It’s that time again, where Yoshi-P gives us some updates for everyone’s favorite Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. He made some introductory remarks in the Letter from the Producer LI earlier in the week, but the main details were not divulged until the weekend’s Live Letter. Roughly 80% of the Live Letter was devoted to housing options available for the upcoming patch 2.1. Here are the highlights:
There are plans to update the Duty Finder’s party feature to allow players to select from different categories and play styles, so that players will be matched with similarly interested players to form their parties. Further details will be available in a special Live Letter.
A lot of adjustments are being planned for patch 2.1 Warriors will get a bump to make them more equal with Paladins, including improving the usability of the Warriors stun ability. Bards will be getting a nerf because they’re just too strong. And melee DPS will be able to deal more damage. There will also be some balancing out of the use of cross-class abilities in order to balance out certain class choices, though Yoshi-P did not go into detail about exactly how. Additionally, the dev team will be updating the display priorities of the FFXIV system for certain larger events, so there should be less crashes during Odin and Behemoth FATEs and other special content involving lots of players in the same area.
There was also a lot of updates about housing. Currently, the only requirement to have a house is to increase the rank of your free company (individual housing will be added roughly 6 months after patch 2.1). Houses will display in an instanced area, with 30 houses per instance. The gathering/crafting classes can be used to craft items to customize the exterior and interior of the house, and eventually it will be possible to have a jukebox to change the music inside the house, a bulletin board posted outside, and a garden to grow special items. Your characters will also receiving a Resting bonus by logging out inside a house, and there are plans to make it able to place aetheryte inside houses (this is possible, but not definite, for patch 2.1). FC leaders will be able to set permission as to who can move/take the items in the house, and there are update plans for future patches to allow for members to have individual rooms.
A brief video showing different housing styles.
There will be a lot of customization options for houses available right away. In patch 2.1, there will be about 180 different types of interior furniture available for houses, and 40 types of exterior furniture. You will also be able to change the house’s wallpaper and flooring, and add malleable objects such as lights you can turn on/off and cabinets that can be opened and closed. Currently it is only possible to sell the rights to the land, not the actual houses built.
Yoshi-P spent a lot of time discussing cheating, in the form of warpers (those who exploit the game’s program to quickly warp from area to area) and bots. The size of FFXIV’s staff has been increased to monitor this issues, and Yoshi-P promised that they are continuing to work on different methods to eliminate such exploits.
Quick hits:
• The amount of gil that can be acquired through instances has been increased.
• New crafting recipes will be added soon to make up for the glut of crafting materials.
• Unfortunately, the chocobo farm option will not be available until after patch 2.3.
• There are plans to allow players to build airships and access special content by building things in their underground workshop.
