Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - Letter from the Producer LIVE at Las Vegas summary

Las Vegas’s Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival is progressing through its second and final day before moving onward to London. The Letter from the Producer just wrapped up and lots of new information relating to Patch 2.4 and beyond was shared with the audience.

Starting with Patch 2.4, the release date was confirmed as October 28th, and a large amount of changes will be coming to preexisting content as well as clarification on many new aspects that will be making their debut.

Brand new class and job addition; Rogue and Ninja had a few reveals that have been a long time coming. Ninja’s primary stat was announced to be Dexterity, with cross-class skills branching from Pugilist and Lancer, with end-game gear being shared with Monk, presumably including both Strength and Dexterity.

With the addition of Final Coil, there will no longer be a weekly lockout of content, allowing you to assist Free Company members with additional turns during the week. Final Coil will provide four turns for players to tackle, with bosses on floor three and four being very large spoilers for existing players. A series of changes will also be applied to the currently existing Secondary Coil. A token drop system will also likely be coming in 3.0 for Heavensward Raids.

Following this information, a series of questions were answered by the panel.

    Can we get Coil mounts such as ADS?
    We think this would be easy to implement, so we think we can say Yes to having an ADS mount.

    Will we see a turn that requires three parties, a twenty four man Alliance to fight Bahamut, or split to fight separate body parts?
    Getting 24 people together to do something that difficult seems rather hard. It is a good idea though, and the final Crystal Tower is coming in 2.5 so perhaps that might be more difficult. Of course there is also Heavensward which will have more Raids and Alliance based Raids.

    Are you planning on introducing Battle on the Big Bridge, Extreme?
    There will be an eight arm version, but not quite Extreme, this is coming in Patch 2.5! We don’t want to make Hildibrand battles hardcore, something very fun and for everyone that you can do in Duty Finder. Hildibrand series is not just about the battles, it is also about the fun and comedy too, you will definitely be getting that this time. Please look forward to it.

    Will Hildibrand continue in 3.0?
    It’s all up to you guys, the current story will be coming to a conclusion in 2.5, whether he gets blown away to the North is up to you or not. In the past when we added Inns, we thought it would be nice if there was a couple of episodes and stories to go with it, not knowing that it would get this big, even we don’t know what’s going to happen.

    What is the name of the new Tomestone?
    It’s not the Allagan Tomestone of Yoshida I’m afraid. In Japanese it is called Shigaku, so Allagan Tomestone of Poetics. You’re going to be seeing a lot of Rowena. Mythology will be phased out as was previously announced, and you can exchange your Mythology for Soldiery, so please do that.

    Will we be able to upgrade the new Allagan Tomestone gear with materials obtained from the Final Coil of Bahamaut?
    Yes you will be able to upgrade gear just like you upgraded Soldiery Gear.

    Will you be introducing new gear for Crafters and Gatherers?
    Yes, there will be more gear available to these classes. If you’re at the top gear for the current patch, you will be able to work on getting the best gear again for the new patch.

    Can you explain a bit more about the Housing changes?
    Like we mentioned previously, we’re doubling the amount of wards that you can purchase land in Patch 2.4, and there is a new system to purchasing houses from the new wards. Prices are the same as of 2.38.

    Will Yugiri reveal her Face in 2.4?
    No, but for clarification, she will be the new race coming in Heavensward, so perhaps 2.5.

    Can we set permissions for personal rooms with our Eternal Bond partners?
    We haven’t implemented this, but we do have the ability to do that, so it’s something we will consider.

    Will there be any restrictions on Personal Bond? Such as how many ceremonies per day?
    This will be coming in Patch 2.45, and players can only have one Personal Bond. The Ceremony of Eternal Bond guide will be put up on the Lodestone; You apply through the Lodestone, you will receive a bracelet upon your registration, and with both of you having that equipped you will go to a special NPC, talk to them, and you will be able to work on how you’re going to do the ceremony. The ring is given after this. There will be a restriction on how many ceremonies can be performed per day, and there will be a schedule. It is a reservation system so you have to decide when your time will be and apply. Once the date and hour is confirmed, you will receive your invitations which you can customise and then pass out to other Free Company members and friends.

