Yoshi-P At PAX (Officially Translated)

Just thought some people might like to hear Yoshi-P talk about FFXIV.

https://www.youtube.com/live/kgCNyeARcac?t=2128

Addresses how he processes feedback and such things. If you want to skip to that bit.

Before I spend time in looking at it, does Jesse ask any actually hard hitting questions. Or does he do the basic courtesy every other interviewer does where they just ask the simple soft questions and fangirl over the game and him.
Because I would rather not watch the same interview for the 10th time

His responses feel sincere and human.

I think he still takes this game and the players to heart.

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

His responses feel sincere and human.

I think he still takes this game and the players to heart.

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He perfected his role as the devoted selfless producer, don't fall for it.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Before I spend time in looking at it, does Jesse ask any actually hard hitting questions. Or does he do the basic courtesy every other interviewer does where they just ask the simple soft questions and fangirl over the game and him.
Because I would rather not watch the same interview for the 10th time

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Jesse is like that, but a huge portion of it is talking about how he views feedback and Jesse also gave him some audience questions.

Since feedback is a big part of the point of the forums I thought it held some relevance.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Jesse is like that, but a huge portion of it is talking about how he views feedback and Jesse also gave him some audience questions.

Since feedback is a big part of the point of the forums I thought it held some relevance.

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Suppose a more candid location is better for more hardhitting questions than in front of an audience like that.

Oh neat. Yeah, wasn't exactly expecting much in terms of revelations in this interview, but it's nice to hear Yoshida's thoughts.

Interesting trivia bit about how he came to take over the Wandering Minstrel for the Rising and why it looks nothing like him! lol

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Originally Posted by vincexorcized

Crazy how y’all praised him for so many years, and now he’s the most wanted human on earth. Like, the man still human and is allowed to make mistakes you know? The devs are also listening to the feedbacks.

By the way, feedbacks they always listened to, which guided us to the 2 min meta, easy game and so on. Community tend to really forget they’re the first responsible for turning the game to whatever it is these days in terms of gameplay and such. Because they actually cared about feedbacks.

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I remember the 2 min meta resulting from what players preferred back in high-end content during HW. Namely the healers and Ninja. AST - AOE Balance or GTFO. SCH - It's success with AST in the high-end content made WHM the laughing stock. It success also caused SMN to suffer a bit (despite SMN being the king of AOE at the time). Ninja - It's utility and comparable DPS to other melee made MNK rather unfavorable.

PF attitudes back in HW and SB did not help things for those who wanted job uniqueness in the long run.

A lot of these preferences contributed to why all the roles are homogenized as they are today. People tend to take their things for granted to the point where they don't know what they've got till it's gone.

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Originally Posted by Vanfrano

He perfected his role as the devoted selfless producer, don't fall for it.

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May I ask what exactly I am falling for from his sol-called role as devoted selfless producer? He just answered the interviewer's questions.

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Originally Posted by vincexorcized

Crazy how y’all praised him for so many years, and now he’s the most wanted human on earth. Like, the man still human and is allowed to make mistakes you know? The devs are also listening to the feedbacks.

By the way, feedbacks they always listened to, which guided us to the 2 min meta, easy game and so on. Community tend to really forget they’re the first responsible for turning the game to whatever it is these days in terms of gameplay and such. Because they actually cared about feedbacks.

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I never, ever liked him ever since he took over during 1.0 and others had already foreseen what a joke he was and still is. And I don't like Soken either.
One of the first thing he did back in 1.0 was adding himself as a NPC in the game and starting his ridiculous PR letters from the producer...

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Originally Posted by Vanfrano

I never, ever liked him ever since he took over during 1.0 and others had already foreseen what a joke he was and still is. And I don't like Soken either.
One of the first thing he did back in 1.0 was adding himself as a NPC in the game and starting his ridiculous PR letters from the producer...

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Simple question: Why?

A quick look at your post history here demonstrates that you are perspicuous regarding your dislike of him, but I didn't see anything that really elaborated on why he offends you to such a degree.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Simple question: Why?

A quick look at your post history here demonstrates that you are perspicuous regarding your dislike of him, but I didn't see anything that really elaborated on why he offends you to such a degree.

