Comments from the Devs

[Churchill]

I bet he don't, nigga, i bet he don't

[LD]

I wonder if the game actually being out will make this better or worse.

[Rocl]

take heart in knowing there's apparently a JP interview with sparse details on airship and boat content for you to salivate over in between bouts of FFXI is hard and let me tell you how to play vidya

should occupy like five minutes and ten posts

edit: o lol airship/boat is mentioned cuz they're getting rid of anima?

[Gokulo]

I saw the mention of abolishing anima and it has me confused. Would that mean removing teleports or what now.

[Churchill]

would be enough to make me not play to be honest

[Gokulo]

Maybe they'll remove anima but teleports stay and are simply free and airships/ships are there for their own specific content. Especially since Yoshi mentioned the anima stuff in the context off "It would suck if you were in Gridania and your friend mentioned a FATE event starts in Ul'dah and you're stuck since you have no anima". And it's not like Anima was as limiting after they added Hamlets.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I highly doubt they're going to remove one thing and not replacement it with something else. Could be something as simple as a timer, could be as complex as spells (although unless they revamp classes I don't see teleport spells ever hitting this game).

[Rocl]

if someone speaks JP better than google translate you can find out for yourself here:
http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs...28_580546.html

[Izzy]

The amount of attention this thread has paid to fall damage is fucking ludicrous. It's seriously an afterthought in every MMO I've ever played.

You fall X distance, you take Y damage. How does it need to be any more complicated than that? Who the fuck wants more artificial barriers?

[Lordender]

WoW actually has some lethal drops at the edges of their maps in some of the TBC areas, lol. Farm near edges at your own risk on PVP servers...

Its just going to take some SE fans to get out of their little safety bubble-boy bubble when it comes to stuff like this. Change is a comin', whether some people are ready for it or not.

Edit: And hell, we've got a guy who has played other games with Fall Damage and still doesn't understand the point of it. Take a jump off the cliffs in GW2's WvW area and ask again why there needs to be fall damage.

I'll never forget owning some alliance dude back in WoTLK, he was a warlock that was being a dick at the top of Naxx and when I got up there, I thunderstormed him off Naxx killing him from the fall. Another time I thunderstormed someone off the cliff while they were mining and the fall killed them, lol

[Grey Jorildyn]

The amount of attention this thread has paid to fall damage is fucking ludicrous. It's seriously an afterthought in every MMO I've ever played.

You fall X distance, you take Y damage. How does it need to be any more complicated than that? Who the fuck wants more artificial barriers?

I guess it's just the behavior of the FF community to blow things out of proportion. Seems like whenever a change is proposed to this game that is "unfamiliar" to the general population of these games, the OFs get all up in arms about it and a few of those people trickle over here too. Remember when they announced removing the claim system? How about the two-homepoint discussion? Or when they showed jumping in the first alpha videos? Holy hell people acted like the world was gonna end over shit that wasn't going to change their gameplay all that much (or improve it if anything). Just one of those things I guess.

[Gokulo]

I hear there's much butthurt about Legacy now from people that were unable to get it and want it to beta asap.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Fuck 'em.

[Pooky]

^ This.

It's not like they posted notices and warnings of when the cutoff for legacy was, giving months of advanced notice, so everyone who gave a shit could get legacy if they wanted...oh wait.

[Rocl]

Said interview about the anima:

Spoiler: show

[ Gamewatch Interview | 121228 | Source ]

-- What were your impressions from the live broadcast?

Like I said in the broadcast, I was pretty nervous. The reason is not the broadcast being live, I've had experience with this with the producer letter live. The reason was that this broadcast was the first that wasn't aimed solely at FFXIV players, so there were also people not interested in ffxiv watching, so I was rather worried about the results. Luckily the viewers seemed to be excited so in the end it was fun. However, in case the servers crashed, there were bound to be some people saying "this is definitely going to fail". It's like when you host an event in DQ to defeat the Demon Lord and the servers crash in the middle of the battle, people would definitely label it as a failure. So it was pretty bad when it really happened.

-- How was it to be appearing together with Hiroyuki-san?

It was a lot of fun. I was tempted to invite him to a drink after this. I've been keeping an eye on 2ch ever since I got into the gaming industry, but it's the first time I spoke with him directly. I was wondering how the reactions from the live broadcast would be and looking forward to it.

