Chocobo Content Update (Hot and Cold mini game, Chocobo Paradise, Beast Tribe, etc)

[Iscah]

That's okay though, I also loved the jump rope and card game lol. I'm a sucker for those FF mini-games. Although, do you think it possible to make it more interesting to you (without making it something 100% different)?

It's been a long time since I played, but I just remember it being tedious and luck-based. And I think also that it had a short time limit and then you had to restart the whole thing, instead of just keeping on going until you found something.

I did like the "finding treasure chests from Chocographs" element but that's not really tied to the minigame itself, and isn't that far off what we already do with identifying treasure map locations. Though it could certainly be introduced as a different treasure map system.

[Gemina]

Chocobo Hot & Cold was my least-favourite thing about FFIX. :/

I realise other people enjoyed it, but I just found it tedious from start to finish.

Then you must hate treasure maps in this game? It's nearly the same thing.

The thing about hot&cold was that the spoils were AWESOME! But they were also meant to be found one time. A chocobo hot and cold game in FFXIV would require some additional thought to perpetuate it. As usual, they would likely put bardings in there that are marketable with a ridiculous RNG factor. But I would be ok with it so long as we got something for our chocobos.

They could also add another 5-10 ranks on the company chocobos, and then place things like onions, peppers and other useful chocobo related items in the hot and cold game. The market on onions has already been obliterated since most players have maxed out berds these days.

[Iscah]

Then you must hate treasure maps in this game? It's nearly the same thing.

As I'd explained just above your post, I'm fine with treasure maps and the similar treasure-hunting element of Hot & Cold. But that was only a second step - and the initial process of having to dig for those maps is what I would actually consider to be "playing Hot & Cold", and I didn't like that part of it at all.

Treasure maps are aquired in a different way here, so that seems irrelevant.

[Gemina]

As I'd explained just above your post, I'm fine with treasure maps and the similar treasure-hunting element of Hot & Cold. But that was only a second step - and the initial process of having to dig for those maps is what I would actually consider to be "playing Hot & Cold", and I didn't like that part of it at all.

Treasure maps are aquired in a different way here, so that seems irrelevant.

I didn't see your post. Otherwise I wouldn't have asked. I apologize but it happens. I figured you were talking about finding the locations on the world map because that is what most people hated about that game. The actual mini-game where your digging stuff up in a certain amount of time was like opening presents, and the music was so catchy. It just never occurred to me that someone wouldn't mind the chocograph part, but dislike the actual mini-game.

[Shougun]

I wish we had a Chocobo Breeding system similar to Final Fantasy XI... Closest we get is whats involved with Chocobo Racing, but those birds pop out fully grown... XI you cared for an egg all the way up to adulthood, with various traits acting as stats for the Chocobo Digging side content, which was somewhat similar to IXs Hot-and-Cold minigame.

Just Chocobo Hot-and-Cold would be absolutely amazing though. Probably one of my favourite minigames in Final Fantasy. They've kind of already got the systems needed in place via the bunnies in Eureka...

Yes, remember seeing your baby chocobo? .. ... So cute! They can modern"ify" some aspects but the Golden Saucer does not count as chocobo raising/breeding to me in the sense that it just doesn't scratch the itch that I have had satisfied via FFXI or even other FF. Golden Saucer is too menu, low visual/interactivity, hands off, and a bit irrelevant unless you adore chocobo racing (important for making the best racers).

Also they could add to their moogle companion app the ability of taking care of your bird, so you could do it on the fly (if they make it interactive enough that such a thing would make sense) - careful on implementation that it doesn't become meaningless menu though.

It's been a long time since I played, but I just remember it being tedious and luck-based. And I think also that it had a short time limit and then you had to restart the whole thing, instead of just keeping on going until you found something.

I did like the "finding treasure chests from Chocographs" element but that's not really tied to the minigame itself, and isn't that far off what we already do with identifying treasure map locations. Though it could certainly be introduced as a different treasure map system.

One of the suggestions I made to the game was that the better your end score (how well you did) you'd get access to take one reward from the list of available rewards that were offered randomly (or perhaps some exclusive to "high score" rewards as well). Such that if you were trying to farm for dread peppers but didn't get a single one at the end you could at least spend your choco score on say 6 peppers.

