FFXIV Patch 2.1 Press Interviews with Yoshida

[Kaisha]

In this patch, we'll be implementing a process where if you back up to a position that forces the camera to get closer, once you move away from that position, the camera will return to its original follow distance.

Thank fucking god.

[Obsidian]

You mean I can tank Anantaboga without spinning the camera around backwards? Update of the year, all years.

I just pull it around the pillar and face it into the wall so I don't need to deal with the camera retardation. But then people have no idea where to stand and freak out because they can't park behind the pillar and go AFK, so you end up dealing with party retardation instead.

[Niiro]

I'm still waiting for the fix that keeps the camera position where you put it after walls/terrain DO shove the camera up my ass.

So fucking tired of having to zoom the camera out manually in the middle of a fight.

Camera didn't do this in XI, not in 1.0, and in XIV there's an option for it to remain where you set it to but only for standard controls for some fucking reason.

What the shit.

[Scythiroth]

There is an option to "save" the camera position at whatever point you have it and reset it back to that with a keybind of your choosing (which is how I currently deal with this nonsense), but yeah, would be nice if it just did this on its own.

[Sho]

Thank fucking god.

^

Those damn straightaways in WP, lol.

[Slycer]

Part 7 of....maybe 10?

Note: A previous interview said 10 mytho per day, this one says 5 mytho per day. Not sure which is right, but they were both done around the same time (actually all these interviews probably happened in a row on a press day or something) so I'm surprised there's a conflict between the two.

Highlights:
-Selecting and updating dungeons for hard mode
-Subscription rewards
-Vanity system

-----

So next up, let's talk about the three new dungeons. First, can you tell me why you chose Copperbell Mines and Haukke Manor as the two hard mode dungeons?

Yoshida: The original plan for dungeon updates until version 3.0 was to add three new dungeons with each patch - one completely new dungeon and two hard dungeons. We didn't decide the hard dungeons for 2.1 right away because we ran into some unexpected challenges at first, so we tried to pick the ones that would be easiest to make into hard mode dungeons. We planned to use areas from old FFXIV like Dzemael and areas with gimmicks like Toto Rak later on. Because of the design of those areas the difficulty and cost to remake them would be quite high, so we decided to look at the dungeons made newly for A Realm Reborn.

Those were too large?

Yoshida: Yeah. The dungeons from old FFXIV were pretty long, so we had to cut them down for new FFXIV and that was challenging. Also, the specifications in general had to be updated for new FFXIV, so it was pretty difficult to change the atmosphere.

Because of that, we chose Copperbell Mines and Haukke Manor. Haukke Manor is a relatively fixed path with various partitions around, so it was easy to change up the structure. In the original level design there were already blockages to the route, so because it's a two story structure, it was easy to change the overall feel of the dungeon by just changing the progression route.

That was the first hard mode dungeon we worked on, and we got a first impression that we did make it quite hard. The team in charge also wanted to work on Copperbell from the start, opening up some parts that were cut out, and adding some new gimmicks.

Are you talking about the gimmick like defeating the slime using the bombs?

Yoshida: Actually for all the hard mode dungeons, the gimmicks will be different. It won't simply be that the enemies are stronger and with more HP, but there will also be different gimmicks and strategies involved.

So the bombs are gone, will they be replaced with something else?

Yoshida: Yes, the progression will be totally different, so please stay tuned.

Is this why you'll get rare equipment and philosophy and mythology tokens as rewards?

Yoshida: Yes. For people who got bored of Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace, these three dungeons should be considered the next step. So there will be five dungeons that will be accessible for players at or near item level 50 once the patch is released.

After the patch is released, the three newly added dungeons will be the most efficient way to collect tomestones, and Amdapor and Wanderer's will fall slightly below these, but are easier to complete.

I'm surprised that Amdapor and Wanderer's will be below them.

Yoshida: Yes, I think that people who stopped at job-specific equipment could comfortably get through Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace first.

The current state of the game is substantially centers around instanced dungeons, do you plan for this to end at some point?

Yoshida: For weapons and armor, since there will be more content, there will be more different items available, so there will be many more choices. There will still be other options for those who see efficiency for mythology equipment.

When I talked about the duty roulette before, I mentioned that you'd get about five mythology daily for participating in the low-level roulette and I heard a lot of reactions that this wasn't really a motivation at all to go to low level duty finder. For those who are just looking for efficiency, of course that's the reaction that we'd get, and you shouldn't expect that you'd be getting a lot of mythology in a simple dungeon. Rather, if you're thinking about other things, such as collecting Darklight or other Philosophy items for equipment on a new class, you'd be able to do this at a low level. If you only go once a day, you'll still obtain 200 philosophy and 5 mythology.

