Interview - Cost, Hiring, FT, Hardcore and Casual, Ultimate, Cosmic, Future of FFXIV

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I want to believe it can be pulled off somehow as several other Final Fantasy games on PC right now have toggles that can make the game easier or harder at a player's choice, and even within this game we have things like MINE and unsync.

It's just that, while there are options to allow players to adjust the difficulty of things within FF14, they're very limited in scope, and certain mechanics and entire modes aren't affected at all.

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They dipped their toes into allowing players to decide which variable mechanics they'd have in a boss fight through variable dungeons. That was likely to sample how players would feel if allowed to choose mechanics based on preference, without difficulty being an impactful factor. People were generally satisfied with the result.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Is there evidence of this somewhere? They deck them out with every insurance and company perk imaginable.

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You mean like Ubisoft and a lot of other big companies? They flaunt those big buildings with amenities, creches, gym rooms, etc when they post their recruitment ads, and then you look at what actually matters like the salary, the social benefits and working conditions and it's enough to make Marx turn in his grave.

Like, I don't know how it is at SE's, but not gonna lie they'll never make me believe they aren't crunching like crazy when you hear the leads talk about how they're always crawling under work.

there is a convenient language called english. a lot of people use it to communicate with each other...

i know its not as easy as it sounds but their insularity mindset on their island is not only limiting them in manpower and experience but also in creativity.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

This here really worries me, as it sounds like a one-size-fits-all approach.

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They mean that the difficulty will be adjustable, like the new DD last boss will be. I believe they are implying that the variant dungeon will allow you to scale difficulty as well, which might actually avoid the need for a Criterion dungeon by way of allowing you to enable Criterion-like difficulty in the variant dungeon.

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The forums are full of complaints that the game is already too easy, so making dungeons easier seems out of the question. But when they raise the dungeon difficulty, they will no longer be doable by the people that already struggle with normal trials.

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If this extends to dungeons, which is unlikely, it will be great because it will allow us to scale up the difficulty of dungeons if we find them too easy.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

there is a convenient language called english. a lot of people use it to communicate with each other...

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Let's not get xenophobic, shall we?

We play a Japanese MMORPG. They speak Japanese. It's just as easy for an English person to learn Japanese as it is for a Japanese person to learn English.

There's an expectation and obligation to abide by the rules of formality, especially when the game was created/designed/built by the Japanese, and not make everything about you.

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Originally Posted by Seraph_Variel

As someone who only collects cards when I get them, this really doesn't affect me, personally. I also had no idea there was a TT card behind blood. Admittedly, did also forget about the all notes reward we're likely to get come north horn.

Besides that, doesn't actually change my point, as ignoring it was with the idea that you're only after the story, as neither TT nor the (presumed) achievement reward are 'story'.

Again, is it good design? No, it's not, and only exacerbates the issues behind the design of Forked Tower Blood in its intent and execution being so poorly thought out that it's leaving me wondering if QA touched anything within Occult Crescent.

People looked at me as if I were crazy to say I disliked phantom jobs and wanted logograms back in the one prog run of FT I did due to the versatility of being able to build around the job I play, and if Phantom Freelancer could fill that niche, it probably wouldn't leave me so confused. What's the one people are hoping for to fill that niche? Phantom Mime or something? I only know FF11, 14, and 16 so I genuinely have no idea. Either way leaves me with little hope for south horn as it stands. I still find Eureka to be more engaging and the last things i've been doing there was bunny farming for 6 hours straight.

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Yeah there's a TT card :/ We have to hope it comes to a vendor or to an NPC at some point (I prefer playing the actual TT game to get my cards instead of drops anyway)

I don't know that we know for sure nothing about Forked Tower will affect the story yet. It may not be required but there may be significant lore missed out on that could leave some missing pieces of the puzzle by the time we get to the end.

The notes are honestly just baffling. They really screwed up there. IIRC even the duel one in Bozja has another RNG way to get it.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

He says overseas developers are interested, but it's challenging because they need to be able to speak Japanese, which obviously most of them can't.

