Translations (JP to English)

[Soukyuu]

This one was very long and surprisingly had a lot of unique info tidbits. Enjoy.
Source: [Part I | Part II ] [ my comments ]

• Story
  
  • Nael is dead. [Sounded pretty final, so no "coming back as omega weapon" etc]
    
  • Gaius was just observing which party is going to fall, so he and his troops are unharmed. He is going to be our opponent for the time being.
    
  • Garlean Empire's motivation is "Primals are killing the planet, so we have to stop them. Unite under our banner to bring on an era of peace! If you go against us, this means you are aiding the beast tribes to destroy the planet. This means, you are our enemy."
    
  • Crystal tower is related to the mystery behind the Allagan Empire, and is it's legacy.
    
  • All of the 3 storylines are interwined somehow.
    
  • Dalamud was a machine created by the Allagan Empire [so, it was not the same as the sealing ceremony Louisiox tried to perform!]
    
  • The emperor Xandes (sp?) of the Allagan Empire is not dead. He is actually in a cold sleep chamber. Yoshida-san wants us to speculate whether Nael was trying to bring Dalamud down to awaken the Emperor and whether the appearance of the Crystal Tower signifies the Emperor's awakening or not.
    
  • Main story will end at lvl50 with a tentative ending, what will follow are numbered patches, just like with the 7th Umbral Era storyline of 1.x. He emphasizes that he's not talking about expansions here. Those 3 storylines will come to a conclusion before the first expansion is released.
    
  • "The Grand Labyrith of Bahamut" is not meant figuratively, but literally. It's going to be huge.
    
  • It appears that Bahamut was not allowed to roam around freely, which is why there is a labyrinth and why the world has recovered. The whiteout at the end of the End of Era trailer takes place right before something happens. [Odin after all?]
    
• FATE
  
  • Rewards won't be useless (like, "here, have a potion"), but won't be anything rare/powerful either
    
  • Rewards will have something to do with the type of FATE cleared. For example, completing a chocobo escort will yield a reward related to chocobos.
    
  • The claiming system is disabled while in a FATE
    
  • Once a FATE starts, everyone on the zone will get that huge FATE message and the location will be marked on the map
    
  • When you get close to the FATE location, your normal objective list will be replaced with the FATE one. Once cleared, the normal objective list will become visible again.
    
  • Planning to have 5-10 different FATEs per zone
    
• Housing
  
  • After you build a house, you can't trade that patch of land. [He did not elaborate.]
    
  • Once you build a house, there won't be any upkeep cost.
    
  • Housing is planned to be implemented in the first big update after release. However, since debugging still needs to be done, we will get to test it somewhere at the end of Beta.
    
• Alpha
  
  • A lot of positive feedback on alpha ("Amazing" "Didn't expect so much from an alpha" "could have released this as beta"). He was very happy to hear that because he expected a lot more negative comments. [Do I sense a fellow perfectionist soul there?!]
    
  • Alpha was branched 2 months ago [I wonder how much they improved it in those 2 months]
    
  • Regional datacenters won't be ready for Alpha
    
  • First 2 days of global alpha will be limited time-wise, if everything runs well, it will be running 24/7 starting from the 3 day.
    
  • Alpha will end before the end of the year. [Yes. About 1-2 months of waiting time till beta]
    
• Beta
  
  • Goals of the beta include (among others) stress test, pc search and market system testing. These are sceduled for beta phase 1. They will put dummy items into the marketplace and will ask us to search for something all at once.
    
  • Basically, just as in Alpha, it comes down to squishing bugs and tweaking code to be more performant. Apparently, removing one loop from the battle code improved the performance allowing for 200 more battles in a zone - laglessly.
    
  • "Why was the Beta delayed?" "Because I told them to *wry smile*". Basically, he wants to polish it more because of the feedback he received. He's been telling the dev team that saying "it's just alpha" is not allowed and that thinking like that was what has lead 1.0 to be all over the place. [Hear hear! <3]
    
  • Beta length will depend on what kind of feedback they will receive. He wants the testers to say "it's enough already, just release it" before he does.
    
  • Still not clear if there is going to be an OBT and/or early access, this will depend on beta feedback, too.
    
• Animations
  
  • 3 animations for taking damage, different animation depending on damage taken
    
  • Final motion blending animations are not implemented in the alpha. [this should calm down a lot of people, including myself]
    
  • Beta will introduce some, but not all animation blending.
    
• Misc
  
  • They expected the servers to crash a lot on the last day
    
  • Reason why they went along with it anyway is, they wanted as many people as possible to watch the trailer at the same time
    
  • We definitely won't be able to experience the 7th Umbral Storyline/Content again, but not saying "no" to time-travel in general
    
  • Apparently, 1.0 servers were running on LUA scripts, and the biggest problems were instability and memory consumption.
    
  • Back when he decided to destroy the world [oooh, evil ] instead of just shutting down the servers, he was looking for a way to do that. That's when he asked what the dot near the moon was. Apparently, Dalamud was supposed to be used in a future scenario of the original story. Well, what he did was to ask "is it okay to make it fall?"
    
