This is a translation of the conversation primarily between Yoshida and voice actress Rie Tanaka with a few other people involved. I think this is mostly complete except for a few random lines of banter that I left out. Let me know if anything is unclear. I'll be re-reading for accuracy and making some edits, so link back here if you're copying sections somewhere else.
The whole top section is mostly banter, but there was a bit of new (although a bit bland) information in the Q&A she had with Yoshida after the initial back and forth.
Original source: http://www.famitsu.com/news/201509/02087479.html
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Voice actor Rie Tanaka practices the second level of savage Alexander every night! From the 14-hour live event
During the 14-hour live broadcast celebrating the second anniversary of Final Fantasy XIV's start of service. Let's take a look back at the show, which included plenty of special guests like voice actor Rie Tanaka who appeared in a stylish costume.
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On August 22, 2015, a 14-hour live broadcast for Final Fantasy XIV was held. Among the events in the broadcast, one of them was a chat with some special guests. The guests were kept secret until just before the broadcast, but they included community team lead Toshio Murouchi, producer and director Naoki Yoshida, and voice actress Rie Tanaka who plays the voices of both the Twin Adders' leader Kan-e-Senna and the primal Garuda.
Tanaka has been an avid player since the original FFXIV and is familiar to fans as she has appeared on numerous events related to FFXIV. This time, she appeared in an amazing costume.
From her appearance, it was clear that she was truly enjoying FFXIV's Heavensward expansion pack. As she is a serious player, she asked some sharp pointed questions, like Kan-e suddenly turning into Garuda, some of which seemed to leave Yoshida trembling with fear. The questions from the broadcast are below.
Playing through the main story of Heavensward
Rie Tanaka: Without going into too much detail to avoid spoilers, around when did you decide on Haurchefant's fate? You must have known before you did voice recording.
Naoki Yoshida: I've been trying to avoid talking about the story as much as possible so far (laughs). We decided the fates of each of the characters between patches 2.2 and 2.3. It was decided upfront, not based on the popularity of certain characters.
Tanaka: What about the members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn?
Yoshida: Y'shtola has already been helping the player, but perhaps some of them truly fell in battle.
Tanaka: So it's still supposed to be a mystery?
Yoshida: It is. When you're recording for Kan-e-Senna, we don't tell you all of the setting. The surrounding things are completely blocked out.
Tanaka: Well, I also play the game, so if I knew everything it wouldn't be as fun. It's a bit tough to record being completely isolated, though, so I ask Soken (Masayoshi Soken, sound director) to at least give me a brief idea.
Yoshida: Even though you join us every time for voice recording, you still don't know what's going on with the Scions.
Tanaka: Yeah, I don't know that.
Yoshida: It should be soon, though.
Tanaka: I'm looking forward to it.
Toshio Murouchi: Anything else to add?
Tanaka: I wonder how much Aymeric will appear in the future.
Yoshida: Aymeric is a character that would need to appear to continue the Ishgard storyline. It won't be so easy for him. After the story of Heavensward, the Dragonsong War between humans and dragons has not necessarily ended so neatly. Aymeric's standing and the troubles he faces are something we'd like to focus on in the future.
Setting the main story of Heavensward aside...
Tanaka: Before savage Alexander was implemented, I was working on the extreme primals. Although I was done with extreme Bismarck, I was repeating Ravana a few times at the beginning because normal Alexander was a bit tough without the Ravana weapons.
Yoshida: Once you started beating it, about how many times did you try it?
Tanaka: The items I wanted never came out of the treasure chest. It was a bit irritating. When I was going, the astrologian weapon dropped many times. In the end, I probably went more than 40 times.
Murouchi: Which jobs do you play?
Tanaka: I'm mostly focused on two jobs. My white mage and dragoon are level 60.
Murouchi: Did you get both of those Ravana weapons?
Tanaka: I have both.
Yoshida: So you're really focused on maxing out your jobs, not just getting to the level cap.
Tanaka: I've already started going for esoterics equipment...
Yoshida: Even though you're extremely busy.
Tanaka: Even with that, FFXIV is part of my life. I still like to log in and play.
Murouchi: You've probably been asked this before, but what's a day in your life like?
