Ask Questions for Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXXVII! (Exploring Patch 4.0)

What's the name of the Hell Frog Medium?

Can we please see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Kojin (TMNK) in a future quest chain?

If you could go back and change something from 2.0 or 3.0, regardless of what it would take to actually make it work what would you change?

Whatever happened to the Doman Adventurer's Guild plotline from 3.0?

Can you tell us about Eureka?

There are certainly plans for Kojin and Anata Beast Tribe Quests to be added in the future. Any chance at a sneak-peek?

Summoner was really nice to play back to Heavensward, we had a nice burst, we didn't have to care about pet responsibilities (old contagion), we had a nice and solid rotation and we had our beloved aoe.
Stormblood came and we got hit really hard:
-Bane ridiculous nerf.
-Ruin 3 nerf.
-Deathflare damage falloff.
-Lost of a 3rd DoT.
-Lost of Spur.
-Lost of Sustain.
-Locking us from stuff we used to be free (Aethertrail and Aetherflow).
Also was said that SB would make the jobs easier to play and less punishing.
SMN now requires an INSANE player skill to maximize their dps. We gotta align Contagion, (which please, fix the pet responsibilities, we are totally depending on Contagion now for out maximum dps) Tri-Disaster and Aetherflow for Summon Bahamut.
The job is now one of the hardest jobs to play. Also the punishment is INSANE. ex: We die just before we are about to summon Bahamut, and what about Aethertrail and Aetherflow being on the same gauge? Fester is missed or Boss/mob moved when we just casted Bane we got 1 minute penalty because of that.
Sustain is now gone and we can't heal our pets anymore, we gotta ask for the healers to heal it and now is practically impossible to do solo content as smn.
What about Ruin IV? We SUMMONERS depending on RNG to have our old Ruin III potency, that's just the old Ruin III with a different animation.
What about Devotion? Pls make it to we choose the target or make it an AoE because now it's really an useless skill.
Anyways SMN need some love, SMN needs to be easier and less punishing.
Is there any plans for SMN changes on the next patches? Is there any plans to fix pet responsibilities? (Since our dps rotation is based on a perfect timing of contagion) Because SMN was an amazing and fun job to play on heavensward and it's no more.

With the expansion, a lot of us were waiting for the cross-server Friend List and Linkshells, is that coming anytime soon before 4.1, or is it gonna be at 4.2?

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Originally Posted by ziDvna

Regarding the Job Gauges:

Will it be possible for other classes to also track some of its buffs/CDs? Ex: WAR only tracks the accumulated beast gauge, is it possible to add the Storm's Eye buff or Berserk buff

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Originally Posted by Oriens

Is your team reworking any or all job gauges based on player feedback?

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Wanted to add my voice to this with particular regard to Bard. Any plans to make it easier to track its buffs, DoTs and Debuffs with a Job Gauge update? Given that much of its Job Gauge gimmicks rely upon the upkeep of its buffs, debuffs and DoTs, this seems like a pretty obvious spot for better integration.

Hello

Can you answer wether the people who moved to the new server Omega be able to move off before the 90 day rule? the reason i ask this is because we where not aware of there being another EU server added until a couple of days later.

There are people like myself who wanted a less congested world and a quieter server now stuck because of the rule. Do you not think it would be fair to let people have the choice and ease the pressure on Omega.

It has become quite congested and i know i am not the only one who feels this way.

Thank you :)

Can you give us about your miserable state of servers at the launch of Stormblood and its few later weeks? Did you actually underestimate the flow of players joining the new journey or was it pure ignorance?

Can we expect better textures via a texture pack, atleast for your PC players?

Reposting my questions as I missed the bit about "one question per post":

The increased aggro modifiers on tank skills in 4.01 feel heavy-handed. Is this a temporary measure?

Many players who play Warrior feel that the job has become clunky, and that the flow that the job was known for in Heavensward has disappeared. There's also issues with "Unchained" being obsolete since its cooldown is tied to "Inner Release", and "Shake it Off" feels like it isn't very useful. What are your thoughts?

Many players who play Scholar feel that the job has been simplified too much, that it is too weak compared to Nocturnal Astrologian, and that its ties with Summoner are increasingly becoming a problem. What are your plans regarding Scholar balancing?

Any update on the Free Company Alliance or the Cross-server Free Companies?

What's the latest news regarding the new smartphone app?

Recently, there has been a lot of talk on the OF and Reddit about the textures of the game. Has the development team considered perhaps updating the textures of the game? Everything else looks really good but the textures really seem to holding it back mainly when zoomed in during cutscenes. Some type of HD texture pack.

Thank you

I'm aware of the current limitations, but would be possible to make a cross-data center Friend List/Linkshell (once the X-server FL and LS are implemented)?

When you revealed the new jobs, you said you didn't notice any significant changes in queue times by adding new tanks and healers. Since queue times for dps are a major cause of concern right now, do you have any plan to incentive using tanks or healers in the daily roulettes?

Many players feel that the game's textures are its biggest flaw in terms of graphics. What are the chances of increased texture resolution being added?

Will DRK see any change regarding their lack of mitigation skills? Shadow Wall being exceptionally weaker than Vengeance due to the 5 less second duration and 60 second longer cooldown compared to a class with a few more defensive skills is somewhat unfair. Buffs to Shadow Wall? Maybe change Quietus to something useful?

Also the immaturity of many people and the harassment they resort to is shocking. Do people even get punished?

Recently it was mentioned that the "ability to influence the party's damage" is a determining factor in a job's balance.

