FFXIV Naoki Yoshida Interview Transcription

[Acturus]

Bravo, you masterful representatives of BG, bravo!

[Xanthe]

That truly was an excellent interview on behalf of both parties involved. Yoshi-P continues to impress me with his dedication to FFXIV and its playerbase. I especially appreciate that he's not playing the part of a used car salesman trying to sell us a turd with a fresh coat of paint. He admits fault as a company (no finger-pointing) and is doing everything possible to turn the situation around including breaking SE out of the self-contained ethnocentric norm of most Japanese developers and engaging their worldwide playerbase. He's not only leading a revolution for the game, but for the Japanese video game industry. Kudos!

[Lucavi]

Good job holding their ass to the fire with follow-ups. A solid interview.

[shidobu]

i feel like i owe you guys money for this.
Whens next bg donation drive lol?

Good shit guys

[Corrderio]

Can't wait for the new graphics engine. I'd love if it's reasonable enough so I can play XIV on my work laptop during lunch breaks.

[Kurokikaze]

Depending on how well the scaling is on the graphics engine it's possible that the minimum requirements are lower come next Sept.

[Corrderio]

That's what I'm hoping on. I know my laptop's card isn't for gaming, but I'm hoping with the revisions I can at least play on around the lowest settings just fine.

[Sonomaa]

based on what yoshi said and how he seemed to reflect it during the direct x 10/11 question, he wants the game to scale to lower end machines very very easily and look fantastic on higher end machines as well. he seems to have drawn a lot of inspiration from blizzard as a company for their constant ability to make games that play on any computer you want. The new engine seems to have that scaling and unlike every interview with anyone else before, they arent afraid to drop the wow comparison, so they really are taking that as a template on what things can and should be done for the betterment of the community. Not making a wow clone but doing what wow did right in an MMO system and mixing it with what the final fantasy series was so popular with.

[Zirael]

That's what I'm hoping on. I know my laptop's card isn't for gaming, but I'm hoping with the revisions I can at least play on around the lowest settings just fine.

At launch the game was lagging as hell on my laptop. When both FFXI and FFXIV were on, I'd get few fps. Now I can log in and do stuff in FFXIV without much hassle even with two instances of FFXI running in background on the same laptop (I even have the same Windows installation/drivers from back then). That alone can tell you they've already done a good job with current engine already. Can get only better.

[Sonomaa]

sent the rest of the questions to SE

[Cayos]

sent the rest of the questions to SE

Just curious, what questions were sent?

[Sonomaa]

At launch the game was lagging as hell on my laptop. When both FFXI and FFXIV were on, I'd get few fps. Now I can log in and do stuff in FFXIV without much hassle even with two instances of FFXI running in background on the same laptop (I even have the same Windows installation/drivers from back then). That alone can tell you they've already done a good job with current engine already. Can get only better.

consider this: Yoshi considers the current engine unacceptable, so however much better its gotten, assume it will get only that much better

[Sonomaa]

Just curious, what questions were sent?

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.

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?

What happened to the other classes such as Flayer and Fencer?

Will you be allowing free server transfers on the 2.0 launch so people can play with friends?

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?

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?

What can you tell us about the LEGACY items, and the "application" process?

Why did you choose to make FFXIV v2.0 instead of FFXI v2.0? One of the two games has enjoyed a moderate amount of success and still has a fairly strong fanbase, and the other does not

How much is Square-Enix as a company willing to let FFXI suffer in order to focus on FFXIV 2.0.

Will you implement walking/active/talking NPCs, by way of adding some life to the cities/world?

Will there be a reputation system where the game acknowledges that you have saved the world multiple times and arent some random adventurer walking down the street.

Will you abolish the silly 'One character, one content ID, more money" rule so that people
can have multiple alts on one subscription?

Can we have more Lalafell hairstyles?

Will the 2.0 game have a jump system.

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.

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?

Will Archer/Ranger get a proper auto attack or still be forced to punch with their first, an ineffective method of fighting for someone with a bow.

How long will we have to wait to see the new 2.0 engine in movement.

