Fans had the opportunity to submit questions to Naoki Yoshida for answer during the Eorzean Question Time. For 40 minutes on Sunday morning Yoshida answered questions that were pre submitted on Saturday from the venue or from the Forums. The following is a highlight of what was asked and answered. The dynamic between Yoshida and Michael Christopher Koji Fox, Localization Director and Yoshida’s translator, is something to watch. Those two appear to have a lot of fun up their riffing off of each other.
Some of the questions and answers have been slightly altered for brevity and clarity.
Q: Will we see more choices for character creation. Faces, body shape, bum slider. How much work would it take to implement something like that?
A: To be honest currently we have no plans to add new options. In addition to this being a burden on the graphics team because this is an online game there is data being sent back and forth between your machine and the server. This would make more data that needs to go in these packets and that could create stress in other areas. But I want to ask, you want that butt slider? (The crowd overwhelmingly responded in the affirmative.) The textures would be all kind of spread out? Is that okay? You don’t want that do you?
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The bigger the butt the more the textures get stretched. I don’t know if that is a little too difficult maybe. But it mean it seems like a lot of players that really, really, for some reason, want this so I’ll talk to the graphics director back at the team and see what we can do.
Q: Will the slots for gardens for houses be increased as well?
A: We have already got furnishing, how about we leave it at that for now and see how it goes?
Yes. We are currently considering how to go about increasing the number of garden slots. However with the estates we can increase the number there easily. With gardens you have all the other gardens in the area showing so we would increase all of the houses by 50 which means there is that many more things showing. This could result in lower frame rates and crashes. This could be too stressful for the users. We are concentrating on inside of the house first and then we are going to work on moving to a new estate and then we will work on garden slots.
Q: For pet that get knocked back can we have her go back to her original state.
A: It’s up to you to get your pet to come back to you. That you will have to do for yourself.
Q: Will there ever be a chance we will get a rhythm game added to the gold saucer?
A: You think it’s that easy? I suppose we could do that, put Theatrhythm in our game. Ah but to play it you have to put in some real money right? Buy some coins in the mog station. Put those in the machine and if we do that we would probably get the okay from the Theatrhythm producer Mr. Hazama. Sounds like a fun idea. When I go back I’ll make sure to talk to their producer.
Q: Do you plan to remove racial restrictions on haircuts?
A: There are some hairstyles we want to keep race specific to maintain that races identify. Some of the others we plan to slowly but surely introduce them to other races. Over the next months years there will be more but never all.
Q: Players love a lot of fights in the class quest. Can you add a feature to repeat fights in the story?
A: This was answered through Yoshida and not translated: “Nice idea. Make a new character.”.
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That was said in humor. The rest of the answer that follows was in Japanese. Because these types of quest are all triggered with quest flags in order to make this possible we could have to recreate our quest systems from the ground up. However now that I think about it each of these battles is created as individual content. If we could make a list of these and be able to draw from them afterwards it’s not impossible. The idea and implementation is not impossible but very difficult and requires a lot of debugging.
In English: But if you can’t wait make a new character.
Q: The new content was too easy. Do you plan on making raids harder?
A: This goes back and forth. After Binding Coil we got this was too hard, after Alexander third leg we got this was too easy. That’s kind of what we want. We have an idea for making special content that is very difficult but if it is too difficult don’t come whining saying it’s too difficult.
Q: Will we get a certain outfit from the mog station?
A: Does everyone want that? Not a lot of response from the crowd. So with the Mog Station it is ruled by a powerful empress. More power than I am. She has mentioned creating this uniform and gear would be very difficult and costly. Basically said if everyone promises to purchase this new item we might consider making it. Would you promise to buy it? (The crowd had mixed reactions). I guess I’ll have to do it.
Q: We really like Hildibrand quests. Will future quest involve trials?
A: There has been a little bit of talk about Hildibrand. When we first introduced him we went overboard on some of his quests. The plan for 3.x was we would take a break from Hildibrand. However we got so much feedback that players wanted to see the return of Hildibrand we added him back in 3.1. And so again for 4.x we thought maybe it’s time to give him a rest. However he never sleeps. So yes. For those of you that have played the 3.5 quest. Pay attention to what direction he shoots off into. Was it west or was it east?
Q: Can we have an in game parser that shows our dps to ourselves please? Official one would be helpful for PS4 users as well.
A: He tried to run from the stage.