There are other things that can be done if we're taking the FFIX concept literally here too, such that each week or however often SE balances there is a special hot and cold mini game where the RNG is significantly controlled and therefore the rewards are much better. So you can imagine different rule sets on hot and cold like different rule sets to Triple Triad (or hopefully what they can do to Mahjong). So you may find one specific rule set to your liking, and depending on balance it'll be available easily or infrequently but still something to enjoy a variation of.

Definitely one of the things I like about chocographs is that you're looking around for a treasure, but you know its going to be a pretty great treasure! Hopefully SE doesn't lose sight of that element, they can add some RNG but I hope there are some non-RNG awesome chocographs or some balance to that idea. Even let's say it gets a bit complicated such that it's like "0-4 hours after it's rained in the chocobo forest you have a 35% chance to earn the dewdrop chocograph" (high enough % that doing it over and over is unlikely but not so high that there isn't an element of unknown and fight against the timer, getting it to rain again wont be as bad as hoping to get Ixion lol). That sort of "fisher" element, but them once acquired the dewdrop chocograph has a known drop and so once you get it you're checking it off the list of cool glamour/emote/bard/appearance/item you've earned. Some named chocographs could drop more than once and others are more of a onetime achievement/milestone, giving you an exclusive untradeable unique reward.

Then you must hate treasure maps in this game? It's nearly the same thing.

The thing about hot&cold was that the spoils were AWESOME! But they were also meant to be found one time. A chocobo hot and cold game in FFXIV would require some additional thought to perpetuate it. As usual, they would likely put bardings in there that are marketable with a ridiculous RNG factor. But I would be ok with it so long as we got something for our chocobos.

They could also add another 5-10 ranks on the company chocobos, and then place things like onions, peppers and other useful chocobo related items in the hot and cold game. The market on onions has already been obliterated since most players have maxed out berds these days.

Definitely the known rewards is really awesome, that's important. I think they can introduce some unknown reward graphs as well as sort of more frequent content (especially once you've unlocked all the "named" chocographs) but having the named chocographs exist is a great thing for the system!

For adding ranks: I imagine one of the things they could do is add chocobo "jobs" or templates. Such that you could replace the tank section with Choco Knight, with new, improved, skills and passives as well as AI tweaks and then have to rerank those sections. Perhaps the concept is once you hit rank 10 in a single theme you can upgrade that section into an advanced option, there in all the skills and upgrades condense into a single node that is also nerfed a bit. For example if you had +100% hp with a max tank chocobo (level 10 in that section) and you upgraded them into choco knight it drops their choco rank down by the amount lost by wiping that section (level 20 bird to 16 for example), replaces the nodes with new better items (for you to unlock), and then adds one permanent node to your chocobo called something like "mastered basic tank". This permanent, already unlocked, node from upgrading the job would be in theme of what was replaced for example it might have +35% hp and some skills associated with it like an enmity grabbing attack/aoe version as well. Now you can level the chocobo up again, making them stronger and smarter and with the chocobo beast tribe quests and mini games leveling should be a bit more fun, easier, and more varied (as you still have the old methods as well).

It may get a bit interesting if they allowed you to have more than one chocobo customized (say 3 chocobos can be leveled) and these chocobos are included into the squadron and trust system. Such that you could do MSQ / dungeons with your bird (and perhaps any content the blue mage can do under party finder). You may find yourself with three distinctly different types of chocobos (visually, not just barding), with three different AI and skill sets (even at max ranked they'd have different jobs "enhanced", and training), and you're conquering story, old content, and near to new content with them. Sometimes with other squadron, friends, and trust members. I think they should also get special rules such that they're even allowed into unique situations like letting you take your chocobo(s) into eureka once it's no longer content SE wants to be on the main treadmill (making weird places like that easier to not become "totally dead" once no longer flavor of the month, as you'd be able to supplement/make a sort of party when needed - at least for content not currently part of the treadmill).

