Game Watch Translation - Yoshida Interview on Heavensward (EU Media Event 5/19)

[Lucavi]

I wouldn't need extra armory slots if I didn't have to keep the gear itself, yes.

[Psion]

OR. keep the prisms, but use them to register a piece of gear to the glamour system. so a summer top would use a level 1 cloth prism or whathaveyou, and then its registered forever, and you can change to it whenever you want. then just get rid of the dispelling prisms because they're useless and i don't even know if you can craft them, or if they're just bought from the npc.

[Damane]

Even xi has a better glamour system than xiv

xi glamour system is freaking fantastic! why they didnt copy that is beyond my understanding

[Qeomash]

Which would do nothing to address the need to horde all gear for all time.

Oh, I'm not saying simplifying the prism situation would make it perfect. I'm just saying it would make it much better than it is.

[Spider-Dan]

I thought you liked the whole "just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it's impossible" thing.

I'm fine with that as a rebuttal, but not when the constant counterargument is pointing at the invisible hand of the free market and declaring that The Market Has Spoken and This Is How The Game Must Be. If we are going to evaluate possible development paths based solely on previous market outcomes, this game is as doomed as every other WoW clone. Whatever you want to say about XI, at least it didn't have a long string of high-profile EQ clone failures preceding it.

If we want to talk about true itemization in FFXI, that did not begin until around Treasures of Aht Urhgan, when the team finally started to come to terms with /NIN (Utsusemi), Dual Wield, and most importantly Haste (you see this all with Salvage gear, some Nyzul Options, ZMN). Chains of Promathia saw some itemization, but it was more or less alternative options in slots that already had broken gear (like Swift Belt, Rajas Ring, Sea Torques).

People already had full gearswap sets in CoP. Windower scripting came out in 2005, long before TAU release.

[Elcura]

So it's fine except for when you think it isn't? I should've seen that coming.

Also, I don't see how XI not having EQ clones fail is suddenly a good thing...? The only thing that comes to mind is "no one wants to copy our game."

[Destinye]

I've never like over-complicated, contrived, needlessly-involved systems that try to shoehorn other systems instead of standing on their own. Crafting doesn't need to cling to glamor systems in order to feel relevant. If they do, you've failed at crafting, which is something that many games do anyway, but you don't need to make your glamor system a causality of that failure.

Yeah, the problem is Yoshi says crafting should never be relevant..then also made it so raiding shouldn't be relevant (since for all intents and purposes..you don't really need to do any of the raids in the game when you can get poe from roullete and max out..then do a relic which requires none.) So they shoehorn in crafting for the glamour system which...is a good idea but XIV's is done retardedly.

If they wanted to make crafting relevant..instead of making chests that drop potions-hi elixirs..how about....making chests relevant? I mean when I think of raids/dungeons then chests inside of them I immediately think of XI and places like Limbus, how you could get material to enhance AF/Relic or additional currency or gear drops or even chests that heal you/summon shit. Just...something other than trash lol. Drop dungeon only craft material that lets you craft sets of armor that can only be crafted if you actually run dungeons.

Then again..Yoshi hates that idea, because "think of the new player, it's not fair if the guy who sits on his ass all day and RPs can't get the same things as you."

Bleh.

I wouldn't need extra armory slots if I didn't have to keep the gear itself, yes.

This is the only thing I give credit to them for - I can glamor and toss/store the shit I glamored onto it. (I normally toss it depending on what I glamored.) For example I glamored the Allagan Bow onto my Magitek bow (cuz now that everyone has one tired of seeing it.) Then immediately desynth'd the allagan bow and picked up another one in T5 for desynth lol.

[Niiro]

They wouldn't add important or valuable crafting mats to dungeons because RMT would just POS farm the chests ad nausea.

Remember when NIN came out and within a few days there were tons of 99 stacks of bloody knife blades on the market boards? They come from one of the chests in WP (the one that can also spit out other "bloody [thing]" relic mats).

There's a reason that all dungeons since then had nothing but trash meds in the optional chests.

[Akiyama]

They wouldn't add important or valuable crafting mats to dungeons because RMT would just POS farm the chests ad nausea.

Remember when NIN came out and within a few days there were tons of 99 stacks of bloody knife blades on the market boards? They come from one of the chests in WP (the one that can also spit out other "bloody [thing]" relic mats).

There's a reason that all dungeons since then had nothing but trash meds in the optional chests.

Except they also came from Levequests in Mor Dhona and one of the leves could yield 3 per turn in on a triple turn in, but yeah.

