Thread: Famitsu Interview Translation - Yoshida on 3.1 Impressions    

Interesting in his Diadem discussion that he seems to heavily hint that there's a lot more to the system behind popping Fresh Tracks than simply defeating monsters over and over at one location.

Edit: I've added in the translation of the first part about the Korean version and Haurchefant's characterization.

Source: http://www.famitsu.com/news/201511/24093759.html

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FFXIV is hot among Korean fans this year!

When we spoke to you at the Korean media gathering back in August, you mentioned that the excitement level with Korean players talking about the game was pretty high. How is it now?

Yoshida: It's still hot. Like in the United States, the players here aren't afraid of making themselves heard. The staff here were leading the crowd in shouting "FF!" like crazy. I'm sorry we got so loud, it was probably an inconvenience for the neighboring exhibitors... (smiles). Perhaps it's because the game hadn't yet launched at last year's G-STAR, but I've been asked to take a lot more photographs and give a lot more signatures now that the official FFXIV service has started. I was also asked to sign a lot of merchandise we haven't released here yet by Korean players who have already been playing the global version in Japan and came to Busan.


I had a chance to try the extreme Titan primal battle with Korean players yesterday (November 13, 2015).

Yoshida: Along with Cho [[sp?]], the producer for local operations, I logged into the Korean public world and I joined Duty Finder groups for the extreme Titan, Garuda, and Leviathan fights. We had a mix of players who knew that we were streaming and some who weren't watching and were feeling confused (laughs). Once the fight actually started, Cho fell off a cliff and died. Cho was joking around and told everyone to vote abandon. By the way, I'm sorry about the one time I was casting to break him out of the gaol and the timing of my Blizzard III was a little too quick and he couldn't avoid the Landslide and falling off... (laughs).

Did you win in the end?

Yoshida: The second time we tried, we had Titan down to 1% but it was just me and a dragoon left, everyone else was dead. The dragoon got trapped in a granite gaol so I did a Swiftcast Flare on Titan to try to kill him, but we wound up losing. I think if I had Manawall up I would have been able to take a hit and get the Dragoon freed... it's frustrating to think about (laughs).

How did the players watching react?

Yoshida: People could tell I was moving with a gamepad from watching. There were a few shouts from the audience when I used Manawall to avoid the Landslide after the two adds appear. It came up on the stream also, although most veterans already know that trick with Manawall. Also, since it's a pain to move around, I was heavily using Aetherial Manipulation (laughs).

Sounds like you were trying to play fancy (laughs).

Yoshida: I did the same at Gamescom in Germany, I'm trying to appeal to more customers so if I have the room to do it, I try.

Mouse and keyboard operation is the norm in Korea, so were you playing on gamepad to try to buck that trend?

Yoshida: Actually, I was planning on trying it out using a gaming keypad but we couldn't get the driver settings to work so I used a gamepad (laughs).

Well, you might appeal to some players by challenging their thoughts on gaming keypads and get them to make the switch.

Yoshida: In Korea, even with online games evolving, many people still are dedicated to using a mouse and keyboard setup. There are gaming keypads available and other options available, it's just a suggestion.


Haurchefant in the North American version is an ordinary young knight.

Can you talk about any content from the Korean live producer letter which will air on November 15?

Yoshida: The Korean version management team will explain the status of the current version and should announce the publication timing for patch 2.4 for the Korean version. I'm sure there will be questions from players, so I'll be around to answer them. We'll also talk about the development of unique events and equipment for the Korean version and the progress for those. Finally, we'll talk about the difficulty of representing Haurchefant in the Korean version due to differences between the North American and Japanese versions.

Huh? There's a difference?

Yoshida: Well, it's our mistake, it was unintentional. At first glance, Haurchefant is just a young Elezen knight, but he becomes a character with much more depth. He has been like that since his first appearance in the Japanese version. However, the localization team thought that some of his nuances may not be appealing to a North American audience, so some of Haurchefant's expression was "suppressed." This led to a difference in representation of the character in patches 2.1 and 2.2.

