Letter from the Player, I (3/13/11)

[Fieros]

Greetings, fellow FINAL FANTASY XIV fans. I hope you are all enjoying your adventures in Eorzea.

I have a confession to make—I love the new forums. And I'm using "love" in the strongest sense of the word here. Call me old-fashioned, but I never saw these English forums of yours as anything but entertainment. Just looking at the topics, I can tell these tissues definitely aren't big enough! And yet here I am, writing my first letter at 3 am. Why? Well, because FFXIV is a beautiful endeavor, and after the recent changes to the game, it's fallen to me to give everybody the lowdown on the game's new direction.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team is NOT safe on Japanese soil, wrapping up conclusions from patch 1.16. This patch brought the long-awaited introduction of sidequests, which were a major disappointment, and our localization staff has been hard at work putting their final touches on their translations of our feedback from the Japanese forums in order to bring you an unforgettable linguistic experience and maintain the impression that we care about your novel and groundbreaking ideas. We originally intended for more item storage to be implemented before the end of February, but unfortunately I had to make the decision to delay its release for a few months to allow your inventory sufficient time to overflow and cause repeated episodes of shuffling items back and forth between your retainers just to add a new item to bazaar. I understand your frustration, but ask that you bear with us just a little longer while we realize that without a mailing system extra character slots are basically useless.

Regarding the frequent ffxi flashbacks affecting many of you, patch 1.15b introduced a measure to help address this issue. While there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of posts suggesting that ffxiv become ffxi, we're aware the issue has yet to be fully resolved, and so our team is continuing to waste its efforts sifting through your suggestions.

And now for a bit of good news! I'm looking forward to reading all your posts. (^-^)v

Jumping? Really!? Is the idiot trying to make me soil myself!?

To help me express how much I love being on these forums, let me try and calm my nerves with a couple new concept designs...

• If you recall in a previous letter I mentioned that death porting was not very FF'esque and the issue would be addressed. Airship and chocobo travel will now allow players an alternate to anima for moving around the wonderful world of Eorzea at the cost of gil instead of anima.

• Also, after being KO'd players will now be taken to the CLOSEST aetherial gate for no cost. Additionally, players will be given the choice to revive at the gate of their choice for the same cost in anima it would take to teleport to that location from their current position. We realize this system makes sense and is fair but will still upset some of you who have nothing better to do than complain about our amazing game. Which brings me to the next point.

• I understand that some of you haven't figured out you can discern HQ items from normal by adding 1, 2, or 3 gil to the price (such as 10,001 for a +1 item) but since not everyone has adapted to this makeshift system we are going to waste resources tweaking our search tool instead of fixing the lack of inventory space/ retainer storage. Also, it has come to my attention that some of you are lazy as hell and complain about travelling to the individual wards and retainers to physically purchase your desired items. I would just like to take this opportunity to reiterate that you are lazy as hell.

• Furthermore, until I read it here on the English forums, I had no idea that 95% of every server population congregates in Thalnan, and Ul'dah more specifically. We are hoping the re-vamp of The Black Shroud paired with the new travel methods and better mob distribution will encourage players to seek adventure in all reaches of Eorzea. We are also looking into some form of global auction house to link the individual city markets. Whlie I can't go into great detail about this just yet, we have decided there will be a hefty tax added of about 20% for utilizing this convenience. Since our global auction house system will rely on mail delivery, the implementation will be sometime in mid-summer of 2011, after we realize how the introduction of a mailing system would give people incentive to buy additional character slots for storage. We do want to take your money at some point, just not until after some more radical changes- rest assured.

Finally, I still plan to explain the "introduction of new synthesis concepts" bit from last month in a little more detail in a future post, just waiting on our team to come up with them first.

That's all I've got for now. Until next time, I wish you all the best in your Eorzean endeavors.

Talk to you all again in a few days! (^-^)

[Reika]

Niceo copy~ /thumbsup

[Kilta_Firelotus]

reported sorry bad taste inlight of what is going on over in japan. And the possibility that our new ffxiv producer may have lost a close friend of his.

really dude.... this was not cool

[Reika]

It was rude, but kinda funny.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

It was rude, but kinda funny.

i would find it funny if the timing was better. : /

[fallacies]

If you recall in a previous letter I mentioned that death porting was not very FF'esque and the issue would be addressed.

Not to continue the rudeness, but death-porting is exactly what happens if you load after gameovering in every FF.

[Reika]

i would find it funny if the timing was better. : /

I know. But staying on a positive side is also good.

[Focant]

I personally could just do without the immense sarcasm. Whatever the OP was trying to get across, assuming he wasn't just doing it to be a jerk, was totally lost in the post.

[Karbine]

I'm getting disgusted with a good portion of this community really quickly.

[Vaymathias]

Is this the same fieros in the NAYA?