[Niiro]

I know, but aside from the sheer volume of items an actual player that knew what the item was for wouldn't be listing them in stacks of 99.

RMT have been doing the chest popping stuff forever, they noticed something valuable came out of them and proceeded to try and make a bit of extra gil by selling them on the market boards instead of NPCing them before the price crashed.

[Lucavi]

The only thing that comes to mind is "no one wants to copy our game."

That's what I keep bringing up but I haven't seen much to address it yet. Clearly there something going on when everyone rushes to copy everything in WoW, yet no one's touching this with a 10-foot-pole. Its been over a decade since these designs and methods were out, and no one's even sniffed them. That means something to devs/publishers, we just don't know what, exactly.

@Niro: That's why I feel like either a straight gil system or a straight "you unlocked it; its yours for free" system would work best. Gil doesn't have enough value as is, anyway, and a scaling price range for instant glamors without the need for RMTable or pain in the ass to obtain items would work.

If anyone still has a copy of Diablo 3, seriously, just go play the game. Trust me, I hated the fucking base game myself, but its better now. Boot it up for like, 5 minutes. They've completely redone a lot of systems, one of which being the glamor. It works really well and its intuitive. I wouldn't mind seeing it ripped straight out of that game and tossed into a MMO. Its not shoe-horned into anything; you don't need a bunch of gems or blood shards or some arbitrary thing to drop from something else. "You got the cash? You've worn the equipment before? Yeah, I can change this into that for you."

[Niiro]

If they just made a glamour log with entries unlocked by acquiring/spiritbonding a piece of gear that would solve the inventory issue entirely.

If they want to keep the glamour prisms for economic purposes fine, just make them required to apply a glamour that's in your log (also merge all the different grades into 1 ffs).

Crafting would be just as relevant to glamours as it is now (if you buy a crafted piece of gear for glamour you can't sell it, and lazy people will still need to buy prisms to apply glamours).

[kisada]

dunno what other games do but i like d3's transmog system.

shit automatically gets archived and you can switch anytime for a gold fee. would do well to counter inflation as well.

[Spider-Dan]

So it's fine except for when you think it isn't?

I'm saying: pick a side. Either the market is all-determining, or it isn't.

My objection is when the market argument is trotted out to prove that older-MMO design decisions are all untenable, yet ignored when talking about the failure of all the other modern-era WoW clones.

Also, I don't see how XI not having EQ clones fail is suddenly a good thing...?

When XI copied EQ back in 2002, that was a solid business model.
Today, copying WoW is a business model with a long and storied track record of failure, even with properties that are more popular than FF.

Clearly there something going on when everyone rushes to copy everything in WoW, yet no one's touching this with a 10-foot-pole.

And copying WoW has a well-known outcome: your playerbase gets tired of playing WoW-with-lightsabers or WoW-with-hobbits and goes back to just playing WoW. So again, if we are going to let the market determine the course of game development, the best choice for long term success is NOT to copy WoW.

[Lucavi]

And copying WoW has a well-known outcome: your playerbase gets tired of playing WoW-with-lightsabers or WoW-with-hobbits and goes back to just playing WoW. So again, if we are going to let the market determine the course of game development, the best choice for long term success is NOT to copy WoW.

And no one has said that you aren't saying that. We're asking: WHY is no one copying XI? You either dodge, sidestep or outright ignore the question of why by declaring that everyone that copies WoW ends up in a bargain bin somewhere (ARR has not, but that's not the point). Stop answering a question that no one's asking and answer the question you've yet to answer: Why is no one copying XI if the system is so stellar?

dunno what other games do but i like d3's transmog system.

shit automatically gets archived and you can switch anytime for a gold fee. would do well to counter inflation as well.

This. This whole thing right here. Take some pride in your work, Japan. The Western Gaijin can develop a great transmog system, but you introduce this... whatever... into your game? Accept the challenge and redo this shitty system.

[Destinye]

And no one has said that you aren't saying that. We're asking: WHY is no one copying XI?

It's easy to answer:

WoW is popular and people want to be like WoW to try to soak up that success. XI was popular and successful but WoW simply made too much of an impact and not always a good one either. Even if XI has better systems in some areas that could be improved upon..people rather shovel out WoW clones to try to tap into that market. It's like how every game post gears of war adapted the over the shoulder type of 3rd person camera work. Mass Effect most famously known for copying it, especially for the first game.

