Ask Questions for the Letter from the Producer LIVE: NA Fan Fest (iLv/New Tomestone)

Can we please have a new system or something different? It feels like I am playing the same patch over and over, the coil, the tomes, the lockouts, its the SAME thing every patch.

Will Tomestone-purchased gear follow the current scheme where it starts out weaker but upgradable via coil drops?

couldnt fit everything in with the 1000 word limit so heres part 2

Will we ever see the return of unique stats on gear such as the "Enhances [Job Ability]" stats that were on AF in 1.0?

I understand the goal of not upsetting player balance or making gear a requirement, but is there any reason something can be added to the Relic once it's reached its pinnacle?

Something like, "Enkindle recast reduced to 240 seconds" or even "Aetherflow IV", or a choice between the two.

Monks could have something like "Extended Greased Lightning Duration" or "Enhanced Mantra"
Paladin could have "Increased Enmity" or "Increased Spirits Within Damage", akin to 1.0.

also another question i had was
Will the addition of the new Tomestone mean you are removing the weekly cap on Soldiery tomes?

and will you be adding a cap to the new tomestone

i heard a person say that "I understand tome/loot caps are their to make people buy extra character slots ( $$$ for you obviously ) "

if thats true can you make a cash shop or something where you can spend rl money to by pass the sol limit and make it accessible so everyone knows about it

Will the development team consider, instead of rapid vertical progression, adding in new stats such as

a) "Critical Hit Damage Rating" (directly increases the damage of critical hits)

b) "Brutal Strike" (an ARPG term, basically a critical hit that will deal a massive amount of damage say 300% of a critical hit)

Will this new tomestone be the last one added? as others have stated we are worried that this method of vertical progression will be the pattern going forward.

To me ilvl seems like an old concept. Is there any plans to make a new system the focuses on a Horizontal Development with interested mechanics like FFX Sphere Grid or FFVII Materia?

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Originally Posted by mithena

i heard a person say that "I understand tome/loot caps are their to make people buy extra character slots ( $$$ for you obviously ) "

if thats true can you make a cash shop or something where you can spend rl money to by pass the sol limit and make it accessible so everyone knows about it

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Hell no.

/10

Can you tell us the reason why you chose ilvl as a core system for the game instead of other systems that you can think of for character progression?

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Originally Posted by mithena

couldnt fit everything in with the 1000 word limit so heres part 2

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Mithena, please DON'T flood this thread with 800 questions in 10 posts like you did in the general topic post. There is a 1000 character limit imposed on your first post, but if you submit it and then edit the exact same post you'll see that there are no character limits on edits. Please just do one big post instead of flooding these with endless posts.

With the conversion towards new tomestones, what can we expect the tome rewards from existing dungeons to be like?

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Originally Posted by Nova_Dresden

Mithena, please DON'T flood this thread with 800 questions in 10 posts like you did in the general topic post. There is a 1000 character limit imposed on your first post, but if you submit it and then edit the exact same post you'll see that there are no character limits on edits. Please just do one big post instead of flooding these with endless posts.

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Originally Posted by Gildrein

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One should follow the rules.

I know this was already brought up in a previous letter, but since the answer was "not for now, we'll look into it", I would like to ask again to see if devs have discussed about it.
Will you eventually (post-expansion) stop increasing iLVL, in order to release gear worth obtaining because of useful unique stats instead of "because iLVL is higher, thus giving better stats"?


Thanks.

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Originally Posted by KingOfAbyss

If I'm confused, perhaps SE will be as well.

iLvl70 AF1
iLvl90 AF2

Did you meant AF3?

Thanks for clarifying.

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It's easy to be confused by this but AF2 isn't out yet, the ilvl45-50 Job-specific armour is the "Artifact" Armour (or AF1) and the ilvl90 Job-specific armour is called "Relic" Armour (technically AF+1)

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Originally Posted by KingOfAbyss

Did you meant AF3?

Thanks for clarifying.

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Concept art for AF2 was shown in a previous live letter, http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/un2ch/imgs/4/b/4bd1120d.jpg shows MNK AF2. the Job quested armor, can see as AF0.5, myth as AF1. Wouldnt be surprised if the AF2 shown in the live letter will appear as max level armor for the expansion.

Anyways:

With the Ilvl increase, will some of the gear eg coil 1 allagan, myth gear be desynthable with 2,4?

Will you please consider more Horizontal Progression (same Item Level, but More Unique Stats) in the future?

Currently the Item Level Inflation is getting out-of-control, and this type of strict, boring Vertical Progression you're doing just invalidates all the previous content you released each time you introduce a New Item Level.

You can still create NEW Gear, but have it be the Same Item Level, but with Unique Stats like "Enhances Rampart (AOE - Everyone in the vicinity gains Rampart)" or "Enhances Holy" etc., or expose more Statistics that are meaningful and create Alternate Sets based on that (e.g., if DEX, VIT *or* STR all mattered for Tanks, you could make unique sets based on different statistics).

Will there be new tome items to buy with soldiery, and how will this affect Allies and Grand Company seals?

How many quest will we get for Zodiac upgrade, and will it meet the next item level cap?

Will crafters be able to create ilvl 110 equipment?

Will the gear obtained via the new tomestones come in weathered condition and require to use of items to upgrade?

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

the Job quested armor, can see as AF0.5, myth as AF1.

