Letter from the Producer, XXIX (06/04/2012)

I am surprised at some of the answers especially the repair one.

The repair system is convoluted and sometimes taking like 4 crafts just to repair your gear. Thats the problem with these polls. I voted that any craft should be able to repair any gear. Only taking feedback from current players really isn't the way to go.

Having to have 4 different crafts to repair gear is like one of the little things that would keep people from playing FFXIV. Its too complicated and takes way more effort then people are willing to put forth. Most MMOs you get some cheap repairs from a NPC then your done. Not FFXIV its really expensive from NPC or you have to afk in town find 3-4 people to repair your stuff or 1 person that has everything leveled.

This whole Viera war is turning into some sort of odd racism fight. People like it and happy to see it and other are like no you're wrong for liking that you have issues. So what if they are happy to see it all you are doing is enticing them to act out because of how much it bothers you. If you don't like just ignore it, races are a means to add more variety to the game, if you don't like the bunny race don't play it, but don't just go well they shouldn't put it into the game cause I don't approve. It's just being ignorant lol.

Hopefully the GMs step up at some point and stop this dumb bickering since it is quite annoying to see.
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In an attempt to go back on topic, I'm not sure how I feel about the responses in the letter, it came off more as "we see what people are asking for and will act accordingly" There wasn't any real insight over things like class or races just well these classes are popular and the bunny race seems popular cause we used it as an example. Also the French seem to like the reptilian race lol.

To me the responses for the classes should have at least been more involved, I feel the question to add a class unrelated to the above ex musketeer/arithmetician is a flawed question since each person can view the class in a different way. One person may have selected Musketeer for the idea that it would be a high delay range class with the ability to ignore defense. Another may have picked it for it's 100% accuracy high dmg capabilities but lacking in the combo department. The issue is we have no idea what route they would take with these above jobs.

When it comes to Arithmetician the idea is usually based on if it's divisible by x but in a battle setup I'm concerned over how useful that would be. If an ability was like "divisible by 2" Players with current HP 2 are effected by this AOE then you only have a 50% chance to land a buff, though of course it would most likely start at 10, then 5, 3 and 2 So an arithmetician prolly won't be effective til higher lvs since it's % to land effects would be low til it obtains divisible by 2.

Though that's of course if that's what they base it on, they could also base arith, on the concept that they are able to enhance the effects of abilities through math!.

At least with the other 4 options you can have a general idea of what one may get but still not the full answer. I just feel a question like this should have used a better example rather then listing classes, like maybe an idea for an ability or two with how they would work, or to list an example of which series they would take the job concept from. Since some jobs/classes can vary from game to game it's really hard to define what route they would take. You may have liked the way NIN worked in one game over another, but what if they used the NIN concept from a game in which you didn't like how NIN was executed.

When it comes to the synth question I hope they don't cave in and make lving synth classes easier since the way it stands now is perfect to allow the proper amount of people to synth. Synthing shouldn't be something everyone can pickup as easily as leveling a class since it's a task which allows one to have more variety in the way they can impact the economy. if you make it to easy to lv then everyone will have crafts at 50 and then everyone will just make things for themselves rather then buying things through the market. The funny thing about this ques though is if it were asked again I'm sure the answers would change completely.

With the recent changes I find "The process if complicated", "It's too hard to level up" and "Synthesis abilities have no impact" are no longer an issue. The complicated aspect comes from the older more cumber stone synthesis process. Since things have sped up I feel that isn't much of an issue anymore. When it comes to this recipes I feel that all recipes should have a 3x method to them since it can become tedious to make materials one at a time when it's a 1=1 ratio. Maybe when the 2.0 build comes in they'll be able to allow more spaces to increases the amount we can make per synth at the risk of a tougher synth such as.

Say I want to make lv 10 recommended logs into lumber, so using a single log would be 10, if I want to make 3 it would be 15, 6 would be 20, 9 would be 25 and 12 would be 30. Basically the "challenge" lv of the synth would go up +5 levels when you attempt to make more per synth so that one can't simply hasty hand their way into making a bunch of mahogany lumber since at 6 lumber attempts it would be over 50+ lv to synth.

Based on omitting those three though, the main issues I see are, "Recipes are to complicated", "I want more powerful items" and "There isn't enough game content". With these three answers though coming from the start the recipes are fine as is, so it's odd people still find them to be complicated unless they are including the older recipes in this question.

