Final Fantasy XIV Letter from the Producer Live Part IV

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After last night’s finale, Final Fantasy XIV producer Naoki Yoshida sat down on a live Youtube video feed to answer some player questions about A Realm Reborn. The official video is not up yet, but it was all in Japanese anyway; instead, you can find a full list of the questions and answers here. Here are some highlights:

With regards to the ongoing development, the first stage of the alpha test has been completed, and if all things go according to plan, the global alpha test will start on November 26, 2012. According to Yoshi-P, this development is behind schedule, but quality is the first concern above rushing to get things done, which I would certainly hope so after the original debacle. Currently, the hope is that the beta test will start in late January/early February. A new development roadmap will be released in late November/early December.

Yoshi-P also detailed more information about two new dungeons: the Crystal Tower and the Great Labyrinth of Bahamut (the latter of whom was a highlight of the 1.x finale!). The Crystal Tower will be a raid encompassing an alliance, which consists of three parties. In the Great Labyrinth, players can find out why Bahamut was trapped in Dalamud and more about the key-like object that fell to the ground. Both dungeons will consist of multiple stages.

ARR will also feature a content finder system which allows players to select what they want to do and to find parties with similar goals. In response to a player question on this system, Yoshi-P seemed to indicate that the content finder will allow players from different worlds will be able to play together through this system, though did not offer any information on how this will be implemented.

Regarding new content, Yoshi-P also stressed that there will be plenty of new content for all types of gamers and all types of groups. Raids will still focus on the full 8-person party, though there will also be instanced dungeons for 4-person parties. There will also be more “casual content” for solo players or small groups, though Yoshi-P did not elaborate. The high-level content will continue to be heavily focused on parties.

For those people awaiting news on whether they’ll be able to play FFXIV: ARR: the first PC benchmark will be released during the beta test phase; a new benchmark will be released at the launch of ARR.


Quick hits:
• It is likely that existing players will be able to change their characters’ names on ARR.
• There are currently plans for a new coeurl mount!
• The entire market system is being revamped, including the implementation of an auction house.
• The “main attribute” for all classes and jobs will be completely changed, to go along with the revamped battle system.
• Yes, the new enlarged breasts will be bouncy. Cue all the 13-year-olds making female characters with the biggest boobs possible.
• In ARR’s PvP system, there are plans in the works to allow players to fight against members of the development team. Too much lag? Just beat on a developer!
• There will be cathedrals to allow marriages, but no same-sex marriage for now, which is pretty lame, but not surprising.

That’s it for now, but there should be plenty more information released later this month as the alpha test is expanded and a new development roadmap is released. Be sure to keep an eye out for more updates!

I'm particularly excited about the news they released about player housing and dying. If I'm reading it correctly, you may be able to dye different parts of gear different colors. Additionally, I like that different additions to your house will have different tangible bonuses (exp. bonus, HQ crafting bonus) which was part of mog houses in FFXI that, I felt, was very under-explored. Also based on Beta planning to start in January/February, it's looking like an early Q2 release for ARR.

They're taking their time, but it'll be all right I guess.

Frankly, I'd rather they take their time than we get a repeat of the first launch.

Ouch!: oh yes, I liked the housing news as well, but forgot to include that in the "quick hits" section. The way Yoshi-P talked about it, it sounds like some of the larger possible houses will be absolutely massive.

I hoarded a good chunk of change before the servers closed (it will be close to 1.8m after the currency re-valuation); I'm hoping that's good enough to get me started towards my own house. I'm all about vanity items.

Also, one particularly encouraging piece of news was that the stat system is getting a complete overhaul. As a total stat whore, I can't even begin to describe how happy this makes me, but I can try to explain why. Every class currently has two primary stats, the breakdown is as follows:

Gladiator/Paladin: STR/MND
Pugilist/Monk: STR/INT
Lancer/Dragoon: STR/PIE
Marauder/Warrior: STR/VIT
Archer/Bard: PIE/DEX

Caps for those stats for auto-attack damage and weapon skill damage is based on your equipped weapon's base damage and damage per second respectively. With endgame-caliber equipment (Garuda/Ifrit/Grand Company weapons), you're going to be aiming for 350 of the first stat and 310 of the second except in the case of ARC/BRD which caps out at 335/300 PIE/DEX for whatever reason. Note I excluded thaumaturge (INT, MND, PIE) and conjurer (MND, VIT, PIE) because their stat situation is even more complicated and does not have current attainable (or known!) caps.

