Patch 2.4 Preview

[Tupsi]

It's almost like there is a fan festival in less than 2 weeks. Could you possibly for one second consider that just maybe they are saving the big reveal for the massive in-person event? That might be expecting too much though.

Festival is supposed to be Expansion focused...but given how Yoshi P says a lot of things..I wouldn't be surprised if it was purely about 2.4 instead.

[Firepower]

What I would like them to do for housing is since Yoshi said 2.4 would double the amount of housing:

All 3 housing zones have pathways leading to what seems to be an extra area, instead of doubling ward numbers use this and have the same number of wards at double size rather than double the amount of wards. I would like to see the housing wards be bustling areas with larger groups of people inside, When a ward is mostly individual housing you have a zone which has approximately no more than 30 or 50 occupants as the larger ones tend to still be FC, as opposed to a fully FC occupied ward (ward 1 for example) which could have over 200 people in the zone creating a much better atmosphere, I'm not sure how to fix this issue but I would like to see some sort of incentive to create wards with a more varied mix of FC's and individual rather than the earlier wards being almost FC only and the newer ones personal only.

Ninja looks good, nice to see Fenrir and the new hairstyles I sure hope are not NPC exclusive.

[ZReport]

The problem with personal housing is the price, they have been released with a price that is higher than the FC houses 2 moths after their release, of course, the influx of gil is higher as well, personal houses are way cheaper than the FC ones were, the price is the same but the influx of gil have changed, that's what the player-base fails to understand, we should blame both, Yoshida for not using the correct words, and the players for nor being correctly informed, it was clear that the personal houses would be located in the same wards the FC ones are, and with the amount of gil we can earn now doing just our routines the price would't change.

Sorry, pricing has never been the major problem, it was availability of wards and spaces (and the fact that Personal Housing would share a common space with FC Housing). Not everyone who plays this game is poor or has a problem making money. It was always implied that an arbitrary number would be set, a number which would diminish like FC Housing. Aside from that, the general player reaction on forums have been blown way out of proportion. It's a problem which will eventually resolve itself with 2-4 subsequent patches.

This is out of place, it's not only offensive but also a lie, FFXI players are used to no see new updates or info for a year+, that's how ffxi updates worked.

It's not out of place nor is it offensive, nor a lie. The lack of updates or information about any updates created a big rift between the devs and the players for years in FFXI. Players and fans then had to deal with an assortment of very dumb updates, while old bugs and problems remained un-fixed for years until they were eventually spotted by devs. It's only now with FFXIV: ARR (and Matsui's direction with FFXI) do we see a direct connection with the devs, much less a forum for both games.

[ZReport]

They lied about it. Said one thing, did another and didn't try to correct themselves. It wasn't released as it was suppose to be originally stated, it was a lazy work around where they just slapped personal housing with FC housing and called it a day. The thing starts, where if you lie to your consumer, who's to say they won't do it again? So now everyone just expects the worse possible outcome, because that's what housing became.

They actually didn't lie about anything:

Q1: What’s the difference between Free Company housing and individual player housing?
A1: Fundamentally, there will not be many differences since individual housing will have the same features as Free Company housing when it is released; however, there will be differences in regards to whether the parks and towers are set for personal use or for Free Company members.

This was directly lifted from Producer Letter LIVE V, a while back. There was no need to "try and correct themselves," because they never lied in the first place. Players saw a misinterpretation of an amount of 850k per house (it was a inside joke between Yoshi-P and a dev; 850k is something that's impossibly low) and let their imaginations take them wherever it wanted to go concerning Personal Housing. However now, the resentment by this fiasco has taken a life of it's own, and people are starting to downplay anything that's said by the team for no reason at all.

SE is at fault however, for not emphasizing or bringing more information out concerning Personal Housing, so as to dispel notions and expectations that the playerbase created for themselves prior to patch.

[Nestama]

That's Mistbeard himself!

Pretty sure our current Mistbeard is:

Eynzahr Slafyrsyn, Merlwybs second in command.

From the Journal: "No sooner do you deliver the coffer to Denston than Eynzahr appears. The storm marshal unlocks the coffer to produce a mask bearing a menacing visage, which he explains has been worn by all the individuals who have borne the name Mistbeard. The legendary pirate, it would seem, is not one man, but many. Eynzahr goes on to say that the current Mistbeard will be the last, having chosen to consign himself and his predecessors to the pages of history-- all for the sake of one woman and her dream of a brighter future for Limsa Lominsa..."

[Altanas]

Hmm, class AF... Wonder if this is an indication of bringing classes in line with jobs

[Lyrinn]

Pretty sure our current Mistbeard is:

That's not to say it isn't one of the older Mistbeards not content with lying dead in the sea.

That rogue AF though, want!

[Alistaire]

Wow! cool to see Fenrir will be in game, though kinda disappointing to see that he's been reduced to a duty boss.

I swear, with some of these responses you'd think people would only be happy if Fenrir was the boss and every single trash mob in a Crystal Tower-like dungeon, complete with minion, mount, matching armor set drops and every SMN who gets the mapping achievement gets to summon him, while riding him and dressing like him at the same time.

This was directly lifted from Producer Letter LIVE V, a while back. There was no need to "try and correct themselves," because they never lied in the first place. Players saw a misinterpretation of an amount of 850k per house (it was a inside joke between Yoshi-P and a dev; 850k is something that's impossibly low) and let their imaginations take them wherever it wanted to go concerning Personal Housing. However now, the resentment by this fiasco has taken a life of it's own, and people are starting to downplay anything that's said by the team for no reason at all.

SE is at fault however, for not emphasizing or bringing more information out concerning Personal Housing, so as to dispel notions and expectations that the playerbase created for themselves prior to patch.

Yeah, if that 850k was a joke right from the start it's in pretty poor taste; no way for players to know that was ridiculous outside of common sense.

[ZReport]

Yeah, if that 850k was a joke right from the start it's in pretty poor taste; no way for players to know that was ridiculous outside of common sense.

Well the joke flowed like this basically:

Dev: Hey, I have 850k on my character!
Yoshi-P: 850k won't be enough gil for a house, lol.

Everyone basically took it as gospel that the price would be around 850k, because it was the only mention at all of a price as a starting point. No one had a clear idea that Personal Housing would be lumped in with FC Housing, so they took to the 850k (maybe a little bit more, within 2-3 mil) and then took on the assumption that Personal Housing would be instanced to achieve these prices. This problem is further expounded upon when Famitsu put out their transcript of the Q&A -- something that, while not a direct translation of events, tend to give a little bit extra information and constantly leaves out in-jokes by the team:

Q: Tell us about individually owned homes.
Yoshida: Private homes are simply land which can be purchased by individuals, but you'll have to have a certain grand company rank and be level 50. We're working hard on this but we're getting down to the wire on whether we can get private homes included in time for 2.3, so it might not be until 2.35. It would be tough to set the price (of private homes) as low as 850,000 gil. It's not going to be as high as free company owned housing.

Here you see what was an in-joke between friends become an explanation by Famitsu. There's where the problems began.

[Ryans]

Hmm, class AF... Wonder if this is an indication of bringing classes in line with jobs

Every class has had their own "AF" since 1.0. The ilvl 70 Gryphonskin, Darksteel, Heavy Darksteel, and Vanya sets were originally class exclusive, but were made usable by the job in 2.0. They are effectively the AF of classes. The Rogue set will undoubtedly be the same.