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This is a problem with a simple solution. Which is easier to find, translators or developers. There is no 'absolute need' for developers to be able to speak Japanese when translators exist.

Fix the problem.

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

Let's not get xenophobic, shall we?

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I don't see anything xenophobic about the observation that English is a ubiquitous (if not universal) language and that if you want to hire more people then hiring English speakers is going to avail you of the widest possible audience. There's no hatred, no superiority or inferiority in that, only fact and logic.

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We play a Japanese MMORPG. They speak Japanese. It's just as easy for an English person to learn Japanese as it is for a Japanese person to learn English.

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Here, you're not wrong, however I'm not sure I see the relevance. If, as others have suggested, the requirement of developers to speak and/or be Japanese is the biggest problem with regard to hiring new talent then relaxing that requirement and facilitating with translators is logical.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Yeah there's a TT card :/ We have to hope it comes to a vendor or to an NPC at some point (I prefer playing the actual TT game to get my cards instead of drops anyway)

I don't know that we know for sure nothing about Forked Tower will affect the story yet. It may not be required but there may be significant lore missed out on that could leave some missing pieces of the puzzle by the time we get to the end.

The notes are honestly just baffling. They really screwed up there. IIRC even the duel one in Bozja has another RNG way to get it.

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The notes and the card being Tower specific are my main reason for wanting a Normal mode. Bozja didn’t lock any notes behind DRS, you could get them from Normal; Eureka didn’t have field notes so it seems like they didn’t realize it would be a problem to put them in BA the sequel! As for the card, Bozja had them in the cluster shop, so by all rights this card should be purchasable for Sanguinite anyway, but it’s random drop in the Tower. Which, if they don’t add Normal or make significant changes to the existing Tower, will be a one and done for me in the far future.

But as someone who loves the lore of the game, I am worried there are little bits and pieces here that I will miss if I don’t do the Tower. I’m a story enjoyer with no story mode here! lol

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Originally Posted by Atma

This is a problem with a simple solution. Which is easier to find, translators or developers. There is no 'absolute need' for developers to be able to speak Japanese when translators exist.

Fix the problem.

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Honestly it seems like they are outright averse to hiring translators considering they'd rather continue letting Yoshi P's words get mistranslated than hire one for the liveletters

I remember their main translators saying how few people were able to do it and how they were trying to get people to express interest in it via twitter.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I remember their main translators saying how few people were able to do it and how they were trying to get people to express interest in it via twitter.

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Are you referring to live letter translation or for general dev purposes?

I'd agree that translators who can translate in real-time are definitely way rarer than those who can take written direction and translate that for SURE. That is definitely a much rarer skillset.

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Originally Posted by Atma

Are you referring to live letter translation or for general dev purposes?

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Both.

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I'd agree that translators who can translate in real-time are definitely way rarer than those who can take written direction and translate that for SURE. That is definitely a much rarer skillset.

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They'd need it for real time for dev purposes because they want to work with people in person.

If they work remotely via text they could just use Google Translate or a browser plugin. I think that is part of the issue. The determination to collaborate in person. Nevertheless, they have to collaborate remotely to an extent regardless.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Both.
They'd need it for real time for dev purposes because they want to work with people in person.

If they work remotely via text they could just use Google Translate or a browser plugin. I think that is part of the issue. The determination to collaborate in person. Nevertheless, they have to collaborate remotely to an extent regardless.

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They could kill two birds with one stone -- Yoshi-P waffling for hours and potential mistranslation -- by having a written translation in all localized languages prepared ahead of the broadcast.

If Yoshi-P is genuinely winging it as his associate "Haha, Hai Hai!" further extends the blathering, it's no wonder the LLs lead to more confusion than clarity.

Amateur operation all round.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

Isn't it clear from the latest live letter that they don't plan to make the game one-size-fits-all, but rather allow for customisable and variable difficulty on a gamemode-per-gamemode basis?

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Nothing is ever clear from LLs other than Yoshi-P's need to be on camera for hours.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Both.
They'd need it for real time for dev purposes because they want to work with people in person.