    How will you be adjusting the Atma drop rate?
    We will increase the drop rate in 2.4 by more than double. Soldiery will be the Tomestone traded for Trials of the Brave, and the exchange rate will be better, so you’ll need less overall.

    Can you make it so our abilities don’t go on cool-down when changing job outside of City-States?
    We want to avoid players abusing this system. Say for example you’re fighting with a Warrior, and you have a really long recast timer, you then switch to a different job and back again to reset that, we want to avoid that. We do understand there is frustration with the current system and we are working on ideas with this such as rested areas and Aetherytes.

    It’s tiring having to cast Stoneskin on each party member, can we add an action for White Mage to fix this?
    It is annoying having to cast on each party member, we agree. There’s a bit of a back-story to this actually. We only had two weeks to tweak this for 2.0, so when we were testing Primal Battles it was a pain to precast this ability every time. We ended up asking Yoshida to have it removed, which he declined. Perhaps we can implement a system where if you’re not in combat you can cast Stoneskin on everyone at once. In 2.4, for boss battles, when a single party member engages in combat, everyone is automatically engaged. If you die and then raise, you’re automatically placed back into combat. Until now, this hasn’t been the case, so this new feature will go a long way in helping us with this request.

    Do you have any plans to add a Chocobo Barding that can have an FC logo?
    Yes!

    I would like to dye my Allagan Gear!
    We have plans for this, but we would like you to wait a while longer.

    Can you adjust the drop-rates for the EX primal mounts, such as Nightmare?
    Sure, why not? We’ll do this for Patch 2.4. We will increase the drop rate for them all. It’s been a while, so we’re going to also increase the drop rate of the Leviathan Mirror too.

    Do you have any plans to adjust the difficulty of the Second Coil aside from Echo Buff?
    Firstly like Patch 2.2 when we adjusted the First Binding Coil, you can go in with any eight player party, there also were no weekly restrictions, this is also going to happen to Second Coil in 2.4. After we release 2.4, we will see how players are handling the content, and we will decide whether it’s waiting two or three weeks where we can progress to the next stage to having the Duty Finder access. You can go solo into the Duty Finder to enter the Second Coil; around the same timing as that, we’re going to ease up on the Difficulty. To go into details, we will be removing the one-shot mechanic from Second Coil Turn 7. You’ll still get petrified and have that long timer, you just won’t get one-shot by a single hit. We don’t want to make it easy so that anyone can complete it without any trouble.

    Any PvP Updates?
    PvP Rank will be increasing in 2.4, with more rewards for Marks. We are also going to add new Rules in 2.5, and after that we’re going to add more Maps.

Following the Q&A it was expanded upon that the Golden Saucer will be coming in Patch 2.5, which will come in two parts; Patch 2.5 part 1 and Patch 2.5 part 2. It will include Triple-Triad, Chocobo Racing (also Breeding), and a large amount of Mini-Games. Details for Chocobo Racing include allowing players to control their own Chocobos instead of just watching.

Finally the Letter from the Producer LIVE concluded with the anouncement of an in-game Cash-Shop coming with Patch 2.4. The shop will sell the usual sets of Fantasia Potions (with varying prices for amounts), as well as a host of old Seasonal Gear from the previous year. Along with these vanity items, they will also be selling brand new Minions; Y’shtola, Yda, Paplymo (Costing $5 or £3.50) as well as a Odin’s Horse, Sleipnir as a Mount.

With Las Vegas Fan Festival coming to a close this evening, London’s Fan Festival is coming up less than a week from now, with a large amount of teased content also to be announced. Will we be seeing more job classes, or more new areas, we will have to wait and see. As usual check out our gallery below for pictures of the event.


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Michael Fisher

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