Chocobo companion timer.

Is there a point to this being a thing anymore? I question to reasoning of a companion still being locked to being a 30 minute summon. I mean you can make the argument of greens being some kind of gil sync.....but they cost next to nothing so outside of that and maybe being a coding issue I can't understand why its still a thing.

The timer can be extended to 60min with greens.

Sure, but my point is why is it even necessary to have a timer anymore? Not even really sure why it existed to begin with honestly, especially back in the day when the timer would get shorter as your chocobo leveled. The whole thing is weird.

pretty sure Yoshi answered a question like this
"Your buddy gotta eat too"
something like that

Well you don't expect your chocobo to fight with you without getting anything to eat do you?

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Originally Posted by Duskane

pretty sure Yoshi answered a question like this
"Your buddy gotta eat too"
something like that

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A reply like that kinda tells me its spaghettis code that they don't want to mess with.

Personally I'd prefer a more WoW hunter concept, can keep your pet out indefinitely but feeding them improves their mood and therefore their stats. Add some food to each zone that the birb can eat, some generic some potent. I have some fond memories taking care of my pet like that. Although if I recall correctly WoW killed pet food stuff, which imo is kind of sad.

OP gyshal Greens are so cheap we can basically have them out infinitely, but man do I also wish the timer were gone. Seeing it there ticking down is surprisingly stressful...

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Personally I'd prefer a more WoW hunter concept, can keep your pet out indefinitely but feeding them improves their mood and therefore their stats. Add some food to each zone that the birb can eat, some generic some potent. I have some fond memories taking care of my pet like that. Although if I recall correctly WoW killed pet food stuff, which imo is kind of sad.

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I remember that! Goodness, I miss all of the little bits and pieces players used to be able to do in that game to make the world that much richer...

Sadly, they've spent the last several expansions doing everything they can to remove most things from world content, instead focusing almost completely on dungeons / raids. >_<

But anyway, back to the topic at hand: Yeah, maybe having a timer isn't technically necessary anymore, but admittedly the thought of it doesn't bother me at all. To be honest though, I'm still working toward unlocking my Chocobo, but I'm really looking forward to it! (Maybe not having had to deal with it for a long time makes the idea more palpable, lol)

It would be nice if your chocobo would eat a greens automatically after its timer runs out, something you could disable or enable.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

OP gyshal Greens are so cheap we can basically have them out infinitely, but man do I also wish the timer were gone. Seeing it there ticking down is surprisingly stressful...

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Exactly! I don't know why, because it is really nothing at all on the cost side of things - nor is 1 hour too short, but it having a timer just makes it like a hassle or 'stressor' to have your bird out. Which is reaaaallllyy not the feeling you should have, imo. Yet the food idea is cute, but that's why I referenced WoW with Hunter- they had the food thing too but it was rewarding to feed your pet, and encouraged, but far less stressful, imo.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Exactly! I don't know why, because it is really nothing at all on the cost side of things - nor is 1 hour too short, but it having a timer just makes it like a hassle or 'stressor' to have your bird out. Which is reaaaallllyy not the feeling you should have, imo. Yet the food idea is cute, but that's why I referenced WoW with Hunter- they had the food thing too but it was rewarding to feed your pet, and encouraged, but far less stressful, imo.

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Ya the current design just doesn't make sense given how cheap the gyshals are. I mean if its entire reason is for lore then whatever. I can't imagine that would be the main reason for it, but I still find the system annoying and weird and if its really about lore then why not keep the whole gyshal greens to summon but just have no timer while you're logged in. When you log out your chocobo gets dismissed.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it's deliberate to actually disuade you from having your chocobo out at all times - they don't want you just spamming open-world content over and over again for hours on end with your chocobo, but actually varying what you do (e.g do a few FATEs, then move onto a dungeon or two, then maybe work on some sidequests or something similar) - which is why you cannot take your chocobo into instanced content. Your chocobo companion is simply meant to be a help in certain open-world situations (such as open-world solo fights or FATEs), but not as a crutch to over-rely on.

Really, it's not that hard to simply buy a stack of gysahl greens from the many vendors, then map it to your pet hotbar and simply hit the icon when the chocobo's timer gets low, which again is probably what SE were thinking when they designed the system. It doesn't need to be even more simplified than it already is.

I don't see where the stress is. Is your companion not summoned when you need it? Press the Gysahl Greens button. Done.

It was only annoying when you had to let the timer run out before you could apply another one.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I don't see where the stress is. Is your companion not summoned when you need it? Press the Gysahl Greens button. Done.

It was only annoying when you had to let the timer run out before you could apply another one.

