Letter from the Producer, XV (07/27/2011)

[Jinrya-Geki]

1.19 probably won't be out to late August early September. :'c

[giftforce]

You should play less with dats and more with the game, sir. :P

Yes, then you might have a chance at out-smarting me.

[Lilith]

He probably just means the rewards you get in five of the chests which don't drop from Batraal.

Anyway, there are no new items in the dats that even seem worth procuring anyway, besides Torturer's Monocle, and even then it's only to do a Papalymo impersonation
.

The Torturer's Monocle is a drop from a chest in The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak (isn't that generally known by now? :s). I'm quite sure he doesn't mean the 5 chest beforer the bosses ...
Very curious about what it might be, probably the weapons found in the dat files that aren't available at the company desk.

[RagingAvatar]

Personally, I'm happy with the update - and really enjoying the combat now. I'm glad that he seems happy with the progress and feedback - good work Yoshi-P!

[Volsung]

Thinking this might be the verdant items or corpus lance?


Unless the were found already :3 if so, then nothing to see here lol

[Kiara]

I realize some of you may be confused or upset at some of the sudden changes, but that’s why the forums are there for you to have your voice heard. So please leave us your feedback!

To Yoshida-san & FF XIV Team:

I'd like to voice my opinion on Patch 1.18 in saying:

• I LOVE the changes to the Class System so far, and look forward to seeing what the team will continue to do in this direction.

• Please KEEP the changes you've been doing to Enmity & the Gladiator Class for Tanking. Sure it's radical and different from what you used to have, but this is now a real challenge and good thing for Combat and the game. We don't need to go back to Easy Mode.

• One small note is that I think War Drum may seem to have little-to-no effect at all, but I need to test it out some more.

• Please KEEP the changes you've done on Conjurer: It's now refreshing and a challenge to be mindful of MP Costs and not spamming AOE Cures and Sacrifice spells with no thought about hate or your resources.

• Please keep producing Challenging, Interesting, Exciting Content like you've done with Dzemael Darkhold. We want MORE of this, and less of generic Guildleves.

Patch 1.18 is the most exciting update to hit Final Fantasy XIV since I can remember, and I look forward to this direction of change for 1.19 and 1.20.

Thank you!

[LuxLex]

Thank you very much for this letter.

I would be very grateful if you acknowledged how overboard your development team went in increasing the MP cost of cures. Although some increase was to be expected, you have made it so I either

a) Can't solo my mages at all
b) have to change all of my stats so I am useless at everything but mage

I always played with fairly balanced stats because I like to play CON, THM, ALC, CUL, and FSH. This means I don't have a large MP pool. Having to take all my points out of Dex so I can manage to play mages really sucks, cause I also like fishing.

I realize that changes to point assignments are coming, but I am very saddened that your development team went ahead with changes which make it impossible for me to enjoy all of my classes, before fixing stat point assignment. Now I can only play 1 or 2 jobs effectively.

If you're dead set on not revisiting the MP changes, please consider increasing the MP restored by ethers and/or removing the medicated effect delay. 50 MP is nothing when cures cost so much. You could make this change into a good thing for alchemists (which like all crafting classes could use some more love) by making ethers less useless.

Similarly, please add refresh food like the "yagudo drink" and food that enlarges our MP pools significantly - this would, again, make it more reasonable to solo play on MP using classes without sacrificing the stats I use for every other class, while making culinarian (which is perhaps the biggest loljob in XIV) more beneficial to other players.

I appreciate the time you took to communicate with us and I hope you are serious about listening to player feedback.

[zaviermhigo]

My only thing about the letter is the traditional vagueness i should be used to by now. "we could of gone overboard" on what, he doesn't specify, for all we know they went overboard on adding to many changes at once, and that is what caused server instability and typos galore from being rushed. I hope he means overboard on class changes, but I don't think its overboard, its just a step across the line. The mp max is only 10-20 mp too high on some spells in my opinion. and raise/resurrect should be reduced mp due to how unimportant it is, and how low level receive it. At rank 14 I can't even remember my mp pool, it was maybe 400 or so? With 1100 mp idc about 101 mp, but I'm thinking about low level peeps trying out the game in the future, like ps3 release.

I just wish they'd be like "we went overboard on this *names what they went overboard on* haha, minor problem i guess in the long wrong, since we'll know eventually.

[Ryndael]

I would be very grateful if you acknowledged how overboard your development team went in increasing the MP cost of cures. Although some increase was to be expected, you have made it so I either

They did go overboard, but only by a little. MP costs are completely manageable once you relearn your job and procure the proper gear/stats for it.

[LuxLex]

They did go overboard, but only by a little. MP costs are completely manageable once you relearn your job and procure the proper gear/stats for it.

Yes, sure, but what if I want to be a decent fisher and a THM? I can't, cause I need to reallocate all my stats to increase my MP pool. At the very least, they should have changed the stat allocation system at the same time as this. As it is now, I just won't play mages because it means gimping every other one of my classes.

Also I take issue with "relearn my job" since I always played with a fairly low MP pool (70 mind at 33 THM) - and used skills like spiritbind, siphon mp, stygian spikes as well as spiri/phantom dart and various weaponskills.

Hopefully it will get better with the removal of physical levels and stats for each job. Then at least I won't have to sacrifice utility on my FSH to play THM.

Anyway, I am glad the producer is acknowledging that things need tweaking. I am concerned that MP costs weren't mentioned, but I will give them a chance to sort things out. Till then I will continue sending the company my money through a game I enjoy playing, and wait longer before picking up XIV again regularly.