  • That's when he started to prepare the plot and thought "just dropping it is boring... what is typical for FF? Summons... speaking of summons... Bahamut! "
    
  • He admits his choice was inspired by WoW's Cataclysm to some degree. He felt this way there would be a surprise, while still staying FF-like
    
  • We didn't get the full roadmap, but a simplified one. For example, in the full roadmap, there was also a roadmap for DoL/DoH, so he did not neglect them as claimed by some players.
    
  • YoshiP "sucks at drawing" [his words, not mine xD], so he wrote the script describing the events in the End of an Era trailer instead.
    
  • ARR opening may feature a narration by Louisiox. [Don't jump to conclusions yet]
    
  • The opening will include the summary of the end of the 6th astral era (3 minutes) and will be around 8 minutes long in total.
    
  • He's thinking about including a "no cut" [end of era + opening] version of the movie on the ARR CE
    
  • Our character data is handled with utmost care and there are backups in place should something go wrong
    
  • He will be thinking about implementing other client languages depending on how many players speaking that language there will be. He knows there is a large demand for a Spanish version and he was also thinking about a Russian one. This is for something after ARR release though.
    
  • They plan to show off systems like FATE in future videos
    
  • NPC speech will only be visible in speech bubbles, not in chat log, apparently.
    

[kimoi]

[*] Legacy characters will still be able to take all the quests just like non-legacy players, he says to think of it as a "stronger new game" [i think he means kinda like you can start a new game but keep all the items in some RPGs]

Yes, the term he uses "つよくてニューゲーム" is the what we call New Game+ in English, so that's indeed what he's saying. Basically, doing the early missions will be really easy for us.

[Judge_Xero]

Little late. But thanks for all your work Rein

[Arcell]

Little late. But thanks for all your work Rein

And Soukyuu, for doing these interviews while Rein's busy with this "family" stuff I keep hearing about

[Evangelus]

since there will be LOD, you won't get the impression there are only 40 models visible on screen.

I do not understand what they mean

[Soukyuu]

Gamewatch interview is up, here's a quicklink

Yes, the term he uses "つよくてニューゲーム" is the what we call New Game+ in English, so that's indeed what he's saying. Basically, doing the early missions will be really easy for us.

Yeah, I couldn't remember the English term for that.

since there will be LOD, you won't get the impression there are only 40 models visible on screen.

I do not understand what they mean

Probably that people will pop into your field of view in a matter that doesn't make feel like the number of people are limited... idk. That's all he said about that anyway.

[Dragonheart]

This one was very long and surprisingly had a lot of unique info tidbits. Enjoy.
Source: [Part I | Part II ] [ my comments ]

• Story
  
  • Nael is dead. [Sounded pretty final, so no "coming back as omega weapon" etc]
    
  • Gaius was just observing which party is going to fall, so he and his troops are unharmed. He is going to be our opponent for the time being.
    
  • Garlean Empire's motivation is "Primals are killing the planet, so we have to stop them. Unite under our banner to bring on an era of peace! If you go against us, this means you are aiding the beast tribes to destroy the planet. This means, you are our enemy."
    
  • Crystal tower is related to the mystery behind the Allagan Empire, and is it's legacy.
    
  • All of the 3 storylines are interwined somehow.
    
  • Dalamud was a machine created by the Allagan Empire [so, it was not the same as the sealing ceremony Louisiox tried to perform!]
    
  • The emperor Xandes (sp?) of the Allagan Empire is not dead. He is actually in a cold sleep chamber. Yoshida-san wants us to speculate whether Nael was trying to bring Dalamud down to awaken the Emperor and whether the appearance of the Crystal Tower signifies the Emperor's awakening or not.
    
  • Main story will end at lvl50 with a tentative ending, what will follow are numbered patches, just like with the 7th Umbral Era storyline of 1.x. He emphasizes that he's not talking about expansions here. Those 3 storylines will come to a conclusion before the first expansion is released.
    
  • "The Grand Labyrith of Bahamut" is not meant figuratively, but literally. It's going to be huge.
    
  • It appears that Bahamut was not allowed to roam around freely, which is why there is a labyrinth and why the world has recovered. The whiteout at the end of the End of Era trailer takes place right before something happens. [Odin after all?]
    
• FATE
  
  • Rewards won't be useless (like, "here, have a potion"), but won't be anything rare/powerful either
    
  • Rewards will have something to do with the type of FATE cleared. For example, completing a chocobo escort will yield a reward related to chocobos.
    
  • The claiming system is disabled while in a FATE
    
  • Once a FATE starts, everyone on the zone will get that huge FATE message and the location will be marked on the map
    
  • When you get close to the FATE location, your normal objective list will be replaced with the FATE one. Once cleared, the normal objective list will become visible again.
    
  • Planning to have 5-10 different FATEs per zone
    
• Housing
  
  • After you build a house, you can't trade that patch of land. [He did not elaborate.]
    