Having more items would be nice, it feels like the people who selected this option are the ones that ignore the older recipes in favor of the newer ones. Then of course not enough content which is where it really needs to most ficing. The aspect of lving up won't be an issue if more content is added, as it stands now the content can mainly come down to Hamlet, Leves and just synthing. Leves offer free materials to synthesis with and no crystal investment, in return you obtain materials, crystals and gil for the quality you turn in. But I can understand why people would want more ways to level up since the above method can become tedious after while. Though unlike a job there isn't much to do when you hit the cap other then assist with Hamlet and make the class only gear lol. Maybe meld materia here and there but with the risk involved it's not exactly the most popular thing around.

With the hopes of the future of DoH I am hoping to see confirmation that you can only take one up 50+ which should be an issue since if people really want to have all crafts capped they can just make another character since you are allowed up to 8 per server and there are 8 crafts. It would just take a lot of time lol. I'm hoping in the future we'll see unique recipes which you have to "level up" in order to use, perhaps a concept in which you can only memorize a set of recipes so that crafters would have to show more dedication over their focus rather then being able to make everything, if they can branch out crafters to make them more unique from one another it should help to make it a more fun experience.

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DoL question intrigued be compared to DoH a lot of people seem to want to gather, since compared to DoH it's pretty much pickup and profit meanwhile with DoH you also have to synth to profit and even if you synth said product it may sell for less then the materials because it's a level up synth.

Again with DoL I feel the same way as I did with DoH the lveling up factor should be hard, to make it easier would create to many gatherers unless you branch out DoL in a way in which you can only learn to gather certain items. Since as it stands now it only takes 3 gatherers to gather a good bit of materials for all crafts minus those using hides and such but if the process of lving becomes to easy then the market would be to flooded with materials. Granted I know there's a fatigue when gathering but it's threshold is pretty high that a normal person gathering will prolly never see it.

The answer I wish was higher up on the list is "not enough materials to gather" cause honestly if you look at the gathering list each area has 4-7 items(main nodes) which really isn't a lot of items to gather per area. more variety would be nice to at least attempt to reduce the amount of certain "rare materials" that enter the market. I also feel like gather abilities don't have much impact should have been a higher answer since those abilities don't do jack and you can only have one active at a time from what I've seen. So even though you can equip 8, if you only want x ability then you'll only have one ability equipped at any given time which really kills the variety of the class. Hopefully in that respects 2.0 will offer more abilities that can be used while gathering rather then them being passive abilities that only activated whenever they feel like it.

I'm really holding out that since they want to release 2.0 info in a flood they'll give us an idea of what they plan to do with DoH/DoL since I"m really curious to see how they plan on overhauling gathering for 2.0. I could honestly care less about the other content atm while I am curious about everything else I'm most intrigued by how they plan on making gathering a more dynamic event.

The concept of gathering materia catalyst from nodes was a decent start but it is bare bones at best as to what they can do when it comes to gathering. I'll hold my tongue as to what I'd like to see them do in this respect and just hold out with the hope that they will give us some info when E3 closes and the site for 2.0 opens up.

Holy shit.. dude.. whats that wall of text? im not reading that. XD

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Originally Posted by Nero

Holy shit.. dude.. whats that wall of text? im not reading that. XD

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Yoshi-P will be suing him for breach of his super long post copyright.

Don't know if it has already been said, but just to get me haypenny out there:

"In contrast with other MMORPGs, I’m seeing a trend towards…shall we say, FF-ness? Ours being a Japanese game, the result seems to tell us that players are prioritizing cuteness, something which I noted with great interest."

I'm okay with a little cute here and there (mog-fists), but I also like the realistic look of the game, the bad-assery that is certain primal wepons, etc. etc. Let's not turn this into Maplestory 2 ^^;

Also, threads like these get way too many posts for me to keep up, so no offense if I don't post anymore.

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Originally Posted by Nero

Did you just volunteer for another Pic.? XD

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LOL sure, when S-E approaches me to model for the next race

Not terribly thrilled about the job poll, but... I guess when there was only one magic class on the list I should have expected that I wasn't going to like the results. Namedropping Musketeer in the last option probably didn't help. If the first batch of new jobs doesn't include at least a couple mage jobs to fix the imbalance I'm going to be pretty unhappy.

Also hugely surprised at the lack of love for Red Mage, but at least Red Mage beat Dark Knight in terms of enfeebling classes.

That said, I don't think this was a bad list to be picking from. My desire for more mage classes aside, the jobs I would like to see coming to FFXIV first are the jobs that FFXI "screwed up"... in terms of their mechanics/role not really fitting with their original concept. And that turns out to basically be Red Mage, Ninja, probably Summoner. I think the FFXIV folks could do a *much* better job of making versions of these classes that actually play the way you'd expect that job concept to play.