And it ended up being a sizeable difference.

Yoshida: Around the time of patch 2.2 for the global version, we started seeing comparison videos on the North American forum showing the differences between the North American and Japanese version cutscenes with Haurchefant. It was an embarrassing way to find out about that, and after I checked with the team, they told me that that the changes were made on purpose, but they had good intentions.

I see.

Yoshida: The thought among the English team was that they wanted to convey his personality but avoid any controversy around his sexual orientation - there was definitely no malicious intent. However, by doing this without consulting with us first, it was unpopular among overseas fans who respect the Japanese version as the original. We talked about this situation on the forum, and in patches 2.3 and later we made adjustments to his personality in the English version to bring it closer to the Japanese version. However, since the cutscenes in the Korean version so far are based only on the English version, there's also a shift from the Japanese version here. Since the original reason for this was an inexcusable lack of communication across our team, I'll be talking about it at the live letter tomorrow.

How will you address this in the game specifically?

Yoshida: For the Korean version of patch 2.4, all of the cutscenes related to Haurchefant were re-produced based on the Japanese version. For those who are already past them, you'll be able to watch the reworked versions in The Unending Journey.


The timing for introducing Esoterics weapon upgrade items will be determined based on the current situation.

Let's switch back to the Japan version for some questions. Do you have any plans to announce patch 3.15 elements, like at a live producer letter?

Yoshida: Since patch 3.15 is a minor update to add the Anima weapons and St. Endalim Scholasticate story, we have no plans for a live letter before the patch. We have a few plans for the next letter after the patch 3.15 release, so hang on a bit until the official announcement.

Is this when you'll make the upgrade item for Esoterics weapons available for exchange, or will that be after the release of 3.15?

Yoshida: We're watching the clear situation with the Knights of the Round primal battle. Since the item level of the reward weapons there is 205, it will depend on how many people obtain that.

I see. By the way, how many clan mark logs will you need to exchange for the item to upgrade Esoterics weapons?

Yoshida: That's still a secret (laughs).

Oh well (laughs). You mentioned earlier that patch 3.15 would be released by the end of the year, have you narrowed that down any more?

Yoshida: It will be in the mid to late December range, but we'll be delivering it before Christmas.


Lotting Rules for Sea of Clouds Exploration

In a previous interview, you mentioned that you would be focused on gauging players' interest about aspects the Diadem exploration. How are you currently feeling about this?

Yoshida: First of all, we had a much higher percentage than expected participating in the content. There weren't enough instances from the first day and many people got stuck waiting for a server reservation, so we increase that amount in the emergency maintenance on November 12.

It increased a lot.

Yoshida: With FFXIV now, within a single server process thread, we have a technique called "instance of an instance" which allows us to create multiple instances. By taking advantage of this, we were able to increase the amount quite efficiently. I don't know the exact trend for the future, but just taking a look at the weekend now (11/14-11/15), we're predicting that there will always be at least 5 digits of players in The Diadem. This is great since many of the players are participating in tht content.

If nothing else, the high performance armor you can obtain is a big attraction.

Yoshida: Once people started reporting IL210 equipment drops on the internet, I was relieved to see that the rate seemed to meet expectations.

Right now, it seems like the main way of handling it is simply to collect equipment by defeating stronger enemies. Do you have any other recommended play styles?

Yoshida: Diadem is not the type of content where we would want to propose something. Since you can enjoy this with anyone, there aren't many restrictions. Within the community, we've seen some opinions that players on gatherer classes should not have the ability to lot since they are doing their own thing, and this has been actively discussed. Rather than introducing a specification which doesn't allow people who don't participate in battle to lot items, we still think it's a good idea to allow everyone the opportunity.

Give us a little more detail.

Yoshida: Right now when a treasure box drops, any player is able to obtain the rewards, not just the players who attacked the target. If players are on their own gathering items, they will still be able to lot even though they didn't participate in the battle. So from that perspective, we understand the feeling that players who start gathering shouldn't be able to lot items.