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Sure. But now let's discuss the concept of 'wants' versus 'needs.'

They may 'want' to be able to 'work with people in person', but it does not - from how they are describing it - seem like that's a viable solution. But they NEED developers with skills in working on MMOs, which they are seemingly struggling to get.

So needs > wants. They should find a way to adapt to this communication gap, like every other company that's forced into this same situation. They are far from the being the first and/or only company thrust into this same situation. They are, imho, being obtuse and stubborn by refusing to do so.

A single head US located developer with access to a translator who can communicate with their JP counterparts opens the prospect of entire teams of US based developers being able to begin cranking out work product. It is not as though every single developer needs to be able to speak to every single other developer at all times in real time. Communication between the two needs to really only happen at the top levels and then be disseminated down.

And then dedicate part of each week to slowly cross-training people in linguistic skills. 4 days of dev, 1 day of language classes. Plant the seeds, and in 4 years you have a forest.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I'm curious about what exactly he meant with the Forked Tower changes as well, since they weren't announced previously. But we're going to find out within days when we read the patch notes anyway.

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I think he means the development team will have the goal of trying to make Forked Tower more like it's original intent, after the 7.3 patch. Like that's when they're going to start working on doing that.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the last question about fanfest. And the reiteration that the goal is to align China and Korea with the international version, despite Yoshi-p admitting that both are still behind. The interviewer asks if there will be five fanfests then instead of the usual three, and the response is that it is impossible. That there is a separate team planning a fanfest.

Personally, I don’t go and don’t care. But there’s a lot of people that care about these events.

It sounds like there might be only a single fanfest that will be translated into multiple languages. Now, this is google translate which might not be 100% accurate with regarding “a”/singular. But I’m sure 5 fanfests not being feasible before 8.0 is reasonably accurate.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

If Yoshi-P is genuinely winging it as his associate "Haha, Hai Hai!" further extends the blathering, it's no wonder the LLs lead to more confusion than clarity.

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He is definitely winging it (with bullet points that we see on screen with the slides). And winging it is good because people who use a teleprompter come across insincere.

A really good example of this contrast is when the person in charge of Xbox came to Fanfest and they spoke like a living teleprompter. The audience just stared in silence at this unnatural, robot, corporate speaker. The contrast was stark - Yoshi-P had been talking for hours in this natural, genuine, passionate, human way and was immediately followed by this corporate teleprompter that oversees Xbox and can only speak in corporate lingo.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Nothing is ever clear from LLs other than Yoshi-P's need to be on camera for hours.

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It's not that he needs to be and more that he wants to be in order to create the personal connection with the players by addressing them with his face. The difference in that is the ability to read facial expressions and emotions. When they talk you can clearly see a genuinness, fun, laughter, all that stuff.

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Originally Posted by Atma

They may 'want' to be able to 'work with people in person', but it does not - from how they are describing it - seem like that's a viable solution. But they NEED developers with skills in working on MMOs, which they are seemingly struggling to get.

So needs > wants. They should find a way to adapt to this communication gap, like every other company that's forced into this same situation. They are far from the being the first and/or only company thrust into this same situation. They are, imho, being obtuse and stubborn by refusing to do so.

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Agreed. Nevertheless, it's actually common that companies prefer "in person". Despite clear evidence that remote work is better, a lot of companies forced people back into the workplace. Like with everything, people are attached to what they grew up with, so the old guard will view remote work as "lazy" and "anti-social" despite how younger people understand the power of collaborating online.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

I think he means the development team will have the goal of trying to make Forked Tower more like it's original intent, after the 7.3 patch. Like that's when they're going to start working on doing that.

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Well we got the patch notes and it seems they probably meant making it require 24 instead of 16. Just didn't come through well in translation.

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Originally Posted by Ryaze

It sounds like there might be only a single fanfest that will be translated into multiple languages.

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Although they could repeat the single one they did with Endwalker, I think they could do the 5 then translate whichever 3 Yoshi-P goes to.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Although they could repeat the single one they did with Endwalker, I think they could do the 5 then translate whichever 3 Yoshi-P goes to.

