Interviewing Yoshi-P at E3: What Would You Like To See Asked?

[Ravidrath]

Hey, everyone.

I don't post here often, but I've got an interview with Yoshi-P at E3 next week, and thought I'd see what kind of questions BG would like to see asked. I wrote 1Up's FFXIV review, and this interview will also be for 1Up.

To some extent I need to keep these questions "general interest" or more geared towards new players, but I've got an hour, so hopefully will be able to get to some questions that would appeal to... people like us.

As long as we're talking about systems and additions and things, I think I can make it work well for both audiences. But complaints about the Primal weapon drop system, etc. would probably be too specific.

I've got several I want to ask already and there's probably a lot of overlap with you guys', but since it looks like he isn't doing very many E3 interviews and not many of the sites invited likely have a lot of experience with the game, I figured I may as well try to make it really count.

So, there you go: suggest away!

[Sonomaa]

Are you going to un-ruin archer/ranger and get rid of that bard bullshit you threw on it and give it a proper name. Yes I am very serious.

You can tell him that Sonomaa isnt very happy with his promised "good changes to archer", I promise he remembers me.

[Nama]

How about positioning requirements for comboing? Any plans with it come 2.0 remove them, alter or leave the position requirements. Perhaps add some mobility dashes or jumps to ease getting into position. I know some still have problems getting combos off and melees are at a disadvantage since whiffing a combo is a significant drop in DPS, not to mention when PvP is added comboing might be impossible for a melee.

[Fievel]

How about positioning requirements for comboing? Any plans with it come 2.0 remove them, alter or leave the position requirements. Perhaps add some mobility dashes or jumps to ease getting into position. I know some still have problems getting combos off and melees are at a disadvantage since whiffing a combo is a significant drop in DPS, not to mention when PvP is added comboing might be impossible for a melee.

This is one of the best questions you could ask, it's without a doubt a hot topic at the moment on most forums.

[Tomino]

Two questions concerning their approach to endgame:

1) Are they happy with their choice of going for short lockout timers, and then using low drop rates to balance the number of runs per day?
When you battle a Primal 5 times in a row it really kills any charm about that fight being "epic".

2) Will they re-consider the design of raid monsters returning to their positions, just like any other mob?
Aren't brave adventurers supposed to fight their way through difficult dungeons instead of running from monsters until they go away?

[Rionel]

Hm... well after recently reading up on the Gladiator thread, I think this might be a good question:

1- Would you reconsider changing the required stats for Gladiator to be more effective? Gladiator/Paladin requires STR/MND for sword and VIT/DEX for shield, not to mention Accuracy, Enmity.

How is this job suppose to gear/function properly to reach maximum effectiveness when their stat requirements are spread out so thin?

Wouldn't it make more sense to just make STR affect Sword Damage/Shield Block Damage Reduction and VIT affect Sword Damage/Shield Block Rate? Hell I dunno, Maybe just make STR/MND a secondary modifier for shield block rate/shield block damage reduction. Every weapon has a primary/secondary modifier so why not shield?

Not to mention by having MND actually help GLD/PLD defensively, that might give people incentive to give it more weight in their builds I guess? Other than Flat Blade and very minor increases to Cure, what else does MND really do for a GLD/PLD defensively?

I hope this is making some sort of sense at least. Please someone tell me if I'm wrong.

[Altanass]

1. I'd like to know if they plan on revamping levequests anymore. A problem from launch was that they were generic and boring. The problem remains that they are generic and boring, even more so with GC levequests and thats disappointing as they sprung forth from Yoshi-Ps team.


2. What are their plans for instanced endgame content. The linear, objective-less dungeons at the moment grow stale fast.


3. What are their plans for openworld endgame content. Theres a lot of small fry in the world. Lots of small NMs. Where are the big guys with unique models. They started this in Tanaka's days but just simply stopped.


4. What are their plans for Guild Based Content. It seems that everything we can do in this game can be done with just a small party in a pick up group.


5. Generally I feel that I am not striving for anything. Events generally arent multi-tierred. Its kill this get (hope for) drop. There are no chains of NMs to pop/fight to get to a higher tier one. What are their plans in this regard? or is everything just going to be a one hit wonder.

[Elcura]

I want to ask them how they plan to design encounters in the future with consideration to melee jobs and job stacking. Also why such emphasis on avoiding attacks through movement when the server (and current design of abilities/WS and anim locks) prevent the player from moving or doing what they want at every possible turn. I want to ask how they plan to add class synergy and how they plan to make abilities unique and valuable no matter what situation/fight the job is in.

[Hiruke]

Two questions concerning their approach to endgame:

1) Are they happy with their choice of going for short lockout timers, and then using low drop rates to balance the number of runs per day?
When you battle a Primal 5 times in a row it really kills any charm about that fight being "epic".

