Letter From the Producer Live XXIII

[Cutriss]

Q62. Similar to the glamour system, can you make it so we can change the appearance of our companion chocobo to look like a different mount?

A62. We would have to create attacks and healing actions for every mount, so this would be difficult.

Horseshit. The actions are already there. What animations does the bird do? It pecks, it flaps its wings, what else? It's not like the sparklies have to be completely redone.

[Rocl]

yeah i want a horse pecking shit

[Wulfgang]

Who drafts these questions? Serious query because they are terrible. I would love someone to ask something about the extreme homogenization of progression, both from a gear and content perspective.

[Wulfgang]

What. The. Fuck.

Way to completely miss the point of the question.

When Diablo 3 does something wayyy better than your game, you should be concerned. D3 effectively has a gear log for Transmogs; once you get the legendary/set piece, it is checked off at the Transmog NPC and you can glamour it any time you want even if you trashed it ages ago. Also, get rid of the freaking prisms and just make it a straight gil sink (~5k or something per piece). When people are complaining about inventory space, the next best thing to increasing inventory space directly is reducing the amount of items necessary for a specific purpose.

[Niiro]

When it was turn to ask about NIN, the question they asked was about MUDRA LAG? WTF, NO ONE FUCKING CARES ABOUT MUDRA LAG. FIX NIN TP

Bullshit no one cares about Mudra lag.

It's still there and it's still awful and it still has a very simple solution (remove the shared Mudra recast).

[Kaslo]

Regarding Question 36 and a certain minion or painting, I kind of want (story spoiler)

Spoiler: show

A blood splattered Haurchefant minion haha #hateme

[Destinye]

It's stuff like this that gets me:

Q28. You can often see some type of airship flying around the Sea of Clouds...what is it?

A28. I think you'll find out in 3.1. For those that haven't seen this, keep an eye out!

I love a mystery, I even "flew up" next to the ship to check it out. Just tell us it's related to the throw away alliance content coming in 3.1 so you can save anyone who has hopes for anything interesting coming a ton of disappointment..though you may lose their sub fee.

Q31. It's difficult to beat the Odin FATE now since there aren't many people around. Can you add new rewards to stimulate participation?

A31. Odin's level is currently level 60, so he is very strong. Please give it some time and try again.

So even though it's obsolete content and people obviously still has an interest in it, why not...stimulate it? I mean you forced people to run content that was obsolete by 2.1 for their relics, something actually fun woulda been nice to do after you finish HW.

Q33. When are you planning to unlock new ranks for Grand Companies?

A33. We’re currently planning Grand Company-related content, so we believe we’ll release new ranks when adding this content. It’s not fun moving into the next rank just by collecting something, so we think it’s good timing to add new types of content when releasing the ranks.

"Instead, we'll have you collect MANY somethings from obsolete HW content in order to pad out the lack of content coming with 3.1. Also, I know we said we will try not to focus on moogles, but did you remember the moogles from Churning Mists? Yeah they'll be related."

Q37. Can you tell us the difference between Alexander and Alexander (Savage)?

A37. Both the difficulty and the item level of the items you can obtain will be different. The design of the rewards will be the same, but you’ll be able to dye the equipment from Alexander (Savage). Additionally, there will also be special rewards that will not affect the strength of your character.

"Basically, you can dye the gear and a minion for more work."

Q49. As an FFXI player, I was happy to see memorable enemies such as Dhalmels and Crawlers. Do you have plans to add other enemies from FFXI?

A49. Since there are many players who were attached to FINAL FANTASY XI, we would like to add more in future.

Now if only said FFXI player mentioned..idk....content concepts. It was nostalgic but damn, I woulda asked about Nyzul or Monstrosity..something xD

And lastly, I said it before and I'll say it again:

Q71. After 3.0 launched, my inventory and Armoury have been super full. Do you plan on adding more inventory space?

A71. I understand everyone’s request, but since additional inventory space would increase the data transmitted, there is a risk for server crashes, so this isn’t something we can do right away. We’re optimizing aspects with every patch, so we will continue to look into this for the future. Until then, we would like to add a feature that stores and retrieves whole gear sets to and from retainers, and make other quality-of-life changes to retainers.

"We can do it, but instead, BUY THOSE MOTHERFUCKING RETAINERS."

Sadly people kept telling me it was PS3 limitations that prevented increased inventory space, despite XI having quests and the porter mog system to handle inventory woes. It by no means solved it, but it sure as hell was superior in comparison to what happens in XIV sometimes.

[Cutriss]

yeah i want a horse pecking shit

That's not my point.

There are, what, 18 unique abilities for a chocobo? Does each one have a unique model animation? I highly, highly doubt it. Choco Cure and Choco Medica have the same model animation, just different sparkly effects. Making the other mount models do this doesn't involve as much work as is indicated, let alone "custom actions" for each mount. We're only talking about replacing the models, not the action sets.