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You made that up! The job quest gear is AF (literally artifacts), and the stuff bought from shops isn't AF anything, but rather mass-produced copies of the true AF. They don't get designated a number. That is how the upcoming gear is called AF2.

As new iLevels are added, when crafters and gatherers upgrade to higher iLevel gear which allowed for higher materia to be used before meld caps are hit. Can we expect a Tier 5 and higher set of materia in the future?

Can crafting help IMPROVE top-level equipment, like crafting a non-sellable shard that can upgrade your gear the same way the Sands/Oils do now?

We need more crafters in this game, and making a character-bound, non-sellable, non-tradeable item you have to make yourself would greatly encourage more investment into the economy and make items far more affordable!

Okay you guys clearly done a decent job with alternatives to wean us off myth preparing for the tomestones (Hunts for i90 gear and Ixali quests for mats) However there is still a loose end to tie up: The Animus books. Are you gonna make it so taht they can be bought with Sol or are you just gonna leave it as is?

Why not just keep Myth tomes and Soldiery Tomes as they are and make dungeons that are harder than HM dungeons to drop these tomes?

Will the myth items be removed from the game if players earn solidarity instead of myth?

When are we getting the horizontal progress we were told about by a community rep a LONG time ago? Can you keep the ilvl the same, but give us our old stats back and make them more interesting.

Expansion, iLvls, and Gear

What do you plan on doing with our iLvls and gear once we hit L51 in the next expansion?

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Originally Posted by KingOfAbyss

If I'm confused, perhaps SE will be as well.

iLvl70 AF1
iLvl90 AF2

Did you meant AF3?

Thanks for clarifying.

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Ilvl 50/55 gear you get from your job quests is AF gear. i70 gear is Darklight gear and the Mythology gear that is i90 is also known as AF+1 or AF1. Which will mean AF+2/AF2 is an even further upgraded version/new better version of that gear :). A while ago they teased pictures of some of the sets.

Last Raiding cycle Coil on average was made harder and at the same time the focus on getting gear endgame was also more put on coil. In 2.0-2.2 you could either do coil and get gear that way or spend multiple weeks grinding mytho to get the same grade of gear which was perfect for people that didnt have the time raiding or werent good enough. in 2.2-2.4 Soldiery gear was really easy to obtain but getting ilvl 110 got harder. Since the only way up until hunts was by doing coil. The difficulty of coil got increased and this caused a lot of raid groups to be unable to do this content and a lot of disbanding of raid groups and leaving of players that werent the in the top 5% of hardcore players. For someone level capped on almost all classes being stuck on subpar gear for over half a year due to a random work schedule was very annoying. my question is: How will the new gearsets be handled? will we get the old Philo/Mytho system with coil or will we get the Coil focussed soldiery system.

Why the constant need to keep raising level cap? What's the point of a casual player wasting the time when they can just skip it later?

From a design perspective it really is mind boggling. It makes for a really sloppy leveling process... new players go from iLVL 49-50 to an almost instant 90 (I literally went from AF(50) to full LotA(80) in two runs...then coil (90) in a matter of days.)
Moreover, some of the best gear can be obtained without really putting in a lot of effort (namely, Syrcus tower). This, in turn, makes for really sloppy or under prepared players. I'm not talking newbie players, I'm talking by iLVL 90 not knowing how to use flash or how Medica works..or that Blizzard 2 is centered on the caster.

Anyway, the main question is: your team takes months preparing a dungeon for release, only to make it obsolete in the near future...why?

(Different-ish topic, but continuing the above)

Instead of raising the cap, why not give more choices of top end gear? That is to say, Horizontal progression.

For example a Paladin item could have a choice between:
- reduced cool down time of certain abilities
- more potent cures
- grants the ability to raise mid-battle, but has much lower DEF than a counterpart.
- Specific resistances (vs Cold or Lightning, etc)

...think along the lines of Monster Hunter but much less complicated. This would encourage players to "Gear up" for whatever they're going into.

Final Question:
Will you ever consider utilizing old gear to make new?
That is to say, something like the rare/untradeable armor from Sastasha (Acolyte) + Brayflox (Battlemage) + (whatever) trades into a new piece.
I feel this would allow slow/steady progression along the lines of our relic weapons, but for armor.

How many stages of Armour upgrades will we have this patch.

Will the new gear purchased with tomestones again require a drop from coil in order to upgrade?

Was not a fan of this system as it required access and clearing specific content to make full use of something from other content.

Will relic upgrading be eased so that a relic can compete with other high item level weapons in terms of effort/reward?
As a relic has more and more steps required to be "up to date" it takes more time to acquire and upgrade them, with the time to get an alternative weapon to a relic seems to be more or less the same at each item level increase.

How does the increase in item level impact us when the expansion arrives? Will the gear obtained in the Final Coil of Bahamut last us until we hit the next level cap?

Can we please abandon the relic weapon in the upcoming expansion? If people want to glamour the shiny, fine, but it's way more work than it's worth at this point.

Will there be a 'Item Level Sync' for Hard mode primals?Players doesn't have to dodge anything when fight with Garuda(Hard)...which isn't fun to burn down a boss like that.

When you implement patches that make a tomestone become uncapped, can you make that tomestone drop from FATEs as well to make them less grindy to obtain

What'll be the last ilvl before lvl cap is increased 50+?