17 Attachment(s)
Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXXXVII (07/03/2025)
We are pleased to present the full digest of the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXXXVII! If you missed the live stream, or if you just want to watch it again (and again), check it out below!
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* Don't forget to select the 1080p option to watch the video in HD!
Current State of Development & Operations
(00:34:38)
At the beginning of the broadcast, Producer & Director Yoshida expressed his thoughts regarding the current state of development and operations.
Yoshida noted that the quality of FFXIV’s operations has been slipping over its many years of service, indicated by recurrent cases of system-related flaws, as well as in-game issues requiring immediate action. While their various underlying causes have been investigated and addressed, Yoshida attributed these incidents to a growing sense of "getting too comfortable," which he already brought up with the Development and Operations teams.
For example, when designing a new in-game system, looking back at previous projects helps set the bar for what seems "good enough," but this could also be considered complacency. Our intention is, and has always been, to strive for the best results possible, even in the smallest of ways. But as content and project sizes continued to swell, with pending deadlines to be met, more and more design decisions were made based on precedence rather than seeking ideal solutions for each scenario. Similarly, the teams recently resolved some issues based on previous experiences before reporting on the situation; they meant well, but Yoshida requested them to relay any incidents as they occur, rather than afterward.
The team has been made aware of this overall trend, and we are now rethinking our approach to these situations. In order to maintain high-quality operations, we should be resolving each matter on an individual basis.
Given the consecutive releases of large-scale content during the 7.2x patches, we should have prepared an adequate number of QA staff beforehand. Because we stuck to our standard protocol, certain sections of the game were released with undiscovered issues. There were a large number of new functions added in these implementations, and there were also issues that persisted across several frames of animation.
We are reflecting on these issues and looking into updating our review process, as we strive to deliver gameplay that is not only delightful, but high-quality and stable as well.
Patch 7.25 Community Feedback
In this segment, we responded to global community feedback regarding Occult Crescent and Cosmic Exploration, and also shared our plans on how they’ll be addressed.
Occult Crescent
Attachment 13001
(00:39:34)
First of all, we would like to express our appreciation for those who’ve undertaken Forked Tower so far! Over 400 groups had cleared at the time of the broadcast (Friday, June 20), but we imagine that community strategies are still being ironed out.
We apologize for Forked Tower's current difficulty, as well as the extra hurdles imposed on preformed groups. The system features for Delubrum Reginae seemed too overbearing, so we tried making them a little more hands-off this time around. By doing so, we hoped to open up more opportunities for players to converse with each other and form their own practices.
That said, certain elements will be changed to address the requests from preformed alliances, including the entry method for South Horn.
Until the entry method is changed, we understand that there are concerns about players repeatedly entering/exiting instances when trying to enter Forked Tower, and whether this violates our Terms of Service. Since there aren't competitive rankings in Occult Crescent, this particular trend on its own would not be considered a violation.
To make it easier for groups to join the same instance, Patch 7.3 will introduce a quick fix allowing an alliance (up to 48 players) to enter South Horn together. (Patch 7.3 is scheduled for early August.)
This framework for queuing a large preformed group into the same public instance is something we haven't made before, but we're developing and debugging this system as speedily as we can, so please bear with us in the meantime. Since this feature will involve up to 48 players at a time, we expect the debugging process will be more extensive than usual.
As for entering Forked Tower itself, the current entry method allows players to increase their chances of being selected by inserting multiple Sanguine Ciphers. We believe part of the reason why groups are having trouble reliably entering the dungeon with all of their members is the lack of a menu to see "who" inserted "how many" ciphers, so we hope to alleviate the situation by displaying this information.
Additionally, the current entry method allows players to jump in without a cipher, but this feature and the lack of a difficulty warning when unlocking Forked Tower led to conflicting mindsets between players who entered the dungeon together. To ensure that all participants understand the challenge that awaits them in Forked Tower, we will be changing entry system to always require at least one cipher from every player.
We'll continue to consider and discuss what other system features could be added to make the experience as positive as possible.
Attachment 13002
(00:45:34)
Having multiple difficulty levels would've been ideal; unfortunately, with the time constraints that we had, we lacked the development resources to design and debug two separate difficulties in addition to creating large-scale battle content like Forked Tower from the ground up. Furthermore, we believe the difficulty level overshot what players were expecting before release.
We initially anticipated that, as strategies developed, those who cleared the dungeon would be able to assist others with their clears. But entry method-related complications have hindered groups from going back for multiple clears; as a result, the overall situation has yet to reach the state of affairs that we originally envisioned.
Although we couldn't do it for Forked Tower, we've started discussing the possibility of designing Normal and Savage versions of the next large-scale dungeon. We appreciate the feedback that you've shared with us so far and will do our best to make our next updates as enjoyable as possible.
Attachment 13003
(00:47:48)
We believe this was an issue with our Development team's assessments.
Treasure coffers from Magic Pots and Happy Bunnies always contain gil. The amount of gil was included as a factor when balancing the rewards, so it seems that our Development team's perceived value of gil was different from how our players felt.
