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

Firstly I want to say thank you for Shadowbringers. I know most of my posts in the forums are to highlight issues, but I adore the expansion, I love the story, characters, presentation, atmosphere, music, content (you made all dungeons engaging, all trials engaging, extreme was fun and Eden is great), so I figure y'all deserve a lot of recognition here.

But my question is, could there be better communication between players and dev? I feel like you guys do a lot of work and put a lot of effort in, I think it shows when it you do live letters and talk about the game, this is a project of passion.

But we know the healer community is disgruntled, I figure communication back on the issues may help alleviate any tension or complaints if they feel the concerns are in consideration. Heck, I'd be cool if SE ran a survey so healers could provide useful feedback if that helped the developers out in some way.

Can we please get orchestrion rolls for the Everlasting Light theme of Eulmore and Kholusia?

At the 2018 North American Fanfest in Las Vegas, one of the slides mentioned that in Shadowbringers it would be "time once and for all to take down the Garlean Empire". Yet the 5.0 main scenario had very little to do with the Empire at all. I'm curious if this is still planned to be part of the story in the 5.X patch series, or if the slide was an intentional misdirection.

will new game + make it possible to challenge Tataru in Tripple Triad again? I still need the Firion and Lightning cards in my collection, but the platinum booster packs only keep dropping Shiva and Lahabrea so far, and I have pretty much no chance in actually getting to the top 3 in the tournaments...

Whilst we await further news on the future of the missing genders in relation to the new races, I was curious if there was any fan art of male Viera and female Hrothgar that stood out to you or which you found particularly good/close to how you'd imagine them? Or does your own proprietary concept art (e.g. of Ronso females, or the pre-Heavensward FATE artwork of male Viera) still represent the most faithful representation in your eyes?

I know a lot of people want a new support class, I don't know a lot about the FF world but I know there's a Green Mage that from what I gather, seems to be a melee support, using maces and is native to Viera whom we've just received, they could prove very interesting melee-support type jobs.

Not all supports need to be mage healers, right? So, do you have any plans for the release of a Green Mage?

For Scholars, since Consolation and Fey Blessing are never available at the same time, can you make them share a button?

Encounter design has kept healers mostly using offensive skills, because for skilled players there is so little healing to do most of the time, but those offensive skills are few and monotonous. Would you consider trying to make playing as a healer less boring?

Making Faerie skills player OGCDs introduced extra delays in their activation, especially with Fey Blessing, which can take 5 seconds to activate. Could you reintroduce the pet action cast system; and, why did you take it away?

By the time there is a reason to use the second charge of Consolation, Seraph is usually gone and it feels very bad and clunky. Can we have a system where Seraph spends the Faerie gauge instead? Perhaps with healing Aetherflow actions increasing the Faerie gauge by 20 instead of 10, so we can switch between Seraph and Fey Union.

The entire first part of the Dragoon quests make no sense depending on when you do them. Will a different storyline be implemented for this?

Since apparently most people in the Audience on this side of things just dont seem to understand what this Q&A actually is.Gamescom (stylized as gamescom) is a trade fair for video games held annually at the Koelnmesse in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Since 2018, it has been organised by game – Verband der deutschen Games-Branche; and before that, by the Bundesverband Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware (BIU) (English: Association of the German video game industry).Until 2008, it was held in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany. Gamescom is used by many video game developers to exhibit upcoming games and game-related hardware.

Thus to be the bearer of bad news but Not a one of your healer or pixel related questions will not be addressed in the Q&A (No matter how many upvotes you get for them) and alot of you are being beyond antagonistic and disrespectful in the tone and line of your questioning in the first place.(Remember there are people on the other end of the screen that read these too) The questions that will get answered here in the Q&A are lore , world development, new characters and features.

Now that that little bit is out of the way here is my question.



Q:Now that you've shown a way to save the first and the source of the light. Would Eden be feasible to bring back stability to the 13th and if so what effect would that entail on the source would it stabilize the source or make the threat of an accidental rejoining if so.