If this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it's because the whole system makes no damned sense to begin with and heavily favors some jobs over others. BRD has significantly lower stats which makes maxing out damage much easier to obtain. WAR gets offensive and defensive bonuses from its secondary modifier which puts them at an advantage over PLDs who must choose to either boost VIT for increased defense and maximum HP while sacrificing MND and thus their base damage and cure potency (both of which aid in their ability to keep hate).

It's definitely good that they're addressing these problems with base stats. Hopefully it also goes further to address problems with some of the other stats. One of my biggest complaints about the mechanics of Final Fantasy XIV has been that a lot of the stats are almost completely useless. Enmity reduction or bonuses, for example, are almost entirely negligible in the amounts that you can get them in almost every slot. Each point amounts to 0.1% increase (or decrease) in enmity generated, which means that you can almost always do better with different stats. Magic critical damage bonuses are similarly negligible (you have to stack literally hundreds of points of that to see marginal gains against any enemy you won't be able to wreck already anyway).

The biggest problem is that achieving any of these caps, or obtaining secondary stats in amounts high enough to be valuable require that you make heavy use of forbidden materia melding to get double--or triple!--melds. Good double melds will net you 30+ of the base stats. A successful meld will cost you several hundred thousand gil in raw materials--but those melds currently have about a 20-24% success rate (depending on whether you're going from tier III > tier IV or tier IV > tier IV). And that's only for double melds. You can't reach stat caps on any disciple of war except for BRD without triple-melded gear, and the success rate getting a triple meld from scratch is below 2%. That's millions of gil in raw materials.

So it's good to hear that melding is getting significantly relaxed. It also sounds like melding is going to be significantly nerfed. Tiers currently have a range of values depending on how lucky you are when converting gear; tier IV, for example, can result in stat+16, 17, 18 or 20 for any of the base stats. That randomized component seems out the window, and I imagine that means that the stats will err to the lower end of their current ranges, especially since they're increasing the success rates and relaxing the melding system as a whole.

That's all good news, though, right? The system will get cleaned up. Melding becomes more approachable and less unforgiving. Lowering stat values for materia will also make melded gear less dominant (currently much of the endgame gear you can obtain is kind of a joke compared to even just double-melded equipment).

That said, this also means that a lot of the gear I put a lot of time into getting for BRD and DRG could become extremely useless...

No matter what happens, our gear is likely to be screwed at least a little if not a lot. But that's okay to me, as we're all on an even footing on that regard. Thankfully, I have a decent amount of gil and a good amount of random materia that my LS have handed to me over the months. I'll happily be making use of it in the new system! I'm sure some people will rage about what they spent all their time getting but I'll just focus on enjoying myself. I hope to build an absolutely amazing place for my LS, but we'll have to wait and see how it all costs in the long run.

The full video with translated captions is now available here, and the official transcript of the event has been posted here.

More post-shutdown ARR interview responses which clarify on some of the points from the live letter are available on the official forum here.

For clarification, when he says that the housing pricing model will follow that of DQX, it means that the introductory price point will be overwhelmingly expensive (several, several million) and will drop over time. Prices will start somewhere prohibitively expensive like 500,000,000G. That price will drop at a constant rate until people begin to buy it when they can afford it. After a certain number of people have purchased it, price will start to rise again until they stop buying. After the market for land and housing has stopped, it'll start dropping again. This means that the richest will get the prime real-estate at any given time. That there are only 3 large-sized plots of land in each housing instance also suggests that when the prices get within a reasonable range, it will be extremely competitive.

Also, based on what they've said about three players completing all the quests and combining all that gil to obtain a medium sized house, I'm going to imagine that means that a medium house will cost approximately a million gil. All the quests in FFXIV (and all the missions as well, which provided significantly more gil) barely added up to only 2-3 million gil in the old system, which means 2-300,000 G after currency devaluation. Unless quests give (comparatively) much more gil or there are significantly more quests (which I doubt), those estimates lead me to believe a price point for a medium house (note, that doesn't include the land) to be around one million give or two a few hundred thousand gil. Which means that a small house and land should be significantly less.

I have to imagine that based on their comment that the price of a large house will make us recoil in horror, that there's either an enormous discrepancy between medium and large, or they're exaggerating one way or another. Numerous players are going to be able to buy a medium house as soon as everything goes live on their own (like me). I'm willing to bet that it's more likely that Yoshi is low balling us on the price of a medium house (or they've adjusted quest rewards to be significantly more lucrative than before).