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■ Thank you for coming today. In Patch 2.3, a large scale PvP content featuring 24 vs 24 vs 24 called Frontline was introduced. Do you have any advice for people on how to play?
Yes, well, first of all, there are 6 neutral key points in the battlefield. It is important that you focus on capturing these key points at the start, rather than trying to fight your enemies.
■ You have mentioned during the E3 Producer Letter Live that points are earned by defeating your enemies and capturing key points. Are there merits for capturing these key points early?
Actually, the longer you hold a key point, the more points - which we refer to as tactical ratings here - you will gain from it.
■ Oh, I see. In other words, the rate at which your team earns tactical ratings will increase the longer a key point is held?
That's right. Therefore, at the start of the match, it's better to quickly capture all the key points you can instead of looking for your enemies. By doing so, your team will be able to start earning points right from the start. However, it's not efficient to have your whole team go after a single key point either, so you need to be mindful of this.
■ How so?
A key point is captured when a player enters its flag circle and fills a capture gauge. In addition, the more people you have inside the circle, the less time it takes to fill the gauge and capture the key point. However, this effect maxes out at 4 people.
■ So this means it's better to split up into 2 teams and capture 2 key points near your home base at the start of the game?
Yes. And from that point forward, the players on your team will need to decide whether to move as an army or split up into small parties. If you always move as a group of 24 then you might end up losing key points to your enemies' small parties.
■ Since you are able to continue accumulating tactical ratings just by holding onto key points, there's no real need to go after your enemies in a large group.
That's right. Of course, since there are 3 forces here, once the battle actually begins, it might not be so easy to read your enemies' movements.
■ That's the fun of 3 way battles. If you focus too much on the enemy in front of you, you might get stabbed in the back (laugh).
That probably happens pretty often (laugh).
■ By the way, when fighting over a key point, you mentioned during the Live Letter that when 2 or more forces are present within the same flag circle, the Company with more people will have their capture gauge increase, is that correct?
Yes. For example if there are 2 of you and 1 enemy, your capture gauge will increase at an offset rate of 1 person.
■ You mentioned earlier that the speed maxes out at 4 people. What happens if you have 8 people on your side, and 4 on the enemy's side?
In that case, when you defeat 1 enemy, your gauge will begin to fill at the rate of 1 person.
■ I see. You basically take your effective maximum of 4 people and subtract the 3 enemies from it.
Yes. Therefore, even when you feel you will lose the key point, it's better to stay within the flag circle rather than running away. If you have, say, 5 people on your side, your enemy will not be able to start capturing the flag until at least 2 more of you die. This way, you will be able to delay your enemy's capture progress and prevent them from gaining tactical ratings.
■ And since your side will continue to earn tactical ratings while this is happening, sticking it out might actually make the difference between winning or losing too. By the way, in the patch 2.3 trailer, there were some images of some kind of Allagan structures. What kind of significance do they have?
That location is positioned at the center of the field from the 3 starting points. As we have mentioned before, there are also monsters present in Frontline as an additional force to deal with. That's where you can find these monsters.
■ Ahh, I see. It makes sense as they look like ancient Allagan-type monsters.
When you defeat monsters you will earn tactical ratings, and every bit helps. So we've chosen the location where skirmishes are most likely to happen and placed them there. Think of them as an extra bonus in the battlefield.
■ But that place is located quite high up, right? If you get too distracted by the monsters, you might get attacked from behind by another force...
Yes, exactly. That place is the highest point of the battlefield so you need to watch out for enemies running up from below or else you might suddenly be forced into a close range brawl. It would also be much more dangerous if you end up getting attacked by another force while battling a monster.
■ If all 3 sides end up on there, it'd be scary.... People might fall off.
Maybe that's where skills like Fluid Aura might surprisingly come in handy (laugh).
■ That sounds fun (laugh). Now, what happens if multiple forces attack the same monster? Who gets the tactical rating? The one to strike the killing blow, maybe?
It's simply the side that did the most damage.
■ I see, so it looks like we might see a big battle royale where everyone's trying to deal the most damage to the monster while fighting each other... By the way, is it possible for a tank to pull a monster to an enemy camp and set it loose there?
No. The monsters in that area have all been set to not move from their location and will randomly attack nearby players. Since players may very well be fighting each other near these monsters, we wanted to make sure there's no unfairness involved and make it easier for people to plan their strategies.
■ If there's no way to control which side a monster will attack, it becomes more important to decide whether to fight an enemy or to focus on the monster first.
Now, since this is a 3 way fight, it's important to be able to improvise. Even if you have 1 very powerful army, if it gets caught between the other two, it still won't stand a chance. So the key to winning lies in your team's ability to improvise and move as a whole, rather than any individual's skills.
But rather than focusing on winning, I hope people will focus on enjoying the spontaneity of the situations. No matter if you win or lose, everyone gets the same amount of allagan tomestones as an entry prize, so just try to have fun.