Since the low level dungeons are relatively simple, it should build your confidence for higher level things if you do it every day. Also, as you get the five mythology a day, at some point you might notice that you've accumulated a bunch of mythology and you might start looking at the kinds of equipment you can get with mythology. After you build some confidence, then maybe you'll try out Amdapor Keep or Wanderer's Palace.

Well, that'll be five more than I have (laughs). So for people who find it tough now, they should wait a bit longer until patch 2.1.

Yoshida: Yep. However, today, there are a lot of choices for entertainment, and we're competing for customers with non-gaming entertainment as well. So there are some people who may not have been willing to wait for a patch to fix something. For those people, we'll be sending out some notices like "now that we've added this interesting feature, why not come check it out?" and hopefully some people will decide to come back for a little while and feel better about the game. Compared to when when the old FFXIV began charging, we have triple the amount of customers. We hope this will continue steadily if we manage the MMORPG well by continuing to steadily output content that players find interesting.

By the way, in the LIVE letter, you mentioned that there were rewards for subscribing for 90 days, 180 days, and 270 days... and more and more. Do you think this has any effect?

Yoshida: Yeah, I think it has a rather significant effect actually. For customers that continue to subscribe, they will continue to obtain new rewards.

So it's mainly to motivate people to keep paying for the game.

Yoshida: Yeah, that's right.

Will you continue to add new rewards in the future in 90 day increments, like for 360 and 450 days?

Yoshida: It won't necessarily be in 90 day intervals, but we'll keep adding new ones.

Will you be adding any new mounts or minions?

Yoshida: I think the reward for the first anniversary (360 days) will be a really good one. We're looking into options now.

What kind of options?

Yoshida: That's a secret (laughs).

So you were originally planning to add the vanity system, but it was postponed to 2.2. Why was it postponed?

Yoshida: We simply didn't get it done in time.

I was able to obtain all of the Lightning equipment in the FFXIII collaboration event, and although the equipment was very well designed, since it was level 13, it wasn't very useful to me. I was hoping that the vanity system would be added in 2.1 so that I could dress like Lightning.

Yoshida: Yes, I understand what you mean very well (laughs). I really wanted to get it in, but it needed a lot of debugging. We couldn't just force it in.

Do you have to test all equipment individually?

Yoshida: We won't be doing it all over again. But there are a lot of tasks that we have to make sure work correctly such as the item level and other armor specifications which we want to make sure we carefully debug, so we pushed it off to patch 2.2.

[Sho]

Yoshida: I've seen many times "I avoided it on my screen!" I think if someone steps on a trap, they sometimes shout "but I avoided it on my screen!" just so fellow guild members don't get angry with them. Then there are those members who will counter with "I think you need to reinstall, your game is glitched" (laughs).

Yoshida, da bes.

[Niiro]

There is an option to "save" the camera position at whatever point you have it and reset it back to that with a keybind of your choosing (which is how I currently deal with this nonsense), but yeah, would be nice if it just did this on its own.

There's no Home key on my controller.

[Carth]

Yoshida's example on Duty Roulette is quite perplexing.

[Voyage1970]

When Yoshida talks about the new dungeons being more tome efficient than WP or AK, I wonder if he's comparing it to current speed run tactics? My guess is no so I wonder how much Philo/Myth they plan on making the Hard Modes + Pharos give.

[miokomioko]

Then people figure out all the Pharos/Copperbell/Haukke gimmicks and those end up being run just as speedy all day erry day.

[Gokulo]

When Yoshida talks about the new dungeons being more tome efficient than WP or AK, I wonder if he's comparing it to current speed run tactics? My guess is no so I wonder how much Philo/Myth they plan on making the Hard Modes + Pharos give.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that the majority of players can't really do those if you made some statistics

[Spider-Dan]

I'm still waiting for the fix that keeps the camera position where you put it after walls/terrain DO shove the camera up my ass.

So fucking tired of having to zoom the camera out manually in the middle of a fight.

That's what he's describing in this patch.

Camera didn't do this in XI, not in 1.0, and in XIV there's an option for it to remain where you set it to but only for standard controls for some fucking reason.

I still don't understand why they force you to walk (instead of run) backwards in standard controls.

[Alkar]

When Yoshida talks about the new dungeons being more tome efficient than WP or AK, I wonder if he's comparing it to current speed run tactics? My guess is no so I wonder how much Philo/Myth they plan on making the Hard Modes + Pharos give.

He's talking about tome rewards. AK will be nerfed so they'll likely lower the myth tomes from 40 to 30 (it'll be on par with WP) while new ones will likely drop 40-50.

