It’s been an exciting time at E3 so far this year, with Square Enix just finishing Letter from the Producer LIVE at E3, and another scheduled for this Thursday, there is plenty to be talking about.

Top of the announcements that came from the show, Rogue and Ninja were revealed as a new class and job coming in Patch 2.4 (Personal estimate around Late September/Early October).

Oof! Patch 2.4 can’t come soon enough! The video shows a variety of abilities that both class and job utilise, you can find thorough information regarding the specifics in the Q&A below.

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The Letter from the Producer LIVE at E3 was hosted by Matt “Bayohne” Hilton, with Michael-Christopher Koji Fox aka “Fernhalwes” providing the translations, and Naoki Yoshida answering questions directly from the western audience.

Transcription of Question and Answer at the E3 Letter:
Is there any possibility for a Hug emote?
We first would like to add a Slap emote, but after that we will look at adding a Hug emote.

Will Disciples of Land/Hand be able to get Relic Tools?
We will be adding desynthesis in Patch 2.3 which will give unique items to these classes, we have plans to turn these unique items into potential equipment.

Will we ever see other areas of Coerthas such as Eastern, Western, etc?
At the end of 1.0 when Dalamud opened and Bahamut was unleashed upon Eorzea, many places were destroyed and others locked off. We are currently looking at the possibility of opening up new areas; for example, in Patch 2.3 players will be able to go to Carteneau Flats where the final battle took place.

In the previous LIVE Letter you spoke about an impossible battle, any further information?
Internally we refer to these battles as the “Brutal” Coil of Bahamut. These are powered up versions of all four bosses in the Binding Coil. In the development stage we tuned these fights down from where they were, and so the Brutal Coil are the fights before they were tuned; we don’t know if it’s possible to defeat them, we couldn’t, but if you do you will get a unique title to show off your fighting prowess. We may add unique equipment later on from these Brutal Raids but it really depends on how many players can do them and whether it’s worth the investment of time. This is coming in Patch 2.3.

Can you give us some more information on the Rogue Class and Ninja Job?
The Rogues were once thieves but through time they’ve evolved into their own respected guild. Why would a city allow a thieves guild? This is the reason they are not called thieves. Movement speed of the Rogue and Ninja will be faster than that of normal classes, and they will also take less falling damage than other classes. You can see in the video that the Rogue class adds poison to the weapons, and this is at the core of the Rogue class. Varieties of poison are added to weapons that change their properties and how they work in combat. The Ninja Job will also use these poisons and dual wielding abilities of the Rogue but also use Mudras in combinations and patterns that evolve from hand gesture to hand gesture to create Ninjutsu magic. Stealth abilities and moving from stealth into a technique will also be used by this job. The class/job is a DPS based class, with Healer and Tank classes coming later in the expansion pack.

Will we see more FATEs such as Behemoth and Odin?
For Patch 2.3 we have “The Hunt” system, that pushes players to go out and hunt NMs. As for things like Odin, we aren’t going to rule it out, but for 2.3 we are going to have this aforementioned focus.

Can we get a Minstrel Ballad that pits us against all of the Imperial Generals at once?
For the Fan Festival coming up in October, we’ve been working with ideas for unique fights that we can have at the show. At first our thoughts were similar in regards to having a unique Imperial General fight, but since then we’ve come up with a better idea that we are using. We can see fans would like to have something like this, so we would like to do something.

Any updates on Personal Housing?
Personal Housing is still on our list, but we aren’t ready for that. But we are releasing the “Private Chambers”. We are hoping to have Personal Housing at the latest in Patch 2.38, but definitely before Patch 2.4.

Can you tell us anything about Shiva?
Well she is definitely not a Motorcycle, or Shivabike. In 2.3 Ramuh is coming up first, Lord of Levin, and 2.4 will be Shiva’s appearance, although her story will begin starting in Patch 2.3; we are glad that we are able to show Shiva to you all.

Do you plan to add more Eight man dungeons as there is only currently the Main Scenario which facilitates this?
We realise that because this is a global game, it encompasses all types of communities and people; all these communities have different playstyles that they want catered towards. Some people want large eight man content, others want smaller four man content, and others even want solo dungeon content. We want to cater to everyone and as such we have things set up in a priority list of sorts, we want to give everyone what they want eventually but can only do things one at a time. Currently we are releasing primal fights and light dungeons, this will continue for a while before we move to providing eight person content, after that we will look at providing the solo content that people want. For us as a development team, it is hard to create eight man content as it takes much longer to tune and balance in regards to our current four man content, so due to the time investment we want to make sure this is what the majority of the communities want before we invest time.