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when I played anarchy online the one game director would hide inside a bar in one city. Another one would log in sometimes and just wander around and do stuff. People would have close interaction with them the way you would the mayor of a small town. You actually had the opportunity to speak with the person in charge and exchange ideas etc. I don't even think yoshi knows anything about his game outside the jpn region.

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Originally Posted by Astronema

when I played anarchy online the one game director would hide inside a bar in one city. Another one would log in sometimes and just wander around and do stuff. People would have close interaction with them the way you would the mayor of a small town. You actually had the opportunity to speak with the person in charge and exchange ideas etc. I don't even think yoshi knows anything about his game outside the jpn region.

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Fair enough.

On the other hand, the game director of a game I played before I discovered FFXIV was outright antagonistic toward the playerbase of that game. He outright avoided any and all interaction, was pathetically easily offended and preferred to let the Community Manager play middle-man rather than directly addressing anything himself. This might not have been quite so bad had the CM hadn't had a fairly confrontational mindset toward the community.
This meant that the CM's livestreams included a Q&A session where the CM - having no answers to any questions put to him - would say "I'll look into this thing".... and then nothing further ever came of it.

In fact I'll never forget one particular long-running example of this. A group of players, including myself, asked for this particular thing over a period of eight years. We got promises like "all in good time" and "be patient". Polls were created - one in 2017 and another in 2020; the item we were asking for won both by a significant margin. They ignored the results. During a CM livestream this was pointed out in the Q&A session - the CM simply told us to "stop being jerks" about it. Again, said item did finally appear after eight years of begging but at that point it felt like it was less to do with players asking for it and more the fact that they'd run out of other options. Heck, even the promotional guff that they put out pre-release contained a thinly veiled insult regarding how this item was everyone's "second favourite".

I didn't persist with the game for long after that anyway - sadly, getting something you want in a game which reduced it's content output to one 45 minute 'episode' every six months (due to turning their focus on gambleboxes) and let powercreep reduce it's more difficult content into a joke that could be cleared in 12 seconds didn't really feel like much of an achievement in the end.

Sorry - YoshiP may have his faults. He may not be the saint that some perceive him to be. But regardless of those faults, he engages the community in a positive way. He gives us feedback. He has been known to take feedback onboard. He's clear on where the game is going.

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Originally Posted by Astronema

when I played anarchy online the one game director would hide inside a bar in one city. Another one would log in sometimes and just wander around and do stuff. People would have close interaction with them the way you would the mayor of a small town. You actually had the opportunity to speak with the person in charge and exchange ideas etc. I don't even think yoshi knows anything about his game outside the jpn region.

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Question, were those directors ever playing on a server not in the same region as they live?

Because from what I picked up, YoshiP does indeed play his own Game, iirc he's even got pug logs up on that one Site. It just is that he plays on servers he's got good ping on and can fluently speak the same language as Most other Players there.

That comment on game devs playing other games at 46:40... well touché I guess.

The interviewer really did not push him at all for any even moderately hard questions. This is why you don't get content creators to interview devs for games they primarily stream.

They just lob softball questions at him and let him opine about whatever he wants, same with the media tour. We just had a really bad expansion with very little communication that our feedback was even heard or it will get better while subscriptions tick on. We've been told we're getting less content going forward, and it's looking like the next expansion will be delayed compared to the normal schedule with no guarantee of increased quality.

I'm not saying make him cry or harass him but put his feet to the fire a little, come on.

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Originally Posted by RokkuEkkusu

PF attitudes back in HW and SB did not help things for those who wanted job uniqueness in the long run.

A lot of these preferences contributed to why all the roles are homogenized as they are today. People tend to take their things for granted to the point where they don't know what they've got till it's gone.

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When AST's original cards were scrambled in Stormblood, people were livid that "job lost its quirk". What I remember, however, from its release is that everyone chased getting crit cards and didn't care about other types. And it's hardly the only kind of community behavior that afftected job design, future or past.