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I mean I didn't say you had stress, I said I, and another, did. Just like someone might say savage is easy and another says it's not. So.. "okay, great . . . you don't" doesn't mean anything to me though and adds nothing to my feelings on it lol. And it's not like end of the world or savage stress. It's just seeing a timer countdown. . It's minor anxiety. Not the kind that isn't get over-able, but it's just.. meh, it doesn't add anything of value and you could have similar systems that add more value (keep gil sink if that's important). Like running around without a full clip, even in games where it's not that trigger important. No I want the full thing.. Often I just top the chocobo off even when it's like 35 or 40 because bleh.

If it's to dissuade you from using it too much, I guess so in the beginning when you're poor but I literally always have 999 greens. I've always my chocobo out because it's meaningless not to, why not have free heals out. If they want to dissuade players make it cost more or add a cooldown lol.

The timer at this point in the game feels meaningless and yet also annoying - a terrible combination, and if it was for lore / vibes it could be done better, and if it was for companion management that too could have been done better.

One thought where it might still have a function is it might be for server stress, while trying to allow players the opportunity to have it out as much as they want - that I suppose it can do (cooldown can do server stress too but it wouldn't allow some players to have it out all the time, as nature of it being a cooldown).

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it's deliberate to actually disuade you from having your chocobo out at all times - they don't want you just spamming open-world content over and over again for hours on end with your chocobo, but actually varying what you do (e.g do a few FATEs, then move onto a dungeon or two, then maybe work on some sidequests or something similar) - which is why you cannot take your chocobo into instanced content. Your chocobo companion is simply meant to be a help in certain open-world situations (such as open-world solo fights or FATEs), but not as a crutch to over-rely on.

Really, it's not that hard to simply buy a stack of gysahl greens from the many vendors, then map it to your pet hotbar and simply hit the icon when the chocobo's timer gets low, which again is probably what SE were thinking when they designed the system. It doesn't need to be even more simplified than it already is.

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Considering a lot of past post expansion content focused heavily on doing FATES? I find this reasoning to be nonsense.

People are also not going to refuse to do other content just because they have a chocobo companion. Again, that reasoning is just silly.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I've always my chocobo out because it's meaningless not to, why not have free heals out. If they want to dissuade players make it cost more or add a cooldown lol.

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If I'm taking glamour screenshots and going in and out of gpose, it's easier to have the chocobo unsummoned so I don't have to turn it invisible every time.

Plus it's sort of annoying if I'm questing but not trying to fight things, especially if in town talking to NPCs and going in and out of buildings or tight spaces. It can be annoying having it follow me around and getting in the way of characters, at least visually. (Plus I really hate it on occasions when your chocobo snags against someone else's and they both just keep walking against each other trying to move into position.)

I just don't like having a big clock that says "your friend is leaving you in XX:XX."
Sure it can be reset or extended, but when it's up there's that pressure to get through dialogue / cutscenes / whatever really fast because it's ticking down and doesn't stop ticking. It makes it feel less like you're exploring and adventuring with your buddy in a way I find quite unpleasant.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

pretty sure Yoshi answered a question like this
"Your buddy gotta eat too"
something like that

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It's nothing more than a low level gil sink.

That's the thing... I agree with the OP that Ghysal Greens are meaningless now. They are extremely cheap, so there's nothing of relevant in having them... Like, you'll always run around with 99x no matter what unless you just forget to buy or don't care about the chocobo. Might as well just remove them and have the summon being an extra action.

However, instead of removing altogether, they could add layers to make it interesting, such as having different Greens (more expensive/rare?) that summon the chocobo with a certain specific buff to help with the role you set it to. If we actually had a choice to make there, having the companion being summoned by an item would make sense.

But still, they would have to make stuff like leveling FATEs more interesting, because that is the only kind of content that I can see the chocobo being uselful to do when there's just you doing them.

As an aside, it's always fascinating to me that despite the development team's own habit of adding quality of life changes with each new content patch there's always a handful of posters quick to shoot down suggestions based around quality of life features.

I generally like to have my chocobo companion out when I'm doing a new batch of MSQ's, doing FATE's, participating in hunts and when tackling treasure maps.

It's not a huge pain to grab some gysahl greens from a vendor, or to use them to summon our chocobo companion. With that said, it isn't particularly thrilling and could easily be streamlined to free up an inventory slot by reducing the mechanic to a simple summon and withdraw feature that is tied solely to action commands rather than an item.

If more people get into the habit of using their chocobo companions maybe it could even lead to the open world experience being a little bolder.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

It's not a huge pain to grab some gysahl greens from a vendor, or to use them to summon our chocobo companion. With that said, it isn't particularly thrilling and could easily be streamlined to free up an inventory slot by reducing the mechanic to a simple summon and withdraw feature that is tied solely to action commands rather than an item.

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That's the thing... when a certain design ends up being thoughtless, or unthrilling as you put, then it's stale, at least is how I perceive.

