Time to get serious: A BlueGartr interview with Naoki Yoshida Coming Soon

[darkepyon]

From watching XI over the past year or so and from observing other currently running MMO's over the past decade, what have you and your team learned in the time since being assigned to work on FFXIV?

With the coming job system, do you plan to retain some degree of customization of abilities obtained from other jobs (like how it is now with being able to use magic spells on a DoW class)? If so, will the usage of certain traits/abilities be restricted past a certain level (much like XI's main/support job system)?

What are your plans for the city-state of Ishgard? Are there plans to make it into a high-level quest hub of sorts? (I somehow can't help but see this becoming a major hub for players like Jeuno/Whitegate in XI.)

[Charismatic]

When is the animation lock going to be fixed?
Why are character positions not updated more regularly? (also when is sever latency going to be addressed? this shit is way off)
Do you really feel that crafting classes should actually exist? (because I feel that crafting classes existing gives the impression that they are as important overall as the battle classes and it makes me wonder where the crafting content is, like... what is the ifrit of crafting? the darkhold of crafting? etc)

[dfdfpp]

Back in the day, the survey said that an majority of people would welcome some changes even if they made things a little uncomfortable. Is there any specific detail about future uncomfortable moments (ala major gameplay changes, modifications to items we "own" already, basically anything that either makes us relearn stuff or significantly changes the perceived "value" of our existing characters) current players might want to know about?

I doubt this is answerable, but I'd also like to know what kind of resources the XIV team has available to them and/or the extent they are being supported; even a vague answer (well, less vague than what we know already) would probably help us understand S-E's current patch development times and/or how much of a joy/pain Crystal Tools is to work with (I remember guffawing about some "because every time you use it something breaks" quip someone made). There was also something about S-E hiring for the XIV team last month (I think?), which people took as a good sign, but it'd be interesting to know if that was actually expansion of the development team or replacing lost or even diverted members, which would definitely not be a good signal of confidence.

And a relatively light one - why doesn't the Black Shroud look like a forest anymore in that developer document (seems like a lot less green anyway)? On those lines, are the landscape changes going to be accompanied by plot elements or are they going to just sort of happen?

And oh I guess echo echo echo the client/server crappiness. Info about the amount of resources currently dedicated to this (if any?) would be cool.

[solracht]

I'm going to avoid repeating some things people have already asked, such as animation locks and server adjustments. I'd definitely like to see Yoshida answer those questions over any of the ones I'm going to ask, though.

-Do you have any means to detect bots? If so, have you been keeping track of them and are you planning on dealing with all the people who have used them?

-Do you have any obscene gil sinks in mind for those who are sitting on 100-200mill? Perhaps vanity things like a unique Chocobo model or unique looking Company gear that can only be bought from NPCs?

-The Duty system (guildleves, behests, garlean invasions) could use improvements, such as letting you take on two duties at once and not auto-failing you when you disconnect or crash. Do you have any changes in mind for this system?

-The resetting system for enemies is horrible and feels buggy as hell. Could we expect improvements sometime soon so mobs don't try to reset when they're clearly under attack?

-Are there any plans to make 4 the magical number for parties instead of 8?


A few silly ones:

-Can we expect to see Ala Mhigo, Sharlayan, Garlemald and the beastmen regions in-game within the next one or two years? Do these places exist beyond concept art? As in, have you actually started building these places with the engine?

-Will the company headquarters ever get a real building in the cities? I think they deserve a visible building at least, even if we keep the zoning.

-Are you planning on dealing with the abrupt ending some ingame events have, such as Garlean invasions or Guildleves? Watching a bunch of NPCs instantly fade away isn't exactly pretty or climatic. Maybe have them run away first or something?

[Gulkeeva]

Maybe some long questions who knows...!

1. Yoshi mentioned long ago about wanting to make a beta server for people to test patches developers are working to roll out onto "live servers" *ahem* before its released. When will this happen? This would (hopefully) help fix out potentially game breaking/exploitable mechanics the current SE team may have missed (Like the current level 1-> 40 within a day) that is currently causing the forums to go into an uproar currently over what happened in 1.19. Infact per major patch "something" is wrong, and the trolls just make sure that the problem will bring down FFXIV just a bit more each time.