[Shougun]

Due to the huge exp buff we had recently I added a section to the main post covering max level birds and how the exp/leveling content could still be valuable (beyond just adding chocobo breeding). Which I'm now part of the level 20 club, wewt... lol (was level 14 before the buff).

For people who don't know when blue mage first came out the exp buff for blue mage also applied a huge buff to our chocobos (like 100x), allowing for exceptionally fast exp (I know many know this but I imagine many months down the line, this explanation may help). There was also a hotfix released that has nerfed that exp buff (not back to default), but also brought up all the other jobs to the level of blue mage's nerf. Such that you should feel something around ~5x what you used to earn on a normal job fighting level appropriate monsters (at level 70 ~2k I think), but as a blue mage your 10k chocobo exp is probably now around 800 lol.

The section I added I'll post in spoiler tags below, but the TL;DR of it is a job customization system akin to main job/subjob (think FF Tactics) that adds value to keep leveling your chocobo and adding personalization, and while detailed a bit above is now better detailed in my post added to OP (and the updated section attached below).

Please bare in mind that the recent exp buff (for all jobs, nerf for blue) has made leveling less painful than before and major concepts of the OP post are there to make the experience smoother (like mini games and chocobo beast tribe quests) - so... don't jump back in fear you might have "another 4 years" to rank up your bird (it wont be! lol).

Where you can take the basic job of "defender","healer","attacker" that you have at rank 10 and turn it into a stone for sub job use, and then have your chocobo take that open space and learn a new job (meaning new abilities and concepts to experience, as well as a more powerful boco). Could be silly things like a special job with an ultimate skill of summoning a fat chocobo "primal" attack (like you might remember in other FF games), another allowing your bird to become a spell slinger weaving in fire blasts, an enfeebler/buffer, better tank, farm support via classic Thief concepts, etc.

Advanced Trees, New Jobs - After Rank 10(s), level 20 boco:

With the blue mage exp buff allowing many more people to quickly hit level 20 I wanted to reiterate in this post something I stormed up later in thread - the idea of advanced paths/jobs for the chocobo. Say for example the base tank route is at rank 10 (meaning maxed), now you have the ability to collapse all of those buffs and spells into one complete node. This node could be utilized as a equip-able passive slot which I'll call sub job/node now (if SE wants to add some unique customizing and better balance control) or it can be an always on passive that doesn't take up a slot (meaning each job finished just makes your bird more and more powerful). I say customizing because it means you could unlock many job nodes over your experience with the game but you would make a "build" of three currently in slot (ranking area) and one in sub job at half power (more details on that below), which is quite a bit different than perhaps keep it all, getting a very powerful bird that is also not really tailored once all things are said and done.

May visualize the nodes as chocobo job stones, where in the chocobo can have many job stones active at once (unlike us). And the passive slot like FFXI / FFT with sub jobs where you can level up a job and then put it under another at a lesser but still VERY helpful power bonus (gaining /some/ skills and powers).

My suggestion is that the node will be at full power if equipped in the rank section or half power if equipped into the single slot of passive (next to barding equipment area). Such that if the basic defender path gave you 100% hp and three kick abilities the collapsed node equipped on the sub job slot is 50% hp and a kick (very similar to sub job in other FF titles). You could move it back into the ranking section for full power but then you wouldn't be able to equip/level a new job in that place. You might wonder why the node has less stats when in the sub job slot near barding section, but that's because once you upgrade your basic rank path you can choose to replace it with a newer advanced form (with more powerful, and likely more niche options) - so it's that old job added on top of another thing (it's better in the end!). Then you may wonder what's the point of letting players equip the node back into the ranking section, that is simply a huge QoL for players - lets say you rank EVERY CHOCOBO JOB (wow good job) so now you want full power X, Y, Z (of things you already own nodes for) and half power sub job G... well you're in luck you can do that all (you don't have to rerank something to hold it in the rank area, your node can exist full power there just give them the node (job stone)).

