Famitsu interview with Yoshida after NA's FanFest

[Colorful]

Levelling potion works in WoW but I honestly don't see it being a right fit for FFXIV, Blizzard is experienced with creating "tutorial" based content such as their honour grounds and they slowly introduce you to your class after you use the levelling boost. You're not dumped in with every ability, but a voiced instructor gives you an idea of the basics of doing somewhat decent at your roll and you do this for every character you boost. It works because at their core, WoW's classes are very simple with a complete ability set only taking 1-2 hot bars. WoW also has the excuse of older content being very dated and playing very differently to current content, FFXIV does not as it hasn't changed much since the beginning.

FFXIV in comparison is far more complex when it comes to jobs, every class has a ton of abilities that they won't be able to ease you into without a prolonged 2-3+ hour tutorial. Might seem like a poor argument until you look at what audiences the two MMOs attract, most people going into WoW are either a returning player or has at least played more than a few MMORPGs, whereas FFXIV attracts plenty of FF fans who've never touched another MMORPG. Can you imagine someone who's never touched an MMORPG getting pushed into a level 60 role with no idea of the basics? I don't see it working. There's also the issue with the story, WoW has never been as heavily story focused as FFXIV but I won't get into that.

I don't really know why I'm bothering to voice my opinion, I figured they were going to implement this and here we are, it's being "considered" and will more likely than not happen because of the money they'll make from it. They saw how profitable it was in WoW and that's it, they'll spin the new player excuse but as soon as they sell these on the cash shop rather than giving one boost for free with an expansion purchase that all goes out the window.

[Neophyte]

[...] whereas FFXIV attracts plenty of FF fans who've never touched another MMORPG. Can you imagine someone who's never touched an MMORPG getting pushed into a level 60 role with no idea of the basics? I don't see it working. There's also the issue with the story, WoW has never been as heavily story focused as FFXIV but I won't get into that.

Why would anyone like this buy a game + 2 expansions (100 bucks?) and use a skip potion for 60 bucks to skip 2/3 of it, anyway?

If there is such a special snowflake, you won't recognize him in between all those special snowflakes we already have. You're a ninja with almost 900 SS, didn't the MSQ teach you that this a not that good?

[Irie]

FFXIV in comparison is far more complex when it comes to jobs, every class has a ton of abilities that they won't be able to ease you into without a prolonged 2-3+ hour tutorial.

Apparently going through all the MSQ and leveling didn't teach you to level your subclasses.

There will be literally 0 difference between ppls skill before and after the implementation of the potion.

[Duelle]

Levelling potion works in WoW but I honestly don't see it being a right fit for FFXIV, Blizzard is experienced with creating "tutorial" based content such as their honor grounds and they slowly introduce you to your class after you use the leveling boost. You're not dumped in with every ability, but a voiced instructor gives you an idea of the basics of doing somewhat decent at your roll and you do this for every character you boost. It works because at their core, WoW's classes are very simple with a complete ability set only taking 1-2 hot bars. WoW also has the excuse of older content being very dated and playing very differently to current content, FFXIV does not as it hasn't changed much since the beginning.

Sort of. WoW's classes have been designed to be easy to pick up, but mastering a class/spec still takes a bit (though mostly done if you read the tooltips and hit a target dummy to get a feel of how it all comes together). There is, surprisingly, less intuitiveness to WoW's classes than FFXIV's classes. FFXIV has combos and the mechanics are pretty obvious. I noticed this back when I used my complimentary legion boost to boost a rogue to lv100, and was very impressed with how the tutorial was structured; by the end I was a passable lv100 rogue.

That said, yes, we would need an actual tutorial for the gameplay aspect of a level boost. I'd suggest SE look at Blizzard's tutorials for boosted characters as a starting point, and then implement that Intermediate Hall to further teach people how to play.

So you people want the same silly repetitive quests which keep asking the same old things again and again? People were complaining that the game became boring and repetitive without risks and imagination. Yoshi decided to risk with Eureka. People crying before even they see what exactly is this then want the same old stuff again and again. Just lol

What people wanted was likely a return to the 2.0 relic quest instead of making a potential zone dedicated to relic progression.

