new interview @ http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?pa...=0&cId=3145765
highlights -
1UP: Raising the level cap would defeat the point of the Merit system. The last time I spoke with you at TGS you said that perhaps the Black Mages were overpowered and could use some adjustment, which sparked some controversy in the community. Now that there's been a couple months of tweaking and tuning done to the game, what job would you say you are most happy with and what jobs still need the most work?
HT: Regarding "manaburning" parties, I think that sounds pretty cool. [laughs] What I really meant to say at the time is that I think it's a good idea, and if anyone hears those stories about those kinds of parties and feels that Black Mages are too strong, I would like them to be more creative and to give you help in making your jobs strong so you can do more interesting things like that. But I don't think the BLM job itself should be weakened just because of this current trend of a new way to form your party. And this goes for every job. I'd rather adjust things laterally to try to bring a job's strength up or down. The only exception was the Ranger, not just because of the way people play and the amount of money they put into it, but also the job itself had a fundamental attack advantage, and that's what we most recently tried to fix. But in general we don't want to make any job weaker.
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1UP: The reason people fight these sort of monsters is to get the abjurations they need to get their high level armor, like a Paladin would need for his Koenig armor for example. Would you ever also consider adding these items to Kindred Seal battles or something like that?
HT: If the MPK problem can be solved across the board, as you're saying, the situation might get better. So rather than focus on just helping out what high level jobs need to get their top stuff, let's work on something that helps the problem across the board. And if that solution includes shifting where items drop, then so be it; it's something worth considering.
1UP: On the topic of instancing, is there any chance you might turn Dynamis into an instanced battle? For example, if there are 5,000 high level players on Siren, and everyone of them has a Dynamis scheduled, which usually happens on a weekend...if there are 36 people who go into Dynamis, and there's another alliance that wanted to go in at the same time, it could take upwards of three hours of just waiting around, whether they win or lose. With so many high level players on each server now, the traffic jam can be pretty severe.
HT: I can't actually comment on this, but this is one of the parts of the game we're actually giving a lot of consideration to right now internally. But I agree that Dynamis is important for high level characters, and if you have a lot of high level characters what are you going to do? I'm sorry I can't comment further, but we are thinking about it.
word. - sorry if another threads up.