Ask Questions for Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXXV! (Patch 4.0 "Stormblood")

[Reaver_Bharash]

In Stormblood will you be making content that makes the use of 2 tanks mandatory even at higher ilvls? Trying to do stuff as a tank when people only want 1 is really bad. You want tanks and healers to actually stick around but content is getting to where 1 tank 1 healer is fine, making it more difficult for people who want to do content have a hard time finding/getting a party.

[Iromi]

What kind of brand new content are we going to see?

[Eloah]

Is Gosetsu a roegadyn or just a hyur that's very muscular?

PLEASE!!!! be a Roe, he has to be a Roe. We need more Roe Main Characters, right now its just Merlwyb and Biggs. And on that note we need a new lala too, T.T, you know why.

I have played a healer in FFXIV since 1.0. With no new healers being introduced in Stormblood, could you elaborate on how you plan to have each healer be unique and interesting moving forward? I am specifically interested in how the dev team envisions the three healers working together and what design philosophy was employed toward end-game healing content.

P.S. We also hate cleric stance.

Not sure if you mean its annoying to switch to attack or we shouldn't have the option at all. I just want to be able to DPS when healing is not required.

As for my own question:

With the cross class system, there were many skills viewed as "mandatory" for each role/Job, some even placing higher in the slot list over others; for instance, as a SCH the 5 cross class skills were in "order": Cleric Stance, Aero, Protect, Swiftcast, and Stoneskin. with the new Role system coming and all abilities and skills being reworked will we see some cross class skills get replacements if they are no longer available for other Jobs? For instance, Aero is a good DPS Skill given to both SCH and AST to supplement their lower DPS spell count, will either job be able to keep Aero or will they get a replacement skill? Likewise, Fracture, though a Warrior skill, isn't practical for use by them, but it is a cross class for both Monk and PLD, and is a good skill for them to have/use, will either of them keep the "reworked" Fracture, or will they get a new skill to replace the "lose"?

[Teneaux]

Would it be possible to expand on Free Companies, beyond the company workshop and crafting, possibly add things like daily Free Company quests things that the Officers and leaders can choose that members can accept and perform to some benefit of the Company, maybe for company credits or buffs or gil etc. Just something to add to the current free company system and give players more of a reason to be in a Free Company?

[Waffles298]

will there be a distribution of fantasias with storm blood, similar to when Heavensward was released?

[Antwan]

Free Companies
Are there any plans to make free companies more inclusive? Something like a challenge log that is synced across all free company members, or rewards given to free companies that aren't as bland and understated as the FC Credit system.

Free companies struggle without a system of camaraderie that causes us to get closer together as a company and as friends which is disheartening within an MMO. Once an FC has a house and an airship system all maxed out there are no longer any collective goals for us to work on, and even the mentioned collective goals are not long term solutions to the bigger problem of FC inactivity. Although FCs can create and manage small and large scale social events within their FC and server, there is nothing really there for us as an FC to do past that.

How do you plan on alleviating this issue in 4.0?

[Jpec07]

HOUSING RESTRICTION

Will there be a restriction to where once you buy a house you can't buy another one? Housing has been chaotic due to some players buying multiple plots making it hard for some who really want a personal home because plots are being sold quickly.

You already can't. Characters and FCs are limited to one house, each, and I don't think they'd prevent people from buying houses on alts.

With the current lineup of jobs showing a rather significant tilt toward DPS classes, will we see formation changes in future raid content from the traditional 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 dps to what we've been seeing in the 24-man alliance raids with 1 tank, 2 healers, 5 dps?

No. The composition changed for 24-man raids because there was literally no point to having six tanks in an instance. Even in the first part of Crystal Tower, there were multiple points where, if a tank wasn't the main tank, the tanks' job was to DPS until a mechanic happened. It will stay 2-2-4 in 8-man content because there are plenty of ways to make things interesting for two tanks.

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Now for another question:
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Are there any plans to address the scaling limitations inherent in the design of the housing system currently in place in FFXIV? What I mean is this: with a fixed number of housing plots, as the game's audience grows, supply will always be chasing demand, which creates an environment that is incredibly hostile towards new players and people looking to buy housing plots. Even if you add new wards, they will eventually fill up, and housing will continue to be a source of pain for your players. If, instead, the housing system was built to scale with supply, demand, and usage (using a cloud-based infrastructure like AWS, which can easily be manipulated through its SDK, to add wards and move plots as needed, for example), you could remove the reclamation system and never have a situation where a player would be unable to buy a house. Is this something that you guys would consider doing?

[Mysticales]

Can we expect to see any changes to clipping with hairstyles and weapon meshes with the discontinuing of PS3 for 4.0? Will there be any graphical changes at 4.0 launch?

[Delta041]

Are there any adjustments in the works to advanced materia melding?

Current melding chances are extremely low on the first overmeld and any future materia grades added will simply make matters even worse.

[judgemagister]

will there be new job class quest for the existing jobs?