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

Housing:
The random timer system to a new plot become available to be bought is awful. There are a lot of people who spend several hours in a day just waiting for this while meshing the confirmation buttons and it still not a guaranteed success method. It can become available after 1 hour or after 20, nobody knows.

Can you guys change this system into something like a lotto system in which players can just buy a ticket to apply for a house? Even an auction system is better than the current one. Or, at least, reduce the time limit to something like 3 hours. Noone enjoys spending five, six hours a day stuck at the same place just meshing the same buttons to have a chance to buy a house.

Can you do something to alleviate the cost of crafting ingredients for Weaver?

Every other job has basically this:
Raw materials x4 -> Usable ingredient x1

Weaver has an extra step:
Fiber x4 -> Thread x1
Thread x3 -> Cloth x1

This means insane volumes of fiber materials are needed to get a small amount of cloth to work with. The costs of WVR ingredients is much too high as a result, and Wind and Lightning Crystals use up way faster than everything else because of the extra steps. Can you please reduce the number of ingredients and crystals required overall to produce cloth items?

[1] Very little was communicated about healers during the promotional materials. Expected changes were poorly received, and upon launch this continued.

As the team continues to struggle with healers, can we have more frequent adjustments to the healers and communication about what is intended?

[2] Could you change the text of Walking Dead to "Health is fully restored when otherwise lethal damage is received" please? Healing potency was reduced so much from 4.5 to 5.0 that the healing cooldowns required are often so much that it is better to let the tank die and resurrect them later, since healing cooldowns capable of fully healing a tank often simply do not exist or drain the party of several minutes worth of healing.

After the previous revamp and truncation of the veteran rewards system and ranks to the current four ranks are there any plans to add new ranks with rewards or will all future rewards be attached to the Achievement Vendor?

As a healer, I have a significant amount of downtime where players are in a safe spot where any healing done would massively overheal. As player skill and gear improves, both for myself and my party, this downtime massively increases. Considering healers are not supposed to use DPS spells, what are they intended to do during this time? How can we keep healing engaging?

With the addition of the achievement vendor and currency we've seen a lot of previous veteran rewards added to it with a few new rewards like the Magitek Death Claw mount. Is there any planned future releases for it? I've bought everything and still have over 100 currency left unspent.

With the success of this game and the newest expansion bring me to ask..will there be or are the plans to make another MMO in the future?

Two questions hoping to hear about during this Live Letter:

With the number of players being higher than it's ever been, is there any plans to increase the current number of available housing plots/wards?

Alternatively, is there any future plans to fix the system as it currently stands, in regards to the random timers for purchasing land, and limiting the number of plots a player can own per account, rather than player?

Thank you, and keep up the great work. Shadowbringers has been wonderful!

With the success of this game and the newest expansion brings me to ask..will there be or are the plans to make another MMO in the future?

Do you have an estimate on when we can expect to see relics in this expansion and what kind of content do you have planned for them?

I’ll assume this id the same for other Tank jobs, but whenever I sign up for any duty as a PLD, I need to re-apply Iron Will upon entering the dungeon or trial. Can you make it so that the status persist?

5.0 saw substancial changes to healers. Can you elaborate on the reasoning for these changes and can the Combat designer team communicate with the Healer subforums? We'd really like to hear and discuss healer gameplay with you all.

I love the Replica Dreadwyrm Tonban of Healing/Casting and think they would make an amazing glamour for Dancer. Could it be made possible to remove the class restrictions from the replica dreadwyrm gear?

What are the chances of a half-Elezen race, like Hilda, being made available at some point in the coming years in one way or another? I'd personally like to play as a shorter yet still mature 5 foot or so tall Elven girl, please and thank you.

Hello and thanks for all the hard work :)

I have got a question related to FCs.
I help run a fairly big FC for ffxiv standards (~100 Members) both engaged in raiding and casual content, and i feel the features for FCs are lacking. There is no real benefit to join up with an Community further than the EXP Buff and it is kinda sad.

