4Gamer Interview: Yoshida responds to player questions/requests

[lilbubbles]

Idk then, if it was always the plan to never support ps3 then I don't see what the hold up is. An addon system isn't hard to implement, considering you already have the basis of one because the developers themselves need a way to add UI elements(like all those random relic quest windows).

Maybe they are afraid the first thing we would do is make a legit parser and have a legit reason to kick the 300 dps bards in expert roulette.

I just add my own things when I need them, like my old Renauld spawn timer, or my unspawned fate tracker, etc.

[Lokus]

They did mention that they had a rough version of it working but that basically it was too powerful since you could create bots with it. Gotta wait for them to nerf it down from the Extreme version so we can play with the story mode version.

[Destinye]

So when are one of these interviews going to bring up the long, long, long delayed add-on support and actually get a response about it anyways?

This falls under the "future announcements so we won't talk about it or allow questions about it" thing.

I say addons are here, work, but the ps3 doesn't have the memory to support them. IF we get them, it won't be until ps3 support is dropped.

If I am wrong on this, I will eat a piece of paper with a cock drawn on it.

Better get to eating it, because the PS3 has no bearing on literally any design decision in this game besides being a convenient excuse they assume less knowledgeable people will accept, much like the "PS2 limitations" o XI's era that suddenly vanished despite still supporting it. Unless a mod completely repurposes sections of the game (which is never allowed in any game) the PS3 wouldn't have any issues with the system because if the game has to constantly rewrite functions then it would stress the console and be a "limitation", otherwise the game itself already has the core of the add-on system in place, it's just a matter of unmasking it once it's complete.

They did mention that they had a rough version of it working but that basically it was too powerful since you could create bots with it. Gotta wait for them to nerf it down from the Extreme version so we can play with the story mode version.

Yep, their fear is botting or "automated play" despite being able to do as such now, even with clever Macro use.

[haroldsaxon]

Because FFXIV doesn't already have a load of bots.

[Rocl]

fucking kipling

[lilbubbles]

the PS3 has no bearing on literally any design decision in this game besides being a convenient excuse they assume less knowledgeable people will accept

You try writing ff14 to run in 256 megs, now throw in extra 2d interfaces from users and a sandbox to run the scripts in.

It isn't about the processing, or rewriting functions or whatever lol. It's the same reason skyrim was shit for a long time, and arguably still is on the ps3. Sony and Microsoft were cheap when it came to memory for some reason that generation.

Just for reference, injecting the program I use into ff14 which is just lua and a primitive 2d interface library with some of my own interfaces takes ff14 from 640 megs of reported ram on my system up to 800 megs. I'm sure that could be lowered....

[FHT]

Thank you so much for the amazing translation.

Customizing characters besides just appearance?

We got several posts from players who wanted to be able to customize not only their character's appearance but also their skills and equipment for a particular job so that they could show some more individuality. This is a topic we've seen come up since the initial release of A Realm Reborn.

Yoshida: Right. So, if we did something like add mode A and mode B for dragoon, eventually people on the internet would examine them and choose which one was stronger. Then, when we created new content, the content would have to be based on whatever was strongest. There would be a lot of discussion about the job states like "that job is too strong" or "that job is too weak" and people would always choose what they felt was best. That's not to say a skill system like that would be negative, but the armoury system itself already allows you to play all of the different jobs. Since we already have that system in place, I'm not expecting that we'll make branches for jobs for the time being.

The flow of the game is to keep collecting higher performance equipment and challenging more difficult content, so of course you'll certainly want to figure out what works best. Some people only play their favorite jobs and in the end wind up playing whichever they feel is the most efficient.

Yoshida: We're working to get rid of those differences, but I wonder if it would be better to add a new job to make more people happy.

No doubt. I think FFXIV is the kind of game where you work to be most efficient. Do you think adding some more individualization will play any role in the game?

Yoshida: That's like a console game or MMORPG based on a skill system. With a leveling system, all the jobs need to develop side by side so it would be correct to say we won't be adopting a system like that in FFXIV.

While he understand one of the major problems with the players, I find it sad that he's not willing to even try working around it. People are asking for different & individualised play-styles, am I wrong to believe this is possible while to do while keeping an equality between different styles?

Still a shame, they could easily remedy to this if they wanted to look at their game & at the way they create things with a different perspective.