Tanaka: I usually wake up around 5:30 and try to do some monster hunts. Although recently the number of players doing it has been pretty sparse, it's still not too bad during primetime at night and the monsters die quickly. But I like to get up early to try that. Then I have breakfast, and if I have time and I'm not too sleepy before work, I'll do dungeon or a trial.
Yoshida: That's a lot to do before work.
Tanaka: Well, esoterics is important! I usually get back from work between 6 and 7pm, so I eat dinner and I log in around 9:30 since I do savage Alexander every day around 10pm.
Yoshida: So you sit around waiting for 30 minutes before that?
Tanaka: Yeah, I wait to start. I like spend the time to calm down and prepare some medicines and food. We hopefully start at 10pm and we practice until around 12 or 1am.
Yoshida: Hang on... so you sleep for 4 - 4 1/2 hours?
Tanaka: I do, yeah.
Yoshida: Actually, that's more than I imagined.
Tanaka: Sometimes I'll get on and my friends will say "you're up early." So I'll say "so are you!" (laughs). I ask what they're doing, and sometimes they're leveling crafting as they say its better to do it in the early morning. I'll go and do the monster hunts while having conversations like that.
Murouchi: Sounds packed. It must be tough to decide when to take a break.
Tanaka: I like to keep going, but it's important to be realistic.
[[random chit-chat, not translated]]
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Question 1: Repairing friends' equipment
Tanaka: In FFXIV 1.0 you were able to repair other people's equipment - do you plan to bring that back? I have friends who started with Heavensward. They don't have all of their crafters capped, and if they want to do Alexander savage, it would be helpful if I could repair their equipment in the battle area, and maybe help to deepen the bonds between players.
Yoshida: Adding that function in field areas would be very easy to do. However, the reason we haven't done this is because in Duty Finder, with matching done across servers, it would create an additional load because more parameters would have to be exchanged. We've gotten a lot of requests to bring it back, but we need to look at it in more detail. As a result, you'll need to be a little patient...
Question 2: Bypassing Faust after defeating him once
Tanaka: There are many people who haven't yet cleared the first level of savage Alexander. Every time you go out and re-enter, you need to defeat Faust again, and you don't get anything for defeating him. I think you should allow it to be bypassed after defeating it once so that the struggle is with the real boss rather than Faust.
Yoshida: There are a few reasons why we don't have a checkpoint after beating Faust. What happens if you challenge the area with different members? Things like that. If you defeat him with one group of eight people, but then one person leaves to go to sleep, the replacement person may not yet have defeated him. We'd like to prevent this from happening with the specifications, so it's not as easy as it sounds and will take a little longer to resolve.
Tanaka: What?!
Yoshida: I think if you increase your item level it solves ths issue. (Seeing Tanaka's facial expression) It's a feeling like "not there yet."
Tanaka: I see. So you're saying that you should raise your item level somehow. Over time you can raise it with Esoterics, but it's tough (laughs). You have to beat him in 2 minutes 30 seconds.
Yoshida: Since Faust also has the role of checking whether a party is properly set up for taking on the first level, that creates another problem around what to do if a member changes, so it will be difficult to adjust. We'll make use of this kind of feedback in the future like we did when we decided to make both a normal and hard mode of the raid replacing Bahamut's Coil from the 2.0 series. We'll take public opinions like yours into account when we design the next portion of Alexander, but perhaps there will be another sensei then (laughs).
Tanaka: (Laughs)
Question 3: Mounts with 3 riders?
Tanaka: I like the variety of mounts. You can get a Draught Chocobo from the friend recruitment campaign and there's also the Ceremony Chocobo exclusive to players who have Eternally Bonded. Will there be any two or three seat mounts that you can fly that you'll be adding in the future?
Yoshida: You want a 3-seat mount?
Tanaka: A 3-seat mount, or maybe a 4-seater!
Yoshida: Since you can ride the Draught Chocobo with friends, we're working on making it a flying mount. It will be set up so flight won't be available if the rider cannot fly.
Tanaka: What about other multiple rider mounts?
Yoshida: Well, I can't say no.
Tanaka: For example, a mini airship.
Yoshida: So you want us to add more and more of them?
Tanaka: Add Hraesvelgr and Nidhogg as optional item mounts. They can also be 3-seaters!
Yoshida: I doubt you could ride Nidhogg, I think he's get pretty angry. Well, maybe you could ride him dangling from a spear stuck into his body? But then Nidhogg would be flying on his own.
