Ask Questions for Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XIX! (Exploring Patch 2.45)

Hey everyone!

We're pleased to announce the next Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XIX focusing on the many exciting updates coming with Patch 2.5! This next Live Letter will take place on Saturday, December 20, 2014, from 5:30 p.m. (PST) / Sunday, December 21, 2014, from 01:30 (GMT)!

In this thread we'd like you to specifically pose questions and feedback related to Patch 2.45. In addition to collecting your questions in real-time via Twitter, we will also use this thread to gather your questions ahead of time and answer them during the event.

When submitting your question, we ask that you follow these steps:

• Please post your question(s) as a reply to this thread
• Please limit posts to your question(s) only and do not use this thread for discussion
• If another player already asked a question you had in mind, simply click the "Like!" button instead of re-posting the question
• Please post only one question per reply (of course you are allowed to post several replies!)

For more information regarding the Letter from the Producer LIVE, please read the following: <a href="http://sqex.to/PTo">NA</a>/<a href="http://sqex.to/Bvv">EU</a>

Please note that once the event is over, we will be closing this thread.

As of late the forums and other media have seen a lot of cash shop concerns being voiced.
I would like to talk about two of the new cash shop items introduced in 2.45. Which is the marriage system and metallic dyes, as these items went beyond what players saw coming from the announcements.
We knew that the wedding was coming, but not that we could sell the expensive ones in game for gil. The dyes, we didn't see coming at all and these open up the option to dye other peoples clothing for gil.
These are things where the cash shop/real money is starting to interact with the gil flow and thus indirectly the actual gameplay.

I would like to hear your standpoint on these items? And what is to expect in the future?

I understand the reasons for the dimishment of treasure chest drops for coil due to players running it again, but based on the patch notes, I have a problem with the fact that if over 6 players have run it before, then nothing drops. Buzzkill for the 1 to 2 players who haven't ran it yet under the lock out.

Any chance that this will be changed to allow for a chest to fall all the time, the players who have ran it already will simply only be able to pass on the drop?

For those who are not interested in marrying or doing endgame, this patch was pretty poor. When can we hope to see more casual-friendly features such as customizable options, more casual gear (that does not require high-level crafting and insane amounts of gil, possibly) and most importantly more emotes and /changepose options?

Could you please explain what happens to the Eternal bonding system After you have bonded with someone and they leave the game or transfer servers or divorce you, will the items gained though the wedding be lost, or otherwise unuseable or will they still be useable after the ceremony?

Thank you Yoshi-P and everyone for the great work, and for communicating with us!

Eternal Bonding and Shared Housing

One of my greatest hopes when I heard about eternal bonding was that my husband and I could buy a house together and share it, however, with the implementation of patch 2.45 this doesn't seem to be an option. Is this something that could be implemented in the future, or should we just buy a house each?


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Edit, update:

Thanks everyone for liking my question!

Keeping a large linkshell organized is a lot of work, especially in regards to organizing raid schedules, events, etc and keeping track of active and inactive members.

Is there any chance we can set a short comment for our linkshell tabs in the UI, and be able to see when each member last logged in?

Could we see a calendar added to the FC tab that we could schedule events on? Most FCs/guilds/etc. I've been apart of in other MMOs have been somewhat difficult to get people to visit an external website to view such events posted. Having one in game would alleviate this quite a bit. We could even have a calendar furniture item that could be hung in an FC house for members to come in and check.

Can you guys add package deals to the dyes, similar to the fantasia potions? Pretty please?

In this game I can have everything max leveled all on one character. I really like this, however there is one huge exception to this: desynth. In order for me to not have to rely on the overpriced auction house, I would need at least three characters all with different desynths leveled, undermining the point of a one character for everything game.

My question is: now that high level desynth of every class is required for the next step in relic, when will we be able to have all 8 desynths max leveled on one character?

Relic Weapons

Previously you had mentioned that 2.45 will introduce the final phase of the relic quest, and it looks like this results in the relic only being i125. If you compare the amount of work of that went into obtaining this item, this seems lower than it should be, especially considering that i130 Augmented Ironworks weapons can be gotten comparatively easily. What was the thought process behind making the relic a lower item level than Augment Ironworks weapons and are there any future plans for increasing the item level of the relic weapons?

Back when the eternal bond system was announced, and the only 2 person mount that does not require recruit a friend was announced, there was no hint that these would be cash only. 2.45 finally released this mount...for cash shop only.

What led you to think it was fair to suddenly announce this mount would be cash-only at the last live letter (which by the way was not in the Q&A threads so non-Japanese speaking players who didn't read fan translations of the event, or read forums, actually had NO idea about this sudden cash shop announcement until the patch notes came out), and keep going through with this idea even after all the player blowback regarding having to pay extra for content despite that we already pay a subscription?

