Letter from the Producer, XVII (09/01/2011)

[syntaxlies]

I think the whole "Airship Issue" is a double-edged sword, really. They wanted to add alternate modes of transport, but if the ride took a while, people would rage because "anima is faster". As a result, we get a quick ride but nothing interesting to look at or interact with during the flight. Once the other modes of transport have been fleshed out, they really need to abolish the anima system. There will be a never-ending stream of bitching until it's gone, people will always compare each new mode of transport to the efficiency of anima.

i don't know why people insist on abolishing anima, no one makes anyone use it. The whole game is supposed to be about playing your own way. I think there should be an npc that can rid you of all you anima permanently, and never be able to get it back for all the people that don't like anima. Well see how many actually use it.

[Sypherblade]

as for the airship rides.. considering they plan on redoing the world maps...with land marks...why make it so you can look down at the current world design? maybe they will add it later once the maps are done.

[ydp002]

People lets just not compare each system of transportation to another and each one to be good for everything. Anima is great for every location and a quick party group. Chocobos will be great for short distant from city to nearby locations. Airship will be great to transport to city to city saving anima. They are trying to cover each mean of transportation. Definitely they are room to improvement but so far they are coming alone.

[Jynx]

there is a reason they dont have you look from the airship to the ground, have you scene the map.

there is also the possibility that the tops of certain terrain and buildings are not animated.(they had this problem with the last wow expansion, they had to ad graphics to the tops of everything cause of flying mounts)

The simple solution is making the airships it's own "Zone" like XI it's not like you were actually looking at the ground players were on. Making a "Skybox" for the ground...would be fairly simple compared to somehow making the airship actually fly through the zones.

[Fensfield]

Also, we were given warning aaaages ago that at first they were just adding it this way without the 'middle' section of the flight. We knew about it.

Even so, I'm going to join the ranks of those 'complaining' about it.

For one, I'm still disappointed anyway.

For another, I'd rather the reaction to the lack of an actual airship ride (as opposed to a glorified teleporter) be as loud as possible, even knowing they warned us before. At least then, hopefully, the developers will keep it and accompanying content in mind for the future, rather than thinking 'meh, nobody wanted it anyway' and not bother to expand it at some point down the road.

Besides, it'd also have the knock-on effect of subtly warning them against just quietly deleting the ferry's sea voyage and all, rather than iterating on it and putting some content in there.

[Cycloptichorn]

Why are people so upset that the airships are going to take a few secs, with a cutscene?

When I want to go to Grid, I don't want to take a 10 minute ride there, crafting the whole way. I want to get to the place I'm looking to go, so I can do the things that I want to do. Immediately.

The only thing that would really justify actual travel by the airship, to me, is content along the way, such as shops on the ship (with items you can only get there), crafting bonuses to wind-aspected stuff, or monsters that randomly pop and can be fought behest-style on the deck. Or maybe Garlean or pirate attacks... or maybe a random airship crash every now and then that drops ya in a dangerous or inaccessible zone.

They could go a lot of different ways with it. But getting me to grid so I can do my bizness there is by far more important.

[Malakhim]

Pop-up Help.

Thank. Fucking. Jebus.

You want to attract new people to your game? Always make sure to provide excellent ways to bring them up to speed on its mechanics.

Also, on the subject of making people move from city to city as opposed to sticking in Ul'dah, they don't need to link the Market Wards together. What they should do is create certain types of content that just aren't accessible in other cities. I'm totally cool with Ul'dah being the place to be for a mega-economy. It makes sense lore-wise and it's convenient for players. It's cool to be able to say "man, I've gotta hit the Las Vegas that IS Ul'dah if I want the good stuff."

Limsa Limsa is a huge port town with a powerful navy. If they introduce ship-to-ship combat PvP, only allow access through Limsa. Ul'dah has the Colosseum. Wanna do standard PvP mano a mano or against monsters? Hit Ul'Dah. Let's say that they release chocobo racing, and each city has its own type of themed track. If you want that tricky forest path with logs everywhere and such, gotta go to Gridania. They don't necessarily need to take any of these suggestions, but I think the idea of creating unique and compelling content for each city will eventually lead to market wards, while not as extensive as Ul'dah's maybe, coming back to life in each, which will lead to more players around. The additions of air routes will also make things much easier to access said cities quickly, so win win in my book.

...But seriously, give me a chocobo track in Limsa in which I have to navigate around stone pillars and rickety wooden walkways.

Why are people so upset that the airships are going to take a few secs, with a cutscene?

When I want to go to Grid, I don't want to take a 10 minute ride there, crafting the whole way. I want to get to the place I'm looking to go, so I can do the things that I want to do. Immediately.

The only thing that would really justify actual travel by the airship, to me, is content along the way, such as shops on the ship (with items you can only get there), crafting bonuses to wind-aspected stuff, or monsters that randomly pop and can be fought behest-style on the deck. Or maybe Garlean or pirate attacks... or maybe a random airship crash every now and then that drops ya in a dangerous or inaccessible zone.

I definitely agree with your point, but I think that just the idea of seeing some pretty scenery, listening to some nice music, and playing a game of Triple Triad is enough for a lot of people, myself included.

Garlean air raids or mobs like Doomgaze popping up from time to time would be cool though.

[naaros]

Why are people so upset that the airships are going to take a few secs, with a cutscene?

When I want to go to Grid, I don't want to take a 10 minute ride there, crafting the whole way. I want to get to the place I'm looking to go, so I can do the things that I want to do. Immediately.

The only thing that would really justify actual travel by the airship, to me, is content along the way, such as shops on the ship (with items you can only get there), crafting bonuses to wind-aspected stuff, or monsters that randomly pop and can be fought behest-style on the deck. Or maybe Garlean or pirate attacks... or maybe a random airship crash every now and then that drops ya in a dangerous or inaccessible zone.

They could go a lot of different ways with it. But getting me to grid so I can do my bizness there is by far more important.

I agree with this. I'd rather the airship ride just be cutscenes unless they had some sorta battles while on the flight. Of course, I don't know how they would balance such a thing for all levels of people riding it. :/ In FFXI, I'd just go afk for 13 minutes or ever how long everything took, so this is a nice change for me. Again though, if they had some sorta interesting battles on board the airship, I wouldn't mind the extended trip. =)

[Archadius]

i don't know why people insist on abolishing anima, no one makes anyone use it. The whole game is supposed to be about playing your own way. I think there should be an npc that can rid you of all you anima permanently, and never be able to get it back for all the people that don't like anima. Well see how many actually use it.

Oh please... That is a tired excuse. Everyone knows that people naturally take the quickest, easiest way of doing things that is available to them.

No one wants to wait for you while you walk outside LL to the Airship platform, wait for it to arrive, board, get taken to the Grid platform, and run into town to meet your party members. They would rather tell you "just use anima to teleport to us so we can get going faster".

Do you understand?

[Sephr]

Yeah but where did they say 1.21 will come out in 3 months? 1.19 is late september, 1.20 should be 3 months after... 1.21 3 months after 1.20 so that makes it 6 months? Unless they churn those patches faster i don't see 1.21 as being ready for release anytime soon.

The difference between 1.18 and 1.19 is about 2 months. They've already said they expect patch releases to speed up now, so I'd expect 3 months from the release of 1.19 to not be that unreasonable.