Comments from the Devs

[solracht]

Didn't expect FATE to be level capped. Maybe dungeons will be capped too after all (wasn't sure if I believed the first comments on the subject).

Hopefully it's a good and seamless level cap system (GW2) and not a terrible one (XI-CoP). As soon as I start losing skills/gear and not simply power/stats, the system can go fuck itself imo.

[Cichy]

Didn't expect FATE to be level capped. Maybe dungeons will be capped too after all (wasn't sure if I believed the first comments on the subject).

Hopefully it's a good and seamless level cap system (GW2) and not a terrible one (XI-CoP). As soon as I start losing skills/gear and not simply power/stats, the system can go fuck itself imo.

yeah, that's my main concern. I dont want to carry 8 fuckin sets of gear cuz my lvl 50 shit gets gimped so bad it's like fighting naked

[millionsknives]

apparently, in L-size houses you can distribute the space inside to make own rooms. [Not sure I got that correctly]

I think you did. In the live letter, from my understanding, you can have your own room in a free company house.

old 1.0 story got scrapped, however the essence is still there.

Wow, that's new to me! From what I'd previously heard they were going to continue the original 1.0 story after they'd wrapped up the Dalamud plot.

[Gokulo]

Wow, that's new to me! From what I'd previously heard they were going to continue the original 1.0 story after they'd wrapped up the Dalamud plot.

While they weren't exactly specific, they were actually saying stuff like that: the story background is the same, but stuff is changed etc etc.

[solracht]

Another interview was translated by Soukyuu:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post901126

Story
Main story will introduce a character related to Louisiox
Why Bahamut was sealed is related to the Crystal Tower
There will be no need to know the 1.0 story, as everything will be explained in ARR
Concept art of items obtainable in the Great Labyrinth of Bahamut [click]


Name changes
Changing char name is possible technically
This will mean your friend list [and probably LS membership] will be lost, though
They are worried about people mistyping their char name, since it's a one-time opportunity and there is no confirmation dialogue on char creation, so they are asking to be careful about it
HE NEVER SAID "YES" DIRECTLY! WAIT FOR AN OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION!


Character customization
Bust sizes vary by races, for example Roegardyn will have bigger sizes than sunseeker, moonkeeper coming after it. [Hyur/Elezen not mentioned]
Bust physics will be kept as modest as possible
Other char model movements involve Miqo'te ears & tail, as well as Elezen/Lalafell ears.
For miqo'te tails, there will be 5 tail types, ranging from more lion-like movement to more cat-like movement [Yay~]
Barber NPC will make you do a quest that will allow you to change your hairstyle, it's color as well as facepaint. Not face/body proportions though.


FATE
Definition of NM as "mosters that suddenly make the otherwise safe environment dangerous"
Rewards are decided based not on party, but individual performance
All players treated as "one large party" [so basically you just get flagged as "near enough to be evaluated for a reward, which also level-synchs you to the event level]
Level sync only works one-way: if you're above content level, you will be de-levelled, if you're below content level, nothing happens.
Other FATE types:
village/city invasion (example: bandits/thieves)
chocobo escort
No limit on how many people can participate in a FATE
They are thinking about a system that automatically creates an instance and moves the half of the people to a new one should the number of people reach a certain number
While this system is technologically possible, the cost is high, so they are planning to monitor the events in alpha&beta to decide if it's really needed.


Housing
To be able to afford an M-Sized house, three players would have to level to 50 by clearing all quests and combine the gil theay earned from that. Apparently, that would take about 50 hours.
The housing system is comparable to Dragon Quest X
Land and House prices are separate
Land starts expensive, but if it's not bought, the price will start to drop
There are only 3 L-sized patches of land per instance
Apparently, once we will see the amount of gil needed to buy an L-sized patch of land, we will recoil in horror.
Since the price will be falling with time, he wants us to worry about when the right timing to buy it will be
Retainers will be placed in our homes
You can buy from them there, or alternatively from the board [probably our current marketplace system]


Free Company
Free company ranking and "earning reputation from a GC" is just a setting they thought of for the roleplaying community. Non-RPing players won't really have to pay attention to that.
Example of perks for taking the top position in a GC ranking: That GC NPC will greet members of that FC with more respect, saluting once you approach them.