As for the treasure coffers found in the overworld, we included some appealing rewards because they are related to Occult Crescent's main activities: critical encounters, FATEs, and mob farming. We also previously received feedback asking us to refrain from making hairstyles and certain other reward too hard to obtain.
These factors resulted in the current balance of rewards.
However, there were evident issues with the rewards we chose and how they were distributed, so we are reevaluating these points with the team.
Although we were conscientious about including rare rewards from previous content, they were still obtained far more often than expected, indicating that our balance adjustments were still inadequate. As for the criticism that including certain high-value rewards was going too far, we'll be doing another analysis of the opinions of those items and considering future adjustments.
Some have asked if the loot tables for Magic Pots/Happy Bunny coffers were accidentally reversed with that of overworld coffers, but this was not the case. It was moreso the fact that, in the context of an MMORPG economy, we subconsciously saw giving out currency as something requiring high vigilance, and ended up balancing the coffer rewards around how much gil was being awarded along with them.
Attachment 13004
(00:51:02)
In the Occult Crescent and everywhere else, FATEs can adapt their parameters to accommodate both busy and relatively uncrowded hours of the day. But with larger groups of players, the FATE can end before the parameters have a chance to adjust, so determining a method that works well for all situations can be quite complex.
With that in mind, we'll be examining the gameplay data to consider the possibility of making changes. Theoretically speaking, new content could be released with relatively tough parameters to account for the high traffic during the initial period, then ease them as time passes. Adjusting the parameters based on the situation would be better for accommodating our players, rather than permanently sticking to a single setting. Generally speaking, we should err on the side of making enemies easy rather than too tough, which is what we've always done so far, but we'd like to see if further accommodation might be possible.
We've seen suggestions to spawn multiple FATEs at a time, but the maximum number of ongoing battles is limited by server load. While we certainly want to spawn as many FATEs as we can at once, we need to be mindful that the server will crash if we have too many.
Even aside from the limit, if we allowed multiple FATEs to occur at the same time, we predict that players would move on to the next FATE as soon as they're sure they've achieved a gold rating. But on the other hand, we do not believe in implementing a penalty where leaving a FATE before completion would lower your evaluation.
All in all, this situation could be an indication that we've reached a point where we need to redesign our specifications for FATEs.
Attachment 13005
(00:54:56)
The idea of what makes for a "good drop rate" will vary from person to person, but we aren't planning to increase the drop rates at this time.
Demiatma have a drop rate of 20% from critical encounters and 5% from FATEs (both in Occult Crescent and Dawntrail areas). These odds mean that there could be times where you're obtaining demiatma quite often, and others where they just don't seem to be dropping at all.
When you hear "20%," you might think that you're guaranteed to obtain at least one demiatma for every five CEs, but that is not the case since the probability is independent for each CE that you do. We chose this drop rate based on an estimate for how many times one player will participate in critical encounters and FATEs. Because these numbers will vary for each person, even if we raised the drop rate to 30%, there would still be people who feel like they aren't getting any drops at all.
For those curious, when the atma step began in Patch 2.0, the drop rate was 2%. An adjustment was made in Patch 2.4 to help latecomers catch up, and further adjustments were made since then; the drop rate is currently at 20%.
Given that reward drops will continue to be used in future content, we will consider making adjustments to each iteration based on your play data and feedback, and we will take another look at the data when we create a similar reward system in the future.
The "demiatma farming" step is only required for your first Phantom weapon, and will not be necessary for obtaining the second weapon onward. This change was made from previous weapon enhancement quests because collecting demiatma for every weapon seemed like too much when considering the amount of free time our players would have nowadays.
Attachment 13006
(00:59:36)
We will make adjustments in Patch 7.3 so that the weather will not change to Auroral Mirages while a critical encounter is underway.
Hearing this, you may think, "Wouldn't that reduce the frequency of Auroral Mirages?" To avoid such a situation, when the conditions are met for Auroral Mirages to occur, if there is an ongoing critical encounter, the weather change will be put on hold until the critical encounter is over; once the critical encounter is over, the pending Auroral Mirages will then take place. This means that Auroral Mirages might shift their timing depending on the situation, but will not occur less frequently compared to before.
(01:01:37)
On a separate topic, we also identified an issue related to Forked Tower in the French and German versions. A particular encounter had a phase where the name of the enemy attack was relevant in identifying the mechanic, but the two attacks had the same name and couldn't be distinguished from each other. This issue was addressed in a Hotfix on Tuesday, June 24.
We previously had a similar incident with Alphascape V3.0 of the Omega raid series. In Japanese, the names "Right-firing Wave Motion Cannon" and "Left-firing Wave Motion Cannon" were quite clear about whether the attacks were coming from the left or right. But in other languages, the direct translations resulted in the names "Starboard Wave Cannon" and "Larboard Wave Cannon", making the mechanics more difficult than intended. In terms of localization, this seemed like a good metaphor that likened Omega to a ship, but it was unsuited for naming a mechanic that needed to be solved quickly.