■ So even if you lose you can get rewards. In that case, it makes more sense to just play without worrying about winning or losing. By the way, when there are less people online, the system will automatically reduce the alliance size to 16 or 8 people. If there's only 8 people on each side, wouldn't it make it hard for people to actually bump into each other?
In a 8 vs 8 vs 8 situation, the key points are reduced to just 3 spots. We've made it so that key points are reduced when there are less people so encounters should still be common.
■ That's good to know.
Yeah, if we didn't scale the battlefield, you'd end up with a huge field and people running long marathons through them. You guys at 4Gamers went through this with Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) too (laugh).
■ Not only are the enemies far away, we'd often miss each other.... By the way, it was announced that Ninjas will be introduced in 2.4. It felt as if that job was designed with Frontline in mind.
To a certain extent, we wanted the it to be able to perform like an assassin class. Of course, the main focus is on its PvE skills, but it should still shine in a different way in PvP too. So post-2.4 we should start to see different situations in Frontline featuring Ninjas with their stealth skills. For example, a stealthed Ninja might be able to feed information to his teammate, like "the enemy is fighting a monster, we can take them from behind if we climb up the South side".
■ And since they suffer less falling damage, it's useful when scouting too.
Yes, if they get discovered while scouting, they may need to run away. Since they'll likely be moving alone, being discovered often means death, so instead they might want to jump off a high place, and use their fast movement speed to run away.
And there are some skills that can only be used while in stealth so in a way they're more PvP oriented.
■ So, do we get signature skills like backstab, like the kind of stuff we saw in DAoC?
Maybe (laugh). This is more of a 2.4 topic so for now let's just take it easy and go beat each other up.
■ Understood. Having said that, there must be some players who are experiencing large scale PvP or flag capture fights like this for the first time. What kind of things should they keep in mind?
Well, to start with, if you see an enemy, try to pick on the squishy looking one. If you're scared, then just try spamming Sleep or Repose as a White or Black Mage, It's exciting to see when you've successfully put someone to sleep. It's also exciting just to watch a teammate defeat someone you've put to sleep. I'd be happy to see more people experience the addictive thrill you get from this that you don't quite see in PvE contents.
--- New dungeons to make up the Expert Roulette. Allagan Tomestone rates increased---
■ In Patch 2.3, 3 new instanced dungeons (ID) were added. Which category of roulette do they fall under?
Expert. And the ones that used to be in Expert will be moved to High Level.
■ Really? Will their difficulty change?
It's more that everyone's item levels have increased as well, so even at the same difficulty level, they're suitable to be moved to High Level.
Just the other day, before 2.3 was released, I did a run of Brayflox Hard Mode as a Black Mage, and the people I got matched with were all in like crazy good High Allagan gear. And then it started with a single "I'll do full pull" and the tank pulled everything up to the first boss and they just got annihilated and in a blink of an eye we cleared. And at that moment I thought "ok this isn't expert anymore" (laugh).
■ Yeah, I can picture that (laugh). The expert roulette IDs from 2.2 all have established strategies now, so perhaps they no longer feel difficult when compared to the others.
Plus, many players who do High Level Roulette are already using Soldiery gear for their main job too, so I don't think it should be a problem.
■ I see. The fact that high level gear is now commonplace is another reason. By the way, are the rewards obtained from the Expert Roulette the same as before?
No, we have increased the amount of Soldiery and Mythology tomestones obtained from them. So please don't say "Bray was better" and give the new IDs a try.
■ Among the new IDs, the return of Edda-chan in the trailer was shocking.
For the new Tam Tara we've put more work into it than any other dungeon we've done. Personally, when I was doing the prerequisite quests to unlock the dungeon as part my checks, I remember thinking "I'm not sure if I actually want to go...." (laugh).
■ You might make some people scared of going after reading this (laugh).
But then you'd kind of want to see what's so scary about it too... And what makes the new Tam Tara different from all the other dungeons too is how the story continues as you progress through the dungeon. So I hope people enjoyed that. Personally... I don't really want to run this one more than once (laugh).
■ Wha... Well, it'll certainly be interesting to see what's in there.
---Many new crafter recipes added, including those that involve Item Desynthesis---
■ In the trailer we saw many new crafter recipes. Among them are glowing Primal weapons.
They really look cool. The upgraded Ifrit's Blade, Inferno Blade, doesn't just glow, but actually have flame effects. Garuda's weapons too gains floating feathers effect.
■ And those are difference from the Zenith and Novus weapons too. What about Titan's weapons?
Swirling rocks. Just imagine a character from Dragon Ball powering up (laugh).
■ Ah that's easy to picture (laugh).
And Titan's weapons were particularly large to start with, so the effect is quite impressive.
■ I'd love to see them in action. Now, these were introduced during the crafting segment of the trailer, so they are made by the players?
That's right
■ It appears they'd be mainly used for Glamours, right?
I think most people would get them for Glamours. Of course, they're still fairly high level weapons on their own, but they're not as high or as strong as, say, Novus weapons.