I mained WAR during SB, when they added def/aggro and damage stances. People cried out during Shadowbringers release how lamentable it is that the stances were removed because something something "but stance dancing is fun!!!" when the reality was that no one actually did the "stance dancing", regardless of content difficulty. You were expected to use aggro stance for first two-three GCDs at most and then switch over to "not cause dps loss for the party". To put it simply, the concept that was technically fun was removed because it wasn't utilized by the playerbase.

DevTeam aren't saints by any means and do mistakes, but people should stop pretending that the way they play the game isn't part of the reason some of the decisions are made.

Yeah, HW AST was an absolute blast to play, but the Alex raids were so poorly tuned that any job that didn't offer a very sharp advantage was pushed out. It was much like the attitude around Pictomamcer with FRU; AST was just way too good in that content to ignore

The initial cards system had you draw a card, choosing to burn it to add an extra attribute for the next card or immediately use it. The Ewer was a powerful MP regen, and the Spire did the same for TP. Burning these cards made you next one an AOE.

Spear shortened the cooldown time for abilities, but only ones used while under the effect, so it was impossible to coordinate in most content. Bole was a defense buff. Arrow was a haste, and using it on a monk could ruin their rotation from running out of TP. Meanwhile, the balance was a damage buff, a big one, too.

So what you would do is just fish for Ewer/Spire, burn it for the AOE additional effect, and fish for Balance. Because it was ALWAYS good and extremely needed in how insanely badly set the DPS checks in the Alexander raids.

The incoming damage of those same raids was so insane that it was why White Mages were pushed out. Having a powerful shield healer in Scholar and Astro's original design allowing you to be both a shield or regen healer with that card buff system just made WHM a worse AST in every way. I suspect this is what led to the Blood Lily. They gave WHM one of the most powerful spells in the game.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

Arrow was a haste, and using it on a monk could ruin their rotation from running out of TP. Meanwhile, the balance was a damage buff, a big one, too.

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I used to love ASTs giving me Arrow as a newbie BLM! lol I saw some amazing ASTs under the old system too. I was awful and they still kept me and everyone else alive, while throwing out all their cards.

When I finally got around to trying out AST, I loved being able to choose Diurnal or Nocturnal, and I usually preferred Nocturnal, despite to this day not really enjoying the other shield healers.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

DevTeam aren't saints by any means and do mistakes, but people should stop pretending that the way they play the game isn't part of the reason some of the decisions are made.

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This. Along with more vocal feedback, I really do think they pay attention to how people are actually playing the game, and that’s the impetus behind certain changes.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

This. Along with more vocal feedback, I really do think they pay attention to how people are actually playing the game, and that’s the impetus behind certain changes.

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I wouldn't be surprised if it's the case for a big chunk of combat-related changes. Unlike us and even the logs website, they have the full picture. They also do play the game, so some of the things they see first-hand.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

I mained WAR during SB, when they added def/aggro and damage stances. People cried out during Shadowbringers release how lamentable it is that the stances were removed because something something "but stance dancing is fun!!!" when the reality was that no one actually did the "stance dancing", regardless of content difficulty.

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Not sure we played the same WAR or the same game. In Dungeons, stance dancing on Warrior was almost a constant for me.
Getting the self heals on the gauge spenders with supbar healers, going into tankstance for Aggrocombos to keep up with much better dps players.

It's just that the people that complained about it were louder then those that used and enjoyed it.

As with most changes like these, the people that want the old status quo back were not the ones asking for what we all got.

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Originally Posted by Sani2341

Not sure we played the same WAR or the same game. In Dungeons, stance dancing on Warrior was almost a constant for me.
Getting the self heals on the gauge spenders with supbar healers, going into tankstance for Aggrocombos to keep up with much better dps players.

It's just that the people that complained about it were louder then those that used and enjoyed it.

As with most changes like these, the people that want the old status quo back were not the ones asking for what we all got.

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Maybe I was just unlucky with my teams, then. Because I liked the concept of stances, but was nagged about them more than once, which is why I remember it being a point of friction.

At least it wasn't a DC issue, since EU got split into Chaos and Light closer to the end of the expansion.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

Maybe I was just unlucky with my teams, then. Because I liked the concept of stances, but was nagged about them more than once, which is why I remember it being a point of friction.

