FINAL FANTASY XIV fans the world round, the eleventh Letter from the Producer has arrived for your viewing pleasure!

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Hello again, all fans of FINAL FANTASY XIV!

June has arrived at the speed of light, bringing with it warmer days. But outside isn’t the only place where the mercury’s rising. Things are also heating up here on the team, on both development and—*gulp*—scheduling fronts. We’ve reached a crucial stage of work on 1.18, and as promised in my previous letter, today I’m going to give you a progress report on auto-attack.

Now, if a picture paints a thousand words, a video should paint several times that and then some. So before I launch into the main body of this missive, I’d like everyone to check out the video of auto-attack I’ve (had) prepared. Please keep in mind that this content is still under testing, and is subject to change. I repeat, this is a video of content under development!

(click picture to view)

I’ll release all the juicy particulars closer to the release date, but for now here’s a rough sketch of the changes that are in the pipes, organized into bullet points.

• * Auto-attack functionality will be prioritized in 1.18. 
• * Attack motion diversification and fine-tuning are planned for 1.19. 
• * Battle classes only will receive auto-attack. 
• * The stamina gauge will be abolished with the introduction of auto-attack. 
• * Recast timers will be adjusted for certain actions obtained via quests and guild marks whose action costs were managed solely through the stamina gauge. 
• * Certain actions dependent on the stamina gauge will have their effects adjusted. 
• * Characters will be made able to switch between passive and active modes while moving. 
• * Multiple attacks during auto-attack is also being planned for the future.

In implementing auto-attack in 1.18, we’ll also need to make major revisions to enmity algorithms, tweak the motion of certain actions (as seen in the above video), and also rebalance a handful of them—just to list a few battle-related items. It goes without saying that all these will require a great deal of testing. Please pray with me that our lead battle planner Akihiko Matsui doesn’t collapse from exhaustion. */pray*

To touch on some other items under development, I’m happy to say that work on one raid area is complete, with the second hot on its heels. We just need to secure enough time for testing and optimizing balance…which, I’m afraid, will push the patch behind schedule. I’m very sorry for this, but given the tremendous size of the patch, I estimate that it’ll take two more weeks beyond the anticipated mid/late-June release date to deliver it to our fans. I promise you, though, that the extra time in development will be meaningful. The FINAL FANTASY XIV team is resolute as ever in its mission to bring about great and positive changes to Eorzea, and we ask for your continued understanding.

1.18 is promising to be a heavyweight among patches, and we expect to have plenty of details to share with you in the weeks leading up to release. Please bear with us in the meantime.

Thanks for reading! Catch you next time and/or on the forums!