Are there any Plans to rework FCs a bit so it is easier to build a lasting Community that helps each other? For Example "FC Achivement" - Achivements that will be gained when a party with a majority of FC Members does something together. Be it clearing a dungeon for the first time, or a Savage Raid. Those Achivement could always bring rewards like Mounts, Glamour and so on, something that rewards being engaged in a Community. Any QOL Change for FCs are welcome tho.

Was there a standard set for the healer adjustment in 5.0? One can easily spot on the big level gap between WHM/SCH and AST just by looking at healing skills.

WHM: Most skill's purpose is either pure healing or pure damaging. Purest of healers.

SCH: Most skills are focusing on shield healing. There are skills to assist when pure healing is needed, such as Emergency Tactics and Indomitability.

AST: Core healing skills such as single and AoE heals are present, but they are much weaker compare to the two other healers. On top of that, the extra healing tools that are otherwise given to WHM and SCH (Asssize and Tactics for example) are further divided into support role skills due to AST's supportive nature which is card system and divination. Not only AST has less healing tool, the job also provide weaker base healing. Why is AST so inferior when compare to the other two healers?

Can you please discuss the decisions made behind the dramatic realignment of the 5.0 healers? We understand that, with the new direction that Shadowbringers went, changes needed to be made, but a lot of us are very confused why certain decisions were made (i.e bringing SCH and AST "in line" with WHM instead of the other way around). There has been a lack of communication about the healer changes in general, from Live Letters to updates, and I'm sure the entire Healer community would appreciate some insight into why such drastic changes were made to our jobs.

Is there any chance for mog station npc glamour gear to be dyeable?

If not, can we know why?

Would you be able to add a "Repair All Equipment" button to Menders to make repairing all of your gear faster and easier?

Why is it that crafted materials made by Weavers require significantly more ingredients to make than materials made by other crafting classes? I've been confused for years by how much more effort is required to produce cloth than metal/lumber/etc while being treated as no more valuable than other crafting materials. I'd be very interested to hear the reasoning behind this decision and why it has been so consistent throughout FFXIV and its three expansions. I'll provide a detailed explanation and examples below, if necessary:
This is something that has been consistent in all yarn and cloth recipes since even the lowest levels. For example, Bloodhempen Cloth requires three Bloodhempen Yarn, each of which require 4 pieces of Bloodhemp for a total of 12 Bloodhemp per Cloth, while the equivalent item for Goldsmiths, Koppranickel Nugget, uses a total of five items and only takes one craft to make. This is consistent across all equipment-producing crafting classes; every 2 levels, Weavers must make an entirely new set of Yarn and Cloth materials, requiring 3 yarns to make one cloth, and approximately four items for one yarn, while all others simply make their material in one craft with 4~ items, or occasionally use a single Nugget/Lumber/etc from the previous level range and 4~ new gathered materials, which still results in a much lower material and crafting time requirement. I would understand this difference if Cloth materials were used in lower quantities or less often than Yarn and other classes' materials, but this is consistently not the case. For example, a headgear item for a Disciple of War or Magic made by Weavers typically requires at least 2 Cloth items, in addition to 2 or more miscellaneous materials. Weaver recipes almost never exclusively require Thread/Yarn; always Cloth, and usually more than one. The other crafters will use a similar amount of their own equivalent material for equivalent recipes, but their material will require less time to make and much less materials.
I apologize for my lengthy explanation, I just wanted to make sure everything was clearly explained and laid out. Thank you very much for your time.

Can we get a Crystal Tower Ultimate raid this expansion?

Grand Company Squadrons

Will Squadrons see any updates and AI improvements?
More recruits, more dungeons, more customization, more rewards?

The wooden steps (stairs) added for housing furnishing are nice, but they are currently difficult to place with the desired direction. Would it be possible to flip or mirror the stairs by tapping the rotation button/command?

Would it be possible to get back Divine Seal/Largesse for WHM and have it then upgrade into Temperance at level 80, instead of removing it entirely from lower level content?