[haroldsaxon]

I think he wants to encourage role switching for different playstyles rather than trait switching (which has its problems with gear and those that want to play one class). While i'd rather them work on actual content to do, I do hope we have something along the lines of traits in the future.

[Lokus]

I sorta agree with him in that front. I haven't played much of WoW but from I gather, a single class can spec into different roles (healer or tank for example) and you would need to get a different set of gear for each role. That's not much different from job switching in this game or at least how SCH and SMN function.

However, some customization would be nice so you can tailor your job for a specific encounter (AoE heavy, single target, PvP, solo) since changing jobs isn't always an option because gearing is gated in a way that makes this game seem like it's a one class per character game until late in an ilvl cycle.

[haroldsaxon]

I sorta agree with him in that front. I haven't played much of WoW but from I gather, a single class can spec into different roles (healer or tank for example) and you would need to get a different set of gear for each role. That's not much different from job switching in this game or at least how SCH and SMN function.

However, some customization would be nice so you can tailor your job for a specific encounter (AoE heavy, single target, PvP, solo) since changing jobs isn't always an option because gearing is gated in a way that makes this game seem like it's a one class per character game until late in an ilvl cycle.

While in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much but say you can change traits when not in combat in a dungeon so that groups that have a poor mix of DPS aren't screwed, which may lead to the possibility of harder dungeons in the future.

[Ophannus]

The way I see it, the job system is already character customization. There's 3 roles with one role having 3 sub roles.

Melee DPS
Caster DPS
Ranged DPS
Healer
Tank

Say you want to pick melee DPS. Monk, Ninja, and Dragoon are three "customizations". Instead of thinking of the three as separate jobs, for which everyone wants skill trees or specializations for, think of jobs as being a specialization of the role itself. Having specializations or skilltrees for jobs, which are aleady specializations is very redundant. You want to play a melee dps, there's 3 skill trees you can take: Monk, Ninja, Dragoon, each offering different gameplay and utility. So again, if you just imagine the current jobs as already being branched skilltrees of the parent tree Role, then you would see that specializations are obviated already.

Having further customization such as "i want to play sch but focus on raw healing skills", this is obviated with white mage, just play white mage. Mixing and matching is fine offline (even then, extensive theory-crafting ruins this and there will be optimal choices), but online there is no place for branching paths. There will always be certain skills which are "must have" and even still, people would atart only recruiting people with very specific skills and leave out others without them. Finally, if they made branching skills, they would -need- to let us change and reverse them like we can with attribute points. And if they do that, people will pick/change skills for each content, and then it's no longer "customization", it's artificially restricting abilities temporarily to focus on others, which we have already in the form of various stances and cross class abilities. Ditch this shit.

[haroldsaxon]

Which I would agree with ability wise, but there is an issue - you can't completely freely interchange gear between classes and if classes had the same optimal gear (when we're talking about min maxing for top end content).

But take SMN and BLM for instance in raids. SMN is AOE god, BLM is Single target god. If I was to do A2S, ideally i'd take SMN. Both have different stat preferences (SS is best for BLM, but worst for SMN). I'm guessing this is similar for healers (WHM not wanting crit, SCH wanting crit), although for tanks i'd imagine they want the same stats. Melee, again Crit/det? I'm not 100% sure.

Furthermore, Esoteric (tome) gear is restricted to the class you are on, so you are reliant on raid drops. If you end up switching classes, you end up falling behind. If they can find a solution to that, great. I'd also like some more customization to have more stuff to experiment with between encounters so that we have some more variety in the fights we have, but that's just my opinion.

[Rocl]

To be fair tome gear isn't always class-specific. I really didn't think they'd repeat the same mythology mistake with esoteric in 3.0, but it's not the first time I've been surprised at dumb design decisions and probably won't be the last.

That only really applies for ranged/caster/tank/healer though. For some reason every melee DPS has its own fucking loot pool, that's true (outside of jewelry). The Scouting/Maiming/Striking split is literal pants on head retarded. At the very least you can sort of justify Scouting being a DEX-based melee, but Striking/Maiming has been confusing as fuck since day 1 considering how healing/fending/casting has been in the same timeframe.