Take pride in your work, Japan

Yoshi is definitely not the whole of Japan, because even PSO2 has far superior systems to this game in some areas (hell even the freemium like housing system is better), glamor or not - and it's by Sega, not exactly known for it's amazing work. Also XI has a better glamor system..that too is by a Japanese developer, the same studio even.

[Destinye]

Edit: double

[Lucavi]

It's easy to answer:

WoW is popular and people want to be like WoW to try to soak up that success. XI was popular and successful but WoW simply made too much of an impact and not always a good one either. Even if XI has better systems in some areas that could be improved upon..people rather shovel out WoW clones to try to tap into that market. It's like how every game post gears of war adapted the over the shoulder type of 3rd person camera work. Mass Effect most famously known for copying it, especially for the first game.



Yoshi is definitely not the whole of Japan, because even PSO2 has far superior systems to this game in some areas (hell even the freemium like housing system is better), glamor or not - and it's by Sega, not exactly known for it's amazing work. Also XI has a better glamor system..that too is by a Japanese developer, the same studio even.

TAKE PRIDE IN YOUR WORK, JAPAN!

Ahem.

As for your first comment, sure, that's how the market works, for better or for worse. Things get buried under other things all the time, like the Ogre Battle franchise.

...Goddammit.

[Spider-Dan]

And no one has said that you aren't saying that. We're asking: WHY is no one copying XI?

Well, for starters: this game is already taking several cues from XI, notably job change. The concept of leveling one job to get abilities to use on a different job is also a holdover from XI. So the idea that this game takes nothing from XI is not exactly true.

But to answer your question: I'd say the primary reason why this game is more of a WoW clone than an XI clone is because WoW clones tend to enjoy short-term success, and after the failure of 1.0, 2.0 desperately needed any kind of success. And as for why other games don't copy XI: if you're going to make a mindless clone, then it makes sense to clone something popular and familiar. Originality is difficult and risky.

That being said, the reason why ARR has outlasted the rest of the WoW clones is simple: PlayStation client. ARR is, by far, the highest quality WoW clone to come out for a console, and WoW itself does not compete in that space. So since ARR has a captive audience (one that has managed to sustain even an outdated game like XI for a decade into the WoW-era), I think having established a baseline successful product to work from, SE could be much more original and daring than they have been with minimal risk. When it comes to consoles, they are still the only game in town.

You continue to frame the question as me wanting FFXI HD when that's not the case. Even 1.0 had a lot more freedom than this game; it's just that Tanaka was a moron and executed it in the worst way possible. I'd like to see ARR take some of the best parts of 1.0 (read: customization that even surpassed XI in some cases) and merge them back into ARR.

1.0 had a lot of good ideas. Yoshi took many of those good ideas and executed them better in the era leading up to 1.23. Rather than continue to run away from everything in 1.0 (and to a lesser extent, XI), I'd like to see them take more of what worked from those games, because while continuing down the path towards WoW may be a bad business decision, the thing that concerns me more is that it's just effing boring. Gear in this game is boring and cross-classing in this game is boring; neither of these things need to be that way.

If we're choosing between a version of XIV that fails because it's an unoriginal WoW clone and a version of XIV that fails because it's too different and unfamiliar, give me the latter. And if we're choosing between a version of XIV that succeeds because it's familiar and a version of XIV that succeeds because it's different and original, give me the latter there, too.

[Voyage1970]

Yoshi is definitely not the whole of Japan, because even PSO2 has far superior systems to this game in some areas (hell even the freemium like housing system is better), glamor or not - and it's by Sega, not exactly known for it's amazing work. Also XI has a better glamor system..that too is by a Japanese developer, the same studio even.

To be fair PSO2 is pretty explicitly designed for glorious Nippon use only and there was even that whole DDoS fiasco which prevented a lot of filthy gaijin from being able to play at all without some use of VPN or voodoo chicken magic. I'd hazard to say if SE was developing this for JP-onry or even a JP-focus we'd see much more in the way of cosmetic updates to XIV (for better or worse, looking at you PSO2 scratch tickets).

Things get buried under other things all the time, like the Ogre Battle franchise.

...Goddammit.

I'm going to be honest I took a cursory glance at Ogre Battle but from what it seems like it's pretty similar to Soul Nomad that Nippon Ichi released on the PS2. I know you are a fan of Disgaea so you might have already known about it but just in case you should really give it a whirl. It also has hands down one of the best "Evil" story paths in any game I've ever played. The ending to the Evil path is still my go to resource anytime a question about what makes a good villain comes up.