2. Looking back a bit here...
http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...ival-says-Wada

Asked if he thought Final Fantasy XIV was a serious rival to World of Warcraft’s throne, Wada said “yes"

This interview long ago, made points about building on the good parts of FFXI and focusing on group play for a more enjoyable experience. Why has this not happened? SE? Yoshi P was to take FFXIV in a new direction and make the game more exciting, but its becoming a FFXI clone slowly and copying bits of warcraft.

There hasn't been much to work on the grouping aspect of FFXIV, with the exception of basically forcing people to should in Uldah or find a LS and spam it for people. If your going to copy other games, go copy their "group making".

I watched someone sit in LS Lv20's sit and complain for an hour he can't level, can't find anyone and finally logoff from boredom because... well theirs no one (in that LS) his level (or power level him). I'm sure many new/returning players feel the same way, as they have no easy/quick method to find others their level.

3. Community support, it seems... lacking.
Developers -> Insert massive abyss of darkness -> the guy on forums (with some translator guy) -> <- Community on forums

It seems only a few things have escaped the abyss (through massive amounts of spam on the 500page threads asking for a female galka and male miqo'te). But many of the other things requesting fix's have not been looked upon.
(Refer to question 1 about beta server) there needs to be much more Player/developer interaction, not player make suggestion, translator guy makes dart board for developer and he shoots at what he "may" work on.

(think the parts above look ok... almost 2am and only slept like 4 hours in 2 days) O_o

[Burningthought]

I don't think i'm explicitly repeating anything, sorry if I am but here are my questions:

Edit: Editing my shit since they sent out that new reveal.

-It was said that Eorzea is just a region of Hydaelyn, when can we expect to see new regions of Hydaelyn?

-Yoshida has mentioned that they want to release an expansion some time in the future. When can we expect it, and what details can he give us at this point?

- What kind of new character customization options can we expect in FFXIV2.0?

- Final Fantasy XI had a lot of side activities that didn't have to do with crafting, or battling fiends or other players, such as Chocobo Racing, Chocobo Raising, Pankration, and Gambling. Can we expect to see mini-game type activities in XIV2.0?

- In the cinematic trailer for FFXIV, guildleves are shown to be a huge adventure with a group of friends, trying to make a little coin on the side. In reality, Guildleves are merely fetch or hunt quests, and players burn through them very quickly. The cinematic trailer leaves much to be desired, can we expect any changes to liven up the levequests in FFXIV2.0?

That's all i've got for now~

Edit: One more

- During the Letter from the Producer Live event, every officially supported language was invited to participate, but it seemed to be a Japanese only event. Is it possible to have better translation support for non-Japanese speaking players(Better support meaning, taking questions in different languages, and perhaps a faster means of getting the translated information to players)

[Cichy]

All the questions Celeras mentioned.
Also,
- what ideas are you considering for housing, will it be just a room or can we expect more?
- will you add large scale battles vs. Garlean Empire?
- can we get some raids where you battle Garlean Empire and we fight some of the generals?
- can we get an option where by typing in /ls1, /ls2, /ls3, etc we can speak to different linkshells without having to switch them?
- can we get regional chat, Uldah chat, Limsa chat, Gridania chat?
- party search system is extremely important plz fix it as soon as possible
- can we expect jobs and the zone revamp to be released before the end of the year?

[Gokulo]

-A while back you said Ishgard would be out by the end of summer, it's now October, where is it?

-How will the Artifact armor or Class specific armor shown off during the latest Famitsu and Live Producer Event be obtained? Will it be quested or will it be similar to WoW's tier gear from end game raids?

