FFXIV Patch 2.1 Press Interviews with Yoshida

[Corrderio]

Dunno if I buy that GW2 is less complex than XIV overall. XI is a fossil so yeah, anything remotely alive should outpace it.

Well I kinda meant from a DPS standpoint. My DRG sure feels more complex than my Guardian ever did

Eh? But dungeons give you quite a decently sized amount of bonus exp for completing a dungeon for the first time. They very well should be the go-to choice for exping when you're leveling your first class. Especially since you need to do them for the story line in the first place.

Maybe for the first time, but I mean for later on down the road when you're on your 2nd+ job. I guess it's more of a question of if the dungeon EXP boos will outweigh having to wait as a DD instead of FATEs

[Niiro]

Eh? But dungeons give you quite a decently sized amount of bonus exp for completing a dungeon for the first time. They very well should be the go-to choice for exping when you're leveling your first class. Especially since you need to do them for the story line in the first place.

When you're a DPS spending 30+ mins in queue, going to take a piss, missing the window, and having to start again....

No, it's not the go-to.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Dungeons would be a moderately decent tutorial if the margin for error wasn't so high for most of them. Outside of like, Qarn first boss and Aurum Vale, they are all piss-easy and messing up a mechanic doesn't = a wipe. Thus it doesn't take rocket science to learn how to do your job correctly since none of these fights are DPS races or real gear checks.

Granted, I'm not saying pre-50 content should be as punishing as say Titan HM. Just that it's no wonder nobody knows how to play their class as a fresh 50.

[Toth]

Except they can. I've done sub 10 mins on my MNK and I've done it with a DRG. Want to try again?

That's like saying SCH can't do WP SR because they can't spam holy which makes it slightly easier/faster, which is just stupid.

This is interesting. What does your MNk and DRG do to speed up the damage so much?

[gaogaostegosaurus]

Dungeons would be a moderately decent tutorial if the margin for error wasn't so high for most of them. Outside of like, Qarn first boss and Aurum Vale, they are all piss-easy and messing up a mechanic doesn't = a wipe. Thus it doesn't take rocket science to learn how to do your job correctly since none of these fights are DPS races or real gear checks.

Granted, I'm not saying pre-50 content should be as punishing as say Titan HM. Just that it's no wonder nobody knows how to play their class as a fresh 50.

I think game is actually pretty good at hinting "you fail" even if you somehow beat a boss anyway. Almost nothing will outright kill you, but you will generally get taken aback by the damage and anyone with a modicum of curiosity will think "that might have been avoidable."

I mean bad players are gonna be bad regardless of how punishing mechanics are, so I think what they have now is okay, in a way.

[Andradi]

This is interesting. What does your MNk and DRG do to speed up the damage so much?

Monk: PB and rockbreaker spam (or something like that)
Dragoon: Doom Spike spam (with Ring of thorns off Heavy Thrust and DFD when it's up)

Using the appropriate buffs, obviously. Dragoon tends to run out of TP when Invigorate is down, depending on how quick the group is.

[Alkar]

Dungeons would be a moderately decent tutorial if the margin for error wasn't so high for most of them. Outside of like, Qarn first boss and Aurum Vale, they are all piss-easy and messing up a mechanic doesn't = a wipe. Thus it doesn't take rocket science to learn how to do your job correctly since none of these fights are DPS races or real gear checks.

Granted, I'm not saying pre-50 content should be as punishing as say Titan HM. Just that it's no wonder nobody knows how to play their class as a fresh 50.

Even the Doom from Qarn's first boss can be avoided by ranged DPS+healers. There's a safe spot on the left. However running dungeons gives you an idea of what to expect at 50, FATEs do not.

[Frein]

Guildhests were definitely great while leveling, even though I knew most of this stuff from other games already or just common sense. Adamantoise one was annoying with people that refused to read/pay attention though...

As far as I know though, the game never really mentions them (maybe there was a quest to unlock them at some point? can't remember) and most people may never even do them.

I've never done a Guildhest and I don't remember the game ever telling me how to unlock them. They don't really ever come up in in-game conversations, either, so I'm probably not the only one.

[miokomioko]

There's a point in either Horizon's Edge or Drybone (during MSQ progression) where you get GUILDHESTS UNLOCKED written across your screen followed by the tutorial window popping up and explaining what they are and where to find the NPCs.

[Slycer]

Posting this just to get it up. Still going to post two more parts, so there will wind up being 5.

Highlights:
-Party Recruitment system
-Treasure Hunt info
-Beastman Dailies info

-----

The design of the game created situations where things suddenly felt impossible for players who felt like they were being forced to win certain battles. Some people just sat back and spent time with gatherer and crafter classes.