This. Though you say in your OP that primal weapon drop rate is too specific, I believe that actually has general interest. Even the official forums burn periodically with several long threads of folks complaining about terribad drop rates on primal weapons, darklight, etc. God knows I hop into all of them that I see.

However, aside from that, the absolute most important question to me is:

Are there plans to redistribute CNJ and THM spells again in the future? It takes away significantly from the versatility of BLM to only have 3 elements, and to have Thunder as the element everyone casts on everything. It's also not very "FF" to not have all 6 elements on BLM, and it's not very fun when you can use 1 element against just about every monster ever. I'm seriously going to stop playing casters in 14 unless this is changed in the future.

[solracht]

It's also not very "FF" to not have all 6 elements on BLM

Not that I disagree with BLM feeling weird without all the elements, but FFXI was pretty much the only FF where the main BLM elements weren't just Fire/Blizzard/Thunder.

[Cream Soda]

AUTO TARGET! When they givin that shit to us

[Burningthought]

1. Are there any plans for a dynamic event system in the future such as campaign in FFXI or the questing system Guild Wars 2 is adopting? Specifically something that doesn't require you to be in a party.

2. Current endgame is incredibly boring, AV/CC lose their appeal after the first couple of runs and it can be hard to get a decent group together for Primals. Are there any plans on adding endgame content similar to XI? Dynamis/Salvage/Einherjar/Sky/Sea/Limbus as examples of what i'm talking about.

3. Are you going to compile a list of things that will be added in 2.0? This sounds like a no-brainer but a lot of the 2.0 info is spread across tons of interviews and dev comments and currently even with the 2.0 docs, there's no real central place to find out whats coming this fall.

4. A few months ago you said that 2.0+ it would be possible to have mobile devices and handhelds such as the PS Vita to interact with the game in some way. Do you have any updates on that?

5. A lot of players have been complaining about the drop rate from primals and the method of distributing loot. Are there any plans in the future to increase the drop rate of the weapons, or at least allow players to lot or give away weapons they already have or don't want?

6. In an earlier patch you also decreased the amount of obulations(totems/nuts/feathers) needed to buy a primal weapon, while this was nice and everything especially for people who were trying to save up for them, wouldn't it make the playerbase a lot happier if you just increased the amount of obulations that dropped from the primals instead of decreasing the cost to buy them. If the drop rate on the obulations increases more players will feel like they are making progress instead of getting nothing but dark matter all the time.

7. Are you planning on doing another Letter from the Producer Live before the 2.0 release?

[Ravidrath]

This. Though you say in your OP that primal weapon drop rate is too specific, I believe that actually has general interest. Even the official forums burn periodically with several long threads of folks complaining about terribad drop rates on primal weapons, darklight, etc. God knows I hop into all of them that I see.

Yeah, OK - that was a bad example. You can definitely make a case for drop rates being a systematic thing that normal players might be interested in. Hell, I did it in one of those awful threads on the official forums, even.

Sort of a tangent...

But I think I'd like to see a system that adjusts drop rates dynamically per player based on number of attempts and time away from the event. Basically, get a soft incentive-based dynamic in there like we have with experience points, rather than the extremes we see in XI and XIV now: control of drops through blocking access, or control of drops through low drop rate. I personally prefer the latter because it lets me actually, like, play the game. But they haven't hit the right balance yet to make playing the game actually feel rewarding enough.

You should always be able to do content and always have a chance to benefit by doing the event, even if you don't get a drop. But taking a break should increase your benefit, too.

For example, say each time you complete the event, your drop rate goes up 1% until you get a drop. And time away from the event increases the drop rate 1% per 3 hours away, up to a maximum of 10%, or something. Once you actually get a drop, if it goes into your inventory, this bonus drop rate is cleared or significantly reduced.

I'd greatly prefer a system like this, as opposed to tokenizing the entire game, which some people on the official forums are advocating.

[Niiro]

The increased rate thing sounds okay on paper until you realize WHMs are still going to get Ifrit's Bows, low drop rates aren't the root of the issue, it's the concept of drop rates that are the issue.

A token system is not only completely fair (the personal loot pools in dungeons are a terrible system and entirely subject to abuse) but they don't stick you with shit you can't use or already have.

A token system that rewards strategy and gives bonuses for accomplishing certain things (real accomplishments mind you, not bullshit like all being the same GC) means you get what you put in, no one's stealing loot, no one's getting shit they don't want/don't need/already have, and no one's getting shit they can't use.

Rewards are earned based on effort made and whether or not you deserve gear isn't a decision made by the FUCKING ALL-POWERFUL LORD OF ALL FUCKING CREATION RANDOM FUCKING NUMBER GENERATOR.

