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

[Reaujien]

I personally would like to see anima go away. There's literally no lore behind it - it felt "alien" from the start of this game.

Yeah of course I use it, but only simply because it's there.

Most of us undoubtedly would need anima-rehab, but we can take all the steps in the X-step program together!

[Archadius]

I personally would like to see anima go away. There's literally no lore behind it - it felt "alien" from the start of this game.

Yeah of course I use it, but only simply because it's there.

Most of us undoubtedly would need anima-rehab, but we can take all the steps in the X-step program together!

lol

/10char

[Kel]

I'm OK with the airship with only quick cutscene.

I know ppl wanna view from the sky but several times later, do you think you will still choose taking an airship instead of using anima when travelling from one city to another? No matter what, transportation itself is the most important thing, unless like someone suggested, something special might happen when you take a ship, otherwise there's no meaning to make the airship trip longer than a minute.

Taking this chance, may I ask two "silly" questions after reading the recent letters from Yoshida? Maybe I don't know as I haven't played FFXI before, so if anyone's so kind, please explain to me. Thank you.

1. Why everyone's excited about the upcoming job system?
Is is like adding some extention classes, e.g. your conjurer is at certain rank, now you can start an advanced white mage job with specialized abilities? If so, do you need to grind that "job" again? if grinding is needed, then what's the meaning of having a job system? why not just simply remove the rank cap and let your original class obtain specialized abolities after R50? What's the difference?

2. Maybe someone has asked, but what do "Second primal battle", "Caravan escort", and "Hamlet defense" mean? any idea?


Last thing I want to say, a title system is what I hoped for months, but I'm disappointed that we can just show title earned from achievements instead of what we like to say to others.

[Starlord]

I'm OK with the airship with only quick cutscene.

I know ppl wanna view from the sky but several times later, do you think you will still choose taking an airship instead of using anima when travelling from one city to another? No matter what, transportation itself is the most important thing, unless like someone suggested, something special might happen when you take a ship, otherwise there's no meaning to make the airship trip longer than a minute.

Taking this chance, may I ask two "silly" questions after reading the recent letters from Yoshida? Maybe I don't know as I haven't played FFXI before, so if anyone's so kind, please explain to me. Thank you.

1. Why everyone's excited about the upcoming job system?
Is is like adding some extention classes, e.g. your conjurer is at certain rank, now you can start an advanced white mage job with specialized abilities? If so, do you need to grind that "job" again? if grinding is needed, then what's the meaning of having a job system? why not just simply remove the rank cap and let your original class obtain specialized abolities after R50?

2. Maybe someone has asked, but what do "Second primal battle", "Caravan escort", and "Hamlet defense" mean? any idea?


Last thing I want to say, a title system is what I hoped for months, but I'm disappointed that we can just show title earned from achievements instead of what we like to say to others.

Traveling on Foot from Gridania to Ul'dah= 15-25min
Traveling on Airship ( if traveled with an Instanced area)= 3min

There's a big difference between the two, and if I were to choose to " save my anima, and using the airship to go to the cities, Using the Airship would be the Optimal choice, if I want to go to a Particular camp, that's what we are going to have chocobos, in the end Will I need my Anima?

Answer to that question will be a big Fat "no"

[Kel]

If you mean the airship trip with waiting + scenery + cutscenes <= 3min, then I agree with you. I thought if scenery is added, the trip will be like 10mins, so said after several times of scenery viewing, ppl will at last abandom taking an airship.

[DNO]

It enrages me to no end how people are so lazy and would seriously love unlimited anima and fast travel. For the love of all things holy there needs to be some sort of restrictions on transportation.

Otherwise we might as well strap jetpacks to everyone and explain thats how they can warp to any <pos> on the map. because...you know it's more convient that way.

it enrages me when people think that running for
hours is fun. this is a game that's supposed to be fun and running places for the 1 millionth time is not fun

[Reinheart]

@Kel

1. Why everyone's excited about the upcoming job system?
If so, do you need to grind that "job" again? if grinding is needed, then what's the meaning of having a job system?

They already said no to this one, the class level will reflect the job level. Which some wanted to actually grind on that job and gain levels with that job, rather than suddenly being xx level job when you're xx level clas.

2. Maybe someone has asked, but what do "Second primal battle", "Caravan escort", and "Hamlet defense" mean? any idea?

Second Primal Battle - first is Ifrit so... next garuda? who knows.
Caravan Escort - is related with the mini-farms or w/e devs added in 1.18 they wanted to start with something small for the players to get used to if I remember correctly.
Hamlet Defense - defend the existing hamlet from mobs or imperials... who know

[Buttons]

I'm OK with the airship with only quick cutscene.

1. Why everyone's excited about the upcoming job system?
Is is like adding some extention classes, e.g. your conjurer is at certain rank, now you can start an advanced white mage job with specialized abilities? If so, do you need to grind that "job" again? if grinding is needed, then what's the meaning of having a job system? why not just simply remove the rank cap and let your original class obtain specialized abolities after R50? What's the difference?

Post above me covered it mostly.

For me personally it's about job identity. It's not only about the skills you get, with jobs they are also introducing new armour. If it is anything like artifact armour in FFXI, it should be tons of fun.

You do a proper storyline job quest to get individual pieces of armour that only your job can wear. It just makes the game feel more like a Final Fantasy. Black mages in their coats and pointy hats, and white mages in their white and red robes and hats/cloaks.

Even though they have been working on current classes, they still feel very bland. Apart from the weapon a CON and THM practically look the same and even play the same. The melee classes also wear the same armour, it gets too bland and boring.

As I said before, it really is a shame that jobs still seem so far away. It's actually the thing that's making me hold on. Even in beta many of us wished for new classes and the implementation of jobs will be a nice change of pace ingame.

[Perrin_Aybarra]

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.

Yeah I had June in mind for some reason ^^ thanks for reminding me though! I do hope you are right with 3 months for 2 patches, I would not complain for sure as long as the quality of them is not impaired.

[Balbanes]

Looking good. I wish they would get on with adding mailboxes though.

I'm wondering more and more lately when they plan to launch PS3 and make the game P2P. ~1.21 with jobs? Guess we"ll see.