Read our full transcript for further details of the Development Team Q&A Session held with the Community Team at the 2008 Premier Site Summit. While everything was done to keep the transcript accurate, it should be noted that this text is not without errors and may be edited as needed.
In attendance:
Premier site representatives, Yasu Kurosawa, Matt Hilton, Mocchi, Kenji Nakamura, Robert Peeler, Sage Sundi, and Saori Hill.
Discuss this Q&A on the forums!
Recently there have been increasing numbers of accounts being hacked. Is Square Enix looking into any measures into helping put an end to mass accounts being hacked? (IGN Vault)
Sage Sundi: The account rollback is something we can help players with after their account was hacked. I know it doesn't prevent what happened so since the number of rollbacks increased, we constantly have meetings to talk about how we are going to prevent this before it happens. (with the dev team) In many cases, hackers are not attacking the server or the client, they are attacking directly to the player's PC so something like Blizzard's key with one-time password. I think that's the best way, it's really effective. I will not reveal the exact details right now, but we will try to implement somehow, a one-time password. Maybe soon we can know something.
Lately, Vana'diel seems to have entered the age of TP Burn. Heavy damage jobs such as Warriors, Dark Knights and Samurais are now among the strongest jobs in the game and are still adjustments but melee jobs who don't focus on straight damage but help in tactical ways seem to be suffering. What are some of the changes that you've considered for melee jobs? (IGN Vault)
Mocchi: Assuming that the question is referring to people building up their TP and releasing it immediately without having any tactics, that is happening because there is not enough incentive. Instead of nerfing the damage what we did in the last patch was increase the incentive for skillchains by increasing the damage as well as decreasing the resistance. That's one way, the other is we've been considering something new so that melee and casters can work together. We still don't know exactly what we're going to do, but we want to do something so they can coordinate. It will be some sort of special event added on top of the existing system.
Recently GMs have been seen gathering small numbers of players and asking them about how they farm gil, and other related questions. What was the reason for collecting this data? Are we going to see any increase in quests that have higher gil rewards and possibly have them repeat? (Warcry)
Sage Sundi: The GMs were supposed to be taking those surveys quietly. *laughter* The purpose of the survey for our Special Task Force. We announced at the Fan Festival last year that we banned 90% of the hunters who occupy the area making gil illegally. However, 10% is still remaining and come back even though we ban their account every month. It really became like a cat and mouse game. To end this game I asked the STF to find out new objectives. The RMT still keep coming back because people still buy stuff. From our recent research, majority of the buyers have a shorter playtime than other players. To answer your question, the GM survey is to find out what is difficult in your lifestyle in Vana'diel. You know, when you are younger. Then we make some adjustments, maybe reducing the Dynamis cost is one idea or some other items come with the next version update.
Recently it was announced that you would be looking into adjustments with the cost of entry fee into instances such as Dynamis. If so, what changes can we be expecting and any ideas on when? (IGN Vault)
Sage Sundi: Like I said, with the next version update, Dynamis costs will be reduced along with other modifications to reduce difficulties for Dynamis. We believe that by reducing the entrance fee that this will attract more players to challenge Dynamis and in the process reducing the value of the ancient currency. This will allow players to complete the relic weapons at a lower cost. However, relic weapons are designed to be acquired by only those who complete a certain level of requirements, but there are many more weapons now than we expected. We hope players understand that just because the price drops over time, it does not mean anybody can acquire them easily. We will reduce the cost, but it's not too easy. It will get better than before though.
Warcry: You said that by adding more players into Dynamis you're lowering the cost of the currency, but doesn't this mean more players will want to get their relic therefore increasing the cost of currency?
Sage Sundi: It could be increasing at first after the version update but it will lower over time.
Mocchi: That's one way of looking at it, but we still feel that of course more people will be able to get it but eventually more people will have it and long term, the price will drop.
Matt Hilton: It's a similar situation now where people sell the currency to fund purchases of hourglasses so it's like so people who have never had a shot before because it was so expensive, maybe they still don't have any desire to get a relic and they'll still sell the currency and with so much more on the market...
Warcry: But more players doesn't really mean more relics.
Matt Hilton: That's true.
Warcry: You're just adding higher base of players working for something that they cannot get.
Mocchi: There will be more people trying so that will mean more relic weapons in the world.
