Ask Questions for Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XLII! (Exploring Patch 4.2)

When will we be able to gather peaches and what other types of fruit are in the works?

When will we get more info about Egi Glamors? Will they just be more coloured carbuncles or will we actually get other primals as Egi's?

When will you guys finally answer questions/give us more details about Eureka?

Will we still see a new Deep Dungeon for Stormblood or is that getting dropped for Eureka?

Same question for Diadem.

These were both fun alternatives to the usual dungeon grind and they are desperately needed right now to maintain interest. Hopefully the rewards will be viable beyond the first week of their release.

Can Diadem rewards become more relevant, and entry easier?

In the end people run what they think will get them good rewards. (No one really runs leveling roulette because it's fun, but because of the experience, for example. Even for new content, once the newness wears off, they are run for gear, which are rewards.) The key problem with Diadem isn't a lack of fun as there are people out there who do enjoy completing fates that have clearly defined progression for a mission, but a lack of comparable rewards for the time spent, especially once the special mount & minion have been purchased.

I do see people in Diadem every time I go. I'd see more if more people had an incentive to go and if it was easier to get in. As it is, a lot of newer people forget diadem even exists because when they unlocked it and tried they weren't able to get in and put it aside.

Will we ever see changes to hunts in general or will you only add one S per zone and a bunch of A's and B's for the rest of the expansion? Why is hunting seemingly an aspect of the game that gets no recognition at all?

While it's probably not your focus at all there's still a strong community for hunts. But while you make changes for probably every aspect in the game over the whole expansion I've never seen you make new hunts or changes at all. It's a core mechanic you seemingly lost interest in once the expansion was released and yet hundreds if not thousands participate in spawning, searching and finally killing hunts every single day. There is no official support and we rely on a third-party website to keep track of hunts.

Some hunts are also neither fun nor interesting to spawn. Please Square don't forget a part of a community in your game just because we might be the minority. It would be refreshing to see changes or additional content for the hunting community.

Are there any quality of life changes planned for machinist? It is well balanced with the other DPS jobs now, but there are some things that make it annoying to play.

Patch 4.06 made machinist rely more on burst damage with overheat, but max damage requires precise timing that is difficult or impossible above 100-150 ms ping. Making things worse, Flamethrower's timing is inconsistent, and it sometimes gets used without adding any heat. Also, if you try to use Split/Slug/Clean Shot as your last attack during Wildfire and overheat ends at the same time, instead of using an unheated shot, the game will try to use a heated shot, but then it will cancel your attack completely because you no longer have heat.

There are also players who feel the heat mechanic isn't very fun since patch 4.06. Heat rises so slowly and you have to overheat with every Wildfire, so you often never need to use Cooldown to manage it. Can you give machinists something interesting to do between Wildfires?

Can individuals who own housing finally be able to be granted access to workshops so as to be able to make airships/submarines? One of the reasons so many shell free companies exist is because individuals are locked out of these features that tend to have exclusive items locked behind them and most free companies only allow a certain amount of people to enjoy these features.

Can we get an option to go onto the balcony that is found on Mansions? Given the door inside the mansion and the one on the balcony, it looks like it's designed for that to be possible but it's not possible without use of placement glitches.

Even just an option when you interact with the front door to "Move to Balcony" would be hugely appreciated.

While the fights within 4.2 have been well received, I can't help but feel like FFXIV is losing it's identity as being a seperate Final Fantasy title, and is instead learning towards simply being a celebration of all other Final Fantasy games instead. This isn't bad when it's done in moderation, but when the current raid tier is entirely based on other Final Fantasy games, I feel like it gets in the way of 14 developing it's own identity.

Obviously this can't be stopped with how Return to Ivalice and Omega are currently proceeding but, from 5.0 onwards, is there any chance of returning to giving 14 an identity of it's own again? Perhaps having raid tiers with fights that are relevant to the MSQ (attacking Garlemald for example), or just being a seperate story as usual but with 100% original bosses and content for 14?

Do you have any plans to ever add new slots for specific types of glamour?

For instance, I would like to be able to wear certain types of glasses in a 'Face Slot', while still being able to wear hats in the 'Head Slot'.

Another suggestion drawn from other MMOs might be a 'Back Slot', for things like capes, wings etc.

Probably a bit too difficult to add such things at this point but I would definitely be very happy if it could happen.

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Originally Posted by DarienChiba

On Ragnarok there is a well known Free Company that has been bragging and sharing that they own 37 player houses to supporting their raiding. They even shared an image on Twitter about how they own almost an entire ward in Shirogane. Is it possible to forcibly remove these houses and allow other FC's obtain them?

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this absolutely needs to be brought up. Something needs to be done about shell FCs owning several homes.