I only wanted 2 weapons from Moogle (Axe and H2H), 60+ runs later I had 4 swords, bow, spear, and wand. It took as many runs to get 10 nuts, I buy Axe because it's the weapon I wanted most, next run, the very next run, what do I get? Axe. Oh do I look forward to another potential 50-60 runs when I could have been done right then and there!

Garuda is the best example of a functioning token system they've implemented so far and I've heard jack shit as far as legitimate complaints concerning how the loot works. You are rewarded for every win and your reward is based on how well you performed (I actually haven't done hard mode Garuda myself because there's fucking no one to go with but as I understand it you only get 1 token if you take too long to kill her).


edit: the faction leve system has plenty of potential if only it wasn't so completely incoherent and random, make a clear series of required leves to clear to reach a group one with a guaranteed drop for the completion reward and maybe some random drops in the a completion chest to be shared (not major stuff but things like rare/HQ crafting mats, etc.)

[Hiruke]

@solracht: Now that you mention it, I suppose that's true, especially for the older FF games. Most newer ones don't even have jobs. However, in those games, any elements BLM didn't have, didn't exist. Certainly WHM didn't cast them. And in those games where you didn't have all the elements, there wasn't a particular concern that you might need a Water/Aero/Stone nuke to kill something. But, even in FF1 you had stuff like Quake (in 14, we'd give Quake to WHM, I guess?), and in FF13 you had all the elements except Stone. If they want to give me stuff like Frog, Death, or X-Zone to compensate, I guess I'd be alright with that. Otherwise I'd prefer "newer" FF where BLM has all elements, than "older" and also "bizarro" FF where BLM only has 3 elements, and somehow WHM takes the rest for no apparent reason. And we have water magic potency materia just for the hell of it. Easter egg!

@Ravidrath: I personally don't think we need any kind of specific system. I definitely agree that not every single thing needs to be tokenized. I mean, FF11 drop rates were fine. It has a good mix of tokens and random drops. Some drops sucked, and we all complained about it, but it wasn't even close to the madness that is FF14. Also, I have no idea why primal rewards aren't the same as avatar fights in FF11. It's a quest in both games. Just, kill it once, get a token, turn in (1) token to get your weapon (the one of your choosing... not something random). Institute a lockout if you want. I don't care. Just don't make me fight everything 20843204892309 times. Personally, if I were to phrase the question, it would be like: "Are primal weapons, darklight, etc. considered overpowered items, that shouldn't be in the hands of most players? Due to the extremely poor drop rate on primal weapons, the weapons themselves, and especially the materia that is converted from them, are extremely rare (and expensive on the secondary market, with regard to the materia, which you can't obtain in any other fashion besides primal battles or buying from another player). Are you happy with your decision to make the associated instances easily repeatable, as the lockout period is extremely short, and the drop rates extremely low chance, instead of increasing the challenge of the instances themselves?" But, I'm a jerk. Edit: This question goes double for the forgettable and now highly missable faction LQs. What's the point in unlocking all the faction LQ to kill the buffalo, for example, then you finally do the last one (blowing faction credits the whole way), and then for your efforts you get... nothing. Certainly not a useless piece of harlequin or whatever armor!

New/other stuff I'd ask (though not nearly as important as the drop rate and BLM questions!):

Don't you think it's silly that Archers auto attack with their bare fists if they get too close to a monster? Presumably this would be highly undesirable if the monster had a spikes spell or similar buff up. As it is extremely easy to start and stop attacking monsters, what is the reasoning behind not making the Archer's ranged attack as their auto attack? We don't have anything like the Patriarch Protector's Arrow from FF11, and arrows are crafted in very large quantities, so wouldn't the gil loss from accidentally shooting an arrow be minimal? It also doesn't seem any more likely that a player would accidentally auto-attack as they would accidentally tap Light Shot. Wouldn't the pros (much more user-friendly experience, less silly bare-knuckled boxing) significantly outweigh the cons here?

Are there any plans to address the method of participation for Behest, Caravan, and similar contents? Currently the first 8 people who "sign up" are joined to the event, regardless of whether or not they are in a PT together. This means that if a PT of 8 is attempting either of these events, a random solo player could easily "take the spot" of one of the PT members. Wouldn't it be better to increase the availability of these events (such as have them take up to 3 separate paths, so up to 3 different groups can do the event), and make it so only members of the same PT can participate? As the population grows, the potential for these types of events to be highly contested will increase exponentially. At the highest levels, many players will have other things to do, but there will still be a significant number of casual players who will be inconvenienced by these kinds of bottlenecks and potential griefing scenarios.