It would be a good idea to think about how SE will lower the chocobo level when collapsing and if they need a different exp system, since if you remove 10 ranks worth of exp from a chocobo (to collapse a node, so they can earn a new node on a new job) you'd be at drastically different levels at the end based on what level your bird started at (20->16 or like 10->1 lol). There are some exp curves to think about as well. Besides just allowing that weird relationship (it could work, it doesn't have to change much) I could suggest two other systems instead of our current level 1 to 20 chocobo either:

A exp is a currency, aka dark souls sort of system, which would be similar to what we have now but more straight forward (chocobo experience is poured into a job to rank it up, like in souls to stats).
Or each job gets a share of the exp when monsters die (max ranked jobs take no share, passing it to the remaining) and that % share is modified depending on what mode you're in (healer, tank, free, damage). May visualize warframe a bit for this one (personally massaging the current exp curve or using the "souls exp" system would be better).

In this way the content above (like easier/smoother leveling experience and mini games) isn't lost on max level chocobos, and the journey for those who are at max rank is not over. Some of these advanced jobs could be unlocked by default while others are rewarded from various content, like a gambler job might be from the Golden Saucer, while choco knight is default available. Also consider with chocobo breeding as another way for max ranked players to be able to value the above content.

Some of many possible ideas could be:

• Black mage / summoner kit that allows chocobo "black magic" and ability to summon a "ahk morn" of the chocobo kingdom (fat chocobo booty pound) - perhaps a reward high up in the chocobo beast tribe system.
• Red made type that focuses more on enfeebling the enemy and buffing you (the side of red mage we didn't get so much of in FFXIV's variant, which is cool I think FFXIV red mage isn't bad (just my imo~!!! lol))
• Thief, giving the chocobo treasure hunter and mug
• Every year you can earn "Performer" from my little ladies event, being a sort of singer/dancer
• Gambler a fairly visual chance based job, inspired by the other FF title gambler jobs (some are not titled "Gambler" like corsair or lady luck).
• Explorer which adds a lot to choco passives and increasing exp gain of you and your bird - making it a great lone wolf sub job (as well as perhaps some better hot and cold senses)
• Racer could be from doing well in saucer racing - adding some abilities related to nimbleness, speed (in and out of combat)
• White mage related kit that adds esuna a few more heal oGCDs and a 2 hour cooldown passive that will call your chocobo out and raise you if you die in the open world (to allow players to easily blood port still, have a long distances chocobo kweeeeeeh and after a little bit have them approach and raise you - that way you can easily still use death as a teleport if you had wanted without triggering the cooldown).
• For the extra dedicated if you unlock x, y, z nodes you can get special jobs like perhaps a Gold Chocobo type unlock that is just generally a very good very well rounded job (like maybe not the best at niche tasks but is just a /great/ class)

Bullet points:

• At rank 10 (not level 10) of a path you may collapse that path into a single node. Depending on SE balance it will either always be on or something you can equip into a passive slot for a substantial boost of stats and spells from that node.
• Once a path has been cleared, or perhaps a special item is used to clear it (without the benefit of unlocking the node), you can replace it with special jobs that offer unique spells, stats, and opportunities.
• This system will allow players who are at level 20 (3 rank 10 players) a nice way to continue forward with the above content, also because the above content is meant to smooth out the chocobo experience they wont be left out of playing some of the mini games and quests and getting that smoother experience (they'll just have a head start over other players with low level chocobos).

They had a gambit system, long long ago, that they spoke of us allowing customization to our chocobo minion but Yoshida said no to it because he thought it was so strong it could create a bot. Imo with more interesting chocobo skills I think a gambit light system might be nice, just to tweak something - especially if you're combining two or more ability heavy jobs (like mages, but I suppose if SE designs the system well enough it should be "okay" without).

Really off the cuff wild suggestion. . . but uh. . . you could build a sphere gird for the chocobo's progression instead lol. With certain grids (the idea of "jobs" above) requiring unlocks like in FFX, so very much like the above idea but visually exciting and way more convoluted hahaha. I'm not too fixed on it but I always liked the sphere grid although I saw it as something that'd just be a nightmare for normal progression on our jobs (maybe a merit system).. well chocobo doesn't need normal progression. Anyway.. just a wild thought . A sphere grid would require many tweaks to the above thoughts so I'm not suggesting it's a plug and play scenario, but thought it quaint enough to mention~ lol.