At least it wasn't a DC issue, since EU got split into Chaos and Light closer to the end of the expansion.

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The expectation to be dps stance only, ime, was exclusive to EX and up, where it was also expected everyone uses what tools they had for aggro.
Dungeons people didn't care until you lost aggro or died ime.

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Originally Posted by Sani2341

The expectation to be dps stance only, ime, was exclusive to EX and up, where it was also expected everyone uses what tools they had for aggro.
Dungeons people didn't care until you lost aggro or died ime.

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I'll just assume that someone who stepped freshly out of EX didn't change gears and was still in hard mode in their mind. That could explain those encounters, at least.

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Originally Posted by Vanfrano

I never, ever liked him ever since he took over during 1.0 and others had already foreseen what a joke he was and still is. And I don't like Soken either.
One of the first thing he did back in 1.0 was adding himself as a NPC in the game and starting his ridiculous PR letters from the producer...

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Ah, you're one of those players still carrying the torch for 1.0. Have you considered that, after 12+ years, maybe this game just isn't for you?

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Originally Posted by Vanfrano

I never, ever liked him ever since he took over during 1.0 and others had already foreseen what a joke he was and still is. And I don't like Soken either.
One of the first thing he did back in 1.0 was adding himself as a NPC in the game and starting his ridiculous PR letters from the producer...

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My dude why are you even here? So you can seethe about every little thing?

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Originally Posted by Halivel

I'll just assume that someone who stepped freshly out of EX didn't change gears and was still in hard mode in their mind. That could explain those encounters, at least.

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Oh no, I remember the general mentality was to be in your DPS stance as much as humanly possible for both Tanks and Healers in all levels of play, and I don't think it was ever a necessity.

It's just an early example of how the tactics of the players in the hardest content trickled down to become the "meta" of the game.

Shoot, that can even be shown to explain modern dungeon design. We all basically speed ran them for our roulettes, skipping side paths for chests, tanking everything as one massive group, so dungeons quickly became the mob-mob-bossX3 hallways because players wanted efficiency more that dynamic encounters.

And it's only because we have 5 entire expansions of that efficient design that we're collectively starting to get bored of it. IMO, applying the Variant concept (maybe with a little RNG) to story dungeons is really the only way to keep both the desire for speed but some variation each go so it's not as repetitive.

Talk is cheap, the game needs less talk and more actions imo

I liked this interview overall. He clearly thinks deeply about how the systems in games will impact players. To people saying it's not "hard hitting journalism" the man is making video games, not a politician or something. Remember this is entertainment.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

And it's only because we have 5 entire expansions of that efficient design that we're collectively starting to get bored of it. IMO, applying the Variant concept (maybe with a little RNG) to story dungeons is really the only way to keep both the desire for speed but some variation each go so it's not as repetitive.

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This will just make people mad if they happen to get the "inefficient" variation.

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Originally Posted by JadeCurtiss

My dude why are you even here? So you can seethe about every little thing?

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I do get the impression that you've hit the nail on it's head here. Their post history demonstrates lots of angry replies which are, to quote Shakespeare's Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5 "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

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Originally Posted by Sani2341

Not sure we played the same WAR or the same game. In Dungeons, stance dancing on Warrior was almost a constant for me.
Getting the self heals on the gauge spenders with supbar healers, going into tankstance for Aggrocombos to keep up with much better dps players.

It's just that the people that complained about it were louder then those that used and enjoyed it.

As with most changes like these, the people that want the old status quo back were not the ones asking for what we all got.

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The warriors berserk that then incurred a pacify and the demand for a leeches/esuna/exalted detriment as the 5 seconds was too long, makes me laugh thinking about the rants when healers didn't.

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Originally Posted by PaulH

The warriors berserk that then incurred a pacify and the demand for a leeches/esuna/exalted detriment as the 5 seconds was too long, makes me laugh thinking about the rants when healers didn't.

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Didn't they Change that at the end of HW? Or was that during StB Patches?

Been quite a while.

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Originally Posted by Sani2341

Didn't they Change that at the end of HW? Or was that during StB Patches?