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In the source interview, that you provided, Yoshida said this is literally impossible.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

He is definitely winging it (with bullet points that we see on screen with the slides). And winging it is good because people who use a teleprompter come across insincere.

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Jeeqbit, there is a middle ground where key points are made with a degree of brevity. If Yoshi-P is a shitty public speaker, have someone else do it. Of the last handful of LLs these boards have devoted weeks and thousands of posts trying to decode wtf he was on about. It's a joke.

Or is this another example of streamers being gifted lengthy content with zero production costs?

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Jeeqbit, there is a middle ground where key points are made with a degree of brevity. If Yoshi-P is a shitty public speaker, have someone else do it. Of the last handful of LLs these boards have devoted weeks and thousands of posts trying to decode wtf he was on about. It's a joke.

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Wouldn't this be fixed by simply issuing an official translation for official statements/interviews/Live Letters? It's not that hard for someone on his staff to keep a recording or a transcript to take back to the office and have SE's translators go over it with him to ensure that the intended meaning is conveyed. The only major changes I would make to Live Letters are to bring in a Q&A section and maybe bring in senior devs/writers to talk about stuff, make it more of an interactive affair.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

Wouldn't this be fixed by simply issuing an official translation for official statements/interviews/Live Letters? It's not that hard for someone on his staff to keep a recording or a transcript to take back to the office and have SE's translators go over it with him to ensure that the intended meaning is conveyed. The only major changes I would make to Live Letters are to bring in a Q&A section and maybe bring in senior devs/writers to talk about stuff, make it more of an interactive affair.

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Either they can't afford a translator anymore or they honestly don't give a damn.
Confusing communication is perfect for them, the way japanese people communicate anyway is in absolute circles where "NO" has 7 different forms. This is why it's so hard to decipher them. No roadmaps, no clear plans, no clear communication. No simple "yes" or "no" and nobody to hold them to a fire, except when some people directly question Yoshi P in a handshake line or something and report to the community later. I hope the Japanese community starts shitting on them, maybe they will actually start some meaningful changes after they turn off their consoles and start leaving.

"Its difficult"
"We shall see"
"Tssss..."
"A slight head tilt"
"Please look forward to it"
"We hope you enjoy it in the future"
"I will need to discuss with my team"
"Please give us more time to..."

All are a form of Japanese NO.

And we can CLEARLY see from all the interviews that the questions they prefer are usually soft, the interviewers are soft so a Q&A would be handpicked and soft to suit their agenda. They never really tackle any hard questions nor answer anything regarding the future with anything but vagueness.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

Wouldn't this be fixed by simply issuing an official translation for official statements/interviews/Live Letters? It's not that hard for someone on his staff to keep a recording or a transcript to take back to the office and have SE's translators go over it with him to ensure that the intended meaning is conveyed. The only major changes I would make to Live Letters are to bring in a Q&A section and maybe bring in senior devs/writers to talk about stuff, make it more of an interactive affair.

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Yes, absolutely. The translations could be prepared ahead of time and published immediately after the broadcast if he really wants to get the maximum number of eyeballs on his "presentation."

And I very much like the idea of senior devs giving short explanations of developments in their specific areas. Apparently Yoshi-P is extremely busy with other projects. Maybe this never-ending confusion he produces is simply because he doesn't know what's going on.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

Wouldn't this be fixed by simply issuing an official translation for official statements/interviews/Live Letters?

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Official statements are translated on the lodestone, in blog posts or rarely on the forums. Live Letter slides are translated but exclude Yoshi-P's commentary. The important commentary is translated here albeit delayed. Keynotes are translated at Fanfests.

Whether interviews are translated depends a lot on the interviewer's desired target language. If it is an English interviewer they of course translate it for them and then it's up to them how to present it. Obviously, Famitsu is a Japanese website so they don't see the need to translate it.

They also often convey the same information again in interviews that follow, although it depends what they get asked.

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have SE's translators go over it with him to ensure that the intended meaning is conveyed.

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The main issue is that if they publish the interview themselves and do this in all languages, then it steals the content away from the journalists that interviewed them, who see it as their content to publish.