-- Seeing the touch interface was interesting. Will it also be usable in battle or for chatting?

For chatting, a keyboard is definitely necessary. For a full tablet interface a software keyboard will be needed, so there are a lot of things to be done before the tablet UI can be completed. However, the touch interface of win8 is surprisingly easy to implement. Also, since we wrote our engine to be flexible, integrating touch was easy to do as well. I didn't know about it until last night when I came by our devbooth and saw it and was like "Ah, that nice". They said "we wanted to increase the precision before showing it..." but I replied with "Well, I'll be taking this to the nico broadcast tomorrow." *laugh*

-- Since when have you been thinking about a touch interface?

Autumn of 2011. Or rather, since E3. It was one of the various co-operations we had not only with Microsoft but also a lot of other companies. [I just can't seem to get this part over correctly D:] There are a lot of negotiations going on with regards to the launch of ARR. For a successful launch, simply releasing the package is not enough, I think we also have to do a lot of negotiations and generate enough buzz. Since there has been only little PR so far, we are going to increase it to reach new customers.

-- Do you plan to implement the touch UI at launch?

No, it won't be there at launch. The way it is now is just for us to evaluate the tech and to work with several manufacturers. Basically, what I'm thinking about is to be able to play FFXIV at home on your hi-spec PC, on a notebook before a business trip and on a tablet while travelling.

-- You said there is going to be a "very high" preset, but will there also be a "very low" one?

The "unknown ultrabook" *laughs* I showed the touch UI on actually has lower specs than the worst machine with core2duo. I think that the fact it was still able to run the game is quite satisfactory. Setting the minimum specs below that wouldn't make any sense.

-- Any chance the specs will change in the future?

Since the main goal for Alpha was to stress-test the servers, we first selected people with powerful PCs, slowly inviting people with weaker hardware to find some sort of balance. We will be continuing with this approach in the future, welcoming a lot of feedback from low-spec players, so a change in minimal specs is highly possible. Same can be said for the high-end specs: the very-high preset is still being tuned, so the requirements will rise. There won't be any major changes in specs overall however, so if you go by the alpha specs, you should have comparable performance later on. Lowest spec is definitely core2duo and 8800GT.

-- You announced the abolishment of anima, but how will this affect the airships/ferries/mount systems?

The reason for this will be told in the main story, so basically, you will be able to use ferries and airships when you want to travel. Teleport will serve as a "fast travelling" method. For example, if you arrive in Gridania and your friends tell you "there is a FATE in Ul'dah!" and you realize you have no anima left, that'd be quite disheartening. For that reason, I think it's fine to be able to leap around the world freely.

As for ferries and airships, I'm thinking of attaching them to some content. For example an event where the airship gets attacked by sky pirates, something like that should be interesting I think. For the ferry, something like a kraken or another sea monster attacking could be implemented. That way, there should be some reason to use a ferry or an airship. What's left are mounts, which should have some use as well. I think mounts can be counted as a way to add atmosphere to the world and as a means to explore it once, and beign able to switch to fast travel after that. As a next step, I'm thinking of incorporating ferries and airships into battle content.

-- What about making monsters arrive in town by ferry/airship?

That's a possibility, if we prepare the zone accordingly. FFXIV uses navigation meshes for path-finding, and there has to be one for each zone where you want to let the monsters fight.

-- What will the scope of beta be like?

I'm thinking of having nearly everyone in beta after the final stage of phase 3. Not just "tens of thousands", but "tens of ten thousands globally". However, with datacenters being spread across timezones, the total numbers will be spread out, as well.

-- What are the plans for CBT and OBT ending, respectively?

There will be periods after the phases to allow for corrections. This is in case we will receive more feedback than expected, so think of it as a buffer to be able to proceed with the next stage on time. If you look at the roadmap we released on December 27th, you might get the impression of "this will sure take a while". However, from our perspective we are still at the starting point. Our goal is not to merely satisfy current players, but also new users. This is why our testing should be on a level that people comparing [FFXIV] to other MMOs won't be a problem. So, once we have that, phase 4 will be the start of OBT.

