At this year’s PAX East, Naoki Yoshida held a Q and A panel for Final Fantasy XIV where he took questions from players.

After a quick recap of information previously released for 4.0, Naoki Yoshida came up on stage.

Yoshida: Hi guys! So today we’re doing a Q and A session right? Maybe I should talk about the i280 weapons beforehand…

By the way- is anyone in the audience that has gotten the 280 weapon?

Only two? Really?

I just wanted to mention so… it’s only been about three days since the patch and I see some of you freaking out… you all need to calm down a little bit. It’s not something you can obtain so easily. You have to go to Diadem and start a mission, and then an emergency mission triggers, then you have to participate in it, and clear it, and then be lucky enough to be the one that gets that item drop, and even if it drops, you dont know if it will be for the appropriate job… plus it has random parameters!

If you can imagine… you go to the casino’s in Las Vegas and you just happen to notice a quarter on the ground- you take that quarter, put it into a machine and pull a jack pot. That’s how rare it is. Please take your time and enjoy the content. It seems like that rare occasion did happen to a few people here, but I still believe the Anima weapons at i275 where you can set your parameters is the strongest one available. There may be some players out there that want this emergency to trigger and they go in and do many FATEs, but you should just enjoy the content that is available and then maybe you happen to run into an emergency mission. And once again, you all need to calm down.

OK! Let’s get started with the Q and A!

Q: With the upcoming changes to cross class skills and the removal and retooling of actions, what will happen to healer DPS? Will we still have the same capacity to deal damage or are those days coming to an end?

A: I hate cleric’s stance! If we take it away though I think people will get mad, so it’ll stay. But I want to reiterate too, you guys are supposed to be healers. So you still need to focus on healing, and then if you want to help your party with DPS you can. Don’t get so wrapped up in DPS that everyone in your party is dead. Please be careful.

Q: With the i280 gear added to Diadem, why was the weekly restriction not removed from Dun Scaith or Alexander Savage?

A: It will actually be lifted though afterwards. We will be lifting it, and as mentioned earlier, it’s like the American Dream this i280 weapon.

Q: Can we get a Cruise Chaser mount?

A: I will possibly look into it.

Q: I have to ask since SAM and RDM were revealed to be DPS. Did Doma and Ala Mhigo fall because no one wanted to heal or tank there?

A: Yeah, they may of just had the ability to only attack- everyone from Eorzea should help them as tanks and healers.

Q: I was wondering with all the work we do for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, when will we be getting our goggles?

A: Do you really want the goggles? You would have to be one of the wise Sharlayans… if you eventually get to go to Sharlayan then maybe someday. 6.0? 7.0?

Q: You’ve stated that all healer compositions are viable, but they’re not balanced. You’ve mentioned balance with MNK and PLD, but AST and SCH are preferred because of their buffs and utility. What do you see as the WHM identity that they bring to the party and what balance changes are planned for WHM in 4.0?

Yoshida: But AST has only become available recently right?

Player: But it has the same healing potency as WHM.

Yoshida: Currently, yeah.

We’ll do our best to make that balance. Please trust me.

Q: With the eternal bonding system, there hasn’t been anything expanded with it. Will there be any updates for it like anniversaries, gifts or valentines for the couples?

A: We’re actually working on things for that. Maybe 4.1 or 4.2. When we’re able to reveal that information, we’ll share it with the players.

Q: What plans are there, if any, to streamline crafting jobs like battle classes? For example, removing excess skills or sharing skills.

A: As we ramp up to the new level cap, we’ll be making adjustments to skills for DoH/DoL. Unfortuneatly we don’t plan to introduce a new DoL class though. I think Matt, we were talking about this earlier, you saw an old icon you hadn’t seen before from 1.x?

Matt: It was like a sheep icon

Yoshida: So a gatherer that can sheer a sheep? But that’s all they can do right?

Matt: I”m sure they can do other things…

Yoshida: Like what for example?

Matt: You gotta… you know, ready the meat for sales… am I designing a new class right now?

Yoshida: OK Next!

Q: When can we expect a Krile outfit to be released on the MogStation?

A: Actually, they are working on something.

Q: Are there any plans to make more seasonal events similar to All Saints’ Wake in 2016 like the Haukke Manor mini-games?

A: We definitely do intend on doing something like a dungeon, or utilizing existing content to enjoy a seasonal event.

Q: What exact changes are you planning to Enochian?

A: I can’t say that so easily! It’s not finalized yet but it will be persistent, but in order to work well with that we’ll be doing some kind of damage bonus. In any case for the existing jobs and actions we’ll take the time to explain how they’re going to change and become more interesting before we release 4.0. Please stay tuned for more information.

You won’t see a case where Enochian suddenly stops being effective an you can’t cast and your DPS becomes lower.

Q: Actual Stormblood content question for you (crowd cheers) Having been working on Stormblood for so long, is there a particular piece of content in it that you think we as players might miss or overlook that you are proud of and want us to notice?

A: In terms of playable content, we did our best so that players will be able to go through and not miss anything… are there people in the audience that like to climb on things when you’re in the field? In Kugane, you’ll be able to climb to pretty high places, so if you wanted to explore in that way I would encourage you to do that. It’s very tricky though so you might see people falling off, don’t be scared.