Vault: I wanted to go back to the melee changes. That was actually more meant to be targeted towards the ones that aren't as heavy damage because now a lot of the parties are based on Dark Knights and Samurais, the real heavy hitters. It was more meant for asking if there are adjustments for the lesser damage dealers like Thief. They do build TP fast but they're not in as high a demand other than their treasure hunter. Are there possibilities of adjustments coming to them to make them more of a damage dealer?
Mocchi: The damage adjustments are important for the melees that are damage dealing but thief has hate control. Because we value the hate control portion as a role of the thief we will be implementing more adjustments focusing on the role of these jobs, not necessarily damage dealing.
For months, players have been maximizing their experience points in Campaign without even taking part in the battles. They sub Bard or White Mage, repeatedly cast spells on themselves and frequently get new Campaign tags. Will adjustments be made to eliminate frequent tag acquisition? (Allakhazam)
Kenji Nakamara: Whether or not this is good for the game or not, the answer is based on the fact that currently the system is not perfect. This can be looked at as one of the ways players bond to try to assault such issues as difficulties gaining exp solo or in a small group and some people simply not knowing exactly what they're doing in Campaign. However, we cannot deny that this is a different way to do it than designed. This also discourages the players actively playing in Campaign, so we will make some adjustments to solve that problem. Regarding Campaign battle adjustment, specifically what we are planning to do is require a set amount of time to obtain an Allied tag and implementing a variation of changes in the Campaign battles. Either way, we will make several adjustments by looking at the overall system balance.
Will you reveal information about hidden effects, food effects, and attack bonuses? (FFXIClopedia)
Robert Peeler: Their position is that they don't want to reveal ALL the hidden information in the game. There are several items they want to maintain a challenging enough to be discovered by players as opposed to completely revealed. They want to keep that balance and in order to keep that aspect of the gameplay. In order to do that, they are going to make sure that some information is revealed, but they don't want to uncover and display everything about every item.
Many feel the Campaign battles within the city limits come almost too frequently. Can we expect to see any balance changes to the campaign battles? (Stratics)
Matt Hilton: We actually heard a lot of comments from the community about Campaign battles taking place too often in the home nations. We are planning to make some adjustments to that so they're not occurring so frequently but we do want to continue to maintain and give a feel of an epic and dramatic and like a "fight for your freedom" time. You know, this is how the time was during the Crystal War. We are looking at adjustments for it, but those will be coming in the future. However, there are various factors that cause these things to happen in the first place and it's not just battles. Battles, Campaign Ops, and Tactical Assessment are just three of the factors that make up the organization of the Campaign system. We are always looking at way to continously tweak the system. We're not going to rest on our laurels and say, "Okay, it's good." We're always looking at it and looking at what can be adjusted in the future. So we're definitely taking feedback from the community about the frequency, but it's interesting too because some people say it's great so we have to find a balance.
Do you plan on improving the process of getting back an account that was hacked, allowing the identification of the account by using the ID key of the game or the extensions registered? (JeuxOnline)
Saori Hill: Actually we do use the registration codes as one of the parts of information that we use to verify the account holder. That's not all the information we ask for but it is the key point that we use. We don't always ask a question but we do use registration codes as a part of the investigation.
Are you going to put a bigger focus on the Wings of the Goddess missions now since the Treasures of Aht Urhgan storyline is finished? (OnlineWelten)
Yasu Kurosawa: It seems like less volume when you just look at the log or the Wings of the Goddess missions, but it's constructed in a very special way. Missions are only one part of it, we do involve various quests and side stories to build up the bigger theme so volume wise it is not any smaller than the other expansion packs. If you play all the quests from the past few missions, then you can enjoy as much as the previous expansion packs.
Do you have any plans to enhance the official FFXI windower to lure players away from unlicensed programs? (Warcry)
Sage Sundi: I don't use those tools, so I don't know exactly, but we have no plans for enhancing the features. I think most of the enhancements of those tools allow a player to do something... I'm not going to say "illegal", but something that normal players cannot. So, it's not a good idea to give super advantage only to Windows users, but we are happy to hear any suggestion if the idea is not breaking those rules.
The PlayOnline announcement says that the winning numbers for the Mog Bonanza lottery were randomly determined in a strictly supervised process. Could you provide us with more specific details about the process you followed in and why a month passed before the winning numbers were announced? (Allakhazam)
Sage Sundi: It wasn't in a secret drawing, we just did not reveal the details for other reasons. I participated in this drawing with about 10 people and each number was picked by the dyes or playing cards or bingo slot or scratch cards. I think I picked the second to the last digit for first prize. We also did a videotape for the drawing just in case we wanted to reveal.