-- Please tell us more about the goals set by the beta roadmap released on December 27th

Once we commence the beta, our goal will be to get in touch with as many people as possible. Starting with phase 3, free companies will be introduced, so that communities can be created. We won't rush the release of course, but I think even people wishing for that will be able to get a good impression of the game at that stage. The alpha that ended on the 27th already had a scale way beyond a normal alpha, so there is no way we can keep a traditional scale of an anticipated MMO this time either.

For example, it will be possible to use the character data from FFXIV 1.x, basically playing the beta as a lv50 character. This will lead to a certain separation of perspectives between players, so I hope everyone can have fun while playing together and give us a lot of direct feedback again.

Yesterday, an alpha player asked me "what do you think about the danger of the community falling apart because of the long waiting period?" via /tell. I replied with "It's painfully clear to me". However, just as I've been telling the media, our goal is to be able to satisfy our customers. If we have to put up with a period where people will be losing interest, then so be it. Because I believe that if something ends up being genuinely interesting, people will definitely come back. We are tempted to release faster ourselves, because we don't want to lose after all. We want to make a game that is able to win, or at least one that can fight for itself.

-- You did not announce the beta schedule in the live broadcast, what are the plans?

I can't tell you more than you can get from reading the beta roadmap *laughs*. Mid-february. The roadmap also describes all the details of each phase. If you are interested in what each phase will be focusing on, please take a look at the roadmap.

-- How many worlds will there be in beta?

In phase 1 there will be 5-10 worlds, with more worlds being added with each following phase. We are going to increase the limits depending on the amount of people wanting to play. Looking at official release, since we are using the same server infrastructure as DQX, we will be monitoring our respective user count and adjust the server numbers accordingly. Since we're the same company, there shouldn't be any problems with managing this. However, it's different for the datacenters overseas since they are hosted by outside companies. We will do our best to make sure there will be no problems with that either, though.

-- In the large-scale monster killing event [shown in the nico broadcast], the monsters were appearing and disappearing, will this be fixed in the beta test?

This is because in the alpha version, there is no priority for a model to be displayed. When we were testing the server load, there were no problems with, say, 100 models being displayed. However, with the niconico event, there were about 1000 players concentrated in one spot and because monster models are not prioritized, this is how it ended up. Party members will have highest priority, followed by monsters on the hatelist as well as linked monsters, with other free company members being last on the priority list. This will be implemented in beta.

For beta and onward, in case the model display limit is reached, player models will be removed from the display list in favor of monster models. At the moment, the display limit is set to 100 models, but there is a concern of memory usage. It should not be a problem for high-spec PCs though, so even limitless should not be a problem. We thought of increasing it to 300 or even 500 as long as the load doesn't become too heavy. It is still fixed at 100 for now, but removing it won't be a problem.

Courtesy of Soukyuu on OF

[Lucavi]

I'll never forget owning some alliance dude back in WoTLK, he was a warlock that was being a dick at the top of Naxx and when I got up there, I thunderstormed him off Naxx killing him from the fall. Another time I thunderstormed someone off the cliff while they were mining and the fall killed them, lol

What about the hilarious warlocks that would fly up higher than some poor AFKing bastard, pop feather-fall, dot the hell out of them, and float harmlessly to the ground while the poor AFK schmuck rotted inside out from 4,000 feet up.

[LD]

The only problem with the anima system in my experience was that there was never a long range alternative if you didn't want to go to a city. You teleport somewhere then walk/ride the rest of the way. I mean, it's not bad, but when you run out of anima you have to walk/ride the entire way. I'm definitely not in favor of them getting rid of the system, but if they could create a more braod, region-based alternative it would lower the strain on anima while making the world seem bigger by gating instantaneous travel.

[Rocl]

The way I read it as the Teleport System isn't going anywhere, just the limitation of anima.

[LD]

yeah, I typed that shit out before I saw your post. this is actually close to what I wanted. Giving it some kind of limitation in the same way that Return has a CD when you haven't died. As long as their quests and missions don't have me jumping to 4 different regions before the end, I have no problem with boiling the anima system to a teleport spell.

[Manako]

Said interview about the anima:

Thanks so much for posting this here! Glad I didn't dive into trying to parse the google translate That man really makes me want this game to succeed, even if its just so justice is served -- he is so well spoken and honest (seeming anway) and really seems to have a good idea of what to do for the game. Would royally suck if after tossing him on the grenade it exploded and he had to live with the game's failure on his shoulders.