[Noitems]

I'm all for more Chocobo content especially as everyone's been leveling it up through BLU. I think a designated area for them as well as allowing racing there too for exclusive rewards would be a fun idea!

[Shougun]

I'm all for more Chocobo content especially as everyone's been leveling it up through BLU. I think a designated area for them as well as allowing racing there too for exclusive rewards would be a fun idea!

I could totally imagine some chocobo paradise, garden, forest, and or lagoon race tracks! Would be nice to see part (or all) of at least one track be incorporated in the zone such that you can see the track as a character exploring the world rather than instanced only - even better with either faux racing (AI making it look alive), or an open track you can mess around on (like in FFXV).

[Haxaan]

I wish we had a Chocobo Breeding system similar to Final Fantasy XI... Closest we get is whats involved with Chocobo Racing, but those birds pop out fully grown... XI you cared for an egg all the way up to adulthood, with various traits acting as stats for the Chocobo Digging side content, which was somewhat similar to IXs Hot-and-Cold minigame.

Just Chocobo Hot-and-Cold would be absolutely amazing though. Probably one of my favourite minigames in Final Fantasy. They've kind of already got the systems needed in place via the bunnies in Eureka...

I loved the ability to breed and raise Chocobos. It wasn't for everyone, but it was a fun bit of side-content that really gave me a better connection to my Chocobo.

I have also been clamoring for a Chocobo Dungeon since 2.0 , I think a up to 4-man + 4 Chocobo Dungeon would be amazing! Rewards could be Chocobo items for dyeing and exp gain, and barding. I would love a player created Chocobo barding design contest! I bet we could come up with some really interesting stuff, from cutesy monster based ones to fantastical fantasy themed ones.

I just feel like the Chocobos have been left by the wayside which is sad. I definitely think having a Choco questline when you hit rank 20 to unlock further ranks which unlock barding and other Choco related items would be great! Maybe one day

[Shougun]

In anticipation for Shadowbringers I was thinking about the new "Chocobo" of our new shard. Of course they're not quite a chocobo but they were introduced with that sort of concept in the live letter (they say it's sort of a chocobo for the shard):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A4FrFJMlWU



With that said I was wondering if these Amaro are truly chocobo equivalents or if that was just something they said to give players a semi-reference point (outside game commentary vs in game). Or in other words is it related like Ronso is related to Hrothgar and Lalafells to Dwarves or is it more like a great sword is related to a long sword in that they're both swords (but not the same thing).

Further then... I wonder if it would be possible for an Amaro to be in place of our Chocobo Companion (to fight by our side, race, hot and cold, and so forth). I imagine making some of the barding fit would be a challenge though. If yes they are chocobo equivalents and then yes included into chocobo content then Amaro genes into chocobo breeding could certainly add a lot of chocobo variation options (as I imagined in the first page soft fluffy chocobos like in FFXIII).

I loved the ability to breed and raise Chocobos. It wasn't for everyone, but it was a fun bit of side-content that really gave me a better connection to my Chocobo.

I have also been clamoring for a Chocobo Dungeon since 2.0 , I think a up to 4-man + 4 Chocobo Dungeon would be amazing! Rewards could be Chocobo items for dyeing and exp gain, and barding. I would love a player created Chocobo barding design contest! I bet we could come up with some really interesting stuff, from cutesy monster based ones to fantastical fantasy themed ones.

I just feel like the Chocobos have been left by the wayside which is sad. I definitely think having a Choco questline when you hit rank 20 to unlock further ranks which unlock barding and other Choco related items would be great! Maybe one day

Yoshi-P talked recently about needing more blue mage party content, could be nice if we could use Blue Mages in those Chocobo Dungeon concepts~! Also I am definitely for the idea of chocobo dungeons and more (I made a line about perhaps allowing our chocobo to act as an extra squadron member when doing squadron missions and such too).

Also a chocobo barding player contest could be really cool. . ! Agreed I feel Chocobos have been left alone/forgotten a bit. Like Airships imo Chocobos feel like a great nostolgia point for me and feel they're a bit soft spoken at the moment (made an airship thread too lol).