Ask Questions for Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XVII!

I noticed that there is now an item in-game that provides males with an arm tattoo. And so now I am wondering: Do you plan to include more body tattoos for both male and female characters? And if so, will you be able to obtain some of them using the Aesthetician?

Also, upon recently gaining a house, I found that culinarians were all but useless in creating things for said house. So I was wondering, would it be at all possible for culinarians to create large feasts to set on dinner tables(That could provide a food buff even)? Or random food-related objects to place on tables, like bowls of fruit or the like?

There have been many rumours regarding the possibility of a lizard-like race to be introduced in the near future (most would suggest with patch 2.4 alongside the new Class and Job). Is there any validity to this? If it is true, would the race be akin to the Bangaa or something completely different?

Will you ever make adjustments to game content concerning alts? The combination of the FFXI job system and the now-traditional MMO lockout/point cap systems have give me precious little to do in a given week. This is needed, in conjunction with more meaningful battle content outside of a single four boss raid.

Also, will you ever ease the reins on scaling restrictions? The current level sync system is so clumsy and makes you feel so ridiculously weak. Currently it cuts my HP and damage output by over two thirds just to sync down ONE LEVEL because it also sync all of your raid gear to white. This is without even mentioning the needless removal of class abilities when sync'd. A big past time of MMOs is going back and steamrolling weak content, especially after expansions, that this will probably be blocked in this game is very disheartening.

When do we get hairstyles currently exclusive for certain races / sexes applicable to more or all races / sexes?

Will the Chocobo helm be released, so that ARR players can acquire this extremely desired item? There are a ton of people that want it, there are post everywhere and the community speaks! =)

Will the timing gap between AoE indicators and their attack animations ever get addressed?

It's rather silly that you can sit in dangerous looking attacks and take no damage, just because you dodged the ground marker a moment prior. It would also make the game feel less laggy as a result since it withholds damage dealt until the animation finishes, which is a problem with the way it operates currently with you waiting upwards of two seconds after the ground indicator fades to see if you got hit or not.

any plans if there is enough support for a blitz ball pvp game?

Can we get a Sneak Peek at the Ninja Primal Weapons?

This may be a long post so bear with me. Having played since 2010 I have witnessed many changes over the course of the game. Some good, some bad. As a fan of crafting let's start with that.

The crafting system is one of the best I have experienced across the MMO's I have played. Mind you that doesn't say a whole lot since I have only tried about 10-15 MMO's, however you can't really deny that the idea behind it is pretty solid. However I have a few issues with it that have probably been brought up many times.

First: Availibility of low level items from NPCs. I believe a lot of materials that (imo) shouldn't be available from NPCs are. This takes away from the gathering classes, and while it keeps crafting costs low, for those who bother to know which NPCs sell what...(I am talking to all of you who pay 38+gil each for iron ore when you can buy them from material supplier NPC for like 18...) but there are many other instances.

Second: Crafting gear...is nearly pointless. Let's face it, the game throws gear at you left and right. Can you make gil from crafting gear? Sure, but really only on the high level and even then between dungeons and hunts, tomestones, seals, and gear drops are more plentiful then water. I feel this makes the crafting system in general more of a formality. If you want crafter's to continue to make gear, you need to keep the crafted gear on a competitive level with drops. You can use risk vs. reward...aka make crafted gear with 5 materia better then gear drops, or better yet, actually make gear UNIQUE. And I don't mean as in you can only have one, I mean, hey let's throw something special on this gear, not some run of the mill stat increase.

Third: Stop shafting Culinarian. There is only two uses for culinarian in this game, making food for gathering/crafting, and making turn ins for Artisan Spectacles (which coincidentally become Rose-Gold Nuggets 90% of the time, or I am just very unlucky). (although I suppose the exp boost is a valid use too...) I rarely see people use food in raids, and as far as PvE content goes, I haven't seen anything that can't be done without it. I don't see issues where people need accuracy food (aka mobs that can actually dodge enough to convince people to buy food) etc.

Fourth: Stop shafting Alchemist. While not as bad as culinarian, Alchemist falls behind the curve due to people not buying potions...crafted potions. The potions people tend to use are the ones dropped by the hundreds from everything, not the crafted ones. I feel the effectiveness of said potions (of anykind) are lack luster and the related cool-downs (both length and global) are counter-productive. This could use some looking into. Why bother including something in the game if it is not meant to be used, right?

Fifth: The new line of tools for crafting are ridiculous. The benefit they offer (which is really nothing as any maxed melded crafter with a tier 2 tool and food can hq 3 star recipes. It is actually not worth going for them. You made it so Culinarian was the gateway to the specs and goldsmith was the manufacturer of the majority of all fieldcraft III/mastercraft demimateria...due to this guess what we get? Well eventually I hope lower prices on those two items, but more importantly we get a flood of people all leveling Culinarian to get glasses, and a lot of people leveling gldsmthing desynthesis to get materia. Now we have a huge saturation of the two. This may benefit the few who brave leveling something else, but it is the only efficient way to do it (not the only way, just the most efficient). We need to promote crafting/desynthesis diversity. Do you plan on limiting max crafting levels like you did with desynthesis and crafting in FFXI? I think this could help with the problem.

Let's move on to gathering. I used to enjoy gathering. It was fun in a monotonous grind of spamming nodes kind of way. However, the fun is now just a memory. In it's place a ritual rotation of zones in which i get to hit one node once per hour then move on to the next, spending more time waiting for nodes to pop then actually gathering. Compound this with the ability to grow certain unspoiled botanist items negating the usefulness of gathering them when hq returns in the garden are higher, it makes using the class an inefficient chore.