Yeah.

Yoshida: It would be possible to create lotting restrictions so that only battle participants can lot items. Then, players who are gathering or otherwise not participating in the battle would not be able to lot items. However, this could increase the likelihood that players are going around doing their own thing after being matched with others. For example, some players may not need any battle rewards so they go out and do their own gathering in anticipation of others doing the same. If we use the system to cover this up, then we're using the system to protect morality. The idea behind the content is that everyone can play together and interact. If we start putting constraints and rules on the system, people will start engaging in separate behaviors and it will make matchmaking more difficult and the time spent less efficient. Based on all that, the development team is going to spend more time looking at the current situation.

Ah, I understand.

Yoshida: Instanced dungeons in FFXIV are sometimes discussed as having no freedom and just being a single path, which is one reason you wouldn't see something like gathering elements in an instanced dungeon, and perhaps one reason why it's seen as a problem in Diadem. Based on optimizing clear methods, the roles are pretty clearly defined in each type of content in FFXIV; however, this isn't the case in Diadem. For players who felt like they were forced to play certain jobs or roles, this may offer some flexibility and the opportunity to discuss that with others. This is the idea behind the wind currents at the start. If we get rid of them, I believe there will be more cases where players immediately begin acting separately after entering. This limitation kind of provides a minimum amount of effort needed to work together.

So you'll be keeping rules to a minimum, but also watching how the situation evolves.

Yoshida: We'll be keeping the rules to a minimum, and we'll be looking at the feedback that we receive from everyone. Based on that, and whether or not the amount of participants in the content increases, we'll be thinking about our next moves.

Sounds like you're planning to wait and see.

Yoshida: That said, it's only been out for four days, so I think players should talk it over with their party and try out a variety of different patterns. Notorious monsters appearing on certain small islands might certainly be considered a bug, but that just points to the degree of freedom in the content. Actually, the speed with which some warriors of light are defeating some monsters is so quick, we think it may be a little too rewarding so we might have to make some slight adjustments... (laughs).


Triggering NM spawns

Speaking about notorious monsters which spawn under certain conditions, although it seems like more enemies are appearing each day, it seems like the chance to see a NM is timed. Is it possible to make it so they can be forced to pop?

Yoshida: The appearance of monsters isn't timed. The frequency of their appearance is probably higher than right after publication as everyone is getting used to the content and doing the actions which trigger them to spawn. Originally, people were just roaming around defeating monsters here and there, whereas now they are focused on gathering them to a certain location and defeating them, which is increasing the likelihood of finding a trigger.

Is this something that players will be able to figure out?

Yoshida: There should be some degree of speculation; for example, it's possible that other parties may reduce the chance of finding a trigger.... That said, we're not going to immediately release the trigger conditions, so I hope everyone discusses this to try to clarify it.

It can be difficult to tell.

Yoshida: The Diadem instances are generated in four hour increments, and new parties come in one after the other after spending 90 minutes there. Because of that, it's possible that parties who were active in the instance earlier might have already triggered some of the conditions, so it can be difficult to guess. However, I think the ones releated to defeating enemies are straightforward.

This sounds like a traditional MMORPG kind of thing.

Yoshida: Well, in first generation MMORPGs, hunting monsters in the field was something you would do 24/7. Conditions like "if monster XX is defeated, a NM pops" might feel familiar, but for parties which enter later there's no way to know what has already been defeated.


Wondering if it would have been better to make Echidna from Void Ark a bit stronger...

Personally, I feel like right now, DPS have a shorter delay than tanks do for Duty Finder with Void Ark. With the new content released, are you planning any changes to the matchmaking mechanism?

Yoshida: The delay for tanks is longer in Void Ark because the addition of dark knight has had the effect of more players adventuring as tanks. Also, many players queue as tank to get a shorter waiting time, but since only three tanks are needed for Void Ark, it actually results in a longer wait. Once things calm down, it should get back to normal. The difficulty of matching for Duty Roulette: Expert is more due to players being spread out across more content, but there are likely other factors as well, so we're looking into this as a priority.