-Are there going to be relics / legendary type weapons? If there are will they require items that can be bought for money to obtain, gather a non trade able item, or just drops very rarely

- Actually, in an interview some time ago he said that Ishgard will come later, when the game is in a better state, so not anytime soon

- Afair he mentioned that jobs will get their specific equipment and skill from quests which you get as you level up

- He mentioned legendary weapons (e.g. Excalibur) but w/o any specifics

[Tibian]

1. With the new 2.0 server systems, will the major game breaking issues such as animation lock, the positioning imprecision, and interface lag be greatly reduced? How do we know you're telling the truth, when at first XIV release the game was a complete disaster?
2. Payment using Click and Buy is something a majority of the users have come to not want. Since you seem to be listening very well to what the players want, why haven't we heard anything regarding SE's own private subscription plans and the abolishment of the Click and Buy contract?
3. How much is the subscription going to cost? Since the game is only 50% done, will we see a 50% reduction in subscription costs ala: 6/7 USD?
4. Why are you deciding to charge now, when the game is only 50% to where you wanted it to be at launch? It seems awkward that we're going to be paying a subscription fee for a product that is only half complete, how do you justify this?
5. In the 2.0 PDFs, addons were highlighted as something you want to see happen. Tanaka said the same about addons early in XIV's development but we never saw anything come out from it. Will you be releasing a developer kit to help create new addons for the game and show you're fully supported in evaluating and balancing addons?
6. On the photoshopped concept screenshot of the UI, the party unit frames and general UI seem vastly improved. However there are two glaring features that seem to be missing. One, the multiple action bars on screen at all times seems to have been forgotten, and two, the party unit frames have very abstract buff/debuffs. Timers on the unit frames are a welcome sight, but aside from protect and shell, I cannot differentiate anything about the buffs/debuffs. Will they be hoverable with tooltip information? What happened with showing multiple action bars on the screen at one time? Toggling the action bar is incredibly inefficient for PC users.
7. How are you planning on addressing the current loot distribution quagmire that seems to plague the game right now? Ifrit drops weapons that people can't use because they don't have the jobs leveled, nor do they want to level those classes. Loot cannot be master looted or need for greeded, and there is no random number roll. In 2.0 how are you addressing this lack of attention in the loot table and loot distribution department?
8. To cast a spell, you need to target a monster, hit your spell hot key, and then CONFIRM your target. This is incredibly redundant, annoying, and frustrating to inuitive gameplay. Why haven't we seen the complete removal of confirming targets on spellcastting, and why hasn't the AOE toggle bar been completely removed as you said it was going to several months ago? In 2.0 are we still going to see the AOE toggle?
9. The toggling action bars is unitutive, causes problems, and again is flat out frustrating. You have mentioned being able to see all three action bars on the screen at the same time previously, and I figured this would have been a priority for you. Why have we not seen this feature added yet? Did it get dropped? What is taking so long to implement this feature?
10. A significant number of players have asked for a Final Fantasy card game (Tetra Master/Triple Triad) to be implemented directly into the game, where monsters can be converted into cards, quests yield cards, and crafters can create cards. The 2.0 PDFs disappointingly have no mention of a card game at all. Can you tell us what is happening, or if there are any plans to implement a card game.
11. What are you planning on doing about the monotonous crafting mechanics? People literally sit and press enter for hours on end. Why was this specific crafting style chosen over something simplistic and automatic ala World of Warcraft?
12. How far along is the jump system, and will 2.0 have a full utilization of it? Can you tell us more about it?
13. Arcanist and Musketeer were mentioned earlier in developer/community team posts. Unfortunately there were no mentions of either class in the 2.0 PDFs. Are these classes dropped, and when can we expect to see them and their respective jobs?
14. What happened to the other classes such as Flayer and Fencer?
15. Will you be allowing free server transfers on the 2.0 launch so people can play with friends?
16. Spell animations and player casting animations for mages were requested and confirmed to be under review, how is the progress on this topic and what can you tell us about the new animations?
17. Having to wait for multiple players and NPCS to spawn in crowded areas is a frustrating mechanic. Will FFXIV 2.0 still render only a certain number of users in a given radius from the player, or will all NPCS and players render at the same time for a more fluid appearance to the game?
18. The current build of XIV has underutilized going inside buildings. Most of the shops are outside in tiny stalls. Will 2.0 utilize buildings as actual objects that we can traverse inside, or will buildings still remain a graphical box that we just look at?
19. Pets and summons were alluded to in the 2.0 PDFs, can you tell us more about the planned classes and jobs that will utilize them, and how will summons come into play?
20. Several important content filling topics listed on the 2.0 PDFs are coming "after 2.0." How long "after 2.0" are we talking for many of these features?
21. The current story arc has been said to come to a close before 2.0. Will the Ifrit, Garuda, Moogle primal fights still be accessible after 2.0 occurs?
22. The 2.0 PDFs mention a free trial reinstatement occurring sometime between October and November 2012. The next line then says that the free trial period ends in January 2013. Does this mean that players will have two to three free months when 2.0 launches, or is this a window of opportunity for players to return for a free trial? Also how long will this trial be?
23. What can you tell us about the LEGACY items, and the "application" process?

