Producer's Live Letter 87

Q:I wish I could enter the Forked Tower with a preformed alliance.

A:Yoshi felt the support systems in DRS were too high, they wanted to reduce these.

As of right now, it's hard to get into the same instance with 48 people, leading to what people call "island gacha" trying to go into the instance with the full premade.

They will implement a feature in patch 7.3 to allow a premade alliance to queue in to the same instance at once.

It was also mentioned that a list view to see who submitted cyphers and how many were submitted by each person will be coming.

Q: I wish there was a normal and savage version of the Forked Tower, like there was with Delubrum Reginae.

A: They refer to the lack of normal and savage modes for Forked Tower as a cost limitation (budget or time?)

For this first zone it will have to be like this, but for future zones in the Occult Crescent, they will try to have both a normal and a savage version of the instances.

Q: When magic pot and happy bunny coffers contain only materia and fireworks, the rewards feel inadequate for the effort required.

A: While the coffers also give gil as a reward, they understand that they were off on how rewarding these feel.

They will be discussing this further and trying to change it for the better.

Q: Enemies in FATEs can be defeated too quickly. Unless you're paying close attention, a FATE may be completed before you've even arrived.

A: This is not something that is limited to the Occult Crescent instance, but it's difficult to adjust parameters to match when an instance is crowded and when it's empty, on the fly.

They feel as a general rule it's better to have these parameters adjusted to lean on the side of easier rather than harder but they will be looking into the parameters and try to finetune them.

Q: Please increase the drop rate for demiatma and soul shards.

A: This is down to personal RNG (luck) and they will not be buffing the drop rates for now.

For transparency, they provided the current drop rates:

• Critical Encounter drop rate is at: 20%
• FATE drop rate is at: 5%

It's also mentioned that back in the grind for the ARR relic weapon, atma drop rates at content release had only a 2% drop rate, that was steadily increased over time and now sits at 20%.

They want to keep random drops as a feature in the game and not have players just collect everything at once and abandon the content.

Q: The window for auroral mirages is too short, making it impossible to get there in time if you were in critical encounter.

A: They're changing the system around the Auroral Mirage weather pattern.

They will make it so that the weather condition will not spawn until the instance environment allows for it, meaning that there's no active Critical Encounters at the time.

This will push the weather condition back as it aligns with instance content but otherwise won't change the amount of it spawning.

Q: Can you allow us to use mounts?

A: In 7.3, you will be able to do it and for the new zones of cosmic exploration releasing in 7.31 mounts will be enabled right from the start.

Q: Please increase the time limit for missions.

A: This feedback came from gatherers mostly, they will adjust the mission timers for some missions.

Q: Please make the mission report window open automatically.

A: They believe that this is a feature that should've been in the game since the start and will change it in the future.

Q: Please make it so your GP is fully restored after completing gatherer missions.

A: From now on, you will get back the GP that was used and cast timers for cordials will reset upon completion of a gatherer's mission.

Q: Please make it easier to understand when sequential missions are available.

A: Sequential missions have been difficult to see in the chat window and they will work on improving this.

Q: Please make projects easier to successfully complete.

A: They are looking at data from projects and will keep monitoring it. They're working on a system that allows for a follow-up to failed projects.

Q: Please keep the relative positioning of shops and NPCs constant as the base develops.

A: They focused too much on the looks of how the base would look like fully developed, for the future releases they will re-work the level designs.

Q: Please have holograms installed from the beginning.

A: For the next exploration zone, they will have holograms installed from the beginning.

Q: Please add more incentives to continue playing once we've finished cosmic tool enhancement and gotten the current rewards.

A: They looked at the data and it's clear that there's a lack of incentives to keep playing after the tools are finished and got the rewards.

They will improve this in future releases.

Q: Please implement a retainer bell.

A: Will be added! 🎉

They usually follow a "rule" of only putting retainer bells where they are "safe" (spoiler wise).

Due to this they won't be able to use the design for the latest retainer bells (S9).

Q: Please make it easier to get to the cosmic exploration base.

A: There will be some sort of teleport ticket to get to Drivingway.

New Main Scenario Quests

Mostly screenshots this time, no further info.

New Allied Society Quests - Yok Huy

This one will be for crafters.

Inconcievably Further Hildibrand Adventures

New Dungeon - The Meso Terminal

This one will be part of the Main Story quest.

New Trial - ??? (Normal/Extreme)

Echoes of Vana'diel Part 2 - San d'Oria: The Second Walk

New alliance raid and corresponding quests.

The Wreath of Snakes (Unreal)

Vault Oneiron

New treasure map!

There's some new minigames, maybe it's raps, maybe it's a DJ, who knows... 

Duty Support

Cutter's Cry will be added to the Duty Support system

Cosmic Exploration

As the first cosmic exploration zone reaches it's finale, we're getting closer to being ready to go out into the stars.

What's to come:

• New enhancements to the cosmic tools
• New rewards

With this, a journey awaits us out there, it's time to go to...

The Star of Glass - Phaenna

Phantom Weapons

More enhancement quests for the Dawntrail relics.

Deep Dungeons

They remind players what Deep Dungeons are, for those unfamiliar and new sprout players who never seen the concept before.

With this, the new Deep Dungeon for Dawntrail will be...

Pilgrim's Traverse

This one will be themed around Il Mheg (faeries yay!!)

Overview

Unlocks in Il Mheg after the following are met:

• Complete Main Scenario Quest Endwalker
• Progress to level 50 in the Palace of the Dead
• Character must be above level 91 to enter.

Bonus after completion

After completing the floor 99 boss in the new deep dungeon, a harder version of the floor 99 boss will be accessible from the entrance NPC.

This boss will be able to be challenged at level 100 with a party of four.

Not much shared about it yet, just this.

New Crystalline Conflict arena

New Crystalline Conflict ranked tiers

After reaching crystal rank, the rank up/down will be determined by crystal credit.

Chat Bubbles

They're basically done with the feature but it's still under active development.

They're still working out the implementation, my guess is basically settings and customization implementations (as seen in the image below there will be different coloured bubbles for players, npcs, etc, which might have new settings added to the game) as well as things like range and all of those considerations that come with this.

• Will be optional and disabled by default
• Text will continue to appear in the chat log as normal
• Can be turned ON/OFF according to chat mode (say, shout, fc, etc)
• Bubble and Font colour can be set according to chat mode too
• Can be disabled during battle and PvP
• Can be set to display 1 or 2 rows of text
• Text will be truncated after a certain limit (check chat logs for that)

Hair and Headgear changes

Expanded headgear support for Hrothgar and Vieras

After many families requesting this, and years of waiting.

Various headgear will now display on Hrothgar and Viera characters.

Further support for metal stuff (like helmets) will be coming still, those are not so good and still being worked on.

Options to Hide Viera Ears

• You will be able to choose whether or not to display the ears on certain headgear
• ON/OFF subcommand to the visor toggle for this.
• Setting will be saved on a Gear Set basis

Changes to fringes when wearing hoods

This one will apply to everyone, fringes will no longer disappear when wearing hoods.

Whiteboard

This one will NOT be for 7.3, it's just some highlights that they're still actively working on it. They're broadly aiming this feature to come out in 7.4 but no promisses.

Some features they're discussing still:

• Functions to display the board whenever desired, including during battle.
• Highlight jobs, including own job for clarity in reading positionings.
• Ability to share the whiteboards (probably like posting them outside of sharing them with your party)

Housing

They're working on the increase of objects you can place in houses, but more details about this will only be coming in the next PLL.