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The only major changes I would make to Live Letters are to bring in a Q&A section

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Q&As would be good again.

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bring in senior devs/writers to talk about stuff

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They have done this a lot at Fanfests and game conventions such as PAX. There are a lot of past Q&As with them in the Live Letter forum although I don't think we've had them recently in there.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

The translations could be prepared ahead of time and published immediately after the broadcast if he really wants to get the maximum number of eyeballs on his "presentation."

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The slides already are translated ahead of time. The commentary is unpredictable since he wings it, so that would take time to do, which probably explains why it does take time to put it into the Live Letter forum.

I love the idea that senior developers will be able to communicate more clearly to a non-technical audience than someone with a decades worth of experience. You think Yoshi-P is a master of non-committal or confusing answers, just wait.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The slides already are translated ahead of time. The commentary is unpredictable since he wings it, so that would take time to do, which probably explains why it does take time to put it into the Live Letter forum.

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If this "winging it" has a material impact on the information being transmitted to the point it adds more confusion than clarity, mebbe it ain't a good idea?

Unless, of course, the entire purpose of his interminable rambling is to muddy the waters to produce plausible deniability downstream.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

I love the idea that senior developers will be able to communicate more clearly to a non-technical audience than someone with a decades worth of experience. You think Yoshi-P is a master of non-committal or confusing answers, just wait.

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I'm not asking for a description of the coding and sub-routines. What we want to know is design philosophy and its implementation. What are they planning to do with the game and why?

A road map would be nice too.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I'm not asking for a description of the coding and sub-routines. What we want to know is design philosophy and its implementation. What are they planning to do with the game and why?

A road map would be nice too.

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A roadmap would interesting from a developer perspective but an absolutely terrible idea for the company given how everyone here treats the slightest mention of a development plan as a super best friend pinky promise. The truth is we need someone from the studio who knows how to filter design philosophy through PR speak.

A roadmap is an alright idea because they did that in a previous expansion. I think it was Endwalker. There is a roadmap at Fanfest but it's considerably more vague about when.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

A roadmap would interesting from a developer perspective but an absolutely terrible idea for the company given how everyone here treats the slightest mention of a development plan as a super best friend pinky promise. The truth is we need someone from the studio who knows how to filter design philosophy through PR speak.

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It doesn't matter who is relaying the information, there will always be people in this community who twist the messenger's words to hear whatever they want to hear so they can complain.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

It doesn't matter who is relaying the information, there will always be people in this community who twist the messenger's words to hear whatever they want to hear so they can complain.

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A lot more twisting can be carried out the vaguer the information is. Doubly so when we are told repeatedly that the released content deviated from the original design intent.

I have worked in managing content solicitation, QA, and release scheduling. It is frankly a rather dull, but highly predictable process. We worked with contractors rather than staff. Terms were negotiated with contractors that included a delivery date. Once that date was in place, we mapped QA including a buffer for revisions, time required to develop PR/social media assets, AV clean-up of video, editing associated text, and pushing live on site. Each phase had a due date.

Why does SE work in this bizarre fog of uncertainty, in which the release date of an Ultimate or housing modifications are these Bob Rossian fluffy clouds rather than a red circle on a calendar???

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Why does SE work in this bizarre fog of uncertainty, in which the release date of an Ultimate or housing modifications are these Bob Rossian fluffy clouds rather than a red circle on a calendar???

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The vast majority of what they produce is a red circle on a calendar, but Ultimates are extremely complex and the degree of setbacks for them are not predictable due to the difficulty of getting them just right and testing such difficult fights.

The house updates you're referring to aren't really content, but more of a technical thing they want to address. If it were just content such as new furniture, it would 100% be a red circle on a calendar.

They also outsource a lot, so the people they contract will likely have deadlines as well.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

A lot more twisting can be carried out the vaguer the information is. Doubly so when we are told repeatedly that the released content deviated from the original design intent.