If the new batch of jobs was Ninja, Red Mage, Summoner + some "new" (non-FFXI) back line magey class (possibly one of the Arcanist --> Time Mage or Geomancer or Scholar ideas) I would be quite satisfied with that. That'd have a good mix of front line and back line, and while Summoner is more of a pet class than a mage class you'd at least 3 thematically magical classes so it'd fix that imbalance a little. After that, then yeah, Musketeer (possibly as a class with Ranger as a job?) would totally be next on the list.

Don't know why this was cut into 2 letters, the info isn't exactly mind blowing

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Originally Posted by LlenCoram

Musketeer came in second. I've officially lost all faith in this fanbase.

Now, if you'll excuse me... (don't let them see you cry) I just... have to (don't let them)....

...

;____; I hate you guys!

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Dont cry, im sad too i was hoping to see ranger, besides you might make me cry too... too late ;______; i hate you!!!

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Originally Posted by syntaxlies

Don't know why this was cut into 2 letters, the info isn't exactly mind blowing

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But it's a large volume of words, however. And... Four? languages to be translated to that had to be simulposted. So he most probably was, in fact, just giving the loc team a breather

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Originally Posted by Zaaku

No tails no care.

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Maybe you have some luck and a Roegadyn-Miqo'te race is coming ^^

And about the bunny discussion. I see Viera just as a mentioned example for Mammalian demi-beastmen. Instead of a bunny race they can bring a rat race, too
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cqAKUPFDtl...2Bcrescent.jpg
They would be a good additions for the Miqo'tes ^^

Glad about some of the results. Not glad about Viera, Miqo'te are already filling the "cute animal eared girl" and Elezen fill the "tall slender woman" slot, and I think half breeds would bring more to the table. People want their fanservice though, although I should say 27% voting for Viera means 73% voted for something besides them. I hope they don't actually put Viera in though, besides creating a nightmare continuity-wise it'd show some pandering to the more furry inclined people in the audience, which is never a good direction to go into for a mass market game.

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Originally Posted by Felis

Maybe you have some luck and a Roegadyn-Miqo'te race is coming ^^

And about the bunny discussion. I see Viera just as a mentioned example for Mammalian demi-beastmen. Instead of a bunny race they can bring a rat race, too
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cqAKUPFDtl...2Bcrescent.jpg
They would be a good additions for the Miqo'tes ^^

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Rat people! I liked Freya in FFIX

I just want my Redmage mixed with a pet class and I'll be fine.

*naive person*

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Originally Posted by Elexia

Remember? "The majority of the playerbase posts on the FFXIV forums, they should listen to our every demands anyone who says otherwise is a troll." Always can count on yoshiP to shut these people up.



Not even close, WHM/CNJ doesn't come even an iota close to what a SCH is. Tell me when WHM/CNJ gains Scan, Helicies, spells to control weather based effects and gives you weather benefits as well as buffing your stats based on weather spells, can enhance every spell they own through job abilities (WHM/CNJ/THM can't) have dual stances that enhances a school of magic (they don't, considering the current stances are limited in nature) oh and has the ability to give you multiple buffs in 1 spell as well as extending duration of everything from buffs to debuffs.

Yeah, SCH is a different job from WHM/CNJ.



No, it would mean when it's balanced, they're still doing balance adjustments.

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Sch could be a healer, or DD at the same time, like Red Mage. The abilities are different at the moment, but essentially are the same.

Whm/Cjn in this game can enfeeble, damage deal, and heal. Besides the weapons they will hardly be different. Sch could make their buffs aoe as well, but so could Cjn/Thm when the game was released. Now buffs are generally aoes and Cjn/whm gets Sacred Prism, an aoe to enhancing or healing magic. It's almost Identical in certain ways.

Just saying that they would only have 15 abilities to make Rdm/sch/whm vastly different from each other, including blm in terms of spells that damage. Otherwise we go back to square one where Thm/Cjn were the same class.

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Originally Posted by Felis

Maybe you have some luck and a Roegadyn-Miqo'te race is coming ^^

And about the bunny discussion. I see Viera just as a mentioned example for Mammalian demi-beastmen. Instead of a bunny race they can bring a rat race, too
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cqAKUPFDtl...2Bcrescent.jpg
They would be a good additions for the Miqo'tes ^^

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Oh my, I can imagine the type of games to be had between the Burmecians and the Miqo'te.

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Originally Posted by Fated

Keep talking like your opinion matters.

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Oh, he will.

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Originally Posted by Jinrya-Geki

Sch could be a healer, or DD at the same time, like Red Mage. The abilities are different at the moment, but essentially are the same.

