Ask Questions for Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XX! (FFXIV: ARR)

[Gwaeron]

Why are two-handed staves held in one hand?

[Serotonin2501]

I played XIV during the initial release but stopped played after a time. I did not get to experience the events leading up to the Calamity. Do you think at some point there will be a side story where your character will relive those events (The Battle of Castrum Novum, The Battle at Riven Road, The Battle of Cartanau)?

[Deld]

Can we look forward to the inventory-retainer relationship getting some attention? The entire theme of retainers is to assist adventurers because we're too busy, yet I find myself spending more time sorting/consolidating their inventories and searching through tabs for items, or dismissing and calling retainers in one at a time to get crafting mats.

[KariArisu]

Casting Ninjutsu through the Mudra system is still very sluggish, inconsistent, and generally unresponsive. Some of us are very serious about doing as much damage as possible, and the difference between Mudras flowing perfectly and having even the slightest bit of delay is absolutely massive.

In the past, we were told you'd look into the issue further. Has there been ANY progress at all? Even the slightest change to make Mudras less annoying would be lovely.

[KariArisu]

Are there any plans to make gear more interesting?

Currently, I never feel very accomplished when earning new gear. Unless it is a new weapon, the difference is very small. If you are not a DPS class, the differences are even smaller.
There are no interesting stats. It is not very exciting to clear T13 for a robe that gives you a tiny bit more MND, and some substats that are slightly different than another piece.

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed FFXI's ability to swap gear mid-battle and the crazy amount of horizontal gear progression this brought, literally anything more than small vertical main/sub stat gains would be cool to see.

[CassTristesse]

can you please remove level sync from abilities? cap a person's stats, not the person's skills, no reason players should be punished for being high level when running low level dungeons. this is especially annoying for black mages, certain level caps our spell rotation turns really different due to not having fire3, blizzard3 when level desyncing. just tune the damage accordingly so that it isnt overpowered, but keep the skill/abilities learned.

tanks are also handicapped in low level dungeons due to having their increased threat buff not come till higher levels. these issues are some of the most major when it comes to players not wanting to run lower level dungeons in roulettes.

[KariArisu]

Are there any plans for something like a Talent Tree system? I believe something like this could bring a very interesting layer of customization if done properly. Additionally, you could tie the system in as a reward for clearing content. (Item drops that give new/bonuses to talents, etc.)

[Akiza]

Job
Summoner
-Can the Summoner specialize in AoE Busrst and get Elementalist/Geomancer abilites
-Are Summoners getting Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva Egis.
-Can we channel the Egis
-Enkindle's cool down is to long for the amount of damage it does and can it get reduced to 120s

[CassTristesse]

can you add in job traits that are less bland? a majority of most job's traits at the moment are just stat unlocks for damage/healing increases. not very interesting at all, these traits should be a given when you level your job higher anyway. it would be better if those stat cap increase job traits were innate if you reached a certain level and those traits replaced with more interesting abilities given to job classes.

[Cidel]

There seems to be a trend of female characters having more gender-locked equipment available to them; if male gender-locked gear gear becomes available, females usually get some kind of equivalent. The new Gold Saucer Bunny set seemed to draw more attention to this imbalance. I even recall commentary about how the Sailor set was intended to be male-only but was given to both genders because the developers "liked how it looked" on females.

Is it harder for the developers to come up with male-exclusive gear?