Yasu Kurosawa: This was a truly random and strictly surveillanced by other people. The reason we didn't make this public was for legal reasons. In certain countries, it can be easily mistaken for gambling so we didn't want anyone to be looking at it as gambling, so in order to avoid those confusions from certain governments we weren't able to make public the video. The drawing was done in a very fair manner.
Sage Sundi: We were actually trying to avoid RMTer people trying to create a lot of accounts trying to win those prizes, so we have to wait 30 days to charge to them and avoid a date.
Allakhazam: So on that note, did you see a dramatic increase in characters created for that purpose?
Sage Sundi: Yeah, for the current accounts they were creating new characters, that's fine. But new accounts, they just bought a new bunch of accounts and try to win those. For that part we need to prevent.
Vault: Was any investigation done of the winners to ensure they weren't RMT?
Sage Sundi: We didn't, no.
Warcry: 100 million gil sells for a lot of money!
Sage Sundi: But if they win, if they make 500 accounts, that's still a lot of money there so I don't think they're making good money.
Allakhazam: So were suspected RMT who may have bought accounts just for the Mog Bonanza, were they like in that 30 day period and were they shut down?
Sage Sundi: I think if it's less than 30 days... we have a starter pack. If we can do this next time, we will still have to wait 30 to 40 days.
FFXIclopedia: Do you plan on doing it again?
Sage Sundi: Why not? Did you guys like it?
Allakhazam: It built up a lot of community response. Overall it generated a whole lot more forum activity because there were a lot of threads about Bonanza and it got people excited, some people came back just for this. Yeah, it was a good event overall.
Warcry: It does take up a lot of inventory space!
Stratics: Is there any way to fix that?
Allakhazam: Give it back to the Moogle, can he hold it for us?
Sage Sundi: You can win a bag!
The AI of puppetmaster's Automaton seems to improperly prioritize some of its actions. Some of them can be canceled by using maneuvers while others cannot. Status ailment healing spells are among some of the actions, as well as drain and aspir. If a puppetmaster is blind and low on hp, the Automaton will choose to relieve the PUP of its blindness rather than cure. Are there any plans to boost the overall effectiveness of the automaton whether it be fixes to current attachments to AI adjustments? (FFXIClopedia)
Kenji Nakamura: The automaton action is depending on the attachment and management by the master. The casting spell mentioned in the question also like a change of pace in these factors so we are not planning to make changes for you. For example, by equipping a damage gauge attachment there are a number of light maneuvers, cures are prioritized. So please try various things, see what can be accomplished. Also, about the automaton, we of course have plans.
*Thayos and Pikko begin a private discussion on lockdown plans for the Puppetmaster forum in anticipation of riots.
At FFXI Stratics, we take special interest in catering to new players and focusing on low and mid level content. What exciting new stuff do these players get to look forward to in further developments? (Stratics)
Mocchi: Rather than create battlefields that are specific for level 10s and lower levels, sort of like making higher level stuff for lower levels, our current concentration is to have lower level people not have as much trouble going through the process of gaining higher levels. Immediately after the launch of the expansion pack, people will get the new job and then they'll level up. So when you start it, it's a brand new player but they have an easier time leveling up. Most of the people who are high level players have already leveled the two new jobs. We are currently planning to have a new scheme so that we can have easier time partying up rather than just preparing, waiting around so many hours to go to your party, we're discussing schemes to ease up this process a lot, so look forward to it.
Why does puppetmaster equip a large amount of magical related armors when they don't cast spells? Do you plan on including more attack related items for puppetmasters? (JeuxOnline)
Robert Peeler: The general idea behind the Puppetmaster is they're supposed to concentrate on strengthening the automatons themselves, not necessarily themselves. So in doing this, they must realize that automatons wear only light armor, not heavy armor and because they wear only light armor the puppetmasters themselves internally wear light armor in order to fight like their automaton. And the light armors tend to lean towards magic based armors. So that's going to naturally be the case, but yes, we are going to be adding some items in the Zeni NM system that will award puppetmasters and provide a lot of support for their automatons.