Hello! As a Culinarian, I was so excited to see the culinary wonders of Doma and Gyr Albania. And yet, a lot of the recipes seem Hingian in nature, even if the materials are from mostly Doma and Gyr Albania. What gives?

Oh and by the way, since you guys don't get praise a lot, I'm having a lot of fun with 4.2 and the new trials and dungeons! Good work and good job!

Its clear you had certain goals in mind for the 4.2 housing release. Do you think the changes you made were effective in meeting those goals? Based on what you've seen so far do you think you'll continue with your current plans or revisit them for a different solution?

I wish there was an in game voice chat system. At the moment in order to talk to our party in raids we must use third party services such as Discord. It could be opt in similar to the new recording system where everyone has to agree to use it. Of course there should be a mute and ban system for this just in case. Will anything like this ever be added to the game.

What can be done to prevent RMT sales of Raid content in Party Finder?

These groups use Duty Roulette as a way to be visible at the top of the list.

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Originally Posted by Luna_Li

Will we ever see changes to hunts in general or will you only add one S per zone and a bunch of A's and B's for the rest of the expansion? Why is hunting seemingly an aspect of the game that gets no recognition at all?

While it's probably not your focus at all there's still a strong community for hunts. But while you make changes for probably every aspect in the game over the whole expansion I've never seen you make new hunts or changes at all. It's a core mechanic you seemingly lost interest in once the expansion was released and yet hundreds if not thousands participate in spawning, searching and finally killing hunts every single day. There is no official support and we rely on a third-party website to keep track of hunts.

Some hunts are also neither fun nor interesting to spawn. Please Square don't forget a part of a community in your game just because we might be the minority. It would be refreshing to see changes or additional content for the hunting community.

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Adding to this:

The Hunt Community, or the Spawn & Theorycraft Community to be more clear, has given many many suggestions as to how The Hunt could be improved or how it could be made more challenging, simplified in some cases because some triggers are too heavily RNG based or any of that sort.

As Luna said, we may be a minority, and there are many who even take the work of the spawners for granted - and the time that goes into theorycrafting and testing out every last bit of a spawn is immense.

So:
Could you take some notes from the Hunt Community to make some improvements and recognize that we are in fact a part of the game?
For example: Adjust the health & strength of S Ranks to the amount of players present, or have them be scaling like FATEs do. Sprouts and New Players that run through a A or S Rank die anyway - we then explain it to them and more than once the reaction was: "Oh cool, can't wait to get to a higher level to beat them too!" - so there's no excuse naming that. More than once they even fight with us even though they don't really get a reward other than beating up a huge monster.

Make S Ranks more challenging and not a one minute or even a few seconds fight if enough players smash theirs skills on them.
We get stronger and stronger with each cycle - don't let this be a thing you just feed with new Hunts for new Areas in new Expansions and ignore it the rest of the time.

Lately, there’s been discrimination against those who choose to play SAM for end game raiding. I had an instance where a party had removed me from an O6S weekly clear group just because of the class I choose to play even though all criteria in their party finder had been met.

Is there anything in the works to retool all classes so that they’re balanced? It’s been such a pain to go through this with each and every raid tier beginning with 2.X, and the idea of “balancing” is not living up to what you explain it to be. Just because SAM can’t buff the party should not mean that it isn’t viable for raiding. Unless you’re one of those people constantly checking FFLogs just to see where you rank, a decent party comp with good variety is more than enough to get through most content. But this game is community based, and sadly the community perception is going to discriminate against players who just want to get through content like everyone else, but can’t because of this.

I'm sure it has been mentioned several times already, but could we please get a comment and action on the group who used loopholes and abused the housing system to buy up nearly an entire ward?

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Originally Posted by Altanas

The most redundant part of patches feels to be Dungeons. They are seldom talked about in live letters nor by the community. The community discuss and make guides for Trials and Raids not for Dungeons... The draw of a patch is never a dungeon... Hells Lid felt forced and copy paste of Sohm Al Hard's lava area...

Why not go with only one dungeon every patch and instead release an extra Raid floor or an extra Trial?

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They've already said they're going going to be doing two dungeon patches every only every other cycle so they can focus on the other content.

What are the chances of a legacy server with 1.23b that would reset periodically (every year)?
Yes I know that was a "failure" and the game was once given a chance to be revived, but that was back when it was fresh in the current players' minds.

This, instead, would be for people who've joined FF14 more recently and are curious what it was like (at its best), and because we're all aware that it had issues, our expectations would be low and just "for fun". It'd be great if it was like a temporary server and based on how many achievements were acquired, it'd give real rewards to claim when the server rest. Think of it like a PVE version of "seasons".