Marriage System
For bonuses for getting married, they are only thinking of simple things like using the wedding ring to teleport to your partner. No bonuses in battle, else it will just lead to fake marriages
To be able to marry, you will have to clear a quest with your partner


Mounts
Only chocobo will be fighting by your side, others are for riding only
When you level up, your chocobo levels up with you
There are plans to make the magitech armor customizable [think mecha parts]
Magitech armor will somehow be connected to the story, he said they prepared an episode that will make us sit there grinning
Using in in PvE/PvP is possible, but they currently have no plans for it


PvE/PvP Balancing
They're carefully balancing damage and status effects between those two [seems like the rulesets are NOT separated after all.]
Some kind of "item level" will be introduced which describes the usefullness of your equip. Not only the DPS but also the status effects is taken in account, so that we can go away from "if you're not keeping up your DPS, you're useless"-mindset


Items/Equip
Inventory limited, but banks will have larger capacity
Vanity items still class restricted (no heavy armor mages)
In PvP, vanity will be disabled, so you won't be able to trick people with it
FATE rewards will contain vanity items among others

New Races
Reason why he is torn between Viera and something more brute-ish like a reptile is because Viera are too close to humans and he wanted to introduce something more beast-like. Also, Viera has only appeared as female so far... and he doesn't want to have a gender-locked race... [read: do you seriously want to see bunnyGUYS?!]
He is also worried about crossing a certain line after which it will become hard to distinguish between PCs and NPCs/Monsters


Alpha
currently, zone servers can handle up to 700 players with about 300 battles taking place in one zone and all the AI running
servers start to lag extremely @800 players in one zone, with about 380 battles taking place
they plan to increase that to 1000 players per zone


Beta
PvP will be available for testing
They are thinking of people with alpha invites to be brought to phase1 beta too, but it's not set in stone yet.
The dev team is practicing PvP matches already, meaning we get to fight them


Game content
normal quests soloable
dungeons and raids require a party
normal mode clearable when forming one via content finder
hard mode is only clearable if you have people with experience working together [implying you CAN try to clear it by auto-matching, but you'll need a lot of luck]
content may be hard at first, but if for example a patch introduces some new content that gives you a nice item, it will raise your "item level", making clearing previous content easier.

[Deuce]

Link to concept art mentioned. Includes some images already seen/viewable in released alpha footage.

[miokomioko]

I haven't seen this one before. Looks like new Ul'dah or perhaps their player housing.

[Deuce]

That was one of the images Wada showed during the 4th Live Letter. Yoshida wasn't too happy when he showed it either. I believe Yoshida stated that it was the concept art of the Ul'dah player housing area.

Edit: Here is a link to the part of the Live Letter where Wada shows the picture off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smC5G...video#t=45m18s

[Kurokikaze]

That information sounds great. The more I hear about the game the more hyped up I get. Please don't dissapoint. >_<;

[Psion]

The incredibly high then slowly falling prices of plots of land is pure genius. By doing it that way, it's a gilsink that's flexible. Should a huge inflation in the economy hit, similar to the nightmare inflation in ffxi way back, or atomos spam, players will have far more gil to burn, and will be willing to buy new plots of land much sooner than they otherwise would, which would cause more gil to leave the economy.

[miokomioko]

That was one of the images Wada showed during the 4th Live Letter. Yoshida wasn't too happy when he showed it either. I believe Yoshida stated that it was the concept art of the Ul'dah player housing area.

Edit: Here is a link to the part of the Live Letter where Wada shows the picture off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smC5G...video#t=45m18s

I think I can see why he didn't want that shown. You can tell it's just super-basic 3D modeling with a little bit of sketching done over it. Looks really bland compared to all the other concept artwork they have shown.

[Deuce]

Agreed. I kind of wish they would have a mockup to show us instead, but I'm sure that won't be provided until beta next year. Probably will be a part of their promotional campaign.