This may just be lost in (incredibly poor) localization, but I think the question asked was "can you reskin the companions the way you're talking about doing the egis?" and it was answered as "can you make our other mounts be totally unique companions that also do new and interesting things". People are just asking for DAT swaps.

[Cutriss]

A84. We'll be proactively looking into this if there is a lot of feedback.

I don't think you know what "proactively" means.

[Voyage1970]

To add to the companion glamour bit, a lot of the mount models are taken from existing enemy models anyway. You could just rip the attack animations from them. Pretty sure the Ponies are the only ones that lack a mob counterpart for reference.

Edit: Also disregarding silly shit like Bomb Palanquin and Manacutter as companions

[Hiryo]

That's not my point.

There are, what, 18 unique abilities for a chocobo? Does each one have a unique model animation? I highly, highly doubt it. Choco Cure and Choco Medica have the same model animation, just different sparkly effects. Making the other mount models do this doesn't involve as much work as is indicated, let alone "custom actions" for each mount. We're only talking about replacing the models, not the action sets.

This may just be lost in (incredibly poor) localization, but I think the question asked was "can you reskin the companions the way you're talking about doing the egis?" and it was answered as "can you make our other mounts be totally unique companions that also do new and interesting things". People are just asking for DAT swaps.

That's only how you're interpreting the Q&A though. Someone can easily say that the OP wants a shiva egi with ice based spells and ice based enkindle. Or, the companion reskin needs new sounds, body slam animations from fat chocobo, fire breath from drake, etc.

You could even go a step further and say that the developers will not want to "half-ass" implementing something like this. If players want to see new models, they'll be getting all the bells and whistles to go along with it. (Or the developers can just say that and who are we to not believe them lol)

[Lucavi]

When Diablo 3 does something wayyy better than your game, you should be concerned. D3 effectively has a gear log for Transmogs; once you get the legendary/set piece, it is checked off at the Transmog NPC and you can glamour it any time you want even if you trashed it ages ago. Also, get rid of the freaking prisms and just make it a straight gil sink (~5k or something per piece). When people are complaining about inventory space, the next best thing to increasing inventory space directly is reducing the amount of items necessary for a specific purpose.

I've been citing D3's transmog system for awhile now. Its the best one I've seen and the one I'd most like in this game. I feel it beats out GW2's because of the coloring issue (hello abyssal dye at launch!)

[Cutriss]

That's only how you're interpreting the Q&A though. Someone can easily say that the OP wants a shiva egi with ice based spells and ice based enkindle. Or, the companion reskin needs new sounds, body slam animations from fat chocobo, fire breath from drake, etc.

You could even go a step further and say that the developers will not want to "half-ass" implementing something like this. If players want to see new models, they'll be getting all the bells and whistles to go along with it. (Or the developers can just say that and who are we to not believe them lol)

True. Since they put the original questions through the laundry a few times before tossing them into the Q&A, we'll never actually know what the original intent was, sadly.

On the other hand you do have cases like the glamour question where the intent of the translated question was *QUITE* clear and the answer completely ignored it.

[Ratatapa]

So i just wanna make sure When we start getting alex HM and new tomestone gear, current alex normal will be obsolete right?

[octopus]

So i just wanna make sure When we start getting alex HM and new tomestone gear, current alex normal will be obsolete right?

It's just story mode, of course it will be obselete

[Seravi Edalborez]

Darklight - Law / Bismarck
CT - Alex normal / Ravana
Coil - Alex savage

My interpretation. Obsolete maybe, but probably helpful.

[kisada]

this was seriously so awful to read.

terrible questions. the devs are completely out of tune with what's going on. i was cynical before the expansion but after it? and reading this shit? the 1% faith i had they might fix do things right is now pretty much 100% they will completely fuck everything up.

i just can't understand how these guys are so out of sync with what they actually need to do.

[Ratatapa]

Darklight - Law / Bismarck
CT - Alex normal / Ravana
Coil - Alex savage

My interpretation. Obsolete maybe, but probably helpful.

I'm not saying it won't be useful, what I mean is SCH got a lot of meh pieces, So Icould skip those meh Alex normal pieces and just get tomestone

[Destinye]

i just can't understand how these guys are so out of sync with what they actually need to do.

Because they have steady money from people who think Minions and Glamour is the most important thing to FFXIV and MMOs. They don't need to do anything else. This is why said people happily and quickly tell people to fuck off if they dare question the actual problems of the game.

[Elcura]

MNK? Too hard to balance this shit so we probably won't try.
NIN? Mudra lag isn't a thing. Mudra weaving is clunky you say? You need to practice NIN more.
DRG? Job too hard, dps too low, positionals are confusing! Buffs inc. WUT?

Greatness.

Expansion is winding down quite quickly, hasn't even been a month as well and while it is what I expected it's still kinda sad to see they can't even keep their status quo properly. Can't wait to see what frantic scrambling they do with the SE perpetual engine of fucking up and trying to fix it.