Announcements from Letter from the Producer Live Part LXXXV (85) - 7 February 2025

[Exmo]

I liked it better when it was wild and overgrown and not after we were forced to tear it up to progress. We never got any decent way to hide the factories either.

This looks somewhat better since it's starting with a very blank zone anyway. Hopefully our Loporrit assistants are less obnoxious than the mammets.

Agreed on the first point. The concept of taming the wilds to bring civilization to it... not a fan. FFXIV tends on the most part to be ideologically conservative in this and similar ways (cosmic exploration is probably going to have us strip mining other planets in the name of expansionism, for example) but this is a topic for another day.

It'll depend on what the framing for the initial quests is, but setting up bases to harvest resources from unsettled islands near Vylbrand makes complete sense as a basic idea. The only established things of potential value on the moon were cultivated by the Loporrits, and travel to and from Bestways Burrow hasn't been treated as having any obstacles since the portal in Garlemald was opened.

The uninhabited islands were mainly background until they were elevated as the premise for island sanctuaries. I imagine for cosmic exploration it'll do something similar - either expand on some tiny background lore from an EW side quest, or introduce something new to kick off the expedition. I don't really mind if it's the latter tbh. I like it when NPCs I introduce me to things that have been going on in the background all along, even though I wasn't aware of it until that moment. It helps the world feel bigger and more alive.

[Daralii]

It's more akin to island sanctuary which similarly starts off as a blank (wild and overgrown) slate that quickly becomes your base of operations.

It'll depend on what the framing for the initial quests is, but setting up bases to harvest resources from unsettled islands near Vylbrand makes complete sense as a basic idea. The only established things of potential value on the moon were cultivated by the Loporrits, and travel to and from Bestways Burrow hasn't been treated as having any obstacles since the portal in Garlemald was opened.

[Iscah]

It'll depend on what the framing for the initial quests is, but setting up bases to harvest resources from unsettled islands near Vylbrand makes complete sense as a basic idea. The only established things of potential value on the moon were cultivated by the Loporrits, and travel to and from Bestways Burrow hasn't been treated as having any obstacles since the portal in Garlemald was opened.

From the images were shown so far, if the blank plain and the pink vegetation are progression shots of the same area, it seems like this might be almost an inversion of Island Sanctuary – instead of harvesting resources, we're cultivating them.

That said, the third picture is a crater field exposing new types of rock, which seems likely to be a site for mining, so it's possible that the plain, vegetation and craters are all there from the beginning as zones for crafting, botany and mining, respectively. If so, then that just leaves the question of where we're going fishing – perhaps in that big chasm up the back of the first picture?

[CVXIV]

The comparable endeavors at least started with some kind of framework, not just an empty stretch of sand that seems devoid of use. Revenant's Toll was the closest a place came to starting from nothing, but even that started as an Adventurer's Guild outpost to replace the one they lost in the Calamity.

Yeah you have a point there, even with the firmament it had a bunch of ruined buildings so you'd have an idea of what's being built

[Losado]

"Anything I don't like is bait"

"Any criticism of my favorite video game is bait"

[BokoToloko]

"Anything I don't like is bait"

"Any criticism of my favorite video game is bait"

It only takes one look at Lodestone to recognise a troll's alt, Skiros. You've been paying subs and expansions religiously to derail discussions and lure people in with ragebait with your botted alts. That's some stupid commitment alright.

[Hallarem]

Does anyone have any acceptance pills to the fact that they are never going to surmount to anything great. Leaving QoL and system improvements to the dust.

And that I am basically paying a sub for a free to play quality game.

I'll take copium in any form too. - Final Scifi-"fantasy" fan

[Arrius]

Does anyone have any acceptance pills to the fact that they are never going to surmount to anything great. Leaving QoL and system improvements to the dust.

And that I am basically paying a sub for a free to play quality game.

I'll take copium in any form too. - Final Scifi-"fantasy" fan

If WoW's bad showcase of BFA and Shadowlands along with their internal drama proves anything, then it's that MMO gamers keep playing their MMO's even when the company gets (rightfully) dragged through the dirt.
That's why any MMO that had a measure of quality are still around after 10+ years or have been revived as private servers with a considerable player count.

So yeah, enjoy the shouting into the void. They'll always come back.

[Avoidy]

Does anyone have any acceptance pills to the fact that they are never going to surmount to anything great. Leaving QoL and system improvements to the dust.

And that I am basically paying a sub for a free to play quality game.

I'll take copium in any form too. - Final Scifi-"fantasy" fan

Honestly at the rate new content is introduced, I'm thinking my friend had the right idea all along. Dude basically comes back for a new expansion (.0), enjoys it, and then quits until .55. He returns and spends a whopping three weeks doing all the content the entire post-expansion had for him, and then he can enjoy .0 when it rolls around too. Then he quits again for two more years. Pretty sure he only continued like that because he was invested in the story though. He did not return for DT afaik.

[Iscah]

Honestly at the rate new content is introduced, I'm thinking my friend had the right idea all along. Dude basically comes back for a new expansion (.0), enjoys it, and then quits until .55. He returns and spends a whopping three weeks doing all the content the entire post-expansion had for him, and then he can enjoy .0 when it rolls around too. Then he quits again for two more years. Pretty sure he only continued like that because he was invested in the story though. He did not return for DT afaik.

Not a bad way to play (if you don't just enjoy having access to it any time), treating it more like a game series that has a release every two years, though I think doing it that way would bug me when each "release" is the second half of the game from two years ago. If I was going to go that route, I think I'd have to take the extra bit of self-control to just not play the base expansion until all its patches are out. Although then again, the patch end into new expansion tends to be a cliffhanger while the base expansions usually end more solidly.

I've kept up my sub thus far but I've lost the pull to enjoy it as much as before because the graphics update has made me not want to touch most of my alts any more, so that desire to constantly visit the game and collect things for each of them is lost. I still enjoy the gameplay but I'm only coming to do that when I feel like doing it.