Some players are worried additional Wardrobe space or Glamour Plates will be purchased through Mogstation, can you briefly confirm or deny this?

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Originally Posted by DarienChiba

On Ragnarok there is a well known Free Company that has been bragging and sharing that they own 37 player houses to support their raiding. They even shared an image on Twitter about how they own almost an entire ward in Shirogane. Is it possible to forcibly remove these houses and allow other FC's obtain them?

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Keep in mind its 37 (service accounts) FC not 1. Granted they are affiliated with each other but the plots were relocated and not purchased with 4.2 update.

Is it really that hard to tie one house to one IP address? You change the rules, they work around them, screwing over the rest of the homeless community. Or how about, just changing the entire housing situation period? It's ridiculous, and you've already deleted one home of mine for taking a break, something Yoshi P encourages us to do on the often! I'm sorry I got sick and had to live in a freaking hospital for a few months? HA!

Man, I wonder about the thought processes both players and the devs have about the housing issues a lot.

Absolutely, ridiculous and absurd.

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Originally Posted by polyhedral

Is it really that hard to tie one house to one IP address?

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I can answer that now. It's pretty much impossible. ISPs routinely change their customers IPs (particularly residential), plenty of households have more than one legitimate player, and a lot of players use a VPN to speed up their connection, or for security/privacy reasons. So the technical answer is no - it needs to be per service account.

Please remove party requirements from the diadem. You can die of old age trying to get into it.

Is there any chance that you could look into integrating mouse over spells/actions more effectivly?
Currently we have to write macros to use mouse over features and because of this we are unable to queue spells/actions in the same way we would with regular ones.

Mouseovers are a great quality of life feature, but because of the inability to queue your spells/skills they can become ineffective at higher levels of play.

Are there any plans to be able to take our Squadron Members out as a companion so we can have something else other than a Chocobo?

Can Housing restrictions be retroactive, please? People who abused the system before is still owning too many houses for themselves.

Are there still plans to give us the armor that our character did wear in the grand tournament in Ishgard? (Without any job restrictions)

Was wondering but can it be possible to adjust aesthetician so he can change our race and gender as well? I know fantasias are used for that but was thinking maybe the aesthetician can change our character too. Or would a fantasia vendor be added?

Can we tone down the amount of crystals needed for crafting or take them out completely? Needing so many crystals if you craft a lot is probably helping some of the bots that are farming them and it takes so much time away from doing the crafting itself since you need to farm them.

when will Estiniens hair style be available ?

in november 2016 you said in an interview that Estinien will join the scions in the future.
later during Stormblood you said. that maybe Estinien will appear when alphinaud is in trouble.
when will Estinien gets some screen time? xD

greetings from the Estinien and Ysayle cosplayers on Gamescom 2017 ;)

Can we please have Dark Side on DRK moved to a trait?
It simply doesn't make sense for DRKs to manually activate the skill after every death, beginning of a fight, after sync'n to a fate, zoning into an instance.

There is not a situation where it is more beneficial for a DRK to deactivate the ability. The changes made to DRK throughout Heavensward and Stormblood completely changed this ability to a manually activated trait. It is a waste of a slot on the hot bar.

Why does every change to BLM feels like a bandage over issues the class' design has instead of actually adressing them like it was done with SMN and WAR.

As part of the new mobile app update, is there going to be a new Authenticator to go with it? Having to type in 6 digits every time I want to log in is annoying, and it would be a lot easier to just hit an 'Approve' button when the app asks if I'd like to approve a login session...

(The Battle.net authenticator does this very well. Please copy that design! https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bliz...or/id306862897 )

Why we can't dye the artifact gear lv 70? Why we can't dye all the ff protagonists gears? Please makes everything dyeble. Please remove GC glamour restrictions. I was on Immortal Flames but now I can't glamour my armor from there because I changed my gc. Pls do it. Is not a big deal since on frontlines we have people on flame horses but are from another gc because of the freelancer thing. FF XV is comming out for PC, so where is our Noctis gear? About valentines day how about a blow kiss fixing emote. Many people here wanna the kneel emote on a fix pose too (for the empire).

We wanna a kiss emote with a fix position like this one.

http://images4.fanpop.com/image/phot...85-259-194.jpg

When will you remove the blue dots and make the game open world including in City also could you bring back the three main city music theme from 1.0 or at least make it a orchestration scroll thank you

Will there be a larger selection of exterior house walls that are not themed after a creature in the near future? I feel like the carbuncle, chocobo and moogle walls are very jarring and the shirogane castle walls are simply too tall, so they steal all the view from other houses. I would love to see a new design for the original housing districts as well as some Thavnarian, Sharlayan and Ishgardian house walls.