I have no idea how to ask this in a concise sentence, so I have it down here. I consider this the most important question of my post.

A while back Yoshi/Dev Team posted that there is an algorithm that predicts the location of a character. This has lead to countless deaths and terrible battle mechanics that cannot be dodged in a timely manner. Why is movement and apparent position not on a 1:1, or even close to a 1:1 scale. For instance, on a dual box screen a character can stop literally 5 seconds ahead of another character who is auto following, and on the other characters screen both characters are still running. In other popular MMO's this isn't an issue. However with XIV, this leads to terrible battle mechanics being unavoidable or unnecessarily difficult. Ie: dodging underground moles, moving away from ifrit's charge, running away from the exploding eye in Darkhold, characters being punted up mountains from the ogre fight, or characters being punted into massive chasms and then walking back to the monster virtually on invisible ground, etc. Are you planning on fixing this to make the apparently lag reduced, or is this current mechanic going to stay?

I have revised my questions for a more 2.0 appropriate interview. I hope you enjoy and use many of them. Thanks for taking the time to have this interview BG.

[Kaiyoko]

- Actually, in an interview some time ago he said that Ishgard will come later, when the game is in a better state, so not anytime soon

- Afair he mentioned that jobs will get their specific equipment and skill from quests which you get as you level up

- He mentioned legendary weapons (e.g. Excalibur) but w/o any specifics

If I wanted your answers I would be posting in random question thread.

[Gokulo]

Except I'm just posting what he said, because I don't see a point in repeating some of the stuff in the interview. But if you don't want to know the answers to your questions then fine

[Kaiyoko]

Except I'm just posting what he said, because I don't see a point in repeating some of the stuff in the interview.

Link the Ishgard thing then because that's all you answered fully. I know I read in interview he said summer so w/e.

Edit: Nvm don't link it in here, this isn't the place for discussion, make a thread about your issues w/ peoples questions (better yet put it in random complaint), this isn't up to you it's up to Sono

[Gokulo]

I wasn't trying to decide anything, just wanted to be helpful so that we can ask questions that haven't been properly answered yet and not repeat too much stuff, but see how that goes, heh.
End of offtopic from me anyway now, stuff about Ishgard and Job equipment can be found in the translation thread on the OF.

[Gulkeeva]

A while back Yoshi/Dev Team posted that there is an algorithm that predicts the location of a character. This has lead to countless deaths and terrible battle mechanics that cannot be dodged in a timely manner. Why is movement and apparent position not on a 1:1, or even close to a 1:1 scale. For instance, on a dual box screen a character can stop literally 5 seconds ahead of another character who is auto following, and on the other characters screen both characters are still running. In other popular MMO's this isn't an issue. However with XIV, this leads to terrible battle mechanics being unavoidable or unnecessarily difficult. Ie: dodging underground moles, moving away from ifrit's charge, running away from the exploding eye in Darkhold, characters being punted up mountains from the ogre fight, or characters being punted into massive chasms and then walking back to the monster virtually on invisible ground, etc. Are you planning on fixing this to make the apparently lag reduced, or is this current mechanic going to stay?

ah yeah I almost wanted to mention this but I'm sure the answer is semi obvious.

Game servers = japan

You (USA) move forward -> routing through alot of shit -> overseas -> game server check what you did -> overseas -> other guy near you gets info "This guy has moved forward" -> routing through alot of shit -> overseas -> game server "yup he's moved forward" -> back to that other guy going wtf why is that jerking around like he's playing at 600ms

something like that.