Will the new 2.0 revision also see the names of the races revert to the FFXI versions or stay with the XIV versions.

[Corrderio]

At launch the game was lagging as hell on my laptop. When both FFXI and FFXIV were on, I'd get few fps. Now I can log in and do stuff in FFXIV without much hassle even with two instances of FFXI running in background on the same laptop (I even have the same Windows installation/drivers from back then). That alone can tell you they've already done a good job with current engine already. Can get only better.

CPU - Intel Core i5 2540M Dual Core 2.6 GHz
Memory - 4G
Video Card - GFX NVIDIA Quadro 1000M - 2GB DDR3

That's what my current specs are. I'm not a pro with hardware, but knowing the card isn't designed for gaming makes me wonder if it would even stand a chance on the lowest settings because of how poorly optimized the game is.

I'm sure with the revisions I should be fine, but that's still a year off.

[Aksannyi]

I don't play, I haven't bought the game, never felt the need to buy a brand new computer to play a game that turned out to be lackluster, but I have to say, reading this has me a bit excited. I have no idea if/when I'd have the time to play this much more than casually if at all, but this interview has piqued my interest again.

I love that they're not afraid to compare themselves to WoW now and say, "Hey, yeah, Blizzard does that right, we should emulate that somewhat." I also love the idea of allowing us to use player-made add-ons. Hell yes.

[Thiefami]

based on what yoshi said and how he seemed to reflect it during the direct x 10/11 question, he wants the game to scale to lower end machines very very easily and look fantastic on higher end machines as well. he seems to have drawn a lot of inspiration from blizzard as a company for their constant ability to make games that play on any computer you want. The new engine seems to have that scaling and unlike every interview with anyone else before, they arent afraid to drop the wow comparison, so they really are taking that as a template on what things can and should be done for the betterment of the community. Not making a wow clone but doing what wow did right in an MMO system and mixing it with what the final fantasy series was so popular with.

This is very good news. From the get go I have always said it should be for lower spec computers although naysayers in the community thought somehow this was a bad idea. Now maybe some of my starving artist friends from xi can join me

[Lucavi]

I don't play, I haven't bought the game, never felt the need to buy a brand new computer to play a game that turned out to be lackluster, but I have to say, reading this has me a bit excited. I have no idea if/when I'd have the time to play this much more than casually if at all, but this interview has piqued my interest again.

I love that they're not afraid to compare themselves to WoW now and say, "Hey, yeah, Blizzard does that right, we should emulate that somewhat." I also love the idea of allowing us to use player-made add-ons. Hell yes.

Interesting, considering that this very act by BG members was bannable during the "hey-day" of XI. I guess there isn't much haters can say nowadays when SE's own devs (well, one seriously cool and thankfully influential dev) concur.

I've already said that 2012 was going to be an excellent year for gaming. It looks like now I can say that the -entire- year of 2012 is going to be excellent for gaming.

[Kaylia]

That was a nice read. I loved his answer about the laggy UI...that's how it should have been from the start.

[avelle]

they arent afraid to drop the wow comparison, so they really are taking that as a template on what things can and should be done for the betterment of the community. Not making a wow clone but doing what wow did right in an MMO system and mixing it with what the final fantasy series was so popular with.

This is 100% what I was hoping FF14 would be when I first heard about the game years ago. I'm glad to see they have opened their eyes and are looking around to see what has and has not worked in the MMO genre, because it's sure as hell obvious the original team didn't do that.

[The Blackrose]

This is very good news. From the get go I have always said it should be for lower spec computers although naysayers in the community thought somehow this was a bad idea. Now maybe some of my starving artist friends from xi can join me

Truth be told, forcing high specs upon a player base is a great way to have an abysmal beginning for your MMO. EQ2 and Vanguard pulled the same shenanigans and it cost them.

And the more I think about it, the more SE/FFXIV draws parallels with SOE/EQ2. Both companies did a lot of control to the extent of engaging the hardcore base (SOE was posting in Fires of Heaven's own turf, to the butthurt of the official forums). Now the design and content remains to be seen.