Why are we about to get a special quest that allows you to participate in the Caravans of Grand Companies other than your own? Were there (any) requests for this? It seems there is little to no "faction identity" in this game. Your starting city already has no bearing whatsoever (other than the very beginning of the main scenario quests), and increasingly, neither does your Grand Company. There is nothing to make one group stand out from another, making everything kind of homogeneous and boring. It would be much better if your starting city AND your Grand Company had more flair. Perhaps some friendly competition between the groups. Previously it was announced/implied that Free Companies had to be composed of members from the same Grand Company. Will you backpedal on that, as well, and later introduce a "special quest" that lets you join a Free Company regardless of your Grand Company association? Edit: The same goes for the different factions for LQs, that you can earn "faction credits" for (Brotherhood of the Broken Blade, etc.). What's the point of seeing the "faction standinds" for these groups? Does any group being 1st 2nd or 3rd at a camp/gate have any bearing whatsoever?

[Cichy]

My question:
Since you're planning on implementing a "need or greed" type of looting system in 2.0 how will you deal with the fact that people have multiple jobs? As it stands now, we as players adjust to what jobs we need for given event but that doesn't mean necessarily we want gear for that job. System like this works in other MMOs because you're limited to one job. How are you planning to deal with this?

Also,
Hamlet Defense seems like a perfect event for company seals reward. Is there any plans to adjust rewards including the terrible drop rate of items? Any plans as to adding more rewards than anima to the supply phase?

[Kurokikaze]

Any plans on implementing an Advanced Combo system where players use their skills together to create a new Weapon Skill/Effect? Example: BRD uses Puncture and BLM uses Fire spell = Fire Arrow. Like in the opening cutscene... lol

[Magi]

1. High level monsters render the defense stat borderline useless so tanks are only concerned about HP for survival. Recent adjustments have targeted certain stats to be more effective against high level monsters but what plans are there for defense and other similar stats (magic evasion, +element/status resistance etc). Are stats only adjusted if the forums make enough noise or is there a plan already in place to adjust the stats that don't make a big enough impact to performance and/or are heavily reduced in effectiveness from high level monsters?

2. Seconding the question about positional combos and being able to dash into position. If they're worried about it becoming too action gamey or whatever just make it so dashes don't make you invincible for a split second like those games do. Have it purely for positioning, it would help with making the game look less boring to new people too, I always hear people saying how slow the game looks.

3. There was a quote from Yoshi about wanting battles to take an average of like 40 seconds to complete. Not sure if it was solo or party play but it doesn't matter. Currently in exp parties (at least 20-45) if you have a BLM using Thunder -> Thundara most fights last 5 seconds. It's ridiculous; hate management, doing combos, everything is out of whack and nothing feels cohesive. So I guess the question is do they realise how messed up it is currently or do they think it's fine monsters die in 5-10 seconds with very little input or thinking from players? There's more time spent running around looking for repops than actually fighting and playing the game as it is.

4. If you're not going to make BLM a riskier option to deal damage than close range melees you need to reduce their damage to compensate for that added safety. Same applies to ARC/BRD. That's why people want ranged for everything. Less risk, similar or greater damage with the added benefits of songs/crowd control. It's not rocket surgery.

5. Again more of a command than a question; Make dynamic content that isn't the exact same thing over and over again and scales depending on participants. PLEASE.

6. Command again; If you're planning on having all these dungeons for 2.0 and there's a mid level one, put decent gear inside it that will last for like 10 levels as the best in slot so people might actually want to do them. Your reward system for damn near everything is fucked, figure it out for 2.0 or there's going to be a lot of content that will be completely skipped over. Have a system in place ready to change item stats based on player feedback because we all know you can't get it right (sup pld af. Why hasn't this armour set been revised yet?)

[Hiruke]

Oh, I'm not sure how I forgot this one:

Are there plans to replace parley with a mini-game that is actually fun? Parley requires no thought, is slow, and is in desperate need of being replaced with something that is 1) fun 2) requires strategy 3) engages the player. I can't even describe how incredibly angry I am every time I'm forced to parley. It's the FF14 equivalent of tic-tac-toe. Each turn, there is always an obvious "best move" and the whole strategy hinges on praying the NPC doesn't also take the best possible move on their turn.

I care somewhat less about this one:

Have you considered abolishing the repair system entirely? It seems like a failed legacy concept that has been reworked several times to mitigate how much it annoys the players. If it's simply meant as a way to flush gil out of the economy, wouldn't it be easier to introduce other methods of taking gil out, without unnecessarily inconveniencing the player? Honestly, I'd rather have to pay to enter the inn than ever have to deal with repairing anything, for example. (This is from someone with all crafts except CUL to 50.)

[Altanass]

Also would like to query:

1. Given the hype up to v2.0 when can we expect to get some more info on player made UI add-ons. I'm sure a number of players are toying with ideas and would like a "construction set" type thing to fiddle with mechanics of it all

2. Since the class abilities were revamped several patches ago, I've never felt the need to cross class any weaponskills. I find cross classing is just use for support type abilities. Will there be any consideration given to expanding the Combo system to include cross classed weaponskills?