[Eagleheart]

Many thanks to shidobu, deuce, and sephiroth! I shall proceed with all of this new information in mind. @_@ Very excited by latest interviews... beta being next year is killing me, but I expected it, really, with the way things have gone over the past couple of months.

I need a time machine to get to 2.0 release. x_x

[Adajer]

I dont know if this has been confirmed elsewhere. Is Nobuo no longer writing music for the game? Is Soken doing all the music from here on out?

[Alkar]

I dont know if this has been confirmed elsewhere. Is Nobuo no longer writing music for the game? Is Soken doing all the music from here on out?

It's not confirmed but Nobuo is likely busy with other things.

[Deuce]

Someone on the OF posted a link to another portion of that gamewatch interview. http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs...23_574630.html

Hopefully someone will translate it soon so we can get some detailed information. It seems to talk about regional servers and possibly a release in China. Overall it seems to be pretty long and include a lot more discussion about alpha and beta, as well as some game mechanics. Because of that, I expect there to be some new information accompanying already known info.

Also, here is some more translations/information by the same guy as before. Here's a link to the actual thread: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...9/page524#5234

Gamer interview summary
Not much new in this one, so I've included some of Yoshida's talk that doesn't really count as new information.

Alpha

• Aiming for 5000 players per server, 1000 players in one zone lagless
• Two approaches to zone congestion
• Display a message "too many players in zone, entry denied"
• Spawn instances of a zone to allow for more players
• still testing which one to take, as 1000 players in a zone is rarely happening naturally
• alpha is planned to continue till the second week of December
• they actually already have enough data from the stress tests and also enough feedback to be used for beta
• letting us into the alpha is only to test how far the performance will degrade because of the distance to the servers as well as to perform stability tests over extended periods of time (servers running 24/7)
• login counts are not falling, the devs have been telling Yoshida-san that "it's because YOU log in all the time!"
• he's very happy to be able to talk to players directly and already had numerous discussions [I hope we don't scare him away if he attempts to do the same with us... seeing how our "discussions" usually go]

Mounts

• Apparently, the sprint ability introduced in alpha makes mounts seem slower
• All mounts have the same speed

Misc

• Starting city is fixed depending on your first job, but once you reach the quest to go to another 2 cities, you can freely chose which city's quests you want to do first.
• Legacy characters will start at a different place, the one where the hero party drops from the void. [I'm reading it as legacy = created before end of the era, not legacy = created on a legacy account, but I'm not sure]
• Legacy characters will still be able to take all the quests just like non-legacy players, he says to think of it as a "stronger new game" [i think he means kinda like you can start a new game but keep all the items in some RPGs]
• Arcanist will be available at release, Summoner could make it too, but there seem to be delays on the battle side of things, so it might not make it.
• Wedding quest involves exchanging the rings at some point.
• After you get your ring, you can get married.
• Beta content not yet finalized, but he plans to include all the core story
• Arcanist's "hitting with a book"-animation is being worked on, he plans to show it the next LIVE letter, if possible
• No plans to novelize FFXIV's story, nor release some goods for now. Not until after release, when the community has grown and the game is successful enough for such investments to be worth it.
• There might be an offline event where players will be able to fight against the dev team, he's thinking about doing it about half a year after ARR release if the game is successful. [I hope they will still do online events too, else people outside Japan are left out again...]

[Nullibicity]

When they mention implementing something because of costs, any idea how much money they are talking? Just curious

[Alkar]

Oh nice. I guess they'll drop us in the middle of nowhere and we have to run back to one of the cities XD
I hope that's the case, should be fun (especially on my level 10 character).

[Charismatic]

When they mention implementing something because of costs, any idea how much money they are talking? Just curious

Not usually money when they speak of cost. Think of it as development resources/time/opportunity cost.

[Jamison]

Oh nice. I guess they'll drop us in the middle of nowhere and we have to run back to one of the cities XD
I hope that's the case, should be fun (especially on my level 10 character).

Maybe we'll be in the blue space zone, get a special cutscene or two, then have an option of portals that will take us to a city of our choice. I'm dreaming, but it'd be nice.