Thema: Ask Questions for Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XIX! (Exploring Patch 2.45)

Back when the eternal bond system was announced, and the only 2 person mount that does not require recruit a friend was announced, there was no hint that these would be cash only. 2.45 finally released this mount...for cash shop only.

What led you to think it was fair to suddenly announce this mount would be cash-only at the last live letter (which by the way was not in the Q&A threads so non-Japanese speaking players who didn't read fan translations of the event, or read forums, actually had NO idea about this sudden cash shop announcement until the patch notes came out), and keep going through with this idea even after all the player blowback regarding having to pay extra for content despite that we already pay a subscription?

And before you say it's just vanity. A 2-mount chocobo is more than just vanity; it's a feature. My husband and I like to go farm together. This means we teleport to the same place, then ride to our nodes. Both of us having 2-person mounts means one of us can get up to fetch drinks, or snacks, etc... without forcing the other one to wait.

The recruit a friend mount, which we'll have next month, is only available for the recruiter, so we couldn't alternate who does the leading. Putting this behind a cash wall hinders our ability to play more efficiently, and thus farm more efficiently. It can therefore be used for more than just vanity.

Edit: and using /follow assumes both people have mounts and that (for chocobo) it's not stabled. Something people who have the 2-person mounts can overcome. So, still a gameplay feature being gated.

With regard to personal houses:

1) When will we be able to share our house with our eternal bond partner (mentioned already in this thread and "Liked" by me) (all amenities, Summoning Bell, NPC's, etc., gardening, etc.)

and/or

2) Set permissions for others (even if it is an "all or nothing access" to use our house amenities)

I am no longer worried much about use of the Mini-Aetheryte by others because the Wedding Ring Teleport will take care of that issue.

With Eternal Bond upon us now, this needs to be added without any further delay.

One of the early themes of FFXIV was that you could play every role and do every thing on one character.

For combat classes, this was true up till the onset of the relic atma questline, which made the process of obtaining any single relic VERY time consuming.

For crafters this was true until the introduction of Supras, and to a lesser extent ingredients being heavily time gated.

The current state of the game seems to be moving in the direction of singular class focus, due to the increasing difficulty and restrictions being placed on obtaining high end equipment. (low desynth chances, desynth in general, time gated materials, "Alex and Light Farming")

Have the devs reconsidered their stance on allowing people to excel in every class over the past year, and shifted the focus to excelling in one role/class, and being "so-so at best" in all others?

*PS*
I understand the catch-22 of making content for a multi-class game. If you make it so a person can get 9 Nexus's in 2-3 months (time between Relic updates), then the person who "exclusively" plays one class will have 1.5 weeks worth of content and be done for 2 months.
But the current system of making high end equipment (of questionable value at TRUE endgame) be a time consuming and/or time gated endeavor does not sit well with those who enjoy more than 1 class.
Perhaps a system where, in general, once your "character" has completed a upgrade-sequence such as the Relic Questline, or Supras, they can now use the knowledge that they (and other associated npc's) attained during that process to GREATLY (5-10x) speed things up next time.
This way the single-class player gets 1-2 months of content. And the multi-class player spends the same 1-2 months on the initial run-through, and can knock out the rest of their classes in a month.