And before you say it's just vanity. A 2-mount chocobo is more than just vanity; it's a feature. My husband and I like to go farm together. This means we teleport to the same place, then ride to our nodes. Both of us having 2-person mounts means one of us can get up to fetch drinks, or snacks, etc... without forcing the other one to wait.

The recruit a friend mount, which we'll have next month, is only available for the recruiter, so we couldn't alternate who does the leading. Putting this behind a cash wall hinders our ability to play more efficiently, and thus farm more efficiently. It can therefore be used for more than just vanity.

Edit: and using /follow assumes both people have mounts and that (for chocobo) it's not stabled. Something people who have the 2-person mounts can overcome. So, still a gameplay feature being gated.

Where is the Visual fix of Shiva fight?
it is too white and my friend can't play it at all it is hurting her eyes, you need to fix or update or w/e it ASAP
i don't want to finish farming shiva and my friend is still suffering because of the environment of the fight

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Anathemamask

Thank you Yoshi-P and everyone for the great work, and for communicating with us!

Eternal Bonding and Shared Housing

One of my greatest hopes when I heard about eternal bonding was that my husband and I could buy a house together and share it, however, with the implementation of patch 2.45 this doesn't seem to be an option. Is this something that could be implemented in the future, or should we just buy a house each?

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further to this room sharing for couples should also be an option :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Squintina

And before you say it's just vanity. A 2-mount chocobo is more than just vanity; it's a feature. My husband and I like to go farm together. This means we teleport to the same place, then ride to our nodes. Both of us having 2-person mounts means one of us can get up to fetch drinks, or snacks, etc... without forcing the other one to wait.

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Just use /follow

With regard to personal houses:

1) When will we be able to share our house with our eternal bond partner (mentioned already in this thread and "Liked" by me) (all amenities, Summoning Bell, NPC's, etc., gardening, etc.)

and/or

2) Set permissions for others (even if it is an "all or nothing access" to use our house amenities)

I am no longer worried much about use of the Mini-Aetheryte by others because the Wedding Ring Teleport will take care of that issue. :)

With Eternal Bond upon us now, this needs to be added without any further delay.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Correl

Just use /follow

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You're not supposed to have a discussion in these live letter threads.

One of the early themes of FFXIV was that you could play every role and do every thing on one character.

For combat classes, this was true up till the onset of the relic atma questline, which made the process of obtaining any single relic VERY time consuming.

For crafters this was true until the introduction of Supras, and to a lesser extent ingredients being heavily time gated.

The current state of the game seems to be moving in the direction of singular class focus, due to the increasing difficulty and restrictions being placed on obtaining high end equipment. (low desynth chances, desynth in general, time gated materials, "Alex and Light Farming")

Have the devs reconsidered their stance on allowing people to excel in every class over the past year, and shifted the focus to excelling in one role/class, and being "so-so at best" in all others?

*PS*
I understand the catch-22 of making content for a multi-class game. If you make it so a person can get 9 Nexus's in 2-3 months (time between Relic updates), then the person who "exclusively" plays one class will have 1.5 weeks worth of content and be done for 2 months.
But the current system of making high end equipment (of questionable value at TRUE endgame) be a time consuming and/or time gated endeavor does not sit well with those who enjoy more than 1 class.
Perhaps a system where, in general, once your "character" has completed a upgrade-sequence such as the Relic Questline, or Supras, they can now use the knowledge that they (and other associated npc's) attained during that process to GREATLY (5-10x) speed things up next time.
This way the single-class player gets 1-2 months of content. And the multi-class player spends the same 1-2 months on the initial run-through, and can knock out the rest of their classes in a month.

Relic Weapon:

With the step added in 2.45 the Relic weapon will take on a new appearance. Will the previous increments become available, perhaps via the Calamity Salvager, for the purposes of use with the Glamour system? I want to continue upgrading my relic weapon, but prefer the appearance of the Sphairai Animus/Novus/Nexus to the Kaiser Knuckle.

I'm pretty satisfied with the overall balance of jobs for End game with this last patch. The only job that seems to be suffering still is SMN on some content. Do have any insight on if they will be reworked in some way? Is it more difficult to get SMN balanced out because it shares the same class as SCH?

Will the zodiac weapons become upgradable past item level 125, and will this continue into the expansion?

With the expansion coming in the "near" future, are there any plans to create an "expedited" Relic questline?

New players who join the game when the expansion launches will not want to go through the entire relic-zenith-atma-animus-novus-nexus-"Zodiac Weapon" quest chain.
It seems that the latest step in the relic questline effectively creating "new" weapons hints at the strong possibility that the expansion will feature a fresh Relic Quest which begins with these new Zodiac Weapons, rather than a series of Relic upgrades.

