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

https://www.famitsu.com/article/202507/48601

Cost and Hiring

• He knew people wouldn't understand what he meant and that he shouldn't bring up "cost".
• But if he can't do something, he has committed himself to always explaining why. So he explained and well, you know the reaction he got.
• Hiring more people doesn't mean more output. He says leaders (ie. project managers) are important, and good leaders are very hard to come by.
• There are hundreds of developers working on FFXIV.
• They have assigned personnel to FFXIV as a priority.
• They are planning to significantly increase the number of QA teams but again lack of leaders is a concern.
• They have been trying to increase the number of developers over the last 10 years but the absolute number of Japanese developers is insufficient.
• Now, a lot of people who grew up playing FFXIV are applying to the development team, so a lot of developers now grew up playing FFXIV.
• However, few people have experience developing for a large-scale MMORPG, so it's still challenging.
• They are not giving up hiring. But due to the challenges with finding people with the necessary skills and experience, the growth of FFXIV has been competing with the rate at which they can hire people with the right skills and experience.
• 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.

Forked Tower

• They intended 24 people to be able to clear it, but certain mechanics have made it harder than intended.
• Changes will be made to it in 7.3 so that the intended amount of people can clear it.
• The next one will be developed better so more people can participate.
• Developers are working on a normal mode for the next one "at any cost".

Addressing the Divide Between Hardcore and Casual

• They previously had tried to handle this by making different content types aimed at different types of players, which made sense.
• However, Yoshi-P has decided it will now be better to try and make all content work for all players where possible.
• Obviously this begins with Pilgrim's Traverse (the deep dungeon) but he intends to expand the concept to other content.
• Depending on the offering given, either the HP or the outgoing damage increases by a factor of 1.15 (so, an extra 15%)

Ultimate

• Still said it will be released during 7.x.

Cosmic Exploration

• In ARR, crafting was designed to be done with macros due to how repetitive it is.
• However, in Cosmic Exploration it gets repetitive. They believe it's too simple and that the thinking has stalled.
• They have 70-80 staff members playing it to figure out if what they are making is enjoyable and making adjustments based on that, including making more unique sound effects and just making the experience actually fun.

Future of FFXIV

• "I don't think that FFXIV is perfect in its current state, and I'm keenly aware that we're facing major challenges precisely because we've built it up over so many years. After receiving a variety of feedback, I've finally been able to put it into words, and patch 7.3 is the time we're beginning to make concrete changes."
• "I believe we can only gain trust and confidence by continuing to build on it one step at a time, so we want to approach this as a new starting point for us as well."
• "Of course, I don't expect all content to suddenly reach the level I've talked about today. But I want to do my best to show you a glimpse of that and my determination"

Variant

• Will be a bit different to previous versions.
• "We've changed the flavor so that it can be enjoyed by a wider range of players, and we've also prepared new mechanisms. In this way, we aim to create each major piece of content so that it can be enjoyed by a wide range of players"

Fanfest

• "It's customary to announce new expansion packs at the Fan Festival. It seems like the date and venue have been finalized, so we're hoping to make the announcement soon."

He didnt' say it will be released during 7.x

Yoshida: This time, the Pilgrim Traverse secret boss, where you offer 40 offerings, is pretty close to an ultimate, but it still requires four players... Of course, we're planning on implementing one more in the 7.x series, and we're currently in the middle of working on it. As I've said many times before, developing an ultimate is incredibly difficult

Having said that, this is far more reassuring than anything he's said in the past. This is the first time he's ever mentioned 7.x and the 2nd ultimate in the same sentence. The previous live letter he made no mention of 7.x for the 2nd ultimate. Last LL all he said was "make no mistake the next ultimate is in development."

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.