Has the development team ever visited the idea of focusing on this concept when designing a job, to create a play style that would be primarily supporting their party (for example, FFXI bard)? If so, are there any key points of that discussion that you'd be willing to share?

The topic of a "Glamour Log" is a matter of frequent discussion, having come up during numerous Live Letters and events. Every time it is shot down as impractical for FFXIV's infrastructure. So I would instead ask if the dev team has any ideas or plans for some form of glamour-storing subsystem to alleviate inventory and item bloat which does work for FFXIV's systems?

Going as far back as 2.1 Live Letters, developers have sporadically mentioned the possible concept of a Hybrid Role over the years.

In March, an interview with Yoshida was posted on a gaming news site (Twinfinite.net) where the concept was once again mentioned, this time in the context of deciding what direction to take when designing Red Mage. Does this mean the possibility is still in consideration in some form or another, and have there been any developments on the topic you'd be willing to discuss?

I would like to echo some of the Scholar question already posted here as I feel the current state of the class is an important issue to the scholar community. I've made several post in the healer forums about my thoughts on where Scholar is today and I feel like at some point during the Stormblood development cycle Scholar lost its identity. The changes to the class seemed to be overly harsh and punitive in response to the state of the class during Hevanswards. Many of the abilities introduced in Stormblood like Fey Union directly go against other abilities such as Dissipation creating a clunky system where key abilities are rarely if ever used. What is being done to restore the class's identity and bring its competitiveness back in line with the other healers?

Are there any plans to make the existing glamour system more robust? A frequent complaint is how a piece of gear can only have one appearance assigned to it, and since most jobs share gear (Fending, Healing, Casting, Striking and Aiming Sets) this imposes a number of restrictions upon players when using glamour. For example, if they want to use the Artifact Gear for one job, this means that the others which share a set lose the ability to be glamoured at all, as the appearance will be locked to the Artifact Set which will not appear on other jobs. To be clear, I am not expressing a desire for Glamour Appearance Restrictions (ie. Artifact Sets not appearing on other jobs, or not being able to apply the appearance of Fending Gear over Caster Gear) to be lifted. I'd just like a system which doesn't disable me from glamouring my PLD and DRK if I want to glamour my WAR. Or that lets me give my BRD and MCH uniquely different appearances.

So, are there any thoughts from the devs on making the glamour system more robust, so that players are no longer restricted by the limitations of shared gear?

Is the API for addons still being worked on or has that idea be scrapped?

With the continued item bloat we get every patch and us just now getting some slight increase in space, do you think we would ever see something like a glamour catalog?

Please implement a proper relinquish system for housing plots.
Say the owner get back 80% of the value. This might help with the "black market" of housing where players ask a higher value just to relinquish it.

I recently had the displeasure of getting put into a random party of bots that hacked their way past the starting gate. Do you have any plans on stepping up how aggressive you are in detecting and dealing with said bots, they ruin our game play experience.

How heavily do you invest in your infrastructure (servers, server code, etc.)?

Players that use DirectX11 seem to have a lot of problems with the stability of the game like crashes due to the codec that seem to be isolated to only FFXIV. Are there any plans to better optimize the game for DirectX11?

Are any adjustments coming to the WHM 70 skill Plenary Indulgence? It's not really useful as anything than yet another tank heal right now, which WHM already has tons of. Specifically, having yet another thing proc off Cure/Cure 2 (in addition to Freecure and Lilies) seems like too much, and having to look at the buff bars to figure out who the spell will actually hit (due to whoever has confessions) is quite awkward.

Will we get 99 token exchange for the doggos with 4.1?

What is the point of Shake It Off?

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Originally Posted by seekified

1. The increased aggro modifiers on tank skills in 4.01 feel heavy-handed. Is this a temporary measure?

2. Many players who play Warrior feel that the job has become clunky, and that the flow that the job was known for in Heavensward has disappeared. There's also issues with "Unchained" being obsolete since its cooldown is tied to "Inner Release", and "Shake it Off" feels like it isn't very useful. What are your thoughts?

4. What's the latest news regarding the new smartphone app?

5. Many players feel that the game's textures are its biggest flaw in terms of graphics. What are the chances of increased texture resolution being added?

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+1 especially on the graphics texture feel really choppy and outdated.

Any progress on the Glamour log/ Wardrobe? Is it possible to see it during the 4.XX series.

tried of asking the same questions, but I feel this is the only thing FF14 is missing at the moment that most modern MMOs have- Wow/ DCUO./ guild wars

Can we finally increased retainer inventory and/or an extra retainer? Its the second expac and I'm betting most ppl are running out of space. Why constantly add new glamours if we have no extra space to store it?

I main SUMMONER and love solo play when able; use to be able to reliably handle FATES in areas where population was really low and folks just didn't want to participate and could reliably keep TITAN's hitpoints up using SUSTAIN.

Now that AWESOME and RELIABLE ability was removed; it makes it IMPOSSIBLE to play solo on SUMMONER anymore---you mention solo play recently as something you look at when you determine/balance DPS for SAMURAI; well I REQUEST that you REVISIT SUMMONER--especially with the understanding that MANY players enjoyed solo play on this PET job and it has been horribly changed without consideration to the player base which enjoyed playing content with the CHOCOBO companion and TITAN-egi as tank.

I thank you for this consideration!

With Samurais getting sheaths for their katanas would it be possible for certain Gladiator/Paladin weapons to get a sheath as well?