There's a similar example to that: Back a while ago, a lot of healers got mad with the removal of Protect... But the spell itself (the latest iteration, at least) bore little to no thought or player agency. It was a long duration buff, zero cost to maintain, brought by every healer... When a maintenance buff brings zero layers of complexity to it (much like Ghysal Greens are as a summoning device), that is a strong candidate to be streamlined.

In Protect's case it meant 1 free slot in the action bar... In the Green's case, yeah, it is 1 free slot in your inventory, which can go a long way, depending on the player.

Pretty sure with chocobo's making things more difficult when it comes to things like hunts or congested areas in general, the last thing they want is to have everyone have theirs out indefinitely. It's such a none issue to get the item for them for when you want to use them, not everything needs to be streamlined to death in some cases.

I can see the OP's point, greens do seem a bit pointless at this point and pretty much just act as inventory -1. I have my chocobo out 24/7 when I'm in the open world and as greens stack to 999 and cost pennies it just seems like a waste of an inventory slot. I certainly wouldn't miss them if it just became an action instead of an item.

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Originally Posted by Wasselin

Well you don't expect your chocobo to fight with you without getting anything to eat do you?

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I think that since my character never ever eats and is able to fight, my chocobo should be able to do the same.

After all, do you feed all of your mounts that fly you around? Obviously there's a line somewhere.
Now that I think about it, I never feed my 5 retainers either... or my housing merchants... or my fish.

Should feeding be added for everything? Maybe...

Though we should probably just call it what it is- a tax on the chocobo just like crystals are a tax on crafting.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it's deliberate to actually disuade you from having your chocobo out at all times - they don't want you just spamming open-world content over and over again for hours on end with your chocobo, but actually varying what you do (e.g do a few FATEs, then move onto a dungeon or two, then maybe work on some sidequests or something similar) - which is why you cannot take your chocobo into instanced content. Your chocobo companion is simply meant to be a help in certain open-world situations (such as open-world solo fights or FATEs), but not as a crutch to over-rely on.

Really, it's not that hard to simply buy a stack of gysahl greens from the many vendors, then map it to your pet hotbar and simply hit the icon when the chocobo's timer gets low, which again is probably what SE were thinking when they designed the system. It doesn't need to be even more simplified than it already is.

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How does it dissuade anyone? The greens are almost free. I could buy over 145,000 hours of chocobo time with my current gil stash. Making money is so easy now that they may as well be free.

My chocobo is level 20 so he has max skills in everything. This makes him a very valuable companion that I can always have at my side.
It doesn't matter what my needs are. Glen can Tank, Heal, or DPS really well which makes him indispensable.

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Originally Posted by Nabril

Though we should probably just call it what it is- a tax on the chocobo just like crystals are a tax on crafting.

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Yeah, that's a good summation of it.
Though the tax def made more sense back when the game was experimenting more with open world content.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Is there a point to this being a thing anymore? I question to reasoning of a companion still being locked to being a 30 minute summon. I mean you can make the argument of greens being some kind of gil sync.....but they cost next to nothing so outside of that and maybe being a coding issue I can't understand why its still a thing.

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Apart from I like the idea of feeding my Chocobo, I feel you can think of it as an expense, i.e. the same as the cost of repairing your Armour and Weapons.

So if you still want an alternative idea then you could combining the ideas above and instead of a timer, your Chocobo needs to eat more food after a long battle

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Personally I'd prefer a more WoW hunter concept, can keep your pet out indefinitely but feeding them improves their mood and therefore their stats. Add some food to each zone that the birb can eat, some generic some potent. I have some fond memories taking care of my pet like that. Although if I recall correctly WoW killed pet food stuff, which imo is kind of sad.

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If you do the Vath Beastmen Quests. You can buy Food that helps to improve your Chocobo :)

• Mimett Gourd - Enhances Healing
• Pahsana Fruit - Enhances Emnity
• Sylkis Bud - Attack Power Boost
• Tantalplant - Increase Chocobo HP

This suggestion/complaint sorta reminds me of the problem some folks had with Epona having a "carrot meter" in the older LoZ games. Yes there's no REAL reason to restrict the speed boost just as there's no REAL reason to limit how long we can keep our birds out, but it's a mechanic that can help some other people get a slight sense of immersion (yes the horse/chocobo isn't real and doesn't NEED rest/food but having that limitation mimics a real world thing) basically along with whatever potential backend stuff or gilsink justification. At least that's how I see it.

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Originally Posted by Denzyl

Apart from I like the idea of feeding my Chocobo, I feel you can think of it as an expense, i.e. the same as the cost of repairing your Armour and Weapons.