Yoshida: I have friends at both ends of the spectrum. There are those who are going to the Binding Coil of Bahamut and those who got discouraged after being turned down, and there are those who are just leveling jobs and gatherer/crafter classes to their maximum.

The latter are just some friends who decided to stop at the hard Ifrit (laughs). They say "Relic? What? I'm fine just leveling up gatherer/crafter classes." My friends like that aren't so interested in the information about the next patch. Then I have my friends from Binding Coil who say "give me more end-game!"

In patch 2.1, we'll be adding a party recruitment system. You'll be able to recruit a party and add conditions like "Relic +1 players only!" For those who want to participate, the party will be set up at the moment of application. This will give you some additional options to recruit other players when you are having trouble with Duty Finder, and we hope people use it for various kinds of activities.

Sounds like a good idea.

Yoshida: We'll also be adding Treasure Hunts which you can enjoy starting at level 30 in your spare time. Gatherers will be able to discover the maps, and treasure maps will be available from grade 1 to grade 5.

Is it possible for any of the three gatherer classes to find these?

Yoshida: Yes, these will be results of normal gathering. Once you find a map, you need to take a look at it to decipher it. Grades 1 through 3 should be easy solo. Grade 4 is also possible solo but you'll want to be level 50 and it won't be easy. I think that most players will enjoy treasure hunts alone, but if you want to try a grade 5 chest, you'll probably need about 4-6 people.

When you say that a party would be needed at level 50, will these be boss class monsters?

Yoshida: It might be one strong monster, or a number of weaker monsters.

Heh, that sounds a bit like "Ultima Online."

Yoshida: In UO when the Daemons were released, there was a big panic (laughs). The grade 5 maps are really a bonus, we expect players to mainly focus on up through grade 4. We expect that Free Company parties may form on the weekends and try to work on the grade 5 maps together. We also think it would make a good recruiting feature. Additionally, we also expect a market to develop for maps, although they can only be sold or traded before they are deciphered. Once they are deciphered, they can no longer be sold.

Will you only be able to open these once a day?

Yoshida: No, but you can only decipher one map at a time. You can only decipher the next map once you've thrown away the first or found its treasure. You can't just keep a bunch of decrypted maps and open them all at once. Once you know the specific location for the treasure chest, you'll need to find the chest, open the chest as a disciple of war or magic, and defeat the monsters which protect the chest to obtain the contents. There will also be some element of randomness where the rewards from the chests are hit-or-miss.

What kind of options do you have prepared for the treasure?

Yoshida: You'll be able to find Aetherial equipment, and you'll also earn experience points and gil. If your job or class is capped, you'll receive Allagan Tomestones of Philosophy and Mythology. You may also obtain philosophy exchange items, rare HQ crafting materials, housing components, and various other things.

Are there rare drops?

Yoshida: Yes, there are 5-6 rare pieces you can obtain.

When you approach the right area, will there be a guiding circle on the map like you'd see for a mission battle?

Yoshida: No. Once you run the "Find" action, the location of the treasure chest will be indicated on the map, it will be very simple. After you try to open the chest and defeat the monsters, the contents will be available to you. The idea is that you can accumulate the maps by chance while gathering, and then go ahead and use those maps some other time on a battle class.

Will players at level 50 receive tomestones regardless of the chest rank?

Yoshida: It's not based on the grade of the map. Sometimes you'll get them and sometimes you won't. The idea isn't for this to be an efficient way of earning these every time. If you want to earn them efficiently, then there is other content which you can participate in like Pharos Sirius, which will give you the same number every time.

So this is content that's mainly being added for solo activities.

Yoshida: It's solo friendly, and that's one method of approaching it. It will be the player's decision.

Are the beastmen daily quests similar?

Yoshida: Many of the beastmen had been Tempered and controlled by the primals of Eorzea who hate humankind, and so the citizens of the three kingdoms are hesitant to develop relations. For example, if you look at the Sylph, they are really kind-hearted, but the people of Gridania may not agree. They may want to co-exist peacefully, but they remember the experiences with the primals.

Through the beastman daily quests, you'll be able to understand the life of the beastmen tribes, as well as their principles and motivations. They have different religions and beliefs, and many would like all the people of Eorzea to co-exist. Others, such as those who were Tempered, want all races other than their own to be eliminated. The adventurer will play the role of communicating with the beastmen, getting to know their way of life, and, hopefully, starting a friendship with them.

Will there be a system like Grand Company status where you can understand your relationship with the beastman and earn various priveleges?

Yoshida: Your friendship with the beastmen will become stronger as you clear quests each day. You'll be able to clear up to six per day.