■ I see. And the big question is how to obtain the materials for them. You've mentioned in the past that we should keep our Primal weapons, combined with the item desynthesis introduced in 2.3, I guess we're looking at.... desynthesizing the primal weapons?
You'd be correct. Materias are crystallized remains of an item's maker, so by desynthesizing an item, you may be able to obtain that crystallized material. On top of this, there are some "core" materials that can only be obtained from specific items, such as the ones you will be able to get from these primal weapons. Using these materials you will then reconstruct a new weapon.
■ Primal weapons cannot be traded between players, but what about the crafting materials they yield?
The materials can be traded. Therefore, there will likely be people who will try to make a profit by selling them on the market. However, the Primal weapons will require a fairly high level of desynthesis skill or else the success rate will be 0%.
■ Ah, I figured as much (laugh). So, for item desynthesis, we know the combined maximum is 300 points, and once reaching the max, increasing the skill of one craft will lower the skill of another. Is it possible to, say, lock the skill level of a specific craft to allow you to adjust another?
There's no deliberate locking system but.... I can only ask people try out different ideas.
■ Since it's possible to accidently desynthesize with a class you don't want to level and end up lowering something else...
That won't be happening until you're at the 300 point cap, so for now you can feel free to raise what you like.
■ And the desynthesis skill is capped by the crafter class's level?
No, as long as the crafter class is above level 30, you can use its desynthesis skill as a completely independent skill. It will not be affected by the crafter class's level.
■ So it's possible to max out just the desynthesis skill.
Yes. But having said that, it costs a ton of money to level desynthesis, so you'd need to pace yourself (laugh). It's probably a better idea to craft items for leveling, and then use desynthesis to recuperate some of the costs and items.
---No issues with housing zone loads. Feel free to enjoy your private chambers---
■ In patch 2.3, players are now able to obtain their own private room inside their Free Company housing. The price of 300,000 gil is quite affordable. Did you arrive at this price easily?
Yes. We started planning with 300k in mind, then we observed the overall player population's gil possession, and then discussed about whether to increase or decrease this amount.... before finally deciding to stick with 300k.
■ I can imagine a fairly large number of private rooms are being implemented. Is there any issue with the housing zone's server load?
The server load depends on whether there's a player inside the room. So while you're off doing something else, the server resource goes to someone else who needs it. Therefore, unless ever single player decides to lock themselves in their rooms, we shouldn't have a problem.
■ That's reassuring to hear.
Actually, this was already set up in 2.2 and we didn't have any problems at all. So we should be able to handle a large number of private rooms.
■ As for the housing zones, we've started to notice that the number of plots are quite low compared to all the Free Companies out there. How is this looking right now? Since many people would need to have a house first before being able to get a private room.
Overall, looking at all the worlds, we can say that not everything is sold out. However, we understand that there are many small scale FCs who want their own Small House. We will continue to review the land situation and try to introduce more wards to meet the needs of those who need them.
---What will happen to Extreme Primal fights? An Extreme Primal Roulette?---
■ In Patch 2.3, it is now possible to challenge Leviathan and King Mog Extreme without completing Garuda, Titan, and Ifrit. What is the reason behind this?
We've seen our player base increase by the thousands every day, partly thanks to the PS4 version release. But as we continue to release newer contents, we see our most experienced and skilled players moving ahead, leaving those who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Extreme Primals behind, making it difficult for them to clear the content and access the new contents beyond, despite otherwise having access to the latest end-game gears like those from the Crystal Tower. So this is in part to help them access those contents.
■ And since there's no roulette for Extreme Primals, the experienced/skilled players would need to choose to participate on their own too.
That's right. That's why the first 3 Extreme Primals were made so that only those who wanted their ilvl90 accessories would challenge them, and separate from the main contents path.
■ I see. But in this case, wouldn't that also make it harder for people to get a full party matched for the 3 Extreme Primals through DF?
Possibly at the beginning, yes.
■ Why not just implement an Extreme Primal Roulette?
I'm not sure about that... (laugh) It's possible but... You'd have to figure out what kind of reward to provide for it. It'd have to be something that's worth the time and effort, considering the chances for failure.
■ Yeah, it's entirely possible that many parties won't even be able to clear the fight.
If it's like the Binding Coil where the Echo is applied right from the start then it's possible but... If we just introduce a roulette with the current system, I can see most people giving up as soon as they fail.
■ Yeah... It's kind of hard to think of a reward that would encourage people to keep trying despite the possibility of failure.
Yes. And we don't want to give out too much reward either since it could lead to skilled players forming farming parties. But if we make them solo-queue only then that would drop the chance for success even more. So, we'll need to think about it more.
■ Understood. By the way, when will Leviathan and King Mog Extreme get the Echo?
From the start of patch 2.3, in the same way as the other Extreme Primals where 5% is applied each time your party is defeated. For the Binding Coil of Bahamut, the last buff to Echo is also applied in 2.3 as well. So those who have been stuck can give it another try.