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Originally Posted by kidalutz

Since apparently most people in the Audience on this side of things just dont seem to understand what this Q&A actually is.Gamescom (stylized as gamescom) is a trade fair for video games held annually at the Koelnmesse in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Since 2018, it has been organised by game – Verband der deutschen Games-Branche; and before that, by the Bundesverband Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware (BIU) (English: Association of the German video game industry).Until 2008, it was held in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany. Gamescom is used by many video game developers to exhibit upcoming games and game-related hardware.

Thus to be the bearer of bad news but Not a one of your healer or pixel related questions will not be addressed in the Q&A (No matter how many upvotes you get for them) and alot of you are being beyond antagonistic and disrespectful in the tone and line of your questioning in the first place.(Remember there are people on the other end of the screen that read these too) The questions that will get answered here in the Q&A are lore , world development, new characters and features.

Now that that little bit is out of the way here are my questions.

Q1:I absolutely adore Ryne but I'm hoping that somehow there's a way that she can join us all back on the source will this be possible and will Gaia be our enemy or ally in the future of the game.

Q2:Now that you've shown a way to save the first and the source of the light. Would Eden be feasible to bring back stability to the 13th and if so what effect would that entail on the source would it stabilize the source or make the threat of an accidental rejoining if so.

Q3:Now one of the biggest questions I have is New Game + will there be anything new or different in store for those of us that take this feature and follow it through back to current endgame?

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Mimimimi "not to be the bearer of bad news", but they don't answer multiple questions found in the same post, your post will be ignored anyways. As will mine~

But I'll post a question anyways to stay on topic:

Question: Why is there still not any form of Public Test Server to test the bigger changes you make to this game? It is clear from battle classes you have made many changes that have upset your playerbase, stabbing in the dark is only going to get you so far, you need to start letting your fanbase know you are listening to us, less via the Live letters but also through the forums, the outrage on certain parts on here being ignored is crazy.

Now that the Additional/Role Action system has been essentially reworked, is there any chance that old ability animations (such as Leeches, Exalted Detriment, Shadowskin, Foresight, Shroud of Saints, Luminiferous Aether, etc.) could be returned to the game? It helped give jobs a unique aesthetic and identity.

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Originally Posted by Knoahl

Mimimimi "not to be the bearer of bad news", but they don't answer multiple questions found in the same post, your post will be ignored anyways. As will mine~

But I'll post a question anyways to stay on topic:

Question: Why is there still not any form of Public Test Server to test the bigger changes you make to this game? It is clear from battle classes you have made many changes that have upset your playerbase, stabbing in the dark is only going to get you so far, you need to start letting your fanbase know you are listening to us, less via the Live letters but also through the forums, the outrage on certain parts on here being ignored is crazy.

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Solved through editing

With Shadowbringers we finally learned the reason why each umbral calamity is aspected to an element, is there a reason why all of them so far have been different elements or is it just coincidence that we haven't had two (for example) earth aspected calamities?

• With the launch of Shadowbringers, we have seen an increase in players, directly affecting the housing market on populated servers. Are there plans to extend the wards, or redo the housing system so everyone has the opportunity to have his own place?
• Are we going to see Addon support any time soon?
• Everyone has a Chocobo in this game, but outside the open world combat during leveling, there's very little use for our feathery friend. Are there any plans to open up sidequests that involve our Chocobo's to unlock minigames, rewards or special content?
• We're 2019, approaching 2020, yet our game seems to be the only one still running single server instances. Are there plans to change data-centers into a single server at least to address load and balance issues between servers?

The Warrior of light has been seen as an Archer, Warrior, Dragoon, Monk, Samurai and Dark Night, that makes it 2x Tank and 4x DPS. Is there any chance for the WoL to represent us healers on future expansions?

There's an important line that we'd like to confirm the implications of, because the wording is a bit ambiguous.