[Corrderio]

As long as it breathes some life into dungeons I'll be happy. I never liked AK and I dread doing WP now since I've burned myself out on farming mythos from there.

[Aelfinn]

As long as it breathes some life into dungeons I'll be happy. I never liked AK and I dread doing WP now since I've burned myself out on farming mythos from there.

i agree with this so much!

every AK i've done over the last month, people seem to have so much trouble staying alive on the damn wall… and i have to end up soloing the last 10-15% on WAR, always ends up being far too close.

WP is just /doze… need more variety in my game!

I personally don't give a shit if WP still ends up being faster to cap myth weekly or not, I'd rather do some fresh content to keep my playtime interesting.

[Slycer]

Part 8 of (i think) 10

Interesting stuff in this one. (Very) minor story spoiler in the questions about the story section, so be warned.

Highlights:
-Crystal Tower
-New story content (return to Qarn wtfbbq)
-Ultima Weapon (hard) info

-----

So, I have a few questions about Crystal Tower. First of all, one thing I noticed that you mentioned in the LIVE show was The Forbidden Land, Eureka. What kind of content are you planning for that?

Yoshida: If you've played FFIII, you might be able to imagine it to some extent. As you play through the Labyrinth of the Ancients, I wonder if you might be able to guess what I mean about Eureka.

Oho... will there be any contents such as legendary weapons that FFIII fans might be expecting?

Yoshida: Well, there will be a proper story, including a test before entering the Labyrinth, like in FFIII. Even after you enter the Labyrinth, I think there are some things which might make you grin.

Regarding the Crystal Tower, right now we can only enter the early turns of the Binding Coil of Bahamut - is this similar in Crystal Tower?

Yoshida: The initial state of Crystal Tower will include four bosses. Once all four bosses are complete, the raid will be clear. You'll get to enjoy more of the Tower in 2.3.

How much content is there?

Yoshida: That's difficult to answer. It will take hard work of 24 people to progress through, so it will depend on whether you get through smoothly or whether you struggle.

Well, for example, the Binding Coil of Bahamut is divided up into five separate turns, is there anything like that for the Crystal Tower?

Yoshida: It's just one. Basically this is like the first tier of the Crystal Tower. The Crystal Tower itself will be a four tiered structure, but the amount of content in each tier is different than the amount of content in one turn of the Binding Coil.

Well, this is planned for 24 people to take 120 minutes, so it seems like it will be the longest content in new FFXIV so far.

Yoshida: Yes, because it's a large dungeon and there are many players involved, we set this to be longer to give extra time for players to discuss strategy.

So this will be about an hour if it goes smoothly? Should we think about it similarly to Amdapor Keep?

Yoshida: It's definitely longer than Amdapor. For four person instance dungeons the path is mid-boss, mid-boss, boss. For Crystal Tower, it's boss, boss, boss, boss... with trap, trap, trap in between.

Oh, that sounds like a lot. I guess it's content that I'll have to wait until I have more time to dedicate on the weekends.

Yoshida: Yes, I think a lot of people will be doing it on the weekends. Either that or maybe you could gather at 10pm on weekdays and go to bed by the time it's over. That's how much content we're planning it to be.

So another key word that stuck out to me in the recent LIVE letter was Leviathan - will he also be appearing in 2.1?

Yoshida: Leviathan will be in 2.2.

In what form will he appear?

Yoshida: He'll be part of the main scenario.

So there will be more main scenario in 2.2?

Yoshida: Yes, there's also some in 2.1 - we called it A Realm Awoken because we wanted to directly reference the title of the main story.

So at the end of the main storyline, we found out that the Ascians were still around and the name of a new character was revealed. Will the continuation of this be found in 2.1?

Yoshida: The Ascians will make an appearance in 2.1, and one villain who was missing from the main storyline up to level 50 will make an appearance as well.

The original storyline was planned for about 50 hours, so what are you thinking it will take this time?

Yoshida: For the story? A dungeon is part of it, so it's difficult to answer.

Is entering Crystal Tower part of it as well?

Yoshida: No, entering Crystal Tower is part of a whole separate storyline.

Will it be one of the other new dungeons like Pharos Sirius?

Yoshida: It's Qarn. Rather than involving the hard mode dungeons, there is a quest involving the normal Sunken Temple of Qarn. The intent is that you'll be able to level sync back to Qarn, so you should find it easier than it was the first time.

Oh... I have some memories of Qarn that aren't so good. That's one of the dungeons I never wanted to repeat (laughs).