The bosses which appear there seem to be based on real world mythology. Will this continue in the future of the series?

Yoshida: Speaking of "the void," what's on the other side in another world was also a theme back in FFXI. As things progress and you find out the true purpose of the Warriors of Darkness, you'll start to see connections with elements surrounding the void, so things should get interesting.

Expectations for future development are pretty high.

Yoshida: "Void" has been a key word in FFXIV up until now, but the vague meaning for it and the more fundamental aspects like why it's there in the first place will be clarified in the future.

So it will go beyond just the Void Ark, there will also be other elements involved in the main story?

Yoshida: Yes, I think so.

Do the Zodiac also have some relation to the void?

Yoshida: Hmmm (laughs). Things like the Umbral Era and the Ascians will come into play in a variety of ways, but this is all ahead of us. By the time we get to the finale of the 3.X series, their purpose and how it happened should all become pretty clear. It will be clarified a little in the plot.

Will the difficulty of the future releases be about the same as Void Ark?

Yoshida: We got a lot of feedback from everyone telling us that it was easier than the World of Darkness from Crystal Tower. I wonder if it would have been good to make Echidna a bit stronger... (laughs).

(Laughs). Can you tell us anything about the portrait of the Elezen woman in Leofard's room yet?

Yoshida: I still don't have anything for you (laughs).


The secret of clearing content is to stop focusing on DPS?!

The extreme Thordan primal battle throws a lot of mechanics at you very quickly and you mentioned that it was intended to be reminiscent of Nael from the fourth turn of the Second Coil of Bahamut.

Yoshida: The original concept behind the Knights of the Round fight was to make the battle mechanics-oriented. In fact, when we originally developed the final battle for Heavensward, it had about 70% of what the current extreme version has. Although it was fun, as a way to end the main scenario of 3.0, it seemed unsuitably difficult, so we omitted some phases to remove mechanics and adjusted the final battle to its current form. That said, since the original version was also interesting, we saved that state as well, and made adjustments later on with new elements which eventually became the current extreme battle.

Will Thordan's Reign be used as a point of reference for the difficulty for future extreme primal battles?

Yoshida: We've said this before, but the battle was intended to sit between the normal and savage versions of Alexander Gordias. This one in particular was designed as a challenge for players who are working on the third area of savage to give them another near-term goal and prevent them from getting bored by giving them a new Knight weapon which they can use to keep pushing in the third part of savage. So, based on that, this is kind of a unique difficulty. For the next extreme primal we'll probably scale back the level of difficulty.

It's still been a hot topic, so do you have any advice for players who are still suffering trying to get through the third part of savage Alexander Gordias?

Yoshida: Well, it depends on where they are stuck and the individual party, so it's hard to give general advice...

Anything that we should try?

Yoshida: Well, I think working on mechanics should be the first priority rather than focusing on damage. Try a section 10 times, and give priority to getting through that part of the fight 10 times without any issue. If someone doesn't understand what to do or makes a mistake, practice for that person. If you proceed through the fight without everyone on the same page, the differences will get exacerbated. Instead of setting really high goals, work on the fight one phase at a time and you'll get better results. Let DPS be the last thing you focus on. If you're playing with a focus on DPS from the start, you'll be neglecting how to properly deal with certain mechanics. It's a much better goal to be certain that you can get through the mechanics of phases instead of being able to reduce the boss to a certain HP percentage. Part of avoiding the mechanics has nothing to do with DPS. Once you are at a point where all eight players are able to cleanly deal with mechanics, that's the first time you should start thinking about DPS. The first goal should be to kill it before timing out, and then you can think about ways to shorten the time spent in each phase.

Certainly players often miss mechanics while trying to maximize DPS. Back on the topic of primals, how is that going to continue on based on the previous story?