Tanaka: Still, it would be good if you could add large dragon mount at some point.
Yoshida: The development team is watching this broadcast and I'm sure they are listening to the things you're requesting. I think they're working hard already, so I'm being careful not to make any extra promises which create more work for them.
Question 4: Cloud's motorcycle
Tanaka: You've already added the Strife gear (from Cloud in FFVII) to the game. It would be cool if you could add a mount like his motorcycle as well.
Yoshida: I think I talked about this somewhere. Actually, it's been a while. We had about 14-15 members of the staff in the development booth. It had been reported that it was completed and everyone had grim faces. We haven't touched it in a while, but it was made very well. It's set up to be properly tilted while you're standing on board, and straighten up when you start running forward. But it looks slow...
Tanaka: You can't make it faster?
Yoshida: Then we'd have to make all of the mounts faster. The bike Cloud rides is called Fenrir. It tilts to an angle when you turn, but it only goes about 15 km/h.
Tanaka: Yeah, that's not very fast... (laughs)
Yoshida: If you ride on dirt it also creates dust clouds.
Tanaka: You can't set the speed of different mounts individually?
Yoshida: If we did, then people would only ride the fast ones.
Tanaka: So why not make all the mounts faster? I think players would be happy about that.
Yoshida: The collision detection data wouldn't read fast enough and you'd fall through the environment.
Tanaka: (Laughs)
Yoshida: The flying mounts travel faster through the air, but they still have to read the of object data from the ground. If this loads too late, it can penetrate through the polygons. When I spoke with the staff about this, we decided that we could easily make Fenrir limited to the Ishgard areas which would allow us to make it the same speed as flying mounts. But then, there would still be a difference with other ground mounts, so what would we do? We have some things in mind, like limiting the bike to players who have access to flying in a certain area because the bike can go as fast as flying mounts, but we don't have a solution yet.
Tanaka: So it might get wasted even though it's already been created.
Yoshida: The people who made it worked really hard.
Tanaka: I want to see!
Yoshida: I could show you right away if you just wanted to look at it, but it's really slow. Since it may not get implemented in the client, we don't want to show it at the developers' booth.
Question 5: Buying and selling equipment dyes
Tanaka For certain rare dyes which you can only get from retainer Quick Exploration, sometimes it's hard to get any of them at all. Can you make it so that they can be bought and sold?
Yoshida: I heard this earlier, but they're supposed to be luck-based.
Tanaka: That's right! More ventures down the drain (laughs). Last time my retainer brought back another fish I wanted to say "you're fired!" (laughs)
Yoshida: We'll be increasing the number of rare dyes again in patch 3.1. We'd also like to make it possible to trade the ones you can get from ventures. These will be the same colors, but we'll be increasing the line-up of dyes available for purchase on Mogstation. The items you obtain in game should be able to be distributed to other people in the game, but the ones purchased from Mogstation shouldn't be sellable.
Tanaka: Can you tell me what kinds of colors you'll be adding?
Yoshida: They'll be named "Dark so-and-so." We haven't really had certain dark colors yet.
Question 6: Allowing for more detailed dying
Tanaka: There's some equipment where certain portions don't get dyed, but I think this could allow for more originality from players. For example, you could have a more detailed color scheme allowing a separate color to be dyed for the trim.
From here, lead designer Takeo Suzuki was invited in to answer the question instead of Yoshida.
Takeo Suzuki: That might be tough. What are you thinking?
Tanaka: Also I think there are players who might want to change the color of the equipment, but not the trim. Would this be difficult to accomplish?
Suzuki: It's a cool idea, so I'll see. It's not just the main color, you also want to be able to change the color of the trim details. I understand what you want, but it might be tough to pull off.
Tanaka: Oh?
Suzuki: We didn't think we'd have a situation like this, but we want to make it more enjoyable. However, there's also a memory problem with the packets. We can change the equipment but the amount of information we can fit into a packet is already set and we've already used that up. In order to see the dyed equipment on other players, information from every individual player has to be downloaded from the server, so it could become impossible to add even more.
Yoshida: In other words, if we increase the amount of information transmitted from one player to another, there would be an increasing amount of data being transferred on the network... (looking at Tanaka's facial expression) I'll say it's possible, but it might be tough. (laughs)
Tanaka: Oh, well it is what it is. That's a shame. I understand...