  • Once you build a house, there won't be any upkeep cost.
    
  • Housing is planned to be implemented in the first big update after release. However, since debugging still needs to be done, we will get to test it somewhere at the end of Beta.
    
• Alpha
  
  • A lot of positive feedback on alpha ("Amazing" "Didn't expect so much from an alpha" "could have released this as beta"). He was very happy to hear that because he expected a lot more negative comments. [Do I sense a fellow perfectionist soul there?!]
    
  • Alpha was branched 2 months ago [I wonder how much they improved it in those 2 months]
    
  • Regional datacenters won't be ready for Alpha
    
  • First 2 days of global alpha will be limited time-wise, if everything runs well, it will be running 24/7 starting from the 3 day.
    
  • Alpha will end before the end of the year. [Yes. About 1-2 montsh of waiting time till beta]
    
• Beta
  
  • Goals of the beta include (among others) stress test, pc search and market system testing. These are sceduled for beta phase 1. They will put dummy items into the marketplace and will ask us to search for something all at once.
    
  • Basically, just as in Alpha, it comes down to squishing bugs and tweaking code to be more performant. Apparently, removing one loop from the battle code improved the performance allowing for 200 more battles in a zone - laglessly.
    
  • "Why was the Beta delayed?" "Because I told them to *wry smile*". Basically, he wants to polish it more because of the feedback he received. He's been telling the dev team that saying "it's just alpha" is not allowed and that thinking like that was what has lead 1.0 to be all over the place. [Hear hear! <3]
    
  • Beta length will depend on what kind of feedback they will receive. He wants the testers to say "it's enough already, just release it" before he does.
    
  • Still not clear if there is going to be an OBT and/or early access, this will depend on beta feedback, too.
    
• Animations
  
  • 3 animations for taking damage, different animation depending on damage taken
    
  • Final motion blending animations are not implemented in the alpha. [this should calm down a lot of people, including myself]
    
  • Beta will introduce some, but not all animation blending.
    
• Misc
  
  • They expected the servers to crash a lot on the last day
    
  • Reason why they went along with it anyway is, they wanted as many people as possible to watch the trailer at the same time
    
  • We definitely won't be able to experience the 7th Umbral Storyline/Content again, but not saying "no" to time-travel in general
    
  • Apparently, 1.0 servers were running on LUA scripts, and the biggest problems were instability and memory consumption.
    
  • Back when he decided to destroy the world [oooh, evil >] instead of just shutting down the servers, he was looking for a way to do that. That's when he asked what the dot near the moon was. Apparently, Dalamud was supposed to be used in a future scenario of the original story. Well, what he did was to ask "is it okay to make it fall?"
    
  • That's when he started to prepare the plot and thought "just dropping it is boring... what is typical for FF? Summons... speaking of summons... Bahamut! "
    
  • He admits his choice was inspired by WoW's Cataclysm. He felt this way there would be a surprise, while still staying FF-like
    
  • We didn't get the full roadmap, but a simplified one. For example, in the full roadmap, there was also a roadmap for DoL/DoH, so he did not neglect them as claimed by some players.
    
  • YoshiP "sucks at drawing", so he wrote the script describing the events in the End of an Era trailer instead.
    
  • ARR opening may feature a narration by Louisiox. [Don't jump to conclusions yet]
    
  • The opening will include the summary of the end of the 6th astral era (3 minutes) and will be around 8 minutes long in total.
    
  • He's thinking about including a "no cut" [end of era + opening] version of the movie on the ARR CE
    
  • Our character data is handled with utmost care and there are backups in place should something go wrong
    
  • He will be thinking about implementing other clien languages depending on how many players speaking that language there will be. He knows there is a large demand for a Spanish version and he was also thinking about a Russian one. This is for something after ARR release though.
    
  • They plan to show off systems like FATE in future videos
    
  • NPC speech will only be visible in speech bubbles, not in chat log, apparently.
    

There weren't more information about regional servers? I read 300 ms somewhere...
And for blending motion animation you mean "middle movements animation" right? (my english isn't that good xD ) Well, thanks again!

[KumaAkuma]

LOD = level of detail. It means that objects will be drawn with less accuracy when the distance from the player becomes bigger. More of a blurr, but you won't notice because those objects are further away. It lowers the amount of processing load significantly.

[Gokulo]

So much good stuff *squeal*

[Soukyuu]

There weren't more information about regional servers? I read 300 ms somewhere...

For the love of the Twelve, don't fullquote interviews D:

The 300ms were just the typical latency for Europe for the old server structure, he's wondering how much better the new servers will perform. There were no tests so far, we're the ones who are going to test that next week. He also summarized the problems old servers were causing (Ifrit lag etc), but nothing new.

And for blending motion animation you mean "middle movements animation" right? (my english isn't that good xD ) Well, thanks again!

No, he is talking about animations that are used to blend different movements making them seamless. Them missing is the reason why there are no transitions between running/jumping/standing atm.