With the recent December version update now active in full force, the player community has been asking many a question in regards to the adjustments and changes made to Final Fantasy XI. To shed some light on these quandries, the FFXI Development Team has tackled some of the more prevalent questions floating about, ranging from Salvage tweaks to Playstation 2 installation problems! Read on for all the exciting information!

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From Playonline.com:

Since the release of the December version update, the community has been abuzz with talk of the latest added content. Today, the FFXI team would like to take the opportunity to address some of our players' most pressing questions and concerns.

Q: The new update saw adjustments to existing content such as Salvage, Einherjar, and Dynamis. Can we expect periodic refinements to these and other existing content in the future?

A: Yes. Our plan is to continue to tweak entrance cost, minimum party size, and other restrictions so that the widest variety of content can be enjoyed by the widest audience of players. While we cannot go into specific detail yet, we are closely monitoring player feedback, and will work to address the areas of greatest demand on a priority basis.

Q: A new recipe was added for Pet Food Eta, but the ingredients are terribly difficult to obtain. Will there be any adjustments to this recipe in the future?

A: Yes. The team shares players' concern that this recipe is disproportionately difficult compared to existing pet food recipes, and we plan to ease the requirements to make it more readily obtainable in the future.

Q: Since the installation of the version update, it seems that certain enemy attacks that were previously unable to reach me are now doing damage. What happened?

A: To resolve an issue wherein terrain features in Wings of the Goddess and Abyssea areas could be exploited to one-sidedly attack enemies, adjustments were made to the vertical range of enemy abilities. We apologize for failing to properly mention this in the version update release notes.

Q: After the recent maintenance, the cost of augmented items increased from 1,000 Dominion notes to 2,500. I understand the need to control gil flow, but was it not possible to just lower resale prices instead?

A: Lowering the resale price of these items was an option we considered as well. As the items in question are augmented versions of equipment obtainable via Synergy, however, we came to the conclusion that such a measure would have undesirable effects on crafters. Raising the cost in Dominion notes was deemed to be the fairest solution.

Q: I tried to install the version update on my PlayStation 2, only to have it fail due to insufficient HDD space. Eventually, I was forced to perform a clean reinstallation. Can PS2 users expect a fix for this problem in the future?

A: It is true that FFXI is approaching the limits of the PlayStation 2 HDD, resulting in insufficient storage space errors for some players. As there is no means by which to defragment the HDD, performing a clean installation of the game is currently the only effective solution. We are working on an upgrade to the update process that will lower the amount of HDD space required, which we hope to implement in future version updates.

Q: I very much enjoyed having the opportunity to have questions directly answered by development team members via their Twitter accounts. Recently, though, responses have grown scarce. Will there be no other venue provided for players to correspond with the FFXI team?

A: We understand that players value the opportunity to communicate directly with the development team, and appreciate your feedback tremendously. However, the use of personal Twitter pages for this purpose is somewhat problematic. Our plan is to establish official FFXI Twitter accounts for each supported language early next year, with an official discussion forum also under consideration for further down the line.