Ask Yoshi-P and Banri Oda Your Questions for the gamescom 2019 Q&A

Explanation of what exactly Nastrond/Blood of the Dragon/Stardiver actually are? How can we use them despite Nidhogg's essence dispersing?

I have few.

Why Square Enix is forcing you to work on 2 games, instead of focus your entire time on FFXIV?
Dont they know mmorpgs are fragile games, which require a lot of work and attention to keep it alive and working? Why they dont invest more resources into our game and stop making games like "FFXV" which nobody plays anymore, why not upgrade the current game and make it relevant for longer, instead of throwing away resources at other projects that are not going to be successful in the long run?
You dont have to answer if you dont want to, i just want to send a message to SE quaters, stop with this insanity.

What is happening with the Twintania and Spriggin housing, can we get an update as to when we can perhaps expect to see them added?

This is a question for both Yoshida and Oda-san.

None of the new job actions added in Shadowbringers get any real lore explanation or backstory, and there wasn't much for actions added on Stormblood either. It is reaching a point where some jobs are actually becoming rather confusing from a lore perspective! I would like to know more about the actions each job learns and would be interested to know: could provide this information to players somehow?

This question is for Oda-san.

What are Bards actually doing when they use Iron Jaws? Why does waving their fingers around refresh their DoT effects?

Are all Asican / Amaurotine's real names based on Greek mythology? (EX: Emet Selch is Hades and so on)
Will Unukalhai be making back a return? He was saved by Elidibus before and seems to be just chilling in Rising Stones this whole time ever since Warring Triad and now that we got more information on the Ascian, it would be really awesome to see how he plays into the whole main story!
Is there a chance that we will be visiting other shards in the future? How do you go about setting the style for each world? First was similar to Eorzea with slight differences in monsters but is it possible that other worlds can be drastically different?
Will we ever know what caused the first calamity in the first? I noticed that Amaurotines described this apocalypse in super vague way so I was hoping that we can learn more about how it started!

Thank you for implementing a very beast-like race in the form of Hrothgars. I would've have preferred Bangaas but this works for me too. My question is, knowing that hairstyles are tied to the face of the Hrothgars, are there any plans to allow Hrothgar players to make use of the aesthetician to do so? Right now, Hrothgar players must buy a fantasia just to change hairstyles.

Unukalhai was introduced in 3.X, welcomed to the Scions at the end of that storyline... and has been left alone in the back room of the Rising Stones ever since. Was this supposed to happen, or did you have other plans for him initially?

(I know it's hard to involve optional storyline characters in the MSQ, but he seems so lonely in there.)

Can we please fight the Twelve? Like I’d like to take on Halone or Althyk

Can we have Summoners be more Summoner-y? Upgrade egis to things like Demi Bahamut, and I dunno, more things to summon maybe?

And of course everyone’s burning question: “new healer class when?”

Quote:

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Originally Posted by odym82

And of course everyone’s burning question: “new healer class when?”

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When they can handle the 3 they have.

Sometimes I find myself unsure if I have Lily summoned or not and when battle is already raging it's very hard to see her. Can we have a status icon or something of the like to quickly tell if she is out or not?

Are there any plans to update the chocobo AI or allow for trust parties outside of dungeons like in Final Fantasy XI?

Even in healer stance my chocobo will often stand there for exceptionally long periods of time and do nothing while I die. Occasionally I get a regen and a cure, but the potency, even with Mimett gourds, is so low that a lot of the time it heals for less than the auto-attack damage I am taking.

I even lowered his healing points to just before healing surge, as he would spam that while letting me die, and he still is fairly useless at mid to high levels. And, as I said, the potency of his cure is abysmal. Perhaps a system upgrade that lets us gear them, not just glam them, or put points into their stats/healing power (like with merit points in XI)?

That or let us have something like the Eureka potions for every day leveling. :D

When Minfilia departed for the First, her plan at that time (as I understood it) was to absorb the excess Light and channel it to Hydaelyn to restore Her strength. This didn't happen, and the characters had to deal with the Light in a different way. Was this intended, or a change in the writing direction?

the moon appears to shine brighter on the night sky of the first shard as compared to the source. Is there any particular reason for this? I personally like to think it's because the moon on the first also reflects all the additional light coming from the great empty.

can we have some clarification on Thordan's "what are you?" during his death scene? Was it just the WoL appearing as the villain from his point of view, or was it long handed foreshadowing the recent revelation of the WoL being a sundered ancient amaurotine's soul?

speaking of the amaurotine, are they as a race in total called Ascians or Ancients?

are there any plans on adding more Moogle postmaster quests?
I vaguely recall a statement a long time ago that there was indeed a new batch done, but Koji not having had the time yet to localise them...

Will we ever see a quest that lets us help Tiamat move on from her grief in Azys La?

May we please have instanced housing with outdoor spaces, in some form? Be it an addition to apartments, an instanced house behind a door in a city-state, or what have you.

May we please get a Pass All button on the loot window that will allow us to Pass on everything still present in the loot window that we haven't already Rolled Need/Greed on?

Would it be possible to add the Exarch and Lyna back to the Trust system for those who missed them? For Holminster Switch, at the least.

Will the Redbills have another story associated with them at some point? I just finished Dun Scaith for the first time and I really liked my sky pirate friends. Also, I'd love an opportunity for my honorary Redbill status to come up again.

