To Yoshida-san and the Final Fantasy XIV Team:

As requested by you in the interview with Gamer Escape, I hope the Community Reps pass along our suggestions to you about the horrible Loot System you have for Ifrit:

Gamer Escape: Speaking about the Ifrit battle… I haven’t beaten it yet, but I’ve heard that when players beat it, the items are dropped into their inventory instead of the loot pool where they could then be transferred to somebody. I’d hate to spend this time beating it to get a Conjurer weapon for my Lancer and then I’d feel bad if there was a Conjurer in my group that wanted it and I couldn’t give it to them. Is there a reason it was made that way? Or is this a bug?

Yoshida: Currently that is pretty much what we had in mind, so it’s not a bug. Because the hard mode can be played by everyone, it depends if you have the lamp or not. If you have the Inferno Lamp when you go in, it means you have a chance to get a drop. And If you don’t, it means you’re just helping and you won’t get that drop. So it looks at each player and checks for the lamp and if they have the lamp then it will randomly choose the drop and it’ll give it to each player, so it’s chosen by each player rather than the whole group. There was a lot of talk within the development team whether to look at the class and say OK if it’s this class then they only get this item or it doesn’t look at the class and gives the random item. They went with not basing it on the class because they felt that with the armory system and the way it’s set up now, players probably play a lot of different classes and might not be participating in the Ifrit battle on whatever they consider to be their main job. For example, you might really be a Lancer but because of what the party needs, you went as Gladiator. We didn’t want to penalize that player by not giving them a chance at what they really want. But that doesn’t mean it’s a perfect system. We know that players have started complaining about it. We are moving towards having a system that is closer to the need/greed system like WoW uses. Where players can… if they’re that class they can “need” it, or “greed” it if they want to use it for another class and the “needs” will get precedence over it. We’re finding out how we want to adjust that system and fit it towards FFXIV. Before we do that, we want the opinions of the community on what they feel would be the best type of loot system.

At the very minimum, having a Master Loot / Quartermaster System from XI (where you can designate who gets what loot) is a huge step up from having drops auto-dumped randomly into people's inventories (and them being Rare/EX (Unique / Untradeable)).


I'm not familiar with WoW's Need/Greed System but it sounds like that also helps people specify their #1 and #2 "most wanted" gear from completing a challenge?



The auto-dumping method is just baffling and seems to be a very frustrating / unfair / rage-worthy way of inducing cheap replay value (forcing players to battle Ifrit over and over to hope they randomly get their auto-dumped drop into their own inventory (since you can't trade / pass it to others)) to buy the Dev Team some time for 1.20.


Even with a Key Item involved (which is super easy to get), at the minimum, a Master Loot / Quartermaster System would make the most sense.


Or keep it like you had in Dzemael Darkhold (where it drops in someone's Loot Pool so they can Pass it to others if need be). That requires NO additional technology or new systems, and at least is fairer than what you put in for Ifrit.


Thanks.