Will there be any future changes to Alexandrite?

Minions
Where is the minion tender lamb?

With the recent re-balancing of Dragoon and Ninja, we have 3 fairly balanced melee damage dealer jobs. However, That leaves the other Ranged Damage Dealer jobs completely unbalanced. Bard has a few issues, but most people allow for this because of their support capabilities. Summoner had the "support capability" of Combat Resurrection in previous levels of content. But encounter design plus gear design and poor ability scaling has lead to a situation where this ability can rarely be utilized because of lack of mana. How do you as developers plan to balance this against the swift and very well designed buffs/nerfs to the melee jobs to bring them balance while leaving the Summoners and Bards behind?

I personally LOVE and HATE the new female Eternal Bond haircut. Can we have the haircut without the flowers in the hair? Can you find a way to let us dye hair accessories in haircuts?

I played FFXI for a decade. The one thing I miss more than anything is my Corsage. Is there any chance you could bring over a version of this flower for my hair as a headpiece in the future?

have you guys not received enough complaints about the use of random number generators to slow down progress? the "By completing a dungeon, there is a small chance that you will obtain the associated item. " and more importantly, why do you continue to shove down our throat content that relies on random number generator?

Now that melee DPS felt balanced, but im concerned about ranged DPS mostly SMN since it's 1 of my mains. The 2 things that concern me is Tri-disaster and Contagion. For tri-disaster I felt that it's at a unfair situation against blizzard. 30 potency at the cost of 266MP casting time 2.88, but blizzard 2..50 potency at the cost of 212 MP casting time 1.92 sec. I wanted to see if there's any buff for that ability to make it useful for SMN players cause not many are using it. 2nd is contagion, is there at some point make it to where that the ability will be useable to players than the pets? The pets takes awhile to use it, but it will be easier for players in their action&traits section.

Can you please have an English translator at the December Fan Festival?

We know it's Japan but the Americas and Europe are watching!

Will 2.5 bring us the final version of Revenant's Toll?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mitternacht

Relic Weapon:

With the step added in 2.45 the Relic weapon will take on a new appearance. Will the previous increments become available, perhaps via the Calamity Salvager, for the purposes of use with the Glamour system? I want to continue upgrading my relic weapon, but prefer the appearance of the Sphairai Animus/Novus/Nexus to the Kaiser Knuckle.

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To add to this: our relic weapons are very significant and their original designs are recognizable and symbolic of their jobs. I feel partly hesitant to continue to upgrade my weapons, especially my Gae Bolg because its design holds so much meaning for me and I'd hate to lose that. A lot of people would love to have the various designs/glows available for glamor that they worked so hard towards. I was also hoping we would be able to dye the original design. I would love to have a pink Gae Bolg! I loved the glow on the Novus because it was pink and I really miss that version now that I have Nexus. Could you please try to provide these options to us in the future? Thank you.

Are you against Wedding Bands being sold in game for gil and if not, has the economic value of this item make you reconsider the possibile option to sell the other cash shop items in game and make them tradeable?

The Metallic (Red, Blue, Green) Dye you added to the cash shop... will there be another way to obtain these items in-game with patch 2.5? I find it infuriating to see those items restricted to cash shop only in a game I pay a subscription for.

I have a question -- as far as the Cash Shop goes, and considering what was added with 2.45, can you elaborate on what the additional funding will go towards with the game? For instance, will this extra revenue go towards updating the character models by any chance?

Seeing how the cash shop is being used for little items like dyes, it's kind of depressing... but I might understand a little better if there were a list of stretch-goals that would be reached after a certain amount of funding. How do you feel about adding a kickstarter-like goal system for this kind of funding?

For reasons many have gone over already, will you ever be implementing shared personal housing?

I don't care when it will happen, you can keep the date a secret all the way up to the day of release... but if we all could get a super quick 5 second yes or no response, you would make THOUSANDS of people happy.

Thanks! :)

With how much uncertainty there is with tab targeting are you guys looking into fixing this issue?

Please could we hear your views on SMN, if it will be receiving any buffs regarding poor mana issues in FCOB, and any plans on future armor as the spellspeed on the ironworks pieces is useless for it?

Why wasn't Good King Moggle Mog as performed by Koji a wedding song option, and please could we have it implemented?

I also have another thought about SMN and tri-disaster. If giving the spell more MP at the cost of a 8sec bind and 30 potency, is it possible to give it a new effect to where it occasionally deals double dmg? (5-10% proc rate) I want to make this ability as useful as the other traits for SMN.