Its one those "why aren't you doing anything about it" type things buried under a bunch of repeat complains that are too minor for SE to bother with atm (like the one about FFXIV using too much memory over time causing it to crash)

[Woozer]

I'd like to see Yoshida's reaction to the current Elemental Wheel in FFXIV. It's hard to get used to because like everything else in XIV, was changed from the standard for absolutely fuck all reason. Wind > Fire? I'd also like to ask him about the issue of current casting animations and when we can expect to see new ones. (I remember a looong time ago people voiced disappointment over the animations lacking any real flair, and we were told that new ones would be developed.) (As a side note, I'd also like to see a time when using an ability didn't make my character take a dump mid-battlefield)

What ever happened to Auto-target? Is it being worked on actively? When can we expect to finally see it implemented?

Any thoughts on the current (short) duration of Protect/Shell?

That's all for now until I can think of more.

[mightyg]

1. Along with additional races and genders, will there be additional character customization options like new haircuts, less restrictive facial features, and eye colors?

2. Please give us details on the planned player search features. Is it possible to be able to seek/search for specific quests and battlefields along with experience parties?

3. Along with player housing, are linkshell housing/headquarters also being considered?

4. Will Materia make it's way onto rare/exclusive gear? Do it. Quit putting different stats on colored gear.

5. While I recognize the need for more specialized jobs, I don't want my White Mage/Bard/etc to be completely weak offensively like FFXI. Will efforts be made to not cripple support/healing jobs ability to deal reasonable damage?

[Dense]

I've just read Yoshi's position on Power-Leveling and how he would rather have that option available than deny the honest people the options that we now have when the threat of PL is so rampant (the new claiming system and the difference in levels within the same party not making much difference to the exp earned). I would like to hear a bit more about the long-term plan for what seems to be a mechanic that is quite broken at the moment (people getting 600k exp in 2 days of PL with alts and so forth), and if this is the design that he expected, or perhaps if the dev team and production team did not foresee such exploitation?

[Elcura]

Are you going to do anything to crafting or gathering that gives players more options or a variety of ways to play?

How much skill and influence does the user have over crafting? It seems you can do everything perfectly and still fail horribly, or do nothing right and still succeed in the synth. If you're giving players control over their synths (and as a result, making it last longer - sometimes much longer), should user influence be more important than un-seeable and random factors? As it stands crafting is incredibly dull (at the best of times) and frustrating (at the worst). Add that in with non-responsive UI and ages to load UI pages and you've got an activity that starts off poorly and doesn't really get any better.

Gathering needs a few different methods of game play, as the current hot and cold game has little charm, and that wears off very quickly. What are your plans on improving DoL/H? If you have no plans to improve actual crafting or gathering further, will the process become faster, less annoying and overall less important than battle jobs?

I know Yoshi-P said something about the reason for server side UI and client was to track/prevent botters and cheaters. But this seems to sacrifice performance to prevent something that is rampant already. Will you be making more things client side for a more responsive game? Or will you continue on with server side actions?

Previously in battle you could cue actions, but you can no longer do that. For the battle system that was barely responsive at its best, cueing actions allowed players to play the game a lot more fluidly. Now that you've taken this out, battles has become stiff and unresponsive. What are your plans to remedy this, and make fighting in general a lot more smooth and enjoyable in the future?

+1 Animation lock
+1 Server fixes

[Alk]

I would like to highlight the server latency questions aswell.
Also on the subject, will we ever see a server outside of Japan, 500-600ms won't be too hot when they release the planned PvP content.

[CaptainN]

-When will we see an increase in the number of trade slots, when trading from person to person? FFXI had 8 but in FFXIV they went down to 4?

- Server side checks for everything is it possible to remove them to increase the overall speed of abilities/UI and reduce lag?

- Animation lock question that has already been stated

- Is it possible that beastman currency can be added to our "Currency" tab with our gil/mark instead of taking an inventory slot?

- Is there plans to use the beastman currency in some sort of Burning Circle NM fights similar to FFXI?

- Already asked but I will add to my list to show importance: Will we ever been able to talk to all our linkshells without having to equip a "main shell" by typing /L1, /L2, /L3 etc.