Been quite a while.

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Yeah I thought it was HW, just checked and apparently it was StB/4.0 when Berserk was folded into Inner Release and the pacify went.

...Yeahhh..
So you don't get to ignore quality player feedback for a decade, and then cry and play victim and ask everyone to be nice when you've ignored them to the point where your players are leaving the game like crazy.

Maybe stopping for a moment to listen to something other than your own voice telling you how great every decision you make is and how you can never do anything wrong ever was needed years ago.
But the game is where it is because it's led by someone who falls back on the same tired excuses and flails around like a victim every time something they brazenly ignore from the community comes back on them.


The problem we're seeing now is that this is the first time, ever, that this team is being held accountable and to a standard.
Long gone is the "BEST DEV EVER MMO JESUS" cries, and people are looking for problems to be addressed.

The dev team has no idea how to handle actual pressure because they've never had to deal with it.
They have no idea how to handle player feedback because they've always just ignored it.

They are lost and directionless, and it shows with the way the game is going.

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Originally Posted by CapaxInfiniti

...Yeahhh..
So you don't get to ignore quality player feedback for a decade, and then cry and play victim and ask everyone to be nice when you've ignored them to the point where your players are leaving the game like crazy.

Maybe stopping for a moment to listen to something other than your own voice telling you how great every decision you make is and how you can never do anything wrong ever was needed years ago.
But the game is where it is because it's led by someone who falls back on the same tired excuses and flails around like a victim every time something they brazenly ignore from the community comes back on them.

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It could be useful for the live letters to be a little more specific about reworks in regards to what kind of content/difficulty is driving the proposed changes, because how are we supposed to know if all the job feedback we are submitting is even up for debate if say, there is some extreme and unmovable philosophy that acts as a great filter to so much of it.

But at the end of the day the devs have made it clear they're going to remain largely ambiguous about this issue beyond saying jobs are based on encounter design, player feedback, or balance issues. I personally think this is a big factor thats leading to players giving up.

Wait until 8.0 is, well, not inspiring. What's so wrong with making jobs a larger and more transparent conversation?

Moreover I think it could be useful if this studio can just come out and finally say they are an action studio? Perhaps they remake RPGs or once made RPGs, but XVI is not really an RPG and XIV has seemingly converted away from being one over time??

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Originally Posted by CapaxInfiniti

The dev team has no idea how to handle actual pressure because they've never had to deal with it.
They have no idea how to handle player feedback because they've always just ignored it.

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Which is wrong, for example, they made changes for entering the forked tower after players gave feedback.

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Originally Posted by SyferU

Which is wrong, for example, they made changes for entering the forked tower after players gave feedback.

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After JP* players gave a feedback.

We all understand that we do mistakes but many people will see this as: "he just said that so we feel bad for him and he can run his shenanigans again... yet another please look forward to it!". I mean I can't blame them, we have been on a letdown for so long and its still happening.

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Originally Posted by Sani2341

Question, were those directors ever playing on a server not in the same region as they live?

Because from what I picked up, YoshiP does indeed play his own Game, iirc he's even got pug logs up on that one Site. It just is that he plays on servers he's got good ping on and can fluently speak the same language as Most other Players there.

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that game had only 2 global servers back then with the director based out of Montreal Canada, before that they were from Norway.

One of the biggest things they haven't done yet is prove to us that this new paradigm will be better. So far we have seen nothing of the Quantum fights and they have said they want to change every piece of content to be Quantum.
Without feedback or even an initial trial run. Giving it to Mr Ozma, the dev known most for completely overshooting difficulty and making raiders happy while leaving casuals out to dry.

They are going to put it in 7.35 then in 7.4 with no time for feedback, then in 7.5 and 8.0-8.x with basically no time to fix any issues. We already saw it took more than a year to account for how unpopular Wuk Lamat is in the patch schedule and she was poorly received from 6.55 to 7.0.
If this stuff doesn't work are we really going to be stuck until 8.4 to get any changes to the new formula?

It's genuinely mind boggling the amount of risks they're expecting people to go along with, and with such little communication from the dev team and Yoshida.