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

Did he say 7.3 WILL fix forked or just a vague “we have plans to maybe do further difficulty fixes”

This post, r/ffxiv and r/ffxivdiscussion all seem to disagree on this point

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Did he say 7.3 WILL fix forked or just a vague “we have plans to maybe do further difficulty fixes”

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Google Translation:

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Fork Tower was actually created under the assumption that it could be cleared by 24 people if the strategy was established, and that the remaining 24 people could aim to clear it with support. However, there was a gimmick that collective required responsibility, so we felt that we had not made enough adjustments there. Therefore, the goal of 7.3 is to adjust it to the form that we were originally aiming for.

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Firefox Translation:

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The folk tower was built on the premise that if the capture was established, it could be cleared by twenty-four people, and the remaining twenty-four people were expected to aim for clear even if they followed up. However, there was also a gimmick that became a joint responsibility, so there was a lack of adjustment there. Therefore, it is a policy of 7.3 to adjust it to the shape that was originally intended.

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Sounds like Snowballs

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Did he say 7.3 WILL fix forked or just a vague “we have plans to maybe do further difficulty fixes”

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I wouldn't read it as Forked Tower will be fixed, just adjusted in the hopes that 24 members will be able to clear.

As far as "cost" goes, rather than he shouldn't have said it, especially if he knew in advance that it was going to land poorly, he should have been clear about what "cost" specifically. You would think the creative director, producer and apparent lead marketer of an MMO would understand that words matter, perhaps he should also have run it by the translator first to ensure they're on the same page.

That still leaves me confused

It doesn’t sound like “forked normal” of course but forked mechanics are so intertwined with their personal responsibility design that making it “carryable tour duty” like BA would basically involve a ground up rework anyway which apparently they don’t have the time or money for

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I don't think that FFXIV is perfect in its current state, and I'm keenly aware that we're facing major challenges precisely because we've built it up over so many years. After receiving a variety of feedback, I've finally been able to put it into words, and patch 7.3 is the time we're beginning to make concrete changes.

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So when is the NA community canceling Yoshi-P for being anti-FFXIV? He’s a WoW shill, right? He should just unsub and go play other games?

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.

Thanks for the summary OP.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

• Hiring more people doesn't mean more output. He says leaders (ie. project managers) are important, and good leaders are very hard to come by.
• There are hundreds of developers working on FFXIV.
• They have assigned personnel to FFXIV as a priority.
• They are planning to significantly increase the number of QA teams but again lack of leaders is a concern.
• They have been trying to increase the number of developers over the last 10 years but the absolute number of Japanese developers is insufficient.
• Now, a lot of people who grew up playing FFXIV are applying to the development team, so a lot of developers now grew up playing FFXIV.
• However, few people have experience developing for a large-scale MMORPG, so it's still challenging.
• They are not giving up hiring. But due to the challenges with finding people with the necessary skills and experience, the growth of FFXIV has been competing with the rate at which they can hire people with the right skills and experience.
• 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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Regarding the bolded parts, it's hardly a silver bullet but it seems an obvious sitting would be to relax the requirement that developers just speak Japanese. Instead they should employ teams of overseas developers each with a dedicated translator. For example, one translator per 10 developers, which might be one on a team, or one shared between two teams. Japanese dev companies love to silo teams so I'm sure the existing work processes would mitigate what would be greater problems for more agile teams. This would allow the company to hire project managers and developers outside of their already-dredged job market.

Not an instant fix, either. You might hire one team and onboard and train for 3 months in collaboration with a set of 2 or 3 mentors, then hire a new team and move the mentors across so they spend diminishing time with older new teams. It's a slow and gradual process, maybe hiring 40 devs in 12 months, but it's better than staring in desperation at a dwindling workforce.

"At any cost"

Doesn't really substantiate much when the precursor to this entire expansion was effectively "Spare no expense".

This just feels like a whole lot of word salad.... Saying a lot, whilst simultaneously saying... Nothing at all.

Your team does not have enough people to develop the game and you and your team, is working to hard on something you can't do proper in time, due to that there is too many corners you can't polish.

Also I think the Team has serious misunderstood the use of old content, instead of making new content with the old content... you should revive much more of the old content and make it into level 100 content.