The Nyzul bosses are easier than the normal versions, but after a while if you get no drop, again and again, it's getting annoying. Do you have plans to maybe add some other items and bosses? This doesn't mean "add Ridill to the Nyzul Fafnir version", but at least some crafting materials. (Online Welten)
Matt Hilton: As you probably know, the bosses that show up on the 20th, 40th, 60th, 80th, and 100th levels of Nyzul when compared to the NMs and HNMs outside Nyzul are monsters that are able to be fought with a party of six and much more often than the monsters on the outside. So the same monsters that are appearing in the Assault are much weaker because of that fact. If we were to add even more rewards than there are now, the balance of the strength of the rewards would be destroyed. Also, the values of synthesis items and materials would also be destroyed so we will probably not be adding those. Even if we were to add synthesis items, they would have to be super cheap materials to prevent the same problems. You know, if it were dropping Cerberus Hides or something it would cause the same problems that a rare/ex item would so you wouldn't really be happy if Fafnir was dropping zinc ore. That's just one of the reasons why we decided not to.
As people level more jobs it becomes increasingly difficult to decide which weapon gets merits over another. Also, when are SCH and DNC merits planning to be introduced and can you tell us anything about them? (Warcry)
Mocchi: We do understand that you would like to be stronger, but we would like to try out different concepts and for so now we will not be making adjustments. For Dancer and Scholar it will probably be only Group one merits.
The transfer of a content ID from one account to another has been mentioned in the past. Is this still a planned service and when can players expect to see it? (Allakhazam)
Sage Sundi: To be honest, I am against the idea of transferring to a new account because it may encourage RMT to sell characters instead of the gear, so to avoid that maybe we need to leave it where if you have two accounts with the exact same information on the account information.
Currently there is no way to ride a chocobo in the past. Will we be able to rent them from the NPCs? When can we expect this to be introduced and will the chocobos have armor on them and will we be able to get armor for our raised chocobos in the present? (Warcry)
Kenji Nakamura: We are planning to make it possible for people to ride chocobos very soon so stay tuned. We are also planning to adjust the way to commute between Campaign battles of the three nations, currently if you see a Campaign battle in one of the three nations the Warp NPC will disappear. We are planning to adjust these kinds of things. We are not sure at this point whether you can ride the chocobo with armor or not. Not sure when it's going to be happening, but just keep an eye open.
Treasures of Aht Urhgan and Wings of the Goddess Jobs: Can you provide us the timeline of when you expect to release relic gear for COR, BLU, PUP, SCH and DNC? Also, SCH and DNC are unable to wear any sets from Sky, Limbus and Salvage and are unable to use Jailer weapons. Are their plans to allow them to use these items? (FFXIClopedia)
Sage Sundi: We are not allowed to say exactly what is going to be happening, but you see a hint in the Topics banner. If you go there, there is a hint in the banner. For the second question, the reason that some sets of armor obtained in Tu'Lia and Limbus and Salvage and the Jailer weapons cannot be worn or used is because we are thinking of providing a new armor for these jobs. If there are more people asking us to allow the new jobs to wear those armor weapons rather than waiting for new ones, maybe there is a slight chance that the development team will change their mind but again, team is not planning on it.
Any hopes of a future Brenner tournament or further development in this conflict system? (Stratics)
Matt Hilton: At the present, it's not like there is no idea to ever do this, but there actually no schedule to introduce them right now. There are various people who continue to play and enjoy Ballista and Brenner, so we'd like to continue to support the events but it might not be that simple to implement. As for the PvP system itself since this has a direct influence on the addition of new jobs as well as the regulation of jobs in general we would rather put the priority on what we already have built in the current system rather than build something completely new. But if there are an enormous amounts of demands for it from everyone we will consider other details as well as when to add these things.
Can we expect to have a hairdresser NPC, allowing players to change their hairstyle? Some players play for more than 4 years and might want some change. (JeuxOnline)
Yasu Kurosawa: Assuming that this question is about hair color or face type we did discuss this with the dev team. It is possible. We don't have the answer yet or the result but this came up, so we are discussing to see if it's possible. So maybe in the future you'll see it.
Allakhazam: Would it be a quested thing?
Yasu Kurosawa: We did not go into that much detail in the discussion, but there is a request to change the face type. Technically, it's possible, so we'll see.
Vault: If you were to bring that out would there be any possibilities of new hairstyles? With the expansions there are new NPCs with new hair and new faces, might that be a chance to add new faces and hair styles?
Sage Sundi: That's not we discussed.
Yasu Kurosawa: Yeah, player and NPC graphics are done in slightly different ways.