Q: I’ve been playing for about three years, done all of the raids, but the hardest boss in this whole game is getting in touch with you for customer support. Does anyone actually pick up the phone? I’ve spent a six hour day trying to get my account back and I haven’t been able to do that.

Yoshida: Is it OK to ask why your account was taken away?

Player: I took a year break, came back, and there was no record of it. I have all of the e-mails and when I tried calling in they would never pick up. I don’t know if there was a bug on that end but I could never get through.

Yoshida: There has to be a way you can connect to customer support. We have our leads for the community and service department here, after this panel you might want to talk to them. I will personally ask them if anything. Is that OK?

Q: What’s the status on the male bunny outfit?

A: I do remember this! We talked about this here at PAX East last year. Our process for the Hyur and Roegadyn is done. The other races, we were working on it, but now we’re focused on developing Stormblood so it’s on hold at the moment. I’m sure the person in charge of that may be watching and had a realization like “… oh!” I did get to review the one for the Hyur and it was pretty nice, it was pretty sexy.

Q: Please implement an oPod (Orchestrion Pod) Please please please… and then they wrote please in Japanese also.

A: We need new systems. It’s a wonderful idea.. yeah… but, I think it would require a lot of bandwith from Soken and the sound programmer and if Soken was here, he probably would have screamed “nooooo!” and ran out the door. That being said, I will at least give him a heads up. Please purchase the original soundtracks.

Q: Are there any plans to add tier set bonuses to future savage equipment raid gear?

A: If asked if there ARE plans, we do not have them. As you obtain the same gear going through the content, it would be more meaningful and interesting if you go into that and complete the set. We will try to optimistically look into it.

Q: With Stormblood coming, with new areas and cultures, I was wondering if there were plans to expand on the different cultures of the clans already in the game. Some of them are lacking, even in the lore book- there’s not a lot of information on Duskwights. I was wondering if we can we get some more lore?

A: I don’t want to say we won’t be featuring some of the different cultures that already exist in the four city-states but I can’t pinpoint on which group it’s going to be. Even in 4.0, there will be characters or NPCs that may not have had the spotlight previously that will have have more of a focus. It might not happen to be the character you have an affinity too, but we’ll be featuring them along the storyline so we encourage you to play through the story of Stormblood. If I mention something like that too- our lore team like Banri Oda and Koji Fox might say “oh we wanna make another lore book!” so…

Q: I pride myself in being an interior decorator in Eorzea. I’ve always wanted to display my gear and weapons that I’ve worked hard on in the house. Can we get mannequins or weapon racks?

A: We just happened to have a similar conversation about this about four days ago in Japan. We will accomplish this within the 4.x series.

Q: One of my favorite things to do in the game is run around and explore. With swimming and diving coming in Stormblood, will we have a diving log where we’ll run around and dive off cliffs and stuff?

A: I’m afraid I haven’t confirmed yet which areas we’ll have in the travel logs but I’ll double check during the reviews to see if some of those points are underwater or not. But please don’t complain if its out of the way or a bit of a hassle to do.

Q: Currently in the game we have people looking for challenging content. Once you do that once a week you have nothing else to do. Is it possible to add more content in the game that’s just as challenging as the hard raids so people can do other stuff too and be happy.

A: It might not be possible unless we expand our development team to twice the size. If we make the content to hard though, people complain about that too. If it’s too easy, people will complain about getting through it too quickly and being bored. It’s a difficult balance to strike. We do intend on making content for those teams that clear the raids and are looking for more challenging content so once we are at a stage where we can reveal more information we’ll be sure to do that. I made this point at Frankfurt Fan Fest too but… please don’t complain if it’s too hard.

Q: Are you planning on expanding the mentor buff in Stormblood since the level cap is going up?

A: Do you mean for the newer player joining into a party with a mentor? That buff? System wise it’s an easy adjustment to make so we’d like to look into it- it’s true, we are raising the level cap to 70.

Q: I like tanking but all of my tanking classes are capped. Other than raising the level cap are you going to provide me with any other tools? Puppetmaster tank? Any other new tank?

A: From now? To add a Puppetmaster tank from now? But I’m gonna die! If the development team dies we won’t be able to introduce any other jobs ever. Let’s just enjoy Stormblood content first. We still haven’t’ finished making Stormblood itself! For the next two months or so, it’s going to be hell for us. In any case, RDM and SAM for Stormblood were highly requested so i’m very relieved now that we’ve announced them. After you’ve enjoyed playing with these new jobs, that would be a good time to think about what jobs do I want to request to the Devs for the next job to be added. I want to reiterate- after playing these jobs.

After the Q and A portion, Yoshida made a quick comment for those in North America. The Data Center will be moving and receiving an upgrade.

Yoshida: Since the launch of ARR, as a challenge we’ve taken on, we set up a data center overseas. With the expansion and item inventory and item chests, we want to provide the best possible service in terms of the server and traffic service so we’ll be moving them to a facility that has the latest equipment. We’re planning for that move around the middle of May before the launch of Stormblood. We’ll be making an official forum or topics post to the preparations that go into it, the dates, why we have to do it etc. We strive to provide and even better and more comfortable service to our players out there so please stay tuned for more details.