YOU WILL only spend this much time leveling up to the max level and then find out that most of the content is A Real Reborn to Endwalker and nothing proper done for level 100 or max level content.

Make old content, from treasure hunts in Heavens Ward, all hunts that is B, A and S rank level 100 upscaled to current max ilevel... make all raids except for maybe ARR and HW into level 100 raids... make the game be rounded around rich endgame, where as you having loads of content to do and even more important, let the iLevel of content follow, so you can't just run over it either.

And more to it.... hire more people to do this stuff, as you clearly can't do whatever you are doing now alone with current team, due to, too much that is needed to be done.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It doesn’t sound like “forked normal” of course but forked mechanics are so intertwined with their personal responsibility design that making it “carryable tour duty” like BA would basically involve a ground up rework anyway which apparently they don’t have the time or money for

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Remove the raise restriction and eviction upon full wipe, redesign the relatively few(?) mechanics that require baiting, rescale DPS checks to be 24 players + (0.5 to 0.75) * number of players past 24… and I think you'd get something that six knowledgable, coordinated light parties could help drag others through — or at least prog more successfully and with more fun than, "lol, snowballs/fireballs, gg tyfp."

(I haven't done BA, so I don't have a feel for what "carryable" means there.)

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Remove the raise restriction and eviction upon full wipe, redesign the relatively few(?) mechanics that require baiting, rescale DPS checks to be 24 players + (0.5 to 0.75) * number of players past 24… and I think you'd get something that six knowledgable, coordinated light parties could help drag others through — or at least prog more successfully and with more fun than, "lol, snowballs/fireballs, gg tyfp."

(I haven't done BA, so I don't have a feel for what "carryable" means there.)

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Jesus at this point, why not just ask for a FT Trust Duty lol
Unironically asking for punishment to effectively, not even be possible in a raid is an interesting take to say the least.

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Originally Posted by Bryson

Unironically asking for punishment to effectively, not even be possible in a raid is an interesting take to say the least.

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I take it you've never done anything via Duty Finder, or CLL, or DRN, or Dalriada? Because, lol, punishment "not even be[ing] possible in a raid" already has a long history in this game.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

(I haven't done BA, so I don't have a feel for what "carryable" means there.)

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BA was "Carryable" in the fact that one shot caller (plus a second for first boss/es) could call everything, and you just needed to follow directions. If you didn't, and you died, there were enough people stacked with remembrance trays with sacrifice to raise anyone who had died, which usually only happened in small amounts in Raiden, or Absolute virtue (in ShB, BA has been steamrolled since EW, at least in the discord I run with). Ozma you just had to follow directions but if you died there was a very high chance that if your reraise didn't go off, you were going to be booted out of instance via black hole.

Delubrum Normal, CLL and Dalriada *sound like* they'd be good comparisons, but mechanically speaking they don't really compare with the type of content Forked is trying to be. I do disagree with the removal of the raise restriction and eviction, as those are some of the core systems in BA and Delubrum Savage, which is what forked tower is TRYING to be.

The problem is entirely in the entry system setting up expectations that it was going to be a CLL/Dalriada equivalent, rather than a BA/Delubrum Savage equivalent. If it WERE a CLL/Dalriada equivalent, i'd agree with you. But as it stands, it's a BA/Delubrum Savage equivalent and entirely optional, and can be ignored if you're just after the story, unlike what seems to be the plan with Forked tower magic.

Does it make Forked Blood's design good? No. Is it as close to the truth as we're probably going to get? From my perspective, Yeah.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

I take it you've never done anything via Duty Finder, or CLL, or DRN, or Dalriada? Because, lol, punishment "not even be[ing] possible in a raid" already has a long history in this game.

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what point do you think you're making here?

just because x happened in the past, doesn't mean that has to be the normative standard for everything to be measured against moving forward?

cleared ft, recleared ft. It wasn't difficult.. idk what to tell you.

by appealing to everyone he is going to appeal to no one lol its literally impossible to please everyone he's going to need an entirely seperate development team if thats his aim an with staff confident in their ability to deliver mmo content. otherwise thinks will just continue to tank and flop.