Are there any plans to add an ability to downsample the game resolution for the PC client?

The games built in Anti-aliasing solution has not aged well. However, entirely new AA methods might not necessarily need be implemented into the game as computer hardware has become exponentially more powerful since the game has launched. Most players should be able to render the game at higher resolutions than their monitors run natively. I can run the game at almost 200 frames per second at 1080p on hardware that is a few years old already for example, so I should not have any issues rendering the game at 2k or even 4k.

Is there any content planned for Chocobo Companions in the future? I'd love to have Chocobo Hot and Cold mini game, Chocobo Paradise (FFIX), and other new companion content~!


## Doubt Yoshida would have the time or desire to look at the thread but if there were questions on desires, I made a fairly big thread here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...t-Tribe-etc%29

Can we get a mount key bind?

Every so often we get the chance to go in a nice airship in FFXIV but I've always wanted to have my own like in classic FF games, where you unlock that late game transportation option, which also usually acts a sort of soft hub.. Is there a possibility we would be able to look forward to more in-depth personable airship content in the future?

##Perhaps like a WoW Garrison (or more)? I don't feel adding reference to another game helps get a question asked or even if asked might just look bad so I didn't put it into the body lol... and I am happy for my question to be changed for sound/flow better lol, but Garrison seems like a decent reference.

##I am aware FC have airship content but it's kind of hands off feeling and for FC (so not really what I would hope for), also I imagine a challenging and expensive content if addressed in detail.. so hopefully he doesn't laugh too hard lol. I love my FF airships XD.

##Like the previous question I doubt Yoshida has the time or desire to check out a fat thread but I tried to add why I want more airship content, and what it might be able to do for us here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-All-%28-FC%29

For some people the ability to promote above your own rank in FC is not very intuitive feeling and has been the source of many large scale pains, would it be possible to update the FC ranking system to respect hierarchy and protect FC from accidentally being robbed? Being robbed by someone promoting another person to the highest rank and then stealing everything from the chest or worse.

##It'd be like if you hire a fry cook who then promotes their janitor buddy to a level able to fire the manager who hired the fry cook below them, it doesn't really feel quite right lol.

##This issue I last heard of in 4.4, I apologize if it was fixed in 5.0 (I haven't tested it since 4.0). I've checked the 5.0 patch notes before posting this however and no mention of it was made.

Was really hopeful when Blue Mage came out but was quickly disappointed at 50. 50 content if you can get a party is very under powered and it would have made a great edition story wise as well but was stopped short.

Would you consider adding phasing for Revenant's Toll and Idylshire into the respective 2.x and 3.x quest lines so newer players will be able to experience the areas being built as we did years ago when the content was rolling out?

We currently have chocobo companions. Can we have retainer companions in the future, too?

Will there be changes for Samurai's Meditate and Shoha the charges cannot be gained if you are in a battle with tons of aoe's because interruption happens when you move and shoha is very weak damage?

There was obviously a huge amount of work that went into the names and languages on the First, could that information please be released to the Lore Forums?

please tell me there is a change for MNK skill?

As a long time Summoner main. I really like the addition of Phoenix. [Can you please look into giving the Phoenix summon the ability to rez the closest downed player?] The healing is ok but Phoenix is known for rezzing. I think this would be a great way to break Summoner from Red Mage and give them a bit more utility.

any chance controller players can get the PVP combo system added to the PVE section of the game as an optional feature for 3 hit or 2 hit combos on specific classes that have a standard 3 or 2 hit combo?

Would you consider adjusting the Amaro mount to be a reward for completing all of the 5.0 role quests instead of for getting all combat jobs to level 80?

What reason is it for some skills being changed to "in combat only"? Aetherflow and such are extremely weird like this.

1.New Gunbreaker Sound effects sound so blunt it does not feel right.Can we expect any changes in the future?
2.Dark Knight's Blood Spiller spam feels like Warrior's Cleave chain.It is definitely boring .Do you have any plans to change it in the future?
3.Can we get Garlean Third Eye please???