Question1
Many players desire more content out of Final Fantasy XI to break out of the repetitive cycle of dynamis/limbus/sky/sea that many HNMLS experience. Much focus has been given to adding new content when a great deal of old content remains untapped. key examples are as missions from other nations which are made difficult due to the loss of outpost warps and assault/salvage/nyzul due to the restrictive nature of a single tag per day. Are there any plans to revisit this untapped potential and make it more accessible to players?
Question2
While the STF has been working hard on and been largely effective at controlling the use of 3rd party cheats and MPK attempts at HNM camps, the practice still continues despite their best efforts. Simply banning the cheating accounts is not enough as a replacement will arrive in a matter of hours on a new credit card using the application again to unfairly claim these monsters over other players or to use other nearby monsters to grief those currently fighting. We understand that the developers wish to see competition for these powerful and difficult notorious monsters, but many players have entirely resigned to never fighting these legendary beasts because cheaters have them so completely collared by their 3rd party applications. Are there any plans to revisit the claim system or the ways these powerful creatures are spawned to make them more accessible and permit a portion of the player base to fight monsters they my never have had the chance to?
Question3
SE's developers have come a long way to refine FFXI's clunky and inadequate macro system to allow players to have more flexibility in their macros without relying on 3rd party applications and tools to get the job done. Unfortunately, this update did not alleviate the most critical shortcoming of the macro system: the limited number of commands per macro. For a mage wishing to cast a spell, it's not unusual to wish to swap nearly every piece of gear, from weapons to shoes, but with only 6 lines, we either must press upwards of 3 keys to gear for and cast a single spell, or use far less gear than we would otherwise like. In addition, some situations call for the same spell to be cast using different gear, most notably, +MP equipment. Gear such as a serket ring can be a great boon in extending the MP pool of a whm, but as their MP dwindles, all it provides is -50 HP, an inefficient use of the slot. While the majority of the player base seems very happy with the way the macro books are divided up so elegantly and efficiently, few are satisfied with the way the actual macros themselves are implemented. Are there any plans to increase the number of lines in the macros or even, dare we dream, offer us a fully functional macro environment with conditional statements and access to variables such as current HP/MP?
Question4
Salvage is without a doubt one of the most successful events added by SE to FFXI since Limbus or Dynamis. The reliance on small groups makes it accessible to more players more casually than almost any other event, and the rewards from it are spectacular. Unfortunately, the inordinate cost of Khroma Ore due to its extreme rarity and high demand makes the challenge of obtaining salvage body armor extremely difficult. I have had Paladin friends decline to lot the items to make the extremely rare and powerful Ares Curiass due to their funds and playtime making the cost an insurmountable challenge. Salvage is attractive to many of the more casual players because of the shorter time required to complete a run as compared to camping a ToAU notorious monster or completing a multi-hour Dynamis, but these same players are very limited on the time they have to earn money which precludes them from reaping the rewards of this event. Have the developers considered either making khroma ore more plentiful or reducing the number of crafted items required to produce Salvage body armor in order to make it more accessible to players?
Question5
Over time, more and more players are achieving level 75 on multiple jobs and finding themselves restricted by the current limits on the merit system. A player who has fully merited magic skills for Black Mage will find themselves in deep trouble when they go to level Bard, since they will be unable to merit singing and wind skills for their new job. We recognize that SE would like to see us have to choose how we would like to specialize our jobs, such as is it more important for a Theif to have access to Feint or Aura Steal, but a player with both Warrior and Monk will find his axe, sword, and great axe merits useless on Monk and likewise will his Warrior find any Hand to Hand merits useless inherited from Monk. Does SE have any plans to revisit the merit system by removing the "Max Combo" limits on merit points or permit us to purchase more than the "Max Combo" of merits but only be able to equip merits up to that limit, akin to how a Blue Mage equips spells?