If you enter the camps of barbarians right now, you'll of course be attacked by them. In "EverQuest," as you became friends with them, they would no longer attack you - are you planning anything like that?

Yoshida: Basically, no. In EQ the friendship was like a seesaw where as you became friends with one, you would lose friendship with another. However, in Eorzea, since we have mostly eliminated the Tempered, we can become friends with everyone. However, for the beastmen who have become Tempered, no matter how friendly you become with them, they will always attack you, no questions asked.

So in the lairs they are all Tempered?

Yoshida: Yes, and they have isolated themselves from the rest of the world.

[Eanae]

Treasure hunt sounds awesome and like it'll be a great time waster until 2.2.

[Raldo]

Awesome until we find out that all the rewards are worthless trash.

[XalienLevi]

I don't see how Tomes, Housing materials and Tome Materials could be considered worthless. Hell even high level Aetherial gear can be spiritbonded into Rank III Materia.

I just hope these Rank 5 battles will be somewhat interesting. A lot of my friends are sitting around in i90 now.

[Cichy]

Poor Yoshi-P is still under impression that people will do content for fun

[Rocl]

I just hope these Rank 5 battles will be somewhat interesting. A lot of my friends are sitting around in i90 now.

I definitely don't expect Rank 5 maps to be a challenge for people in full i90 lol

However, the lore nerd in me is excited about his explanation of the daily quests and the gatherer in me excited for selling maps hopefully :E

[Raldo]

I don't see how Tomes, Housing materials and Tome Materials could be considered worthless. Hell even high level Aetherial gear can be spiritbonded into Rank III Materia.

Unless housing materials use things that aren't already flooding the market due to their nature of being simple gathered materials, that's useless. He said maps won't be reliable for tomes, so that's useless. I may have missed it, but I didn't see him mention tome materials, but again, it's probably still faster to spam WP. Rank III materia, oh thank god; I couldn't get those already by spiritbonding crafted gear or anything like that.

Beyond the initial runs to experiment with the system, I have a feeling that people will only care about maps for the "5-6 rare pieces you can obtain." One (or more!) of which will no doubt be a minion.

[XalienLevi]

I definitely don't expect Rank 5 maps to be a challenge for people in full i90 lol

However, the lore nerd in me is excited about his explanation of the daily quests and the gatherer in me excited for selling maps hopefully :E

Well I did say "somewhat interesting" and not challenging xD. I too am glad I'm a gatherer. I prefer gathering over crafting completely.
I wonder though if these dailies are just the start of a completely different storyline? He mentions something about your relationship growing with the beastmen. To what end?
I'm also glad you can start these quests at around level 40, I can finish up my last three battle classes finally(FATE grinding so very boring). I really love exping via the sidequests.

Unless housing materials use things that aren't already flooding the market due to their nature of being simple gathered materials, that's useless. He said maps won't be reliable for tomes, so that's useless. I may have missed it, but I didn't see him mention tome materials, but again, it's probably still faster to spam WP. Rank III materia, oh thank god; I couldn't get those already by spiritbonding crafted gear or anything like that.

Beyond the initial runs to experiment with the system, I have a feeling that people will only care about maps for the "5-6 rare pieces you can obtain." One (or more!) of which will no doubt be a minion.

I can't argue with efficiency. But you can't tell me this content won't appeal to a large amount of casuals. You know, the majority of the playerbase. There are also those like me who while quite capable of speedrunning WP with eyes closed find it makes me HATE the game due to the monotony. Some of us actually like to mix it up. Some don't need to get tomes and Coil done on Monday. Some of us play differently than you.

[Rocl]

In my head the game is going down a 3-way split in the story anyway.

You have the Minfilia quests (Garleans, Ascians), Alphinaud quests (Scions, Primals), and Alisaie quests (Bahamut, Louisoix)

I imagine they'll all merge before 3.0's Ishgardian expansion with some huge Garlean-modified Bahamut battle that the Scions help you fite obvi

[Slycer]

Highlights:
-Details about the ideas behind FATEs
-Extreme primals difficulty to be somewhere between turns 4 and 5 of BC.
-Special mounts from beastman dailies

P.S. I really like this interviewer, he asks a lot of clearly informed questions and is way more direct with his questions than the others were.

-----

I want to ask you a bit more about the future of existing content, so first I'll ask about FATEs. From what I can see, I basically just need to switch back from my job to my class and spam Flash. I mean, seriously, I'd like to try fighting normally as the job I'm on, but when I do that, my other party members will say "what are you doing?" (laughs)

Yoshida: Oh, like "why aren't you casting flash?"

