Letter from the Producer LIVE 53: Ask Your Shadowbringers Questions!

Tanks previously had their job/class specific damage reduction skill removed when role actions were introduced (for example dark knight's shadow skin). Now that we have a static role action in the form of rampart, could tank classes have back their original shield skill, such as shadow skin, in place of rampart? Or perhaps be able to use the original visual effect glamoured over rampart?

Can we please get matching icons for SMN summons? Either three carbuncles or three primal egis...

Since the removal of TP some job roles that are not MP based have no barriers to using skills as they have a limitless pool. Surely there be some barriers?

Q1:
The Crystarium was much larger than I originally thought. And also surprisingly being so large it wasn't split into 2 areas. If this is to be the new standard moving forward is it possible the previous City-States of Uldah, Girdania and Limsa Lominsa can become one large city state again instead of being split into 2?

Will there be a texture update in the future? :):)

Q2:
What changes were made that had you worried but are glad they worked out for the better?

Q3:
The increase in dialogue options was amazing. And while I understand the reasoning behind not doing so in the past: Any possible way the WoL/WoD can have actual voice acted lines even if only a small amount? Not including the one at the final quest.

Would it be possible to add Amaro as a “companion” ?

Is anyone aware of the fact that the new servers like Spriggan as well as some random legacy servers like Hyperion are currently being flooded with so many RMT bots that people can't even enter zones at times?

I get that they've been trying to keep this problem under control all this time, but it's grown rather clear at this point that the current methods being used are not sufficient.

Firstly thank you so much to the dev team, and congratulations on making an absolutely amazing expansion so far!!

Q1: Will we be able to have Feo Ul as a minion? I really need my branch to follow me around and keep me in check. Please.

Q2: Will we be able to have longer hairstyles for male characters at any point? The long ponytail hairstyle for the lady viera is perfect, and exactly what I want for my male character actually! The hairs we have now are nice, but I would love a style with nice bangs. A lot of our current ones are pretty fond of showing off our forehead almost completely.

Q3: Ah, okay, I'll ask too. Has there been any further consideration for the implementation of female hrothgar and male viera, just so the races can be fully completed? And when will we see more hairstyles for the current genders, as well as more wearable helmets?

Did they anticipate Emet-Selch getting so popular?

With how often you cycle through applying and consuming Leaden Fist as monk, it can be hard to track when you have a lot of other buffs. Would it be possible to add an indicator to the job gauge that shows when you have a Leaden Fist buff? Maybe have the coeurl's eye light up?

Can we please move the Sword Oath stacks from the player buff icons to the Oath Gauge? Literally all you need to add is three dots and a timer, or sword icons, whatever.

Under the current system the majority of players don't have access to the FC features such as airships/submarines/workshop.

Anecdotally, only the FC leader and their inner circle benefit from such features or are the only ones actively participating in such FC content.

Things like airships and submarines are significant gil producing assets and can bring in 5-10 million gil a week,if not more.

This also results in people creating shell FCs,buying houses and further exacerbating the housing problem on populated servers.

Secondly, please close the loophole that 1 service account can own 8 FC houses on a server via transfer of FC leadership.

Thank you.

Glamour Items

Could it be possible to get a special foot glam for Hrothgar to make their feet more like the Ronso from 10?

On that items for Viera hands and feet for a more beastial look for those who want them. Like some of the older artwork for Viera.

Housing Items

For the NPC permits and Mannequins for houses will Hrothgar and Viera being added to them?

There's a huge bot problem in low level areas: they sometimes queue in DF and instantly aggro/AoE the whole dungeons out of bounds, teleport and kill quest needed monsters and can even make the whole area congested. There are so much of them that reporting seems counter productive. Are there plans for some extra measures against them?

Is it possible to extend the range of Curing Waltz simply to make it a bit more usable? I am fine with the potency but it is far too small of a range...

With regard to Scholar's "Recitation" how come Lustrate and Sacred Soil are left out of the effects as far as not consuming resources/etc.? I thought it was strange most other skills were usable. Could Physick even be a candidate?

When will you be expanding hairstyles and heads for viera and hrothgar? Also will you be making premium hairstyles for viera a priority, since they were cash shop purchased?

Can we get a version of the Tonberry Stalker from Wanderer's Palace as a mount?

There seems to be an alarming number of bots in game based on posts on the FFXIV subreddit. Are there any efforts currently going on to remove those bots and make it harder for people to create bots in the game?

Shoha in its current state has a really great visual effect, but can only realistically be used once per fight, if even that in some cases. Even if it gets to max charge, it still feels bad to even have on the hotbar, let alone use. When will Shoha be changed to no longer be attached to Meditation?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hammerhorn

Can u remove cover and shield bash for Paladin they are dated and clunky, I know cover is a niche but I’d much rather remove that and make our group shield also effect PLD.

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Could you please not do this?

In ShB, you have decided to change fundamentaly how we play and enjoy playing SCH and AST after all the years.
Why did you choose to destroy some of the core essence of these jobs to bring them near the WHM while you could have just have make this last more interesting ?

Why did you choose this Pure direction for every healers, while you could have WHM/AST (without Nocturnal) as Pure and SCH/4th healer for Shield ?
It would have been much easier to balance 2 and 2 without stripping their identity instead of doing an homogeneization of our 3 healers.