I have worked in managing content solicitation, QA, and release scheduling. It is frankly a rather dull, but highly predictable process. We worked with contractors rather than staff. Terms were negotiated with contractors that included a delivery date. Once that date was in place, we mapped QA including a buffer for revisions, time required to develop PR/social media assets, AV clean-up of video, editing associated text, and pushing live on site. Each phase had a due date.

Why does SE work in this bizarre fog of uncertainty, in which the release date of an Ultimate or housing modifications are these Bob Rossian fluffy clouds rather than a red circle on a calendar???

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I can damn well guarantee that SE is not remotely vague when they are working with their business partners and contractors. Those sorts are very, very different than Joe Shmoe Gamer who thinks "We are thinking about doing X but aren't sure" is an IRON-CLAD PROMISE THAT X WILL HAPPEN WHY DID YOU LIE TO US?!?!?!!?

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Originally Posted by Astronis

I can damn well guarantee that SE is not remotely vague when they are working with their business partners and contractors. Those sorts are very, very different than Joe Shmoe Gamer who thinks "We are thinking about doing X but aren't sure" is an IRON-CLAD PROMISE THAT X WILL HAPPEN WHY DID YOU LIE TO US?!?!?!!?

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Yeah I recognize that, but why do you suppose that SE is not vague with business partners, but is continuously vague with their paying customers?

Feels to me like they respect one group but not the other. And that "we are considering..." is nothing more than soft soap to keep players subscribed.

I can't think of other serious companies that do this. Does a fast food chain announce: "we may start selling a BBQ chicken sandwich this September, or possibly next January, but we really aren't sure. Please look forward to it."?

It's insulting.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

I love the idea that senior developers will be able to communicate more clearly to a non-technical audience than someone with a decades worth of experience. You think Yoshi-P is a master of non-committal or confusing answers, just wait.

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It doesn't take a genius to provide a better argument towards the outdated glamour system than what Yoshi-P told us. It doesn't take a mastermind to respect people asking for harder jobs and give a proper answer, rather than tell them to play content made for 5% of the playerbase. Experience and intention with words go hand in hand. And Square Enix doesn't need billions of dollars to hire a translator for the live letters, which would definitely help.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

With Yoshi P, I'd say believe in his actions and not his words. That's the nicest way to put it.

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We need a man of action, not a man of PR

They have a team of 70+ people testing the game and they still manage to output occult crescent and forked tower like they did. Its time to start recruiting long term game veterans to do the testing or basically any fan of the game because it was obvious within a few hours of playing occult how boring and shallow it was.

These are all words, they mean nothing, just like everything said over the last few years. Eternal broken promises and you expect it to change. Only actions matter now, show me the change, until then I have zero faith. Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes, do not get your hopes up, do not give sympathy until you see proper change.

Stop buying from the cash shop, get rid of all your retainers but the ones you definitely need. I now spend nothing in the cash shop and my total sub cost is 65% less than it used to be. Force them to make change, speak with what motivates SE, money. If you can't unsub take it down to the bare minimum, if everyone does this, you will see how fast the game will change.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Leaders doesn't always just mean project managers either. In software it can sometimes be the senior software developers that you have mentoring, training, and providing oversight on the junior software developers.

And I'm glad he addressed the "more people means more production" because that's not just not universally true. More people can lead to less production. You might have to retask senior employees to bring junior employees up to speed, so you lose production until the point they can work independently. Or if you bring in new management, you might create more management levels that can blockade things getting done. My company follows the Lean philosophy and while sometimes new headcount is the answer, sometimes it's also a change in processes. And we try to fully understand what the effect of a new person is going to be on all elements of the process before we arrive at that conclusion.

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Good old Brooks Law. "Adding more people to an already late project just means it's going to become even later."

Regarding their anti-macro stance with CE: I wrote up an outline for my fellow crafters who struggled with the Cosmic Exploration A-1 crafts I called "Rethinking macros" that was taking some of the actually repeatable actions in older macro crafting, breaking the macros apart, and then building a modular recipe for each of the new CE challenges. I was able to finish out my CE weapons that way (well, I would have, if I didn't get distracted with my alts on Goblin server.)