Yeah. As white mage, I could try playing as my class and casting Stone and Cure, but there's an atmosphere like "why not just switch back to your class and use Flash?" I wanted to know if this was normal and expected from the development side.

Yoshida: I've been in a lot of FATE parties and I've never seen anyone say that (laughs).

It's not that anyone has said that in FATE parties, but I was told that several times by LS members. Maybe it's only just the people around me and it isn't so common, but whenever I see other people, they're constantly using Flash. In any case, most people aren't really defeating the enemies by properly using their abilities.

Yoshida: Yeah, I think that's probably true in a sense. FATE is content that's mainly there to make obtaining experience easier, so I would expect that people would want to level up as fast as possible by clearing FATEs as efficiently as possible.

In other words, FATEs are really just there to casually level up?

Yoshida: Yeah, that's right. The original concept was for people to easily be able to participate and level up using FATEs. It wasn't supposed to be a painful experience, but an enjoyable one. Because of the armoury system in FFXIV, there are a lot of things that you can test and try out, so it wasn't supposed to be about playing a certain way that the development team intended.

We didn't want to make it an arduous experience playing each day and killing the same exact monster over and over, because then people would be frustrated before they got to experience most of the content.

That's funny, that's completely different from what I assumed you'd say (laughs). Surely the players are at least playing in a completely different way than the development team might have expected? I hope that people don't keep asking for everyone to use Flash, but it seems like that's the most rewarding (laughs).

Yoshida: Well, actually I'm impressed that people studied the specifications so well. FATEs look at the amount of hostility contributed, so to calculate the contribution of a party, it makes sense to Flash once to get hate on everything. However, then you should try to put out as much damage as possible to minimize the overall clear time.

Well, even with that, because of the low requirements, you can basically receive experience for doing almost nothing right now.

Yoshida: Instead of just repeating more stressful dungeons and eight-man end game content, I think that it's nice to have some more relaxed battles in a MMO once in a while. It's easy to participate in and provides a comfortable atmosphere where players can also chat with each other.

Yeah, I agree with that. Also, I like how in FATEs around level 45 there are some stronger bosses that do create some tension where if you aren't fighting properly you might be killed, along the lines of Svara in Coerthas, but yield a lot of experience points when defeated. There always seems to be too many people in FATEs, but I guess it will become balanced over time in the game. So anyway, I was expecting that FATE fights would become more challenging and a bit more tense, but you're saying that they're really just intended to be laid back.

Yoshida: Yeah, especially with patch 2.1 After the release of patch 2.1, FATEs won't be the only type of relatively carefree content, and we expect other content like treasure hunts where you just have to kill a couple of monsters without needing the help of others to take some of the burden off of leveling up through FATEs. Since there's also a chance to get other treasures and materials, though, we're hoping that treasure hunts may also get the markets to thrive. With the 24-man content of Crystal Tower, we also expect people to be able to get through it even with a couple of mistakes.

To go along with the end-game options, in addition to the Binding Coil of Bahamut, we'll have the extreme primals. The basis for the difficulty of these battles is somewhere between turns 4 and 5 of the Binding Coil. For the beastman daily quests, there will be certain things sold only by the beastmen, such as certain mounts, so we think people will want to take part in that every day as well.

I'm thinking after 2.1 is implemented, there may not be quite so many people in FATE battles, so you may want to change your original ideas. If you're only casting Flash you might wind up getting wiped out, so there might even be a little bit of tension in these battles.

In the future, I'm hoping people use the party recruitment system to put together FATE parties. With the exception of some larger FATEs, most of the FATEs are designed to be able to be cleared by a party of four people. Even if the area has nobody else, they're also designed so that you still get experience points even if the FATE fails.

Something like Svara is of course impossible for four people, and might not be worth your time. Another issue is that it takes some luck to get the appropriate number of people together. So we expect people to participate in the content based on the number of people they have.

I see. So the content will be relatively balanced with 2.1?

Yoshida: Yes, I think that would keep people motivated to play.

What about Behemoth or Odin where a huge number of people need to gather?

Yoshida: I don't think we'll be changing the amount of people that you need to get together. The reason for the battle isn't for the experience, but rather for the item rewards and the excitement of partaking in such a huge battle. Because there are so many people, though, Behemoth and Odin disappear, and correspondingly, this creates a state where they are unintentionally difficult to defeat. Sorry to have kept you waiting, but you should now be able to see them throughout the battle.

[Voyage1970]

Extreme Primals being Coil level difficulty actually has me excited. Kinda silly they are still planning on ilvl80 accessories from them though if that's the case but considering you can spam them I suppose it makes sense. I just hope the ilvl90 weapons that come from the weekly reward have some good secondary stats to offset the shitty ones on some relics.