Why do you keep persisting to have two stances with AST, Diurnal and Nocturnal while during all these years you didn't seem to want or know to balance with SCH ? If you want to keep Nocturnal, make it different (shields based on duration), and interact with other part of the AST kit.

Why did you choose to destroy the essence of the AST, the different buffs via cards and the possibility to add duration on buffs, and to concentrate your effort on the only thing which didn't work well during these 4 years : his stances and particularly Nocturnal stance ?

Is it intended that SCH must keep his aetherflow stacks or even refresh without using all of them ?
Can you give us Energy Drain or some kind of similar ability (maybe AoE) to make the gameplay more interesting and rewarding ?

Why did you choose to transform Selene into a glamour fairy while you had the possibility to create an interesting duality, or even swap (Dissipation rework) between both to benefit of a various effects ?

Could you give to AST the skills and ancien effects you have removed from him ?
Here the list : everything from the old Cards System, Time Dilatation, Celestial Opposition, Collective Unconscious.

Can we, the Warriors of Light, start officially leading the Scions of the Seventh Dawn? With Alphinaud as our 2nd in command? (so he can handle all the paperwork while i'm adventuring)

You said you wanted to change direction for our Healers and go for Pure instead of Pure/Shield.
The problem is the shield is still an important part of the combat (high difficulty).
So my question is : What did you choose then to have SCH doing Pure/Shield without restriction, AST doing either Pure, either Shield or both but duration limited, and WHM doing still only Pure ?
Don't you think, once SCH and AST will be fix, all the known issues of WHM will be more apparent as for his non-capacity to have shield AoE ?

can we see a male au ra in the CGI style sometime in the future since they are the only race combination that hasn't appeared in a opening or poster like Hrothgar

As a PS4 player it is difficult to communicate in a mix group of PC & PS4 players in a voice chat group using discord, you have to use multiple devices in order to do so while also sacrificing sound quality is not ideal, to make this more convenient have you ever considered adding an in-game voice chat feature?

Can we get some input on why there's been a severe lack of communication over the healer role specifically? The team has been flying over healers in liveletters like they're nothing (didn't even bother showing in game footage during the pre-realease LL and almost skipped a slide, also no healer mains are present at the media tours), they haven't acknowledged any of the NA feedback over the past few years (high demand items, and no not talking about raid utility for whm) etc...
Healer community feels very alone atm given a lot of the changes in 5.0 flew in the face of everything that the community had been asking for. Can this be addressed during the live letter in some form or another?

Thanks.

Could we get the night music of The Rak'tika Greatwood as an orchestrion roll? (the Soken's jazzy piano solo version of "Civilizations"). It is extremely beautiful.




Also huge thanks to Yoshi san and the whole team behind Shadowbringers. ¡What a wonderful expansion!

First Question:

With so many skills being upgraded via trait: Why was the Black Mage spell Blizzard ignored? At level 35 Blizzard III is introduced and after that there is no real reason to ever use Blizzard 1 again.

You also get a Magick trait at 35 that you could add the Blizzard III upgrade to.

I only noticed this when I was synced below lvl 35 and didn't have Blizzard 1 on my hotbar.

Second Question:

Why did you remove so many healer Damage over Time spells when those spells specifically facilitate the "healers need to heal more" mentality? Especially Miasma II, Bane and Shadowflare and Aero III. Those spells were a perfect for that philosophy. All that needed to be done was make Miasma II's initial hit low enough so it would not be cast repeatedly.

Third Question:

With health pools getting so large (110K or more), the Dark Knight immunity ability (Living Dead) has become problematic. When Walking Dead procs, it takes roughly 3600 potency to completely heal them and thus remove the debuff. No single healer other than a WHM (via Benediction) has any way of healing that much HP / Potency in the short time frame required.

Final Question:

Are you happy with the way healers are currently? What is your design intent when it comes to healers? We missed out on a new healer because "The developers needed to Balance what we had". This same reason was given at the start of the Stormblood expansion. Many players (especially AST and SCH) aren't happy with the what we've gotten. This is now 4 years and ongoing of poor healer balance.

One thing that always have bothered me, is that for the past zones like ARR you never see the new races as NPCs, it would be nice that there was an update to add other races npcs to other cities too instead of just being only added to the expansion zones.

In addition could we get an option to disable the normal battle music from bosses in dungeons and only leave the theme from final boss from dungeon? Like you did for the outer world.

For example; There has been many times where the music in the dungeon would amazing and then suddenly I get slapped in the face with an out of place theme by the first and second boss. It takes sometimes the joy from the dungeon or the mood that has been set and instead of enjoying the boss I just try to kill it as quick as possible so I can get back to the dungeon music.

In Heavensward Scholar had a good dynamic with Lily, engaging way to deal damage and a tool to use in every oppertunity to make little changes in all types of content. Scholar in 5.0 is nowhere near as engaging or fun. Can we see a return of manual fairy control, Selene, dots, bane, Cleric stance and the orginal arcanist tools for mitigation? Asking a lot as a lot was removed.

Edit after 5.05: Energy Drain is a welcome return, but question still stands with a lot of tools for non-healing missing.