In the naming conventions for the Keepers of the Moon, it is stated that some of the family surnames "have survived since the First Astral Era". Can you tell us more about the significance of this point, if there is any? Have some of the surnames even been passed down from/are related to the Ancients from before the Sundering?

Will we get more housing wards and / or new zone or instanced housing anytime soon? It's really hard for new players & first time buyers to get housing by clicking placard for hours. Should we expect any changes to the way housing works in the near future? Is instanced housing just a dream?

Question!
With the recent shuffling and culling of abilities, Bard feels really nice to play... Except at level 50, since we only have access to two of our 3 songs.
Would it be possible to switch places of Battle Voice and Wanderer's Minuet, thus bringing parity with Dragoon, that have their base rotation completed at level 50 (with Chaos Thrust(And they get their party buff at 52, when Bard gets WM))?

Also, would it be possible to change Battle Voice so that it affects the user too, and not only the party (So there's a reason to use it when solo)?

It was mentioned before that transporting the large armory is a strain on the system. Have you considered removing belts to make room for more main hand slots? Since they do not visually appear anyway or is it the visual representation that is mainly taking up space?

Maybe faerie glamours that make them moogles?

In a recent interview Yoshi mentioned how he wanted the mechanics in the savage tier to be more difficult but for the dps checks to be more lenient. This tier it definitely feels like you have to be playing your job at an incredibly optimized level to be able to hope for a clear on anything after the first fight. Was this intentional and should we expect this level of dps check going forward? The only fight last tier that felt this tight was final omega.

Why doesn’t Alphinaud learn anything a bit more than Carbuncles?

There are many who are unhappy with the healer classes in this expansion. Most of the lore is ruined for 2 of them, and the classes feel gutted in to many ways.

Will you address these issues support players are having, or backlog it till nex expansion?

Will Viera be getting the other race hair styles? Some of us paid for mog station hair and cant use it.

Scholar used to have as many damaging skills and tools to help do this in as they had healing skills 3.0. Ever since this has been skewed for more and more healing skills that is not needed except in a tiny portion of all the game has to offer playing as a healer. This has been the case for Ast and whm since their release. Can you please redesign all the healer jobs so they have their own unique ways to deal damage than one casted damage spell and one dot for when healing is not needed?

What happened to Heart of Sabik? It seems that it was not used again.

Since shadowbringers WHM and SCH have had the amount of damage actions reduced but we still have as much healing down time as ever so this down time has become VERY unenjoyable do you plan to make adjustments to this or will we have to wait until 6.0?

Will you consider improving the graphic visual for Despair? Many of us feel it animates far too quickly. It could also do with a more impactful sound.

Would you give consideration to one day adding a caster dps focused on Darkness (or "Void") aspected spells, or at least adding such spells to BLM's kit in the future, maybe inspired through interacting with an Ascian or powerful Voidsent? Something like a Void mage.

It was previously said that crafted accessories would not be as important in raid.
However, with the removal of time magic from AST that used to extend lucid dreaming and Ewer not regenerating mana anymore, we have to meld a lot more piety than

WHM who has:
-Assize: Additional Effect: Restores 5% of maximum MP (45s cd)
-Thin Air: Reduces MP cost of all spells by 100%. Duration: 12s (120s cd)
-Lucid Dreaming: Gradually restores own MP. Potency: 50 Duration: 21s (60s cd)

SCH who has:
-Aetherflow: Restores 10% of maximum MP. Additional Effect: Aetherflow III (60s cd)
-Energy Drain: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 150. Additional Effect: Absorbs a portion of damage dealt as HP and restores MP. Additional Effect: Increases Faerie Gauge by 10. Aetherflow Gauge Cost: 1 (3s cd)
-Lucid Dreaming: Gradually restores own MP. Potency: 50 Duration: 21s (60s cd)

Versus AST who has:
-Lightspeed: Reduces MP cost for spells by 50% and cast times for spells by 2.5 seconds. Duration: 15s (90s cd)
-Lucid Dreaming: Gradually restores own MP. Potency: 50 Duration: 21s (60s cd)

I personally had to meld enough to reach 2500 piety to feel comfortable in raids. I was under the impression that we wouldn't need pentamelds to participate, however wihtout pentamelds we just can't compete with the other healers who can freely only meld crit, sps, det or dh because they have no need for extra piety because they have an extra tool to regain mp. I know for a fact WHM and SCH can do fine in savage with 1400 piety and be fine. Why do we have to compensate for our missing mp regeneration ability by using crafted pentamelded gear to reach a similar level to WHM and SCH? And if they use the same gear they can meld even more crit etc than us because we just cannot regenerate mana as well.

Please explain your decision behind this.

All healers have some healing buffs available to them. However these aren't balanced, and I was under the impression that the reason we didn't get a new healer this expansion is because the healers needed balancing.

If this is true, then how come WHM is the only healer that has a buff to off general cooldown healing abilities?
Asylum: Envelops a designated area in a veil of succor, healing any party members who enter.
Cure Potency: 100
Duration: 24s
Additional Effect: Increases HP recovery via healing actions on party members in the designated area by 10%

By standing in this aoe, both SCH and AST benefit from it, however this is a great unbalance towards diurnal AST specifically because they cannot provide such a healing buff to ogcd abilies which are the bread and butter of both SCH and AST. SCH is safe because regardless of having AST or WHM they can only do shielding, but AST being able to do both cannot bring this extra healing buff to the party.

Is there any plan to adjust SCH and AST to receive a similar effect to Collective Unconscious and Sacred soil?