So if you still want an alternative idea then you could combining the ideas above and instead of a timer, your Chocobo needs to eat more food after a long battle


If you do the Vath Beastmen Quests. You can buy Food that helps to improve your Chocobo :)

• Mimett Gourd - Enhances Healing
• Pahsana Fruit - Enhances Emnity
• Sylkis Bud - Attack Power Boost
• Tantalplant - Increase Chocobo HP

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You can grow em too :). When I said that I was thinking on the WoW hunter side of things, where you might go get some stuff in said zone - adding a living on the land sort of vibe. Certainly if the system went to indefinite like WoW, then these other foods would translate into that position of neat food to feed them - but wasn't quite what I meant in the 'of the land's vibe. My boco favors the sylkis :)

With an extra note being that WoW removed a lot of the depth from their food system, so speaking from memory / history at some level lol.

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Originally Posted by SilverObi

This suggestion/complaint sorta reminds me of the problem some folks had with Epona having a "carrot meter" in the older LoZ games. Yes there's no REAL reason to restrict the speed boost just as there's no REAL reason to limit how long we can keep our birds out, but it's a mechanic that can help some other people get a slight sense of immersion (yes the horse/chocobo isn't real and doesn't NEED rest/food but having that limitation mimics a real world thing) basically along with whatever potential backend stuff or gilsink justification. At least that's how I see it.

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The response then would be couldn't there be a more immersive system if that was it's purpose? The carrots personally I never found annoying and do fine immersive- the timer on my bird is annoying and doesn't feel immersive either (imo). Why wouldn't I summon my bird with a whistle lol? I shake the greens like cows or pigs being called in.

Although I would agree that sometimes immersion just happens to have some annoyances (like epona can't infinite sprint, but that adds some gameplay mechanics and immersion), I guess we might just differ on that I don't think the chocobo system is a good example of immersion.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

The response then would be couldn't there be a more immersive system if that was it's purpose? The carrots personally I never found annoying and do fine immersive- the timer on my bird is annoying and doesn't feel immersive either (imo). Why wouldn't I summon my bird with a whistle lol? I shake the greens like cows or pigs being called in.

Although I would agree that sometimes immersion just happens to have some annoyances (like epona can't infinite sprint, but that adds some gameplay mechanics and immersion), I guess we might just differ on that I don't think the chocobo system is a good example of immersion.

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Oh for sure there could be better systems to encourage immersion than a clock ticking down til you use another gysahl green, I was just giving my perspective on why the system isn't -bad- to me but I can agree there's many other things they could do on that front.

Honestly the way it is now is almost a dead copy of how beastmaster's on-demand pets worked in FFXI, what with using a consumable item to summon a pet on a timer which is pretty simple. I would be happy if they allowed us to use different mounts as companions and extended the buff food system we have since right now it doesn't matter much at all.

Another thing they could do as a band-aid measure is give our companion an Affinity meter that grows the more we use them and as it reaches milestones it could increase the time our bird can be out off one bunch of greens.

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Originally Posted by SilverObi

Oh for sure there could be better systems to encourage immersion than a clock ticking down til you use another gysahl green, I was just giving my perspective on why the system isn't -bad- to me but I can agree there's many other things they could do on that front.

Honestly the way it is now is almost a dead copy of how beastmaster's on-demand pets worked in FFXI, what with using a consumable item to summon a pet on a timer which is pretty simple. I would be happy if they allowed us to use different mounts as companions and extended the buff food system we have since right now it doesn't matter much at all.

Another thing they could do as a band-aid measure is give our companion an Affinity meter that grows the more we use them and as it reaches milestones it could increase the time our bird can be out off one bunch of greens.

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WELL THEN, I GUESS WE ARE IN FULL AGREEMENT--- FINE BY ME! lol :)

https://media1.tenor.com/images/2f2a...itemid=4197935

:D

On a deeper note though of course there must be some sort of thought behind why a system is as it is, doesn't mean the thought is the best or still true but I never think the devs are without brain - can't even make an okay game without a brain, and you definitely couldn't make one of the most popular mmos in such a situation :p.

Personally if I had to justify the system as it is currently I'd lean towards server stress, the rest of the reasons while they may have back story are not, imo, enough of any reason not to make wide the gates of potential improvement. Even the server one might come up with an interesting mix, but clearly is one of the issues that's far less flexible. Although I'd hope it's not because I'd hope it can improve lol.

Clearly a big fan of chocobos: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/380224 :P

On that topic of reasons existing but perhaps not in the best format, I am fairly certain that the healer changes, that are not popular with some healers, at least here I see on forums, are actually because of other healers who wanted to focus on healing specifically, and due to some of their other balance designs, and perhaps not perfect implementation, we've now healers who can mostly oGCD in casual content and yet also have very bare bone 'other' tasks.

In that way I really think we agree on a deeper level (purpose of posting, affinity, what have you), if you were listing a potential reason yet not saying things can't change (as I do in some healer threads where I see people say things like they think SE has no idea what they want or why they do what they do- and I personally think it was clearly in response to player feedback but perhaps not done in the best way that it could have been done).