Yoshida: We'll be making a few adjustments to the speed of the lasers on the boss, because they were faster than the ones from Ultima Weapon (laughs). While we were making the contents of A Realm Reborn, Qarn was one of the last dungeons we worked on, and it feels like a lot of people have gotten stuck on it.

So we should try it once again with the newly adjusted difficulty?

Yoshida: Yeah. I think there are still many people that have not cleared Qarn. That's part of the reason you'll have a task that sends you back to Qarn once.

A lot of people never went because you can keep going without clearing it.

Yoshida: Yes, you dont need to clear it to go on with the main scenario.

So how much main story content will you be adding?

Yoshida: In terms of just the main story, if we consider the amount of story quests that follow the original story added in 2.1, I guess it's about 10 hours or so. However, it's definitely shorter if you use teleportation everywhere and skip the cutscenes and dialogue, so probably closer to 4-5 hours in that case. This is in terms of main scenario content only, of course.

And you'll also be adding story in other types of content.

Yoshida: That's right. We'll have the Hildibrand story, the Crystal Tower story, the story of the extreme primals, and story in the beastman daily quests, in addition to the main scenario. If we include all of these different stories, I think there's at least 30 hours of new content. And who knows how many times it will take groups to clear the extreme primals, so it's actually kind of difficult to answer.

So what's the overall volume of patch 2.1?

Yoshida: I'm thinking under the premise that you play through the content in its entirety that it would be something like 300 hours. If you just rush through all the content and only spend around five hours each in Wolves' Den and player housing, then maybe it's as low as about 80 hours. Either way, you can think of it as basically getting a new game for the holidays, it'll be at least that much content.

At the end of the primals trailer, Ultima Weapon came up and you said something like "What's this? Is this a mistake??" It was pretty convincing though, so I couldn't even tell whether it was scripted or not. Did you really not expect that?

Yoshida: Oh, totally unexpected. Isn't that the end boss of the main story?

Unexpected... really?

Yoshida: I'll leave it to your imagination (laughs).

So does this mean that the hard Ultima Weapon will be the final boss of 2.1?

Yoshida: No, that's not it. Ultima Weapon will be separate content. It will be part of the story involving the Wandering Minstrel, and we think it'll be a lot of fun.

Since the quest involves fighting the hard mode Ultima Weapon, will you have to have defeated the hard mode Primals previously?

Yoshida: We're not putting that condition on it, you'll only have to have finished the main scenario.

So the degree of difficulty isn't that high?

Yoshida: Well, I think it'll be in the same ballpark as the hard primals.

In the video, I saw a lot more flashy lasers and other attacks than there were in the story battle.

Yoshida: Yes, that's a brutal attack. However, they were actually in there when we first designed the battle.

So you left them out of the main quest battle.

Yoshida: Yeah, that would be too hard. It would be very interesting, but difficult. For a 60 minute, 8-man dungeon, we didn't want to break any hearts at the end, so we removed some of those gimmicks temporarily.

Yeah. It was a lot simpler than I imagined it would have been from the name.

Yoshida: After getting through a long dungeon, we didn't want to surprise anyone with a boss much tougher than the one we have. So this time, there will be some extra stuff added.

The rewards haven't been revealed yet... what will you get?

Yoshida: I'll leave it as a secret. It has exclusive drops. I think you'll like them.

[Corrderio]

If you've played FFIII, you might be able to imagine it to some extent. As you play through the Labyrinth of the Ancients, I wonder if you might be able to guess what I mean about Eureka.

We'll unlock Nina/Sage there and be OP as fuck?

i agree with this so much!

every AK i've done over the last month, people seem to have so much trouble staying alive on the damn wall… and i have to end up soloing the last 10-15% on WAR, always ends up being far too close.

WP is just /doze… need more variety in my game!

I personally don't give a shit if WP still ends up being faster to cap myth weekly or not, I'd rather do some fresh content to keep my playtime interesting.

For me it's more of I can barely focus. I hate to admit it, but I've lost my edge as a PLD from burning myself out on WP. AK I never cared about (even though I wish I could get the Hoplite Crown when I get Valor/Allagan body), but the burn out carries over there.

[miokomioko]

one villain who was missing from the main storyline up to level 50 will make an appearance as well.

Nael? Travanchet?

[Chamaan]

For reals on the dungeons being played out. I've eaten shit twice on the wall this week capping myths just because I was yawning and didn't catch the repel warning. AK gear is getting downgraded so that's not so important anymore (enjoy looking for the equivalent from Pharos, everyone)!

I'm actually kind of psyched that EX Ultima is going to be his own separate thing from the primals. Would be good if he dropped ilevel 85 stuff as an incremental jump for new the primal line. Just find it interesting that the EX version is basically just the Director's Cut.