phases, and once a phase has been completed the graphic displayed will change. The crafting materials are not that hard to obtain, so you’ll be able to procure them while leveling your Disciples of the Hand and Land classes. You should be able to progress through the phases nicely by collecting materials together with other members of your free company. Once you have all the required materials for a phase you’ll be able to start putting them together, but it’s different from regular crafting, as you will need to be in a party of four Disciples of the Hand. Once you’ve finished putting it together, you’ll move on to the next phase.

Once you start crafting, the fabrication station will display the item being made, so you’ll know what your free company is currently working on whenever you visit the workshop.

0:22:46
Crafting recipes needed for free company crafting will be developed on the schematic board. By selecting the schematic board, an overview of the different crafting recipes will be displayed. You’ll start off with just one type of recipe, so to obtain other crafting recipes you will need to draft them. Drafting will become possible once you gather the materials needed for the recipe. Once drafting is complete, the recipe will be added to the company crafting log, so at the beginning you’ll be going back and forth between the schematic board and the fabrication station.

0:24:06
*The video introduces exploratory voyages with gameplay.

Exploratory voyages can be started from the flight control panel. You'll be able to change the name of your airships. Regardless of the amount of members in your free company and your housing size, everyone will be able to have up to 4 airships as of patch 3.0. It's possible to create and operate 4 different types of airships if you so wish.

When selecting the flight control panel, your finished airships will be displayed, and by choosing an airship, a voyage window will be displayed where you can indicate the travel route. The map displayed in the voyage window will show discovered destinations, and you'll be able to indicate which destinations you would like to explore. Naturally, exploring a lot of destinations takes time. For example, it takes 24 hours and 27 minutes in the real world for your ship to come back from exploring three destinations.

Exploratory voyages are as simple as indicating the destinations and then waiting for your airship to bring back items. As of Patch 3.0, the mammet NPC located in front of the schematic board will ride the airship. Similar to how space exploration works in real life, you have to send a robot out first to check if there is air and water, so first we'll be starting by sending out NPCs. In a future update, we'll be making it possible to actually ride on the airships yourselves to destinations that NPCs have confirmed to be safe. It'll be interesting to see what happens when destinations turn out be unsafe or you run into players from other free companies.

We'll be updating exploratory voyages in stages during the 3.x series of patches. The items you can obtain will be different depending on the exploration routes you choose. You'll also have to consider different ways to explore efficiently. As I mentioned earlier, airships are made up of 4 different parts, and each part has different airship stats. For example, if you want your airship to return from exploration quickly, you can make an airship focused on speed. However, focusing too much on one stat will cause a different stat to become lower. Stats will change depending on how you combine parts, and since you can build up to 4 airships, you can decide to build each of them with different stats or make them all with balanced stats. Additionally, airship parts have ranks, and parts that greatly increase speed have a high part cost. You will need to pay attention to the value of your airship capacity when choosing parts. Capacity will increase based on your airship's rank. By continuously sending out airships on exploratory voyages you will earn experience points, and once you reach a certain amount it will rank up.

To summarize the overall flow of company crafting and exploratory voyages, you'll first create an airship in the fabrication station, and then send it off to explore via the flight control panel. When exploring, it will discover new destinations and find materials that can be used to make new recipes. You can use these recipes at the fabrication station to craft new items, and send out airships to explore while you are crafting. Finally, if you send out an airship to explore the farthest destination, it will take a week of time in the real world, so you can gather your free company members on the weekend and decide on an exploration plan, and then see the result the following weekend. The voyage log will be updated with what you discovered, so please have fun sharing your findings over the internet with other players and free company members.

When items are discovered during an exploratory voyage, you may get lucky and receive a much larger amount than normal, so you can decide to split them amongst members or appoint someone to sell them on the market boards. There are also rare items that can only be obtained from certain destinations, so you can gather members on the weekend to /random for them or organize other activities with your free company.

0:37:17

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*The video shows off the Twintania mount.

The Twintania mount has a neuro link assuring its obedience, and also gives you the option to dive. However, you won't be able to dive into other players. This mount can only be obtained from the Recruit a Friend campaign.

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A good amount of time has passed since we launched the FFXIV Recruit a Friend campaign, so some players may be able to receive the new bonus items if the family and friends they've invited are still playing.

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Please use this opportunity to invite your friends to play with you. It should be easy to form a party if you play with your family.

0:51:09
As mentioned in the Patch 3.0 patch notes, the lotting system will change.

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Let me start off by saying that nothing will change when you are matched with others via the Duty Finder. However, when you create a party on your own, the leader will be able to change the lotting rules.

“Greed Only” functions the same as the rule set by players in the Party Finder, and loot is decided by Greed rolls regardless of each player's job. Prior to Patch 3.0 the game did not support this, but we've added in a system for it.

“Lootmaster” makes it so all of the items found from chests by party members are placed in a special loot pool for the party leader. The party leader can then decide what to do with the loot. With the “Loot Recipient” button, you can directly distribute an item to a party member, and with the “Greed Only” button you can leave it up to greed rolls to see who receives the item. Party members cannot receive items after leaving an instance, so they must be distributed beforehand.

0:56:21

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The Alexander raid will be split up into different areas, similar to the Binding Coil of Bahamut. Up until now weapons and armor have dropped directly from bosses, and on several occasions I have heard feedback mentioning that it has taken up to 6 weeks of trying before specific job equipment dropped. For Alexander, however, equipment will not drop directly and instead special items that can be exchanged for the equipment of your choice will drop. For example, by defeating the boss in the first area of Alexander, several exchange items will drop and you can roll Need on them. Multiple items will drop, so I don't believe they will be very hard to obtain, but we will look into adjustments based on feedback.

Even if you've already cleared an area of Alexander, you can enter again regardless of whether you obtained loot or not.

You can obtain 1 token from each area every week, so if you play through all of Alexander in a week, you can receive four types of tokens.

Alexander (Savage) is scheduled to be implemented 4 weeks after the official launch of the game, and the lot rules are different from the normal version of the raid, so I'll be talking about this in the next Letter from the Producer LIVE.

1:04:26

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Two weeks after the official launch of Heavensward on Tuesday, June 23 we'll be opening the Alexander raid. Please take your time to level up your character and go through the main scenario. There are no weekly restrictions on content until then. However, there are limits on the amount of red crafter and gatherer's scrips that can be obtained in a week.

There's really no rush to hit 60 level immediately when the expansion is officially released, so please go at your own pace and have fun.