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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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And that's the way you should see it. That's the way everyone should look at it, really.

It's 100% clear that Yoshi-P and the leadership at CBU3 got comfortable "suffering from success".

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• "I believe we can only gain trust and confidence by continuing to build on it one step at a time, so we want to approach this as a new starting point for us as well."
• "Of course, I don't expect all content to suddenly reach the level I've talked about today. But I want to do my best to show you a glimpse of that and my determination"

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Like you said, lets see if his deeds match his words going forward.
I know they can do 5 star work on this game when they *really* set out to do it. They've done it before. I hope they'll do it again. ^_^

If you know how to read corporate speak he really didn't say a whole lot here.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Remove the raise restriction and eviction upon full wipe, redesign the relatively few(?) mechanics that require baiting, rescale DPS checks to be 24 players + (0.5 to 0.75) * number of players past 24… and I think you'd get something that six knowledgable, coordinated light parties could help drag others through — or at least prog more successfully and with more fun than, "lol, snowballs/fireballs, gg tyfp."

(I haven't done BA, so I don't have a feel for what "carryable" means there.)

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That’s the thing off the top of my head for mechanics that probably need to be redesigned

Tablet- tablet is mostly fine. About the only thing I could see is maybe one of the stack markers to bounce the meteor placers over to the safe side is pre set and doesn’t move because if the stack bouncers stand too far back all meteor placers just die

Dead stars- snowballs and fire towers need to change. Snowballs they could probably just get away with removing the tether stretch invuln stack but towers basically needs a ground up rework because if two cleaves don’t kill you then positioning in the mechanic suddenly doesn’t matter which makes it a nothing mechanic. Like that’s explicitly designed as an all or nothing that I can’t figure out how they would fix that

Bridges- bridges could stand to delete the Romeo’s on the idols (since Romeo’s is already used on the sprites in dragon) and delete the ability for line cleaves to pull enemies beyond an unbroken wall

Dragon- dragon is fine, dragon has basically zero personal responsibility

Lockwards- lockwards doesn’t have personal responsibility but the rhythmic keyward interruption should be deleted anyway because it discourages spawning support

Cow- holy lance and rune axe both are arguably already balanced by the fact that they give thrice come ruin rather than just kill you but they go off so quickly that doesn’t really help. You really can’t drag people through them, people need to understand raid plans if they haven’t seen them to make them work but I can’t even think of how to make them easier because it’s a dance to avoid ruin stacks. Canisters one is also arguably too tight a check considering you can’t use burst for it

And then just in general no occult armour gives defence like magia or eureka armour or rays so you are incredibly reliant on a shield healer for dead stars, bridges and cow specifically

There is just so much they would need to fix that to fix it feels like would take as much time as making forked normal anyway

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Originally Posted by Bryson

cleared ft, recleared ft. It wasn't difficult.. idk what to tell you.

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yeah, that's the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from someone who has no idea what the the poor plebians who aren't in the top 1% have to deal with.

maybe just try having some empathy? it's surely as easy as just not being bad?

Every issue that the dev team is experiencing is self-inflicted. You mean to tell me that over the course of more than a decade you couldn't have your ops guys develop a strategy for ensuring you're maintaining quality, highly trained, highly skilled personnel? What kind of circus is the management structure in that company? You can't honestly expect us to believe that in 10 years you can't find and develop enough people to maintain the labor and skill requirements to continue performing your duty as a studio in a satisfactory manner. Or wait. Yoshi P...Could it be??