Yoshida: While we have Takeo here, do you have any other questions about graphics?
Question 7: Why are there no long hairstyles?
Tanaka: While I was working on the hairstyle design contest, I was wondering why there aren't any longer ponytails. I know there's already a ponytail, but something a little longer. Also, bangs are important! I'd like to have bangs that don't go down to the eyes. For players who want hairstyles with different bangs and main hairstyle, can you maybe one day divide them into separate items?
Suzuki: Um... I understand your feelings.
Tanaka: Hold on!
Suzuki: ...This also sounds a bit tough to pull off.
Tanaka: Huh? Really? There's already a hairstyle that has a headband as part of it. Would it be tough to remove it?
Suzuki: We can prepare a hairstyle where the headband is removed. But we also receive instructions in-house such as don't create a version of this hairstyle without a headband. For example, orders might come from Maehiro (main scenario writer Maehiro Kazutoyo). We also want to take the opinions of what most players want into account when we look into new hairstyles, which is what we're doing now. If there are a lot of people who want a hairstyle with the headband removed, we can make it, but I can't make any promises on timing.
Tanaka: What about implementing longer ponytails?
Suzuki: It would be a little difficult to go too long without making other adjustments. I don't know for sure right now.
Tanaka: And what about bangs above the eyes?
Suzuki: I'll see about that. I'll bring that idea back and we can review it internally.
Tanaka: I'll look forward to it.
Suzuki: Well clearly you've been enjoying it (referring to her Thavnairian Bustier) (laughs). Since you like it so much, we'll keep working hard at it.
Question 8: About housing
Tanaka: There haven't been any gardening adjustments recently, so I'm anxious to know what will happen in the future.
Yoshida: Right now we're in the planning stages for new crops, and we're also working allowing players to grow things in pots in their individual rooms. We're working on those in conjunction.
Tanaka: That's good. Perhaps this will make more people utilize private rooms. Outside of that, I've been playing around with the airship a bit, but it's pretty inconvenient that there is no Summoning Bell for retainers in the basement workshop. Can you add one in the future?
Yoshida: I can understand why that would be useful if you're doing airship voyages. I did see a specification to add a Summoning Bell to the basement workshop and I told the staff that was a good idea. But I'm not sure when it will be implemented (Editor's note: We received confirmation that it will be implemented in patch 3.1).
Tanaka: I think most people agree that the amount of materials needed to create an airship is very high. Will you be changing the requirements in the future?
Yoshida: We'll keep an eye on it long term.
Tanaka: Understood. Also, those with more fashion sense have been enjoying all of the hairstyles and dyes that are being added.
Yoshida: We mentioned in the 24th live producer letter that you'll be able to use glamour prisms to equip glamour combined head/body gear in patch 3.1. It takes time, but we want to increase the amount of fashion items little by little. Kasuga (Hideyuki Kasuga, lead programmer) is working on optimizing the packet problems. We'd like to continue working on these things one by one.
Murouchi: Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?
Tanaka: Well, after the talk about astrologians in the producer letter, I thought I would complain a bit.
Yoshida: (Laughs)
Tanaka: Doing Alexander savage with an astrologian and white mage, it seems like astrologian's ability to recover quickly is not so high. I wasn't expecting adjustments, though, so thanks in advance.
Yoshida: (Nods and motions at Mitsutoshi Gondai, battle planner)
Murouchi: The astrologian adjustments will be added in patch 3.07 next Tuesday (August 25).
Yoshida: I'm scared...
Murouchi: It's scary, but our next meeting with Tanaka might be even scarier (laughs).
Yoshida: Well, Tanaka has been voice acting for FFXIV for more than two years now. There will be a new primal added soon, are you interested?
Tanaka: Definitely! I'd be willing to do more.
Yoshida: Garuda was considerably weaker. The Warrior of Light has become incomprehensibly powerful.
Tanaka: Yeah. Since Garuda is no longer needed, I'd like to be voice a tougher one.
Yoshida: I see... If something comes up in the future, I'll let you know.
Murouchi: Like Ravana...
Tanaka: I was surprised. I mean, it sounds like there's another voice. "Chandrahas!" How does that sound? Different? (laughs)
[[few more random lines of chit-chat, not going to bother translating]]