[Raldo]

The Scouting/Maiming/Striking split is literal pants on head retarded. At the very least you can sort of justify Scouting being a DEX-based melee, but Striking/Maiming has been confusing as fuck since day 1 considering how healing/fending/casting has been in the same timeframe.

Originally, it was all because they wanted DRG to have higher DEF and lower MDEF than MNK. Now that they dropped DRG's lower MDEF, I don't know why they don't just normalize the DEF values too and put them on the same gear.

I bet it's just for lore reasons now... so DRG can wear some plate-y mail, and MNK shouldn't...

[Hiryo]

To be fair tome gear isn't always class-specific. I really didn't think they'd repeat the same mythology mistake with esoteric in 3.0, but it's not the first time I've been surprised at dumb design decisions and probably won't be the last.

I'd say this was 90% aesthetics. In 3.0, with the rush of new players, they are going to want some identity between each. Visually, we'd have 1 shared equipment set(raid) and 1 unshared equipement set(myth/eso) and players have the option to glamour myth/eso over the raid gear to preserve their job identity.

Honestly, I'm not sure how they can keep this "immersion" without making the gear models purely glamour. Having the gear a side-grade is always an option, but then you have to think of what place should drop it, if it should be on par with tome or raid gear, etc etc.

[Lokus]

Originally, it was all because they wanted DRG to have higher DEF and lower MDEF than MNK. Now that they dropped DRG's lower MDEF, I don't know why they don't just normalize the DEF values too and put them on the same gear.

I bet it's just for lore reasons now... so DRG can wear some plate-y mail, and MNK shouldn't...

The problem is that they aren't even consistent with whether or not DRG wears plate type mail or not. BCoB had all the melee and ranged share one style of gear. SCoB had the melee share while ranged shared with Caster with tome gear being unique for DRG but a shared look for ranged and the other melee. FCoB had MNK/NIN share while ranged and DRG had it's own look and tome gear had ranged and NIN share while DRG/MNK shared. And now most dungeon gear has DRG share with tanks while ranged and the other 2 melee share.

[Silenka]

I bet it's just for lore reasons now... so DRG can wear some plate-y mail, and MNK shouldn't...

This is my guess. DRG and MNK have historically had completely different type of armor throughout the series, if anything it would make more sense lore-wise to mix NIN with MNK gear. Well there's already a fuckton of gear to sort through for drops even without those two to deal with, that's not really a big problem considering how broken/boring the battle system is.

I can't disagree with Yoshi's assessment that if they were to make job customization for existing jobs, people would still figure out what can put out the most dps and ridicule anyone who isn't using that setup. That is literally how the game works currently, I can't see it being any different after such changes. The current battle system (and really, the mindset of the people who know wtf they're doing) really allows no deviance from the build that puts out the most potential dps/utility/whatever. And yeah, the job system is already like a rough version of customization, I guess. It's still sad that cross-class abilities make it look more customizable than it really is, but until they revamp or do away altogether with that system it's going to continue to sit there as a sad reminder of how they tried and failed with the customization aspect.

Personally, if they make any changes I'd like it to be on the battle system itself. People have been talking about how it's no fun to play a rooted job that loses dps every time it has to move out of ground effects, how there are really no "oh shit" moments you can save yourself/your party from, how it's just a calculated dance until you either wipe or win. I agree with all of that and it's one of the major things driving me away from the game. I don't have any problems with the job system really, I don't see what added customization would do when people would just test until they found the winning combination. I just want the gameplay changed to actually be fun

[Ophannus]

I guess in the future, when they release more jobs, it will make sense.


Samurai will likely share Maiming with DRG, for example.

[Lucavi]

I guess in the future, when they release more jobs, it will make sense.


Samurai will likely share Maiming with DRG, for example.

The sooner they do this, the better. The current state of loot pools is one of the most pants on head retarded systems currently in the game. Adding more jobs that can use more types of armor would go a long way to help alleviate the frustration.

It'll be interesting to see drg/sam armor linked in the future, although Drgs won't look bad with Kabuto and Domaru considering they already use yari anyway.

[Destinye]

I guess in the future, when they release more jobs, it will make sense.


Samurai will likely share Maiming with DRG, for example.

Granted, Yoshida doesn't turn it into a Healer with "Divine Arts" weaponskills or yet another tank (THIS WILL GET PEOPLE TO TANK!) using Bushido or some shit.