Emet-Selch remarks that we are of the Source, "seven times rejoined".

Is he talking about our soul, or only the world?

If our soul has been rejoined, does that mean everyone on the Source has been rejoined to another soul-fragment with each Calamity, or are we (and perhaps other specific characters) special in some way?

Does the term "Ascian" refer to all members of the ancient race, or only the specific group who summoned Zodiark?

Did the Ancients really look the way that we see them in Emet-Selch's illusion, or is he making them look different (more ghostly?) for "dramatic effect"?

Did the Ascians we've met once look and sound the same way that the Amaurotines we encounter in Emet-Selch's illusion do, complete with white masks and gray robes?

Can we please have an Amaurotine minion so we can be the giants instead?

When we see Emet-Selch's recreation of Amaurot, both the dungeon and walking around the Tempest, there are some very specific events that occur. Whether it's the disaster at Akademia Anyder or coming across specific corpses during the Terminus event, are these all things that Emet-Selch directly, personally witnessed? If so, does that mean he and the other Ascians had to fight the First Beast, the Terminus Bellwether, and Therion?

Can the West also get their hands on DoH/DoL glamours please?

Any plans on getting a new engine?

Can you please explain the naming conventions for Mystel?

(It would be great to get notes for all the First races like we have for the Source, but Mystel is the hardest one to understand without an explanation.)

The Warrior of Light (and occasionally Darkness) has had a variety of jobs in trailers. Whether as healer or caster DPS, would SE ever consider making the main job for an expansion a magic user of some sort? Sometimes it feels like magic users get seen as supporting cast rather than the main hero, and it would be very exciting to see the midlander from the trailers throwing spells!

I know the answer to this will likely just be "Spoilers!" buuuut... Also, I'm not sure its necessary, but:

SPOILERS FOR SHADOWBRINGERS BELOW



When Hythlodaeus speaks to us, he concludes the scene by referring to our original soul. Why does the gender he uses change depending on the gender of the player character? Isn't the original Amaurotine we come from a predetermined character in the story, thus also with a predetermined gender (among other traits)?

MOAR SPOILERS BELOW (???)


Are there any cleverly hidden hints in-game about the identity of our original soul, beyond the Hythlodeus conversation and the moment Emet-Selch sees us, that players should be on the lookout for? I do love seeing the community investigate the lore together. :)

Did the Exarch stop physically aging when he merged with the Crystal Tower?

Will you consider retroactively adding in NPCs, either decorative or functional, to the Eorzean city-states to make them feel as diverse and alive as those cities on the First?

Will the Redbills come back?

I absolutely loved Natsuko Ishikawa's work this expansion! Will we see more of her involvement in storylines across the MSQ and game as a whole alongside Oda-san?

Did the Allagans actually "build" Syrcus Tower, or did the crystal spire already exist?

Can we get to flirt with the Crystal Exarch?

Could you please kill off Alisaie?

Alphinaud must go first

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Originally Posted by PondHollow

Could you please kill off Alisaie?

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Can we please keep both of the Leveilleur twins around for the duration of the story? Thank you.

I am a HUGE!!!! Fan of the game and am so incredibly in love with this expansion and the new races added! Especially the Viera as I have been waiting for so long (like many others) for them to be playable. I know you said you will be adding more hair for Viera in future updates and you specifically stated that they will be “race-specific” but will we also get the hairstyles that are unlockable through events, deep dungeon, pvp, eureka, gold saucer, and Mogstation for the viera race?
I worked extremely hard on farming for these hairstyles whether it was to buy them with hard earned Gil or spending hours/days farming for them to drop I would love to see these styles especially a chosen few on my viera as I have envisioned her with certain current hairstyles since there announcement and she now feels incomplete without the hair I had in mind for her. I don’t mind waiting for hair to be added I just would like to know if these unlockable hair options will be available for viera to use in the future.
Thank you again for this incredible game!