Will there be any content focused around Free Companies?
There are many types of Free Company, some have 200, some have four members. So if we have a battle centered on Free Companies, do we design it for 200 people or 4 people? It’s difficult for us to create that type of content, so as of right now we aren’t looking to add this. We do realise that free companies want more to do in general, so we are working on creating a list of quests and goals that the Free Company can tackle, and smaller groups of people within can go and achieve these goals to make bigger, better things happen. We are currently aiming at 2.4 for this content; by adding it this way it caters to both the large and the small FCs, everybody can participate.

We will ever see a return of unique stats, and enhancements on Weapons and Armour?
One of the worries with creating gear that enhances certain traits or abilities is that everyone will start using this weapon if it is good, so it will eventually become a requirement that the player has to own this one item. Until now we didn’t want to add this type of gear, as it reduces the choice that players have due to it being something everyone has to use, but due to the interest shown in these types of enhancements we think it is time to start adding unique stats. At the heart of everything, balance is the key to it all and the development team is extremely careful in maintaining this balance so that we can continue to create exciting content.

What about the previously mentioned Airship Building? Is it Free Company based?
Firstly, this is a Free Company effort with multiple crafters. When we first thought about this content, you realise that the size of an Airship is gigantic. Due to this we are using a magic system that condenses the size of an object, such as Airships, and once you take them out of what we are calling the “Workshop” with the magic inside, it will spring to its full size. We are wanting to go beyond the idea of Airships and things that are even bigger.

What happened to the concept of roaming Primals that you previously spoke of?
We are looking for a way to add this in naturally so it makes sense within the story. We don’t want them to just appear out of nowhere with no sense to it.

Where is the Marriage system at?
We are currently working on the Marriage system for Patch 2.4. The general idea is that any two players, regardless of Race, Gender or Creed can get married and be able to pledge their eternal love or friendship to one another in eternal bonding. Why should there be restrictions on who can pledge their love to one another? We are thinking of special items and mounts that can be given to those who are married.

Are there any plans to add 1v1 dueling?
As for actual in-game content, we aren’t sure we will as we don’t know if we can add it into the system and then make fun content. We do understand that players want to use Dueling as a test for looking at dps, damage, armour, etc, and this is something we would like to do.

Regarding the Zodiac Weapons, in the future will they have visuals that stand out? Animations, Sounds, Skills, etc?
The grade after the current Novus we do plan to have something that will substationally change the appearance of the weapon. Even after this next grade, we have plans to eventually add a final version, what we imagine for example the Excalibur looked like, what the Zodiac Braves actually used; we want these weapons to stand out both visually as well as audibly to reward players for their hard work.

Once you have all the Extreme Weapons, what can we do with the excess Rowena Tokens that we get weekly?
Currently for 2.3, we don’t have anything planned. For the future we do have plans for these tokens when the new extreme primals come out but if you need the inventory space, you can throw them away, as it’s still a long way off at this point. The more stuff that we say you should keep that, the more players start asking for inventory space, so we don’t want to say keep them right now.

Any update to the ability to queue with your Chocobo?
We know that players really want this, system wise it’s very difficult to do, as it ties into the Duty Finder, as well as new content. We are working on it and trying many different options. As it’s tied to content we would have to stop adding content temporarily to then go back and add the ability to queue with your Chocobo, we want to do it without affecting other parts of the game so we can’t say when you should expect this change. We designed the Companion System to be a part of the party, and there are many benefits to having it as a party member, so if we were to just remove the Chocobo in the party this would create its own problems without the benefits.

Will you be able to add HUD layout sets for different jobs and classes?
System wise it is definitely possible, and it is currently on our Lead User Interface’s task list. It will be difficult to implement, but as a player myself, I would definitely like to see this feature. We will update you once we have more information.

Any Fanfest Information?
Naoki: “What are you doing asking questions that aren’t in our rehearsal?!”

We can hint at a website, and the ability to purchase tickets on the website, also that people should get them as soon as possible. There might also be in-game items that are connected to the tickets, but we can’t say much else! We will update you with new information as soon as we can.

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I’m afraid that was the entirety of the Question and Answer, but as I mentioned before there is another LIVE Letter on Thursday that is sure to have it’s own great announcements too. Sadly we don’t have a massive gallery of pictures for you this time, only three concept art pictures relating to the topics discussed above.

Until next time!