Problems like these were caused by insufficient communication regarding the gameplay significance of certain attack names. We will be taking steps to correct these shortcomings and prevent similar cases from happening again in the future.
Cosmic Exploration
Attachment 13007
(01:05:06)
Ground mounts will be available on the moon in Patch 7.3, and the upcoming star in Patch 7.31 will allow for ground mounts on release. We apologize for the issues related to ease of access that have persisted since Cosmic Exploration's release.
Why weren't mounts available to begin with? Our goal was to deliver an experience that could be enjoyed without mounts. To this end, we carefully balanced the difficulty level, travel time, and overall content, but ultimately failed to deliver this experience in a satisfactory manner.
Furthermore, the Cosmic Exploration maps contain a good deal of new features, including systems with complex implementations. But now that we have a clear goal for implementing those features, it's time for us to look over everything again and enable mounts in future areas.
Attachment 13008
(01:06:33)
One particular pain point raised by gatherers was how the routes between starting points and gathering nodes leave little room for error when aiming for higher evaluations.
In Patch 7.3, stellar missions on the moon of Class B and below will have their time limits adjusted; this will apply to certain Class A missions as well. Furthermore, since there are multiple difficulty levels within Class A, each difficulty level will be clearly marked and designated an appropriate time limit.
Attachment 13009
(01:07:44)
This was a quality-of-life consideration that we overlooked on release. Moving forward, the window will automatically open when reporting is the only task that remains or when a mission is unsuccessful.
Attachment 13010
(01:08:32)
We received comments about how gatherers are forced to wait while their GP regenerates before starting another mission—another situation we should've foreseen from the start.
Gathering missions will be changed to restore GP and reset the recast for GP recovery items upon completion. Please bear with us a while longer until the change!
Attachment 13011
(01:09:20)
We received comments that the current notifications for sequential missions are hard to notice, so we'll add a new popup in the center of the screen.*
* During the broadcast, we mentioned our plans to display a notification in the center of the screen. However, after further testing, we determined that displaying the information in this way would be obtrusive for players who've completed the mission. As such, we are now planning to separate popup notification, which will persist for some time after the on-screen text has disappeared.
Attachment 13012
(01:09:57)
After receiving feedback regarding large-scale projects, we eased them in Patch 7.25 based on participant numbers and other data. The situation seems to have mostly stabilized since the change, but we will continue to monitor gameplay data and consider making further adjustments.
For the upcoming star, we are working on a potential feature that would provide support in the event that a project is unsuccessful, so we hope to hear your comments on the new star as well.
Attachment 13013
(01:11:09)
Each phase of construction introduced new structures to enhance the feeling of building up the base over time. These unfortunately became obstacles for players, as we hadn't placed enough emphasis on leaving shops and NPCs easily accessible.
We're applying this feedback in designing the upcoming star, as we reexamine its entire level design and make sweeping changes to ensure ease of access.
Attachment 13014
(01:12:15)
We thought the hologram might look out of place in the middle of an empty base camp, which is why we opted to add it in the earliest phase possible. But as requested, for the next star, our cosmic explorers will have holograms in base camp from the start!
Attachment 13015
(01:13:19)
Many players mentioned that their motivation declined after finishing their Cosmic tools or obtaining the rewards they wanted, which correlates with our data.
To address this, we're creating additional rewards and new methods of obtaining them; their specifications have mostly been defined and should be ready by the next stage of Cosmic Exploration. We'll also be referencing your feedback when we consider what sort of rewards to add.
Attachment 13016
(01:14:16)
With no summoning bell on the moon, players who wanted to focus on Cosmic Exploration still had to leave the moon to access their retainers. This accessibility issue was compounded as new base camp structures were built, making traveling to, and on, the moon a frustrating experience.
There was a sort of an implicit rule about placing summoning bells only in established areas, such as city-states. But we'd rather have summoning bells where they're needed rather than follow that rule too strictly, so they'll be added to Sinus Ardorum and future Cosmic Exploration stars.
Since we'd like to implement this quality-of-life addition as soon as possible, we won't have time to give the summoning bell a unique design that suits the sci-fi setting. We briefly considered using the summoning bell from Solution Nine, but since its design is specifically derived from the city's advanced technology, and Cosmic Exploration can be unlocked before Dawntrail, we believe the summoning bells from Eorzea will be more appropriate.
Attachment 13017
(01:15:36)
As mentioned earlier, a variety of factors contributed to poor ease of access in Cosmic Exploration. For this point, our first step will be enabling travel directly from the Bestways Burrow aetheryte to the latest star. This means players will be able to teleport to Bestway Burrows and interact with the aetheryte, rather than walking over to Drivingway.
Another quality-of-life improvement we're considering is a new aetheryte ticket that instantly teleports you to Drivingway. We'll be putting a heavy emphasis on improving ease of access with these and other measures.
Numerous comments pointed out, "Wouldn't you notice this kind of thing during playtesting?" and indeed, there was definitely more we could've done to improve quality-of-life beforehand. We will redouble the thoroughness of our inspections and aim to regain our players' confidence in our production quality.