Letter from the Producer LXII

[spf1200]

Glad the Hrothgar stuff is starting to look nice. But honestly that's the only thing I gleamed that was something that we didn't already know. Still no explanation of why adding a 4 tank for 'balance' is the answer while refusing to do a new healer class for "balance". Guess I'm still sore that we spent all of 4.0 with the constant "balance" issues and yet nothing was ever actually done about it. Holding hope on the Live Letter on May 23rd for this "revamp" but.. I am already not expecting much but probably more homogenization between the healer classes..

But again.. at least the Hrothgar is .. pretty cute

The problem with healer balance is that we only have two healing types shield or Regen with one healer for each and the third doing both. There is also the problem that WHM is kinfof crap compared to the other two.

Also plz stop saying all DPS are in one category cause they aren't. If someone like ranged DPS it doesn't mean they will like melee or casters and the different categories are very different for one another.

[disturbedcobra]

Also plz stop saying all DPS are in one category cause they aren't. If someone like ranged DPS it doesn't mean they will like melee or casters and the different categories are very different for one another.

The general separationg is basically this.
imho
Caster DPS = RDM/BLM/SMN
Melee DPS = DRG/SAM/MNK/NIN (You can honestly argue though that NIN is more Melee support then DPS. XD)
Ranged Support DPS = BRD/MCH

[Skivvy]

The problem with healer balance is that we only have two healing types shield or Regen with one healer for each and the third doing both. There is also the problem that WHM is kinfof crap compared to the other two.

Also plz stop saying all DPS are in one category cause they aren't. If someone like ranged DPS it doesn't mean they will like melee or casters and the different categories are very different for one another.

Hey, I love the 'crap' that is WHM. :3

As far as my take on the DPS split, I do get Yoshi's point. I main a heal, but I love ranged DPS as well. I do NOT like melee, and I'm not generally very fond of casters. While they are all part of the greater "DPS" family, they do play quite a bit differently.

[Sated]

Was hoping this would have more info, but this is mostly what was already said/known.

Still wish they'd stop gendering things unnecessarily... sounds like it'd halve the some of those workloads.

[PharisHanasaki]

Except that analogy doesn't apply to development. You can't just hire more devs and have them immeddiately start 'making cakes'.

And also, when making cakes you don't have to check if your newest cakes ruin your previous 1000 ones. In code, changing adding on line can break the other. No matter how experienced you are, you can still break things if you're not familiar with the code. Please stop using completely wrong analogies for stuff you don't understand. Yoshi P is not making things up, it is as he says, you can't just throw more money.

[Astarotha]

yeah, what yoship is talking about is the law of diminishing returns, if this was a game running on unreal engine the argument could be plausibly made to hire more people short term to help make assets and supplement the team since unreal is a well documented and well known game engine and thus is very scalable, ff14 however is built using a proprietary engine using proprietary software with proprietary tools and apis, spaghettid from 1.0 into the current game.
any new hires that interact with the engine would need time and a mentor to learn how the system works and its limitations, pulling existing people that know the systems away from the workload they already have, and any new hires that dont interact with the engine would similarly need instruction on how those designs would need tailoring when they are modelled in engine.

for those looking at the person above mes mention of coding being very exacting, i play Aliens: Colonial Marines AI in... support mode...?

[Tatiana]

I definitely agree with their decision on "child" characters, but what I do/did want is for the height slider to provide greater variety for the tall races so I could make a shorter (but not tiny) character with them.

[HyoMinPark]

That Hrothgar looks really nice. Not gonna lie. Also, really pleased to hear that they have been working on headpiece for both!!

And though I still harbor just a small pang of disappointment over no third healer (or that DNC isn't a healer), I'm more excited to try it out as a physical ranged. I'll finally be able to flex in my role if it turns out to play very well. Kind of hoping for its dances to function similar to BRD's songs (i.e., "stances"). Can't wait for the end of June!

[Gemina]

The problem with healer balance is that we only have two healing types shield or Regen with one healer for each and the third doing both. There is also the problem that WHM is kinfof crap compared to the other two.

Actually no. Whether heals are direct, shields, or HoTs it really doesn't matter how they come so long as the player doesn't get KO'd. All healers can heal, so they are balanced when looking at just that. If the dev team continues to look at healing balance in this regard, the problem is going to continue well into 5.0. The reason why healers are unbalanced is because two of the three are saturated with utility, and the last has none at all except lesser single target versions that don't help the raid much, if at all.

[PharisHanasaki]

Then there's this line: "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items already implemented, all of which must be manually modified by our designers". That's a blatant lie. A large number of items share models, and an even larger amount are racially universal, like accessories and weapons.

Let me explain it to you. The fact that an item can be worn on multiple races, does not mean it is or can be the same item. For each race, each item has to be appropiately set so that it looks good, we have 6 races, so each item has at least 12 different files (one for female, one for male) . Earrings are not in the same spot, whether your a miqote, lala, au ra, roe, etc. Cuz every race has a different shape. So even if say, some items do not need any changes for the new races (which I doubt, given that their heads are completely different, and hrothgars body shape is somewhat different too) you still have to go ahead an review each to make sure it's acceptable.

It is not a lie.
And if you're asking yourself, why is it harder now than back then? Back then was 2 expansions ago, how many more items, jobs, and emotes, have been added since then? Many. They have to review all items made up to this day, plus new ones, which is a very time consuming task.