Naoki Yoshida interview @Gamescom

[Velhart]

What does it matter if the game does a predictable formula? The problem isn't the formula, it is the quality of that formula. Instead of wanting them to change it, they should change things within it. Like make interesting mechanics to dungeons we have not done yet. Make it actually challenging instead of face-roll content.

If you change the formula too much, you get increased development time/costs and back to experimentation that can rock your community back and forth easily. Doing this is more damaging to the game than you realize. How they have it set up putting unique content inside the basic formula is solid enough. Like I said before, the issue is the quality and lasting appeal of said content. Diadem and Palace of the Dead have potential, but were boring at best. The development team depends too much on face-roll level content that just gets consumed quickly and forgotten about fast or becomes boring. If actual challenge and well polished design were in each content they gave, it would make the lasting appeal a little longer than we get now.

Not only that, they have too much of a "grind this" concept in their content. Which is okay and understandable in some cases, but they are way too dependent on it in most of their content. It especially upset me that he pretty much said he made the relic quest for bad players. What? Really? You shouldn't make anything for bad players. Face-roll easy content's purpose should only be to help work you into challenging content. Don't promote your game to appeal to bad players. Development team, do you even video game?

The issue with open world content is it just won't work with the game we have right now. Gear is upgraded very quickly. People zerg everything. We seen how hunts and Diadem worked out when it was a free for all and it removed all challenge. The only other option I see is if you have parties force a monster to spawn for themselves and possibly add some mechanic where the party could call out for help if things get too rough, but it might lead to zergs as well. It's a very delicate balancing act and I see why the devs just want to put everything behind instances; they can control how many people go in and design fights around that.

Yep. Like Yoshi-P says, a ton of things have to take into account if you make an actual difficult boss in open world. Have to account for how many players are on the map, how the boss's mechanics are and what part of the environment is in it. It is all things people don't account for and makes unbalanced fights that lead those bosses to be just zerg fights mostly. Putting them in an instance allows the developers to make the interesting fights they want. His example with Ifrit was pretty spot on.

It bothers me that the team takes in my opinion really bad ideas from the community here and try to make it work in FFXIV. I really think they listen too much to the wrong people in these forums. Again, my opinion.

[drivendawn]

I am pretty sure a better translation wouldn't have said bad and more like not as skilled as in can't beat savage mode to get the best weapon. However I know what you are saying, Point is they could make some reasonably fun four man trial like content to spice it up or something. I think potd has done well and many like it, although it can be improved upon. Diadem did have promise and fell flat. I do hope maybe that was what yoshi was talking about when speaking of the open world like content with good mechanics.

[Velhart]

I am pretty sure a better translation wouldn't have said bad and more like not as skilled as in can't beat savage mode to get the best weapon. However I know what you are saying, Point is they could make some reasonably fun four man trial like content to spice it up or something. I think potd has done well and many like it, although it can be improved upon. Diadem did have promise and fell flat. I do hope maybe that was what yoshi was talking about when speaking of the open world like content with good mechanics.

Relic quest does not have to be very hard. It just should not be just slam you head on the keyboard easy and only thing required is patience in grinding. Not saying you need to beat raids or Primal EX to clear it. It needs breathing room between the grinds like 2.0 did. You had to fight Chimera and Hydra, but they were not hard trials at all. It needs to be interesting. Right now it is "Ohh done grinding that? Well grind this now.", there is no creativity or imagination in the quests. It is poorly designed and it is sad to see that Yoshi-P thinks it is just right. He should focus on raising the skill floor, not lower the skill ceiling.

They do nothing to prepare players for more challenging content and they ask themselves, "Why do people not like to raid?" Almost all the content besides Primal EX and Raid do not require you to know more than half your job's skill level. This is pretty sickening. True you can't prevent bad players, but it is even worse when you are breeding them and catering to them.

[Sandpark]

Relic quest does not have to be very hard. It just should not be just slam you head on the keyboard easy and only thing required is patience in grinding. Not saying you need to beat raids or Primal EX to clear it. It needs breathing room between the grinds like 2.0 did. You had to fight Chimera and Hydra, but they were not hard trials at all. It needs to be interesting. Right now it is "Ohh done grinding that? Well grind this now.", there is no creativity or imagination in the quests. It is poorly designed and it is sad to see that Yoshi-P thinks it is just right. He should focus on raising the skill floor, not lower the skill ceiling.

They do nothing to prepare players for more challenging content and they ask themselves, "Why do people not like to raid?" Almost all the content besides Primal EX and Raid do not require you to know more than half your job's skill level. This is pretty sickening. True you can't prevent bad players, but it is even worse when you are breeding them and catering to them.

It's not about raising the skill ceiling. The high skill ceiling and floor is the largest problem hurting player retention now. Look at the census, it says that most people have not even progressed through the entire storyline yet, raids has a very low participation and completion rate. These are the areas where the floor and ceiling are the highest.

High ceilings and floors= Anyone who has slow reflexes or can't remember 10-20 mechanics per fight quits or gets extremely frustrated.

You see most mmos creating account wide progression systems, zone battle scaling, moderately difficult endgame these days. I dislike how some games achieve that, but their intention is understandable. The intention is creating an atmosphere that eases the global playerbase into forming communities and allowing grouping up to be easy to do. Even Legion is seeing success implementing world bosses and mini raids.

I can get behind interesting. Interesting doesn't necessarily mean, let's make this game more difficult.

[Frederick22]

If you change the formula too much, you get increased development time/costs and back to experimentation that can rock your community back and forth easily. Doing this is more damaging to the game than you realize. How they have it set up putting unique content inside the basic formula is solid enough. Like I said before, the issue is the quality and lasting appeal of said content. Diadem and Palace of the Dead have potential, but were boring at best. The development team depends too much on face-roll level content that just gets consumed quickly and forgotten about fast or becomes boring. If actual challenge and well polished design were in each content they gave, it would make the lasting appeal a little longer than we get now.

Deep dungeon was a succes, poeple are still playing it.
If you mean beacuse there isnt much to do was beacuse 1. is designed for leveling players, 2. Since it was a new content, they took the safe road by not adding that much. But know we know that we will have a lot more floors for the next patch and 101-200 will be hard core

[Velhart]

Deep dungeon was a succes, poeple are still playing it.
If you mean beacuse there isnt much to do was beacuse 1. is designed for leveling players, 2. Since it was a new content, they took the safe road by not adding that much. But know we know that we will have a lot more floors for the next patch and 101-200 will be hard core

I mean, do you want to argue against my general point or are people too focused on nitpicking my comments? Its an opinion and I think its boring from a leveling perspective and has some things that can be improved.

Some of those questions were loaded.

I see two people who will likely not get direct access to Yoshida again lol

They really put him on the spot.

I say good. Yoshi-P is a good director/producer, but when he starts steering off course, people should call him out on it.