Whm/Cjn in this game can enfeeble, damage deal, and heal. Besides the weapons they will hardly be different. Sch could make their buffs aoe as well, but so could Cjn/Thm when the game was released. Now buffs are generally aoes and Cjn/whm gets Sacred Prism, an aoe to enhancing or healing magic. It's almost Identical in certain ways.

Just saying that they would only have 15 abilities to make Rdm/sch/whm vastly different from each other, including blm in terms of spells that damage. Otherwise we go back to square one where Thm/Cjn were the same class.

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WHM mainly buffs healing and enhancing magic, but not attack, because that is not thier focus, also (I could be wrong here) but thier attack magic stat is not great because thier attack magic is mainly for soloing (how many WHMs nuke endgame) while yes buffs are mainly AoE so thats not such a big thing with SCH, in FFXI at least they were militery tacticions if this carried on into FFXIV there are many ways they could show this role with stratagems etc and access to both CON and THM actions, as well as SCH only actions that are in line with a militery tacticion. There is alot SE can do here.

Best result out of this poll: Only 38% of subscribers ever post on these forums at all.

Can we finally stop using phrases like "everyone wants ____" or "Everyone is tired of ____", or "the majority of people _____" etc, etc.

how about male rabbits O.o

Have they considered a race of Qu? As in Quina Quen? Giant tongued "s/he" running around with bistro forks.

Yummy yummies!

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Originally Posted by Dragonheart

bunny and cat people what next? bear? doggy? uhm..

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Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!

Yoshida...

If you want people to use the forums more extensively and blogs you need to make these things AVAILABLE IN-GAME!!!

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Originally Posted by Agoven

Yoshida...

If you want people to use the forums more extensively and blogs you need to make these things AVAILABLE IN-GAME!!!

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thatd be interesting, people afk in game for hours writing their blog...in game

twitching, twitching, twitching while waiting for it to get read by others

Pop-up in-game email/blogs/forum windows. Doesn't need to take up whole screen.

Actually, FFXIV could steal some ideas from .Hack series...it did some things very well...G.U. series Guild Houses, The way they implemented some questing via NPC desk....among many other things...the game shows really how to create a MMO that is single player friendly.

I don't use forums often so bear with me, but I felt this had to be said somewhere. Reference Crafting and Gathering classes and content: I had the feeling when I came to 14 that finally here was a game that was going to crack the "fighting only" nut. Its a toughie I can imagine, but I thought I saw some opportunities that were not being used.
For instance, the problem of Gathering being "inherently a simple thing" need not be. Materials for the game drop from each beastie we hit over the knoggin, so the gatherer is a bit redundant, dont you think? Also, our inventory overflows with untargeted material after only one gathering run. So what if the game structure made it less possible to get say cotton off an unrelated creature. Cotton grows on bushes not in a sheep's stomach. We have Goblins and Quirin in many places who are non-aggressive, and at impressive levels. What if the Gatherer could develop skills to parley with them to clear an area whilst we gather there? No battle involved there, but high level areas accessible. Then you could make those areas destinations for peculiar materials.
Same with Crafting. Let the Crafter be privy to areas not accessible with the sword by virtue of their bargining skills and let us use lets say a Beastman's forge, or borrow an elemental's fire, or something like that. These skills and peculiarities could be worked into the story or better yet into the world scene.
As far as speed of leveling goes, my only thought for crafting leveling would be to make the desired leves more accessible. I can't even say how often I have come into the game saying "Today I'm going to focus on Leather," only to have no leves available for that craft:( What do you do then? Well, you sort of pull out your bow and shoot something, no?
Anyway, hope these ideas help. I love the game. Just please don't forget us Crafters and Gatherers.

I wonder how they will handle the new classes. I mean, will it be the same way as now ? With some basic classes (which don't have much to do with the classical classes of FF) which can be upgraded into jobs well known, or will they directly add some well known classes upgradable as others well known classes. For a Dark Knight job a base classe such as Knight (they are talking of Knights in the paladin first quests) could be upgraded with enfeebling magic to make a Dark Knight, for the Red Mage, a fencer class, oriented melee magical attacks (using both mp and tp, as some of the old attacks which disappeared), could be upgraded using a Red Mage job.
The problem with poll is that they are nice, it's true, but they doesn't give any real informations, yes people would like something or something, but it doesn't tell us what will be done. Reading at those results I feel like the dev team doesn't really know where she is going, it worries me a little.

I was wondering whatever happened to Musketeer and Arcanist.

I want me some guns!

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Originally Posted by Rosalie

I was wondering whatever happened to Musketeer and Arcanist.

I want me some guns!

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Preach it sister! Let's get some firearms up in dis!