Einherjar just had a big change. It motivated many new linkshells to try their luck with Einherjar. But the Tier 3 chambers often come along with some time issues, because you have to pull much faster and not all monsters come at once. The higher Tiers are probably too hard for many linkshells, but it should stay a challenge. Are their any plans to get more items in exchange for ampoules? (Online Welten)
Kenji Nakamura: In the previous patch, the amount of ampoules you can get goes up but even then if you think about it, there are plenty of uses for the ampoules. So if you have too many goals, each one won't work out very well, so while we may consider adding items, we have to be mindful of this.
The storyline we encounter through playing FFXI seems to barely scratch the surface of Vana'diel's history. I and many others have found ourselves curious about the hidden past of Vana'diel, such as:
Unfortunately, this part of the recording is of such poor quality that the answers could not be deciphered. Notes were used for this portion.
Why is Gusgen Mines haunted by the ghosts of children?
There was an accident in Gusgen Mines and children who accompanied their parents to work were unfortunately killed in the accident.
Who is Uggalepih?
Uggalepih is the goddess who the Tonberries worship and according to their folklore, she is disgraced by Altana.
What was day to day Zilart/Kuluu life like?
That depends on the storyline and depends on how you look at the scenario, so that depends on how you play the game.
What was Al'taieu like before it was removed from the world?
The same but out in the past. (?)
Judging from the Obsidian lined cliffs of the Sea of Shu'Meyo, it's not exactly a natural ocean, what was the region like before the meltdown?
Shu'Meyo was connected to Quon and Mindartia
What truly compels the beastmen? is it merely a cultural misunderstanding? Economic factors?
According to the Humes mythology it's because Humes are the creations of Altana while the beastmen are the creation of Promathia. There have been times when beastmen have had good relationships with the different races, but differences in culture have led them to their current state.
What are Dancing Weapons? Why do they congregate around ancient Zilart ruins?
The Dancing Weapons are said to be metal creatures created by black magic controlled by another monster. They have intelligence and language but they can't move by themselves, so to make sure they can move, they control an Earth Spirit to move for them.
Have you considered revealing more of the back-story? Perhaps as quests or even a purchasable guidebook?
We would like to meet expectations as much as possible so I think this is possible and maybe we can show more in future quests.
The last Update also came along with many new sets of equipment. But this time the real good and powerful equipment is not "rare/ex" anymore, you could sell it if you wanted to. What was your plan to change the real good equipment to only "rare"? (Online Welten)
Mocchi: First off, the many items that were added in the previous Version Update, the fact that they can be sold on the Auction House and be given to other people was decided from the beginning. This is something that presumably makes items very popular. In general the reason for putting Ex into an item as an attribute is to act as proof that someone finished a certain expansion or defeated certain monsters.
In the same way as getting titles and honors, rare is to prevent people from monopolizing certain items. We used this specific feature to prevent RMTers to do their activities, so the meaning slightly changed for some items. As a result, consequences include overflowing you inventory in your Moogle House or not enough items in the Auction House to be distributed.
Recently, since we put a lot of effort into the STF and much less gear are giving a lot problems, the dev team said why don't we start introducing the original concept of the items?" So, introduce items that are not Rare/Ex. We want to see how this goes first. For certain items signifying killing of a mob, those will remain rare, but since we have less RMTers we will see how it will go adding new rare/ex items to the game.
On the topic of mages, people feel participating in the Campaign as a WHM is relatively ineffective. Are there any plans to resolve this issue? (Stratics)
Matt Hilton: Does this have to do with the recent addition of the physicians to campaign? We do hear the voice of the people asking to please raise the value of experience points gained by casting raises. But we don't hold the opinion that people cannot be efficient in the Campaign battles as a white mage. We feel that they still have the ability to use their high amount of experience points doing what white mages do. So right now, we are looking at the comments about it, but it's working as intended basically.
Mocchi: I got to Campaign and I don't expect experience points from Raising, I do other things to get experience. In general, White Mages are extremely easy to get experience in this type of situation: Cure with Divine Veil, then you get extremely high amount of heal.
Generally compared to other jobs, White Mages gain more experience. That's one way to get a lot of experience points, but you can always start meleeing.
Yasu Kurosawa: You can also use a Scholar as a subjob to help with this.
Mocchi: My trick is to try a variety of things: meleeing, debuffing, curing, raising. By doing a variety of things, this seems to be the most efficient way of getting experience. The reason we implemented the Physicians were to assist the White Mage players so they can do a lot of other things in Campaign. So be creative, there is always a dedicated white mage to do the white mage job, so as you go there, you can have more freedom to do other things.