Ask Naoki Yoshida Your Questions for the PAX East 2023 Panel

[WillowTheSinner]

Howdy-Howdy Mr.Yoshida and question readers.

I would like to ask if there will be some kind of Garlemald Restoration in the future?

I find Garlemald on of the more interisting areas in all of The Source, and am invested in the well being in the last remaining citizens there, along with what remains of the left over technology that could benefit the rest of the in-game world.

[Mightyr]

Is there any plans to expand the character customization?
Like adding more body customization options, or body types, new animations, beards.
And as a viera player, i have to ask for option to use hats as a viera or hrothgar

[ty_taurus]

Throughout Endwalker, the healer role continues to receive heavy criticism by many dedicated healer players who are dissatisfied with all of the healers. More and more healer players are leaving the role as a result of the direction of healer design since the beginning of Shadowbringers. These issues can be best summarized into two main issues:

1. There isn't enough damage to warrant the vast selection of potent healing actions each healer has access to in normal, non-savage content. There are many really cool or interesting healing abilities that often are ignored in normal content because they're too excessive for the content.
2. Healers are not fun to play when no one needs healing, which ends up being most of the time. Even in savage content, once a fight is learned, a skilled healer often needs to heal less as the party makes less mistakes and they learn to manage their cooldowns better. The reward for this is more time to spend on unfun DPS.

My Question:

What many of us want is for healers to always be fun, not just fun in savage or ultimate by expanding on DPS tools and/or other supportive tools that are always engaging regardless of whether or not the party needs healing. Additionally, since FFXIV is becoming more and more friendly toward a single-player experience, ensuring the healers promote a fun gameplay experience for solo players is also very important. Are there any plans to address these concerns in the upcoming expansion?

[Rymi64]

Do you plan to add anymore limited jobs alongside Blue mage?

[Recon1o6]

Can healers get more damage spells and unique astrologian cards returned as a priority please?

[Recon1o6]

In all the healer job quests from A realm reborn to Endwalker Healers are taught to use damage spells and healing spells in both gameplay and lore. However shadowbringers removed too many damage spells and astrologian cards which were also tied to lore. Can these be returned as a priority?

[ForsakenRoe]

Echoing other questions about the state of healers, my question would be this:

We saw an incredibly damaging exodus of players with the current raid tier's release (Pandaemonium: Abyssos Savage), due to the sudden increase of required healing and mitigation. Given this massive loss of healer players, and the fact that we naturally end up with large amounts of downtime as healers where healing isn't needed (so we do damage), would the development team be more open to the idea of returning to a previous design of damage options for healers? I remember the team saying we would not return to 3.0's design, but would 4.0 be a possibility to consider? If we are going to have large amounts of 'damage uptime windows' where healing isn't needed, can the development team look at making that 'downtime' gameplay more interesting by adding back some damage actions previously removed? EG WHM getting back Aero 3, or SCH getting back Miasma and Shadowflare

[Dagget]

What Dev decided it would be a good joke for Eastern Thanalan, home to Camp Drybone, the rainiest zone in the game?

[ty_taurus]

Many healer players continue to be unhappy with the healer role, and more healers have been switching to tank or DPS as a result. This is because of two main issues:

1. Healers don't heal enough in most content. Our abilities are way too powerful most of the time, and even in savage content, as the fight is learned, good healers reduce how often they need to heal.
2. Healers are not fun to play when no one needs healing. Healing should still be fun in solo content and normal content like dungeons, but every healer has boring DPS gameplay, even Sage.

My Question:

Are there any plans to address these problems in the next expansion? When can we expect healers to get more things to do outside of healing?

[Chihayass]

As another former Ultima Online player, I see a lot of little nods to that game in Final Fantasy XIV. What aspects of FFXIV would you and the rest of the team like to see future MMORPGs or games carry forward in the years to come?