Hi All,

I think this was a great Letter from Producer by Yoshida-san.

It's pretty awesome that a game's Director and Producer takes so much time to post up detailed thoughts about the game they're working on, and continues to ask for feedback. It's a fascinating window into the mindset of the game developers and also helps all of us as players understand why certain things are the way they are.

I totally agree with the "Theme Park" analogy and it's a noble goal to try and create a world where it caters to many different audiences, while not alienating them all. We'll see how that develops but I remain hopeful.

Yoshida-san, since you're asking:

Trying to affix more materia to the same piece of gear is where it gets risky. That next “peak” is a new goal to strive for. This is something that we’ve added with hard-core players in mind. Failing an attempt at affixing any piece of material beyond the first results in a loss of all involved items—catalyst, materia, and gear. As far as peaks go, it’s a spiky and treacherous one, but I settled on the specs myself. Think of it as a challenge being issued to hard-core players. I wonder how the odds will work out... Let me know what you think!
I would say I understand and appreciate many things about the Materia System (it's certainly kick-started our dead economy and the market wards), but the one thing that I'm really disappointed with is that the chance to meld Forbidden Materia (2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Materia to 1 Item) is left *completely* to a Random Number Generator and Chance.

I would ask you to consider a way for players to earn or at least increase the chance to meld additional Materia through Player Skill and Effort.

Perhaps you have to go through a series of challenging, interesting, engaging Quests and Adventures to allow you to gain access to a 2nd Slot, or if that's too easy, then doing that series of challenges to increase your chance to Meld maybe +5% would be something that rewards Player Skill and Effort instead of just blindly gambling and rolling the dice against a Random Number Generator.

Other than that, I realize we're under construction, but I remain hopeful things continue to improve in the coming months.

Keep up the good work!