Mr. Naoki Yoshida, have you forgotten your own "Three Easy Steps to Failure"?

In light of the ongoing criticism of Dawntrail and your recent responses in interviews, let's explore:

1. An unhealthy obsession with graphic quality

Dawntrail is planned as the first major graphic update. However, have you been overly focused on very specific graphics, such as the grass and every polygon on Lalafell faces? It took the first benchmark and players flooding the forums to point out that there is more to the game than just grass and Lalafell. As a result, for the first time, there was a "patch" for a benchmark.

2. A surprising lack of MMORPG knowledge among development team members

Does this also extend to the writing team? Is your current writing team lacking the knowledge and experience needed to create a compelling story within the current MSQ structure/formula? It seems so, especially if you thought that main story quests should have been side quests.

3. The mindset that the solution to every problem could be patched in a future update

Did you approve the Dawntrail story under the pretense that any "weaknesses" in the story would be addressed later following player feedback?

This is just one slide in a presentation written by you, Mr. Yoshida, about the lessons learned after 1.0 and the launch of 2.0. And it’s not just this one slide. There are a few others that seem to reflect forgotten lessons: "Fun comes first; if it isn’t fun, you’re doing it wrong" or "Never back down; always aim to amaze."
How about "Learn to listen and adapt. A complaint is worth twice as much as a compliment. The silent always leave first. If players are complaining, it means they still care."

I work in a certain design profession where we were strongly taught in college to "take criticism for what it’s worth." We receive criticism from the deepest pits of the seven hells to the pinnacle of the heavens.
For example, "You dumb [redacted]! This is the worst color placement in history!"
What worth does this kind of dripping toxic statement have?
Simple: it highlights the effect of color placement.

All points you bring up has been present since ARR, and you were blind to them back then.
So why now? Why is Dawntrail the sticking point to you all.

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Originally Posted by Audson

We receive criticism from the deepest pits of the seven hells to the pinnacle of the heavens.

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Just wanna say congrats on making a sentence clunkier than anything in FFXIV right now.

It's hardly an unhealthy obsession with graphic quality. It's quite healthy for the game to be getting an upgrade to graphics after 10 years. And it has happened to other aspects than what you said, such as all faces especially Elezen and Roagadyn, clothes, shaders, lighting, weather and system (such as better AA and dynamic resolution).

Most of their team (talking hundreds here) play the game. And many of them play other games, including Yoshi-P, and you can see the inspiration from those games in the content. Like how Solution Nine is basically cyberpunk and they even admitted it when revealing it. Given many WoW developers have played FFXIV even by Yoshi-P's account, it would surely stand to reason that the reverse is true.

They never tend to patch the story, even if people didn't like something. The only real exception is when they revamped ARR and older dungeons and this was after years and years of everyone asking for it to the point that it was "obviously needed".

As for fun, that is subjective and down to opinion. Obviously it is fun in his opinion. And he aims to amaze in the sense he is always looking for a way to create a "high-fantasy" story. An ishgardian knight of the round in the clouds fighting the dragons? A war to liberate nations and dethrone the ruler? Visiting a faerie kingdom and saving a world engulfed in light? Defeating the elder primals, stopping the final days, meeting the ancients in the past and traveling to the edge of the universe? Finding the city of gold, long rumored and dreamed of by giants, and ending up engulfed in part of another world that underwent turmoil, to stop the Queen of Alexandria from abusing souls?

I don't know what "overly focused on graphics" means but the game looks great if that's what you mean.

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Originally Posted by Audson

In light of the ongoing criticism of Dawntrail and your recent responses in interviews, let's explore:

1. An unhealthy obsession with graphic quality

Dawntrail is planned as the first major graphic update. However, have you been overly focused on very specific graphics, such as the grass and every polygon on Lalafell faces? It took the first benchmark and players flooding the forums to point out that there is more to the game than just grass and Lalafell. As a result, for the first time, there was a "patch" for a benchmark.

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Wha? There was no "unhealthy obsession" with graphics quality. The game's been out ten years, they clearly wanted to spruce it up a bit so it didn't look as dated, which I think most people would agree is a good call. Now, the issue with faces is a mess, but that too is not an "unhealthy obsession" either, it was a mistaken stylistic direction people didn't ask for. And the benchmark patch was their attempt to fix mistakes based off player feedback, not obsession. I know you want to strengthen your case by forcibly shoving Dawntrail into each of these categories, but doing so with number 1 is pretty disingenuous.

I love how they do one graphics upgrade in 11 years and suddenly there's somehow an unhealthy obsession with graphic quality.

Time passes, everything ages, FFXIV was looking old, and it's a game they want to remain developing for another decade which means it has to be competitive against newer, possibly more innovative games in the future competing to capture the same (and new) audiences that this game will also need to attract in order to continue getting the same degree of development we players have enjoyed for the past 11 years.

Regarding point #2 "A surprising lack of MMORPG knowledge among development team members"

XI and then XIV both pretty much defined the modern genre of narrative MMO, so much so that WoW now borrows from the XIV method of blending a lot of in game cutscenes as part of the narrative instead of burying the story in text boxes bookended with pre-rendered cutscenes.

Dawntrail's story failure is not so much MMO storytelling failure..... but more JRPG storytelling in general.


This Hero's Journey kind of sucked.

Yeah, I am sorry but every single point you've raised has pretty much been universal since ARR.


Some of these points just seem shoehorned in. e.g., poor story-telling doesn't necessarily equate to poor MMORPG knowledge, otherwise the genre itself is failing, more than what it already is. Poor story telling is poor story telling. That's all it is. It isn't anything else.

Now if you wanted to argue the game trades of QoL for basic RPG mechanics then I would be inclined to agree to a certain extent. But that isn't the point being raised here.

Poor MMORPG understanding to me would be poor understanding and facilitation of social dynamics and groups (grouped content), in addition to poorly managed progression systems, or a non-pragmatic expectation that the game should be developed for solo-play. - All of these points the game has done fairly poorly since it's inception. Of all things raised you decided to go with poor story telling lol.

Point 3., is bizarre, and has been going on for a millennia. - That said, if anything, I would argue the problems with the story were largely by design.

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Originally Posted by Audson

...However, have you been overly focused on very specific graphics, such as the grass and every polygon on Lalafell faces? It took the first benchmark and players flooding the forums to point out that there is more to the game than just grass and Lalafell...

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I just have to nitpick this statement because Lalafells in the first benchmark were uncanny demons as soon as they opened their mouth.