FF14 Evercold is shaping up to bring the most dramatic overhaul the MMORPG has seen since launch, from new combat systems to redesigned progression mechanics. We all know that the real endgame is glamour, however. The character creator is getting a major overhaul to take advantage of Dawntrail’s graphics update, and there are new ways to hide elements of your gear to change how they look. The elephant in the room, then, is whether we’ll be getting more glamour plates. Unfortunately, Game Director Naoki Yoshida has some bad news – but at least he might have been peer pressured into thinking about butt sliders.
To close out Final Fantasy 14 Fanfest NA in Anaheim, ‘Yoshi-P’ sat down for a ‘/random Q&A’ with Senior Community Director Matt Hilton and Translator Aimi Tokutake to take questions submitted by players, which were chosen based on the roll of a die. As it turned out, many of these were more requests than anything else, but they still spawned some interesting discussions. Notable among them was the question of whether there were plans to add additional glamour plates.
Glamour plates are by far the most useful way to return to regular outfits, as once you’ve saved them you can quickly apply them at any time, especially after patch 7.4 lifted class restrictions on what we can wear. We still only have a total of 20 spaces, however, despite there being 21 regular jobs, two limited ones, two more on the way in Evercold, and all the crafters and gatherers on top. So could we finally have more glamour plates at some point in the near future? Probably not any time soon.
“I know that begs the question,” Yoshida responds via translation (starting at the 7:09:38 mark in the video above). “Of course, everybody would want more plates, I understand. It’s such a process, though.” He explains that glamour plates are considered part of the player’s inventory on the server side, remarking, “Warriors of Light, I know how messy our inventories can get.”
He then points to the team’s work expanding matchmaking across all data centers in a region, which will begin testing during the 7.5x patch cycle. “With that data of inventory plus glamour plates, you’ll be connected across the different worlds within your regions. I really don’t want to increase that load,” he pleads, his head down in apology. A cry from the audience of “You can do it!” inspires a laugh.
“I hear lovely words of encouragement. ‘You can do it… We believe in you.’ But the people who will be actually working on the system to accommodate for that is the server team. But the server team is working on the cross-region matchmaking.” That sounds like a no for now, but there’s a sliver of hope. “The leader of the server team is of course a very passionate FF14 player. So maybe when he’s in a really good mood after we’ve done all that work, I might approach him, maybe we can start considering small plate [updates]… But I’m sure he sees it too.”
Elsewhere, Yoshida finds himself on the business end of several more player model-focused questions, like the simple and direct, “Butt slider?” You can blame Yoshida and Koji-Fox for joking about this one during the Fanfest reveal panel, and here he reveals, “Long story short, we honestly really tried to consider this. Now that we’ve done our graphical update, I’m going to go back once more and talk to the top technical artists and character modelers and we’re going to discuss it. I will promise you that.
“That said, I wanted to say one thing.” He gestures with his hands in a wide motion around his own backside. “Say you had a sword sheathed on your side, and you had a cape hanging behind your back. If your butt is larger than it’s supposed to be, it’s going to stick out. You’re going to see some clipping.” The audience shouts that Zenos pulls it off. “Okay, okay, okay, I’ll stop trying to drag my feet and I’ll try to discuss it with my team once again.” Square Enix CEO Takashi Kiryu promised earlier in the show to give FFXIV the company’s full support, so it might as well use the budget for good.
In similar fashion, Yoshida addresses calls for longer hair options. Once again, he points to clipping issues, as well as the fact that long hair needs careful animation work if it isn’t going to look especially stiff. He even says it could be ‘dangerous’ for the character having it near their weapon, and again the crowd responds with cries of ‘Zenos.’ “Oh that’s not fair,” he laughs. “Just because I’m wearing Nike shoes, I can’t ‘just do it.’ I hear you though – I will ask the team about a butt slider and hair.”
While I wouldn’t say no to those options, I was more intrigued by the audience’s very first ‘question’ to Yoshida, asking, “Why are Au Ra males and females dimorphic?” with the postscript “Give us giant dragon ladies.” Yoshida notes that it’s just the nature of Au Ra genetics, but adds, “I do understand that there is a desire for more hefty-build or more muscular dragon ladies.” I’d love to see that expanded across the whole roster, honestly.
The full showcase is worth a watch, with Yoshida having plenty of fun, joking, explaining why he cares so deeply for Urianger, and sharing the story of his fondest development memory (revealing the Heavensward trailer at the first Fanfest). I’ll end with one final request: the return of job mentors like Curious Gorge, who haven’t been seen much since the switch to role quests in Shadowbringers. While there are too many jobs nowadays to come up with unique stories for every single one with each expansion, Yoshida does think there’s space to bring the characters back.
“The scenario team is very much aware of these characters that people want to revisit or see again. We may not be able to do it again, so I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up, but the team was even asking me, ‘Perhaps we can revisit some of these characters that we’ve met in the job quests and write about what happened afterwards.’ I’m hoping that, little by little, we’ll try to see if there is an opportunity to revisit those characters.”