Yoshida: I think it was expected right away, but starting from the next it will be a new series.

Although a themed chocobo barding is available from the Knights of the Round primal battle, it's obtained from the token system rather than from crafting materials. Any particular reason for this?

Yoshida: I think that some of people who get more hooked on content are starting to get bored, so we want to change things up. Previously, in World of Darkness in Crystal Tower, we heard ideas like shifting all loot into a final crate at the end to avoid the problem of players leaving after, for example, not getting their bard body drop. However, the probability of getting items would become excessively low. After we did some studies, we decided to change up the distribution of the items. However, if you're asking if we had any deeper intent with the chocobo armor, my answer is "not really."

After patch 3.1, it seems like operating on ninja is much more comfortable. As a result of those developments, do you have any other improvements planned?

Yoshida: Without getting into the really fundamental detail, it's tough to explain in a few words. I can say that because of the server-client type of game that FFXIV is, there will always be a delay which can occur when data is being transferred. To compensate for this, we have a 0.3 second buffer for movement and a 0.35 second buffer for actions. However, regardless of how much we improve that response, if the communication is stuck in network traffic, there will be a delay in processing.

It's a factor outside the game.

Yoshida: We've seen opinions that players are much more confident than before with the improved operation of the mudra whereas before the communication delay and distance from data centers could have an impact. People were afraid of what the change would bring, but we've seen a lot of good feedback on the internet so we're happy (laughs).

(Laughs)


Windows 10 support announcement

Although you've already had a formal response to the Windows 10 release, do you have anything else to mention about that?

Yoshida: Sorry to have kept you waiting. After Microsoft started deploying the free upgrade to Windows 10, we weren't able to get the formal support out too quickly but we were in a hurry.

It took a while before you got the official support announcement out.

Yoshida: As far as normal operation goes, FFXIV was running since Windows 10 first launched. However, since this is a new OS, it requires separate support for the "game bar." For those playing FFXIV, I think many people had already updated their OS to Windows 10 by the time we announced formal support.

Seems so.

Yoshida: Until we confirmed in detail, we couldn't be responsible for issues. Swapping an OS can affect other applications installed on the PC as well, so we wanted to be cautious.


Thorough investigation of the cause of bugs and quickly addressing larger issues

Looking back on patch 3.1 after it's release, what are your overall feelings?

Yoshida: For some of the bigger bugs that caused urgency, we had to determine the cause so we are aware of what happened and it doesn't happen again. For it's genre, I think FFXIV has relatively few bugs and since this time we had mostly minor mistakes, we were able to spend the time to properly address. We're glad that everyone is enjoying patch 3.1, but the staff is also seriously at work to prevent the recurrence of any bugs by thoroughly investigating their causes.

If you play normally, it's rare to encounter bugs, and players definitely do discuss them.

Yoshida: Even if they're fairly uncommon, we want to be aware of them and focus on eliminating them, not just reducing them. We perform verification of the content, but some don't get caught in advance, like the issue when moving zones into Diadem. Even though we repeatedly moved into the zone many times, whether by bad luck or just not enough tests, it was something that we didn't encounter during our testing. That's something I'll be talking over with the QA team to try to better understand. Of course, players will do things with a much higher frequency than our QA team's tests can attempt, so we're still looking at new test methods, for example things we can test during development, to see if there are any additional stages we can add to prevent this from happening. I hope to have this aligned for patches 3.2 and 3.3.

Looking forward to it.

Why the hell would they scale back the difficulty? Thordan is perfect for a primal.

Originally Posted by Eanae

Why the hell would they scale back the difficulty? Thordan is perfect for a primal.

Because we can't have nice things like mid-core content.

Yoshida: Well, I think working on mechanics should be the first priority rather than focusing on damage.

Someone ought to make him actually attempt & clear Savage.

Originally Posted by Kaisha

Because we can't have nice things like mid-core content.


Someone ought to make him actually attempt & clear Savage.