Fishing is suffering too. Not just I but many others from the posts I have read on various sights are leading me to believe that somehow you broke fishing. People with maxed out stats and supra rods failing more then ever on fish they used to not fail on, the lack of use for fish...the 99% fine sand you get from every fish of every level, which is worth less then npcing the fish in the first place (ignoring shards, if you get any)...I will give you credit for giving us shards for desynthesis, however I still feel that fishing+desynth is still slower generation then other options. Not to mention getting water except for a few instances where i know you can get earth (sand fishing) wind (sky fishing) and thunder (specific fish and not guarenteed to get everytime)...there may be ice and fire but i havent gotten around to those locations (assuming the exist). I know a lot of people feel shafted on the fact that culinarian cant produce fieldcraft or mastercraft demimateria.

As far as battle goes: I feel sad that coil is not worth doing. I did some coil back when i90 was the highest gear and tomestones were still a big grind (pre solderity). It was fun, it was worth it. With second coil, the reward doesnt seem worth the time involved. Few people seem to be doing it since everyone is spamming ST and hunts. Endgame is a buffet right now and everyone is too busy stuffing their faces to appreciate any of it. You need to make endgame content identifiable, give it something to make people really want to do it. Hunts especially are killing the game. Between FATEs and Hunts you can literally run around from 1-50 with flash and level+fully gear out your character with endgame level gear and never know your job or interact with others in a challenging and constructive environment... it is just one big skilless grindfest that is too easy.

Are there Plans to make classes a viable option?

Seriously, if you don't believe me, try it. 1-50 + endgame gear. Get flash, spam it in fates, then spam it in hunts. This just shouldn't be a thing.

Black Mage is stale SE. We throw fire at mobs and occasionally a blizzard, then more fire. You successfully created a one-hit wonder class of 0 skill. I still like BLM, but it very much bores me. BLM felt much more fun in FFXI, but here it feels like I am just...idk...no elemental wheel, no resistances to try to remember... fire hurts everything...even fire...it's illogical even for a fantasy game. Maybe try to spice up the class a bit... BLMs are falling asleep in the backline and still getting high dps right now...

Without any specific detail, can you give us more information about the roles and styles that will be filled in future jobs/classes?

I can't speak much for archer/lancer/gladiator/archanist cause I dont have them maxe out yet so I will skip on that, but I hope if there are issues there someone will bring them up.

Combat in general: I have been wanting to say this for a while... EVERY SINGLE BOSS FIGHT DOES NOT HAVE TO TAKE PLACE IN A CIRCLE. Learn to polygon. There are a few exceptions and those are refreshing, but it's really convient how everywhere we go we have a perfect circle to fight in...bleh...

Equipment: Can we just get rid of the Vitality on every. single. piece. of. gear. You apparently know how much HP you want someone to have so ust scale our HP with level like you did in XI and let us meld Vitality materia if we want more. It will open up more diversity. Add more unique equipment. Every piece of gear in the game doesnt have to be exactly the same ssave for a 1-2 point difference in the last piece (every level) get more creative...

SHOCKER ALERT!!!! => GET RID OF ITEM LEVEL. It is toxic. It is pointless. You know what happened when you gave dungeons iLv restrictions? I had to get WORSE gear with a higher iLv then my 5xmeld crafted gear just to do content. This is wrong. I shouldn't have to NERF myself to get into a dungeon. Scaling dungeon difficulty off of ilv instead of complexity, player skill, job utility is not a great way to promote healthy challenging play.

Is the dev. team planning to add content similar to hamlet where DOW/L/H play together?

Get rid of classes all together. No one uses them and you force people into jobs by making the endgame gear job exclusive. It was a cool idea but you never went anywhere with it.

Add in a legacy UI for FFXI players. Text based inventories, menu casting system (macros still useable) better scaling/styling of party/enemy/target lists. Don't get me wrong drag and drop is nice, but I don't want to look at 100 icons and try to figure out what something is when 10 different things share the same icon. This would also probably improve performance on lower-end PCs.

Can we have solo content (trial/skirmish) with rankings.

What are the plans for the DX11 version?

Addon support release date?

Can you please invest in voice acting for the intro of this game before entering your city-state?

Recruit-A-Friend players want a lasting impression of the game, and it's disappointed a lot of players I've tried to get into it.

Can we have a feature to queue in DF with multiple classes.

When is the soldiery cap lift planned to be implemented?

Currently glamour system has too many steps and items involved, Can we have a system similar to GW2 and others mmo's where there's an exclusive tab for the gear that you want to show?

Can we have an Option to Dye differents parts and details of gear items?

When will we see an expanded world. Will we have grottos, caves, labyrinths, undercities, chasms, caverns. (that are big and explorable)

When can we expect to be able to remove the battle music?

What is the planned released day or month or 2.4?

what is the main stat ninja will use?

Will their be any new crafting recipes added in 2.35, 2.38, or 2.4?

Is there any plans on creating maps that are endgame challenging and massively explorable? Instanced or not.

Is there any plan on making story/mission quests that unlock an new endgame area/map?

Jobs

Warrior gets it's tank stance from it's opening quest, while Paladin doesn't get theirs' until their level 40 quest. Would it be possible to swap Sword Oath and Shield Oath so that Paladin can more adequately tank from it's opening quest?

Will we ever be able to glamour equipment from different jobs onto our characters?

Example: Alchemist coat on Scholar

When will players stop "falling through the world?" At least once a month I run somewhere and phase through a road/bridge/river/etc and have to teleport or return to get out of it. My most recent was quite the adventure, but still rather not have it happen.

Will there be more story behind the Amdapor civilization and will there be any gear associated with them; like what we receive associated with the people of Allag. i.e. Amdapor weapons, armor, gear, and jewelry.