NOOOOO. There is a reason. I 100% understand that you want to see yours and yours alone. But then what happens people in the party can say, well you can see your dps and tell me what your dps is, then there is going to be fights. Once we release that tool it’s only a matter of moments before someone takes it apart and retools it so everyone can see everyone else’s dps. We understand fully a lot of people just want to see their own. They want to see how they can better themselves. But by implementing we are 100% certain this will lead to infighting. I’m not saying this is something we will never look into in the future but during 3.x series with the intro with new skills we saw the skill gap grow. That's why we are going to retool the battle system to close that gap. Once that gap is closed and we have a better balance system, then and only then will we consider implementing this. If we did it now we would only hurt the community and that is something we do not want to do. He struggled with this last part of the answer. So there is something, I don’t know if I‘m supposed to say this. We have something that is planned that is maybe not a system but maybe is a system that can redo something that is part of a system but not... ah next. It’s probably something that has never been done. We think it will be cool but can’t say anymore.
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Q: When can we expect a PS4 pro patch and will it upgrade frame rates?
A: Yes. We are currently working on a PS4 patch. However we are different from standalone offline games. XIV being a mmorpg is all about displaying as many things on screen at the same time. So rather than using the Pro’s power to increase graphical performance we would rather increase the game experience. Show more things on the screen. Last week I tested one of the first builds of the patch. It is going to be soon that we can release this to you. We have one thing we don’t want PS4 players to worry about. The PS4 version won’t drop off. We will put a lot of work into it to bring you the best experience possible.
Q: Would it be possible to keep flowers or plants in pots so they can keep the bloom state permanent?
A: That’s actually in our patch list. There are so many little patches in the 3.5. It’s coming soon 3.5 or 4.0 but very soon.
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Q: Will we see umbrellas in the game similar to minions?
A: Remember the empress of the Mog Station? Her most frugal highness? They are thinking of making one. But they are thinking of it is a mount. Mary Poppins? Actually there has been talk for a while about adding it to the game. It’s whether to make it a mount or something else. Memory for a minion isn’t very big so we can’t make it too detailed. He then asked the crowd. So when you fly should the umbrella spin or go straight?
Q: Are we ever going to get palace of the dead cross server? Will we ever be able to /tell someone from a different server in party finder?
A: First, this is something our dev team is currently in the process of working on. What is closer is cross world matching for alliance raids. We want to have it ready for Return to Ivalice. While it may take time we hope to increase the number of things players can do cross world.
Second, currently we are working on the sharing of the friend list, Link Shell, and Free Company cross server. I think tell was in there as well. Probability if my memory serves /tell was going to come before linkshell. We are working on it as we speak.
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The concluded the question and answer portion of the live letter. Yoshida then briefed the crowd on what to expect in patch 3.55a, yes a, there will also be a patch 3.55b anywhere from 7 to 14 days after 3.55a.
3.55a will be released on February 28th. There will be the final Anima Weapon story quest and it may be easy.
There is new content for crafters and harvesters. Zhloe Aliapoh custom deliveries. They plan to continue to update this through the 4.x series. To introduce the new content they will introduce the new NCP Zhloe. Put simply, since this is apparently a complex process, this NPC needs your help. As you help her you get to see her quest unfold. How SE plans on updating this is by introducing new NPCs and stories. They are quest lines specifically for crafters and gatherers. They hope to change this content and in the end have it so things players make and give to the NPCs the NPCs will end up wearing and you will actually see it.
There will be a Proto Ultima Battle
Yoshida: “People have been playing this at FanFest. With 3.55a people all around the world will be able to play this. The reward for beating him is a 270 accessory. But where this battle will take place we will not talk about. It’s a secret.”
There will be updates to The Feast: New Map, Sudden Death, New Items & Adjustments, Season 3 ends and season 4 preseason begins.
Additional updates: Adjustments to Goddess and Demon Lanner whistle drop. Rates. Easier to get. Garo gear reobtainable via calamity salvager. Abes & High summoner attire available for redemption.
3.55b will have the exploratory missions. They found a bug in the system and couldn’t fix it in time. Yoshida had this to say, “there is a certain raid that is in the new Diadem content that, something happened, yeah. It's a new type of raid and we want the new content to be stress free and fun. 7 more days, maybe 9 more days, maybe 14. But we will try our best to make it 7 or 9. We are very sorry thank you.”
