Announcements from Letter from the Producer Live Part LXXXV (85) - 7 February 2025

[Iscah]

It's more akin to island sanctuary which similarly starts off as a blank (wild and overgrown) slate that quickly becomes your base of operations.

I liked it better when it was wild and overgrown and not after we were forced to tear it up to progress. We never got any decent way to hide the factories either.

This looks somewhat better since it's starting with a very blank zone anyway. Hopefully our Loporrit assistants are less obnoxious than the mammets.

[Exmo]

I liked it better when it was wild and overgrown and not after we were forced to tear it up to progress. We never got any decent way to hide the factories either.

This looks somewhat better since it's starting with a very blank zone anyway. Hopefully our Loporrit assistants are less obnoxious than the mammets.

Agreed on the first point. The concept of taming the wilds to bring civilization to it... not a fan. FFXIV tends on the most part to be ideologically conservative in this and similar ways (cosmic exploration is probably going to have us strip mining other planets in the name of expansionism, for example) but this is a topic for another day.

It'll depend on what the framing for the initial quests is, but setting up bases to harvest resources from unsettled islands near Vylbrand makes complete sense as a basic idea. The only established things of potential value on the moon were cultivated by the Loporrits, and travel to and from Bestways Burrow hasn't been treated as having any obstacles since the portal in Garlemald was opened.

The uninhabited islands were mainly background until they were elevated as the premise for island sanctuaries. I imagine for cosmic exploration it'll do something similar - either expand on some tiny background lore from an EW side quest, or introduce something new to kick off the expedition. I don't really mind if it's the latter tbh. I like it when NPCs I introduce me to things that have been going on in the background all along, even though I wasn't aware of it until that moment. It helps the world feel bigger and more alive.