- Your "engine" is a complete nightmare to work with
- It takes FOREVER to train someone to even work with the shoddy dev tools you've managed to patchwork together due to the "limitations" of this engine (remarkably expensive, far more expensive than migrating engines over the past decade would have been)
- You staff your leadership far too lean, and don't have any personnel "up to bat" in the event one of these leaders departs from the company, resulting in critical knowledge and softskill gaps
- You underpay your staff for the work that they perform, and you refuse to pay new devs enough to generate a massive influx of cream of the crop prodigies to make up for your skill deficiencies (temporary, but you have to make up ground so open up that checkbook)
- This is an incredibly critical issue, and you are downplaying it with the structure of your statements to soften the blow to fans, to set diminished expectations for the players, and to prevent an investor panic
- This is a problem that you will not be able to remedy for an extraordinary length of time

I'm ngl, if even an ounce of this speculation is true, then they are in some deep shit gg's man. Even if not, they'll still have an absolute mountain to climb to overcome their current issues. What an expensive problem they've caused for themselves. In America, heads would roll over this whole debacle.

I am at the I'll believe it when I see it stage. Especially the new dd to see if they have tee he we made it ultimate difficulty again.

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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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Only if they have the changes ready to go for 7.3. If it’s more like 7.31 or 7.35, those will have their own patch notes.

I'm intrigued by the discussion of the difficulty in hiring sufficiently qualified people.

Such people aren't deposited by storks into cabbage patches. Surely corporations needing personnel with specific skillsets, magnified by legacy code, have a responsibility to train employees to the required level?

Well, I had to assume that the issue was skills and experience. It could also just be interest I suppose, or whether a person defines themselves as a game developer.

They do put required skills and experience in job adverts, but they also say in live letters to apply anyway, since it's common that a company may hire whatever they can get even if it's not ideal.

Underpaid developers, recruitment restricted to national territory, dated engine with multiple band-aid fixes through time. Current developers don't even have the expertise to implement a proper blacklist system, and exposed sensitive user data to every client.

Meanwhile nonpaid international developers have (illegally) built a much better engine themselves that works well with the game, and the mobile version has features which might never come to FFXIV. It's only natural that the developers applying will be below expectations for a global product.

The true question is: what is Square Enix going to do about it? How long until we get meaningful changes that will restore the faith many once had in them? All of this PR talk and lack of personal accountability is only going in the opposite direction. When faced with complaints regarding content or job design, Yoshi-P has told people to play Ultimates or other games before.

The lack of effort on developing long-lasting content and decision to lobotomize every rotation into a 2-minute bland meta are not resource issues, they're just bad decisions. By many of Yoshi-P's statements, it's reasonable to conclude they've been designing the game for people who spend most of the year unsubscribed. Who's to say hiring experienced coders is going to change anything... For all we know, we've been on 2-year expansion cycles before, and the game was less profitable.

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Originally Posted by Seraph_Variel

The problem is entirely in the entry system setting up expectations that it was going to be a CLL/Dalriada equivalent, rather than a BA/Delubrum Savage equivalent. If it WERE a CLL/Dalriada equivalent, i'd agree with you. But as it stands, it's a BA/Delubrum Savage equivalent and entirely optional, and can be ignored if you're just after the story, unlike what seems to be the plan with Forked tower magic.

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It's not entirely ignorable. You will never be able to finish your Triple Triad collection without it now. There will always be a missing spot. So if they add another mount reward that needs it, whelp, anyone that doesn't go find a Discord to do it in is screwed. Same if they add a reward to getting all the notes. Neither of those things should be tied to content like this.

Unless the last boss of pilgrims traverse drops decent loot, it won't be worth doing. This scares me considering the developers thought gil as a reward in Crescent was "generous".

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

It's not entirely ignorable. You will never be able to finish your Triple Triad collection without it now. There will always be a missing spot. So if they add another mount reward that needs it, whelp, anyone that doesn't go find a Discord to do it in is screwed. Same if they add a reward to getting all the notes. Neither of those things should be tied to content like this.

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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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Originally Posted by brinn12

Underpaid developers

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

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recruitment restricted to national territory

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This needs to change for sure.