Plenty of people who have cleared A3. It's mechanically fine. Git Gud. A4S is the mechanically stupid fight with Nisi.

Originally Posted by Eanae

Plenty of people who have cleared A3. It's mechanically fine.

So have I. It's more in response to how mechanics and dps are one and the same for the most part in A3S.

Originally Posted by Kaisha

So have I. It's more in response to how mechanics and dps are one and the same for the most part in A3S.

Not really? It was a dps check before Eso weapons maybe and the only groups that did it before then had 4 top tier dps and healers but once Eso weapons came out the majority of having good dps came from being comfortable enough with the mechanics to properly do your rotation.

Originally Posted by Eanae

Not really? It was a dps check before Eso weapons maybe and the only groups that did it before then had 4 top tier dps and healers but once Eso weapons came out the majority of having good dps came from being comfortable enough with the mechanics to properly do your rotation.

I don't see how the dps check suddenly disappears with Eso weapons or higher. It's still there and you can't ignore it, it just isn't as strict.

Yoshida's tip isn't incorrect either. Once you learn and are comfortable with a mechanic you can figure out how to maximize your dps.

Originally Posted by Eanae

Plenty of people who have cleared A3. It's mechanically fine. Git Gud. A4S is the mechanically stupid fight with Nisi.

Also, I genuinely want to know why you think Nisi makes A4S mechanically stupid and not difficult. Everyone defaults to saying Nisi is dumb, untested, broken and I personally can't comment on it since my static has been dead in the water for a couple months.

The rest of what Yoshi said though is just groan worthy. His effort = reward equation is just messy as fuck but at least he acknowledged how much of a loot pinata Diadem has become.

Originally Posted by Kaisha

Because we can't have nice things like mid-core content.

I'd say Thordan EX is just as much hard-core content as Titan EX was in 2.1.
If ThEX is mid-core, what are A1S and A2S?

Probably "midcore" too? I don't know all the fancy terminologies, but there's clearly a divide in difficulty between the first two and last two Alexander Savage fights.

Originally Posted by haroldsaxon

Lazy Mode - Diadem - Minimum Mechanics, No DPS checks

You must be getting godtier PF groups. Getting 0 chests on IV+ mobs because you have 1 afker and 2 tanks and you decided to be the healer....yeah that's annoying

A1 and A2 Savage is mid-core if we're using that terminology because it's only 3 and 4 that actually pushes you. If you know basic rotation and not wearing MND rings on your DRG, you should have absolutely no problem getting through 1 and 2 which are glorified trash pulls and only needing to know how to pay attention. The only change in A1 that matters is the tank buster and the fact resins need to be properly managed as they don't disappear, otherwise, HP bloat aside, it's the same fight as normal as you seen every mechanic before. (2 more bombs falling should not shock you nor suddenly make you go full retard.)

A2 adjusts the spawns and adds a few..otherwise HP bloat aside, it's not different from normal (no actual boss.) The one thing they did a good job is getting you used to mechanics in normal/story mode and in Savage, you'll have to put those to the test, which is why 3 and 4 are really considered the "hard ones" because half the shit in 3 wasn't existent in story mode..like no debuff passing or needing to manage handjobs for example. Especially now..people should have -no- trouble with 1 and 2, no matter how casual you are, no matter if you only play 15 minutes every 2 weeks, you have the gear to overpower it now. It all comes down to if you know how to play.

Kind of why I hate the term "mid-core" because it's like you want to consider yourself casual..but you're not at all confident that you know how to play the game, so you don't want to touch hard content but you still want a challenge and the same rewards as hardcore.

Originally Posted by Destinye

Kind of why I hate the term "mid-core" because it's like you want to consider yourself casual..but you're not at all confident that you know how to play the game, so you don't want to touch hard content but you still want a challenge and the same rewards as hardcore.

Maybe it's just the impression I've gotten from these forums over the years but I feel like "midcore" is just a term that shitters use to rank themselves above other shitters. I agree 100% with what you're saying here too.