Multicolored horses... Great! But why no multicolor chocobos?

[Skullriot]

So the chocobo is probably one of the most recognizable icons of Final Fantasy, and yet with this last update, why are we getting multicolored horses?

I'm not terribly familiar with the chocobo and its history in Eorzea, however I feel that if you are ok with adding multicolored horses into the game, multicolored chocobos wouldn't be a big stretch.

[Myrhn]

Maybe if they add a barding system for chocobos we will see multicolor chocobos too.

[mikoto_qc]

just tell me first :" does any Mount in this game is useful or useless?"
for me i use my mount probably 1 to 2% of my gameplay time.

[Skullriot]

I see your point Miko, but for me final fantasy cornerstones are the summons/eidolons, chocobos, moogles, airships, cid, biggs and wedge! Moogles are a bit non present from ff14 as it is, outside of being mailboxes, and chocobos are all over, but a bit bland.

Mhrhn, when you say barding, do you mean stables and multiple chocobos? Like a breeding system? I would enjoy that myself.

[Myrhn]

I see your point Miko, but for me final fantasy cornerstones are the summons/eidolons, chocobos, moogles, airships, cid, biggs and wedge! Moogles are a bit non present from ff14 as it is, outside of being mailboxes, and chocobos are all over, but a bit bland.

Mhrhn, when you say barding, do you mean stables and multiple chocobos? Like a breeding system? I would enjoy that myself.

Yeah exactly something like that. If you played FFXI they had something like that and we could raise our chocobo and breed it with other people chocobo and with some combination of the food we could get a colored chocobo.

[Enkidoh]

Mhrhn, when you say barding, do you mean stables and multiple chocobos? Like a breeding system? I would enjoy that myself.

Barding is the gear you equip to your Grand Company chocobo - it's a collective term for the saddle, harness and bridle it wears. At the moment, the barding is purely cosmetic, but apparently later on SE will be making it that it has actual stats like character equipment.

As for coloured chocobos, at the moment the closest we have to a chocobo of a colour different to the standard yellow is the little Black chocobo chick minion from one of the Veteran Rewards, so lore wise at least, it's entirely possible black chocobos at least may make an appearance later on in the game.

It should also be noted that lore-wise, chocobos in Eorzea have only just come back from the very brink of extinction, just prior to the Calamity a devastating plague called 'chocobo blight' was afflicting chocobos across Aldernard, forcing the Ishgardian stables to quarantine their birds and thus preventing them from providing them to the other city states. This was the in-game lore reason given at the start of 1.0 why players were unable to ride chocobos then.

Only later on did the blight diminish enough that Ishgard decided that the danger had passed and thusly allowed adventurers to ride their birds again (hence why it's a Grand Company that issues you your chocobo and not a regular stable - the chocobo population in Eorzea is still pretty low and hence the birds that can be spared are provided only to organizations who really need it, ala, the Grand Companies.). Maybe the chocobo blight also is responsible for rendering other breeds of chocobos (ala chocobos of different colours) extinct as well. Or maybe I'm just looking too much into this.

[Skullriot]

It should also be noted that lore-wise, chocobos in Eorzea have only just come back from the very brink of extinction, just prior to the Calamity a devastating plague called 'chocobo blight' was afflicting chocobos across Aldernard, forcing the Ishgardian stables to quarantine their birds and thus preventing them from providing them to the other city states. This was the in-game lore reason given at the start of 1.0 why players were unable to ride chocobos then.

I did not know that, but that is a very good reason that chocobos aren't terribly diverse. However, horses are non existant in the game outside of player mounts, from what I know, so I'm still scratching my head as to why they went that way instead of chocobos. Maybe the model is easier to work with?

[Skies]

I do believe that they literally plan on having a system to raise chocobos, it would affect their abilities as Companions and their colors too. The thing that everyone wants to reset your companion's skill points would also come with that.

[Cassandaria]

There's no ifs about that, they are indeed going to be implementing a chocobo breeding option for home owners. I would assume we would have options to have different chocobos with feeding and breeding regiments, only time will tell.

[DoctaruRavenbe]

Well we had to attract the apocalypse crowd and the pony crowd. so we got the four fiends of the elements ponies.