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Current developers don't even have the expertise to implement a proper blacklist system

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I think that's the bigger issue than "dated engine" tbh. A developer can fix engine issues given an odd 12 years in which to do it. It's also partly that they are not even assigned to fix it, otherwise things would have been fixed over the course of 12 years.

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it's reasonable to conclude they've been designing the game for people who spend most of the year unsubscribed.

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This is honestly the truth. Their perspective is that people lack time, but it essentially forces people to lack time on purpose if they have the time, by way of unsubscribing.

First of all, thanks for the summary, Jeeqbit.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They previously had tried to handle this by making different content types aimed at different types of players, which made sense.
However, Yoshi-P has decided it will now be better to try and make all content work for all players where possible.

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

The DD mentioned here does not concern me (I can't even enter since I never finished PotD). But when this extends to "all content" I have no idea how this should work at all. 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.

So how is this even supposed to work?

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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.
This needs to change for sure.
I think that's the bigger issue than "dated engine" tbh. A developer can fix engine issues given an odd 12 years in which to do it. It's also partly that they are not even assigned to fix it, otherwise things would have been fixed over the course of 12 years.
This is honestly the truth. Their perspective is that people lack time, but it essentially forces people to lack time on purpose if they have the time, by way of unsubscribing.

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It's widely known that the international market offers more and better opportunities for developers with vast experience. For this reason, restricting hiring to Japan can hinder development, especially when combined with other factors such as money offered and a lack of professional growth opportunities. FFXIV's engine is far from modern or robust, and this impacts how developers perceive potential for innovation or advancement. Also, if Square Enix truly offered competitive salaries for the best talent, they wouldn't be struggling to hire them during the game's peak.

Regarding time, the issue is that most players who lack it can still manage to log in and play FFXIV regularly each month. Yet SE treats them as if they couldn't stay subscribed or engage with the game for several weeks, with most new content being short-lived. In contrast, we have the FOMO housing system, and seasonal event gear costing money later. It feels more like an attempt to mask design issues they are trying to hide.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

First of all, thanks for the summary, Jeeqbit.



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

The DD mentioned here does not concern me (I can't even enter since I never finished PotD). But when this extends to "all content" I have no idea how this should work at all. 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.

So how is this even supposed to work?

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Without skill sliders/options, it will not work. If the intent is a one-size-fits-all approach to a remarkably diverse player base, this might as well be FFXIV's suicide note.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Without skill sliders/options, it will not work. If the intent is a one-size-fits-all approach to a remarkably diverse player base, this might as well be FFXIV's suicide note.

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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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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

First of all, thanks for the summary, Jeeqbit.



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

The DD mentioned here does not concern me (I can't even enter since I never finished PotD). But when this extends to "all content" I have no idea how this should work at all. 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.

So how is this even supposed to work?

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That's why much of the decision making is also based on player data and what players are actually doing. The fact that a vast majority of the playerbase won't touch hardcore content with a barge pole is why MSQ dungeons need to cause as little friction as possible, and it's the reason we got "story mode" tier of 8-man raids.
Back in 2.xx there was only one mode of BCoB (basically what we consider savage mode today), and only a small percentage players cleared, so we got "story mode" versions if 8-man raids from Heavensward onward.

Back when Yoshi-P was on tour doing one of his live talks 10 years ago or so, when difficulty was brought up, he pretty much outright stated that even though players were asking for harder content, the player data showed the opposite, basically that most players either couldn't complete it or wouldn't bother with it.

I imagine that's mostly still the case today.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

But when this extends to "all content" I have no idea how this should work at all.

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It doesn't extend to all content. Obviously Ultimates aren't going to get an easy mode and Island Sanctuary isn't getting a raid boss. They're being a little vague with their plans but from what he's said so far it seems like their main goal is to move away from each patch being "the raiding patch" or "the casual content patch" so each group isn't twiddling their thumbs for months on end until their turn comes around again. He keeps mentioning "large scale content" so I assume that means big expansion features like deep dungeons, field exploration zones, etc and not regular dungeons, but who knows.