Ask Your Questions for Letter from the Producer LIVE, Part VIII!

[Tetsaru]

What was your reasoning behind only allowing players to be in just one free company? It seems quite restrictive and pointless to prevent players from helping out multiple "guilds" if they want to.

[Tetsaru]

One of my biggest complaints in 1.0 was the fact that a lot of its content revolved around HAVING to have a full party of 8 people. Any more, and people had to sit out unless you have MULTIPLES of 8; any less, and you couldn't do the content at all. While the Duty Finder and 4-player dungeons/instances are a step in the right direction, I think it would be awesome to allow such areas to scale in difficulty depending on how many people are in your party, as not everyone is comfortable playing in "pick-up groups," or may not have enough friends online at the time to help them. I also think that, given this opportunity, it would be cool to allow skilled players to try to solo dungeons.

My question is, would it be possible to allow some of these strict party limits to be lifted at some point, and allow parties of any size to challenge dungeons, primals, etc.?

[Pwnagraphic]

What was your reasoning behind only allowing players to be in just one free company? It seems quite restrictive and pointless to prevent players from helping out multiple "guilds" if they want to.

A free Company is made up of multiple guilds.

[Tetsaru]

One feature that I liked from other MMORPG's was being able to hover my mouse over an item, see a tooltip comparing that item's stats to what I have equipped, and that followed the mouse instead of being stuck at a specific location on my UI. I also liked being able to "link" an item in chat to show other people. Are there any plans to implement these features?

[Tetsaru]

A lot of players have been dissatisfied with the current map UI functionality. Do you have any plans to adjust this and implement features such as:

- colored maps that more accurately show the terrain and topography instead of the old-school "parchment" look
- show each individual map simultaneously on the world map so players can see how they connect
- show both "halves" of each town simultaneously
- grey out aetheryte nodes that you have not attuned to yet, then make them blue when you have accessed them
- allow for direct teleportation to an aetheryte by clicking it on the map
- allow for drawing, pinging locations, setting personal markers/notes, etc. and allow party members to see these as well

[shanvhere]

Why is MRD/WAR designated as a tank class and can't be a damage class. I want to play MRD/WAR to be a damage dealer not a tank.

[mbncd]

Levelling gathering and crafting classes is just as much of a grind as levelling any combat class, repeating the same thing ad nauseum (I love them but as someone who got level 50 in all of them and the luminary tools, even I've gotta say there were times...). When will gathering and crafting classes be able to quest heavily (and do FATE's) to level up, just like the combative classes? One guild quest per class every 5 levels (and no FATE's at all) aimed at your gathering/crafting class, compared to a complete quest/FATE grind for the combative classes, seems like way too big a gap...

Note: Levequests are very different things without storylines and real characters to break the repetition of the grind. I'm not talking about them, just real (even if minor) quest and FATE grinding.

[Tetsaru]

I may be misinformed a bit on this one...

I heard somewhere that free company housing would be implemented before individual player housing, I'm guessing due to time and/or resource restraints. Is this true, and if so, when can we expect to see individual player housing? This was one new aspect of ARR I was really looking forward to playing around with. My apologies if this was already cleared up earlier.

[Silvanesti]

When will you release Thief?

[TaoStrife]

Will there be a Samurai job and a Ninja job anytime soon?