I personally would have hopped back on the relic thing if it involved recent/semi-recent content as opposed to currency grinds. Or if the process was shaken up a bit with different steps. Since that very impressive starter quest (get item with materia, kill HM Ifrit/Titan/Garuda, get weapon), relics have been nothing but grinding old content and whatever random currency is being asked for. And that's the system's greatest flaw, IMO. Making Eureka relic-centered doesn't solve that at all; all it looks like it'll do is segregate relic progression to that zone alone, and I can bet dollars to donuts that it'll have either a specific cost of entry or a limit to the number of times you can enter.

raid difficulty, and not adding midcore content, but adding even more hardcore content?

I'll admit this part annoyed me. Instead of easing people into content, they seem to want to keep the current difficulty curve and just make stuff that's harder for the top tier guilds. I personally don't see this working without making savage "easier" (and that might be their aim without actually saying it). So you'd have normal mode, savage mode, and ultra-savage mode for the Lucrecias and Angereds of the world.

the increased details on what Yoshi meant by a revamped battle system and skill pruning?

The translation for this made little sense. Particularly the thing about tank stances. Can't comment on something that makes no sense, and I haven't had a chance to look at the article in JP to see if I can decipher it.

removing Parry and Accuracy, further reducing the number of secondary stats we have? (Yes, I want those stats gone too, but removing and not replacing them means we'll have even less choices on our gear)

This isn't really a problem per se. All classes pretty much have the stats they gravitate towards, be it BRDs with Crit/Skill Speed and so on, so nothing is changing on that front other than instead of having stat budgets wasted on accuracy, you'd have the same stats on every piece of gear, which does look like a problem without actually being one.

[Zumi]

FFXIV has combos and the mechanics are pretty obvious. I noticed this back when I used my complimentary legion boost to boost a rogue to lv100, and was very impressed with how the tutorial was structured; by the end I was a passable lv100 rogue.

If you remember back to the 2.0 launch many legacy players were handed every job at level 50 that played nothing like how they did in 1.0. We learned how to play the game by reading tool tips on the skills. People figured out how to play fairly easily after playing awhile. I don't think there would be that much trouble for people starting at 60 if SE decides to have a level boost for Stormblood.

[Duelle]

If you remember back to the 2.0 launch many legacy players were handed every job at level 50 that played nothing like how they did in 1.0. We learned how to play the game by reading tool tips on the skills. People figured out how to play fairly easily after playing awhile. I don't think there would be that much trouble for people starting at 60 if SE decides to have a level boost for Stormblood.

I don't think you're giving the intuitiveness of FFXIV's systems enough credit. Tooltips are part of the process but a lot of the gameplay has things built in to show you a sort of progression of skills. That's a feather in FFXIV's cap that WoW simply doesn't have, even now with the simplified specs and rotations.

Of course, considering that I've had to teach newbie tanks how to hold aggro because they don't bother to read tooltips and follow the bouncing ball, I see no harm in having tutorials. Especially for people who get boosted to 60.

I'd rather devs pander to fans of a Final Fantasy game than the WoW refugees who jump over to this game and complain.

Ignoring the "us vs them" thing, FFXIV was designed to appeal to modern MMO fans. That largely included WoW and those who played SWTOR and LOTRO. Not to mention that people who ask for FFXI things don't understand that a) FFXI is built around very different design principles, b) built around very different systems, c) that game's progression and gear design only work for that game, and d) the game is still alive and well. I don't even need to get into stupid design oversights like gear swaps mid-combat and the resulting inventory bloat from a trillion items built for very specific purposes.

As an example, each expansion storyline was independent in FFXI, and everybody was happy with that, and SE didn't have to sell XP potions. By saying that, I m not asking for the storylines of FFXIV to be the same as FFXI's.

The thing is that expansion storylines were mostly high-level content. Zilart was 50-75. CoP tried the disastrous level capped content. ToAU was all high level (the zones themselves had mobs that reinforced that). WotG story content is also relatively high level.

Of course, you didn't need to add level potions in FFXI because most of the expansion story content had only the game's lv75 cap to take into account. FFXIV doesn't have a static level cap that spans several expansions, so you're sort of comparing apples and oranges.

[Stanelis]

ot to mention that people who ask for FFXI things don't understand that a) FFXI is built around very different design principles, b) built around very different systems, c) that game's progression and gear design only work for that game, and d) the game is still alive and well.

Alive and well :

https://www.google.com/trends/explor...%2Fm%2F04n3w2r

Also, I think you re underestimating the amounts of players who left wow due to the additions such as the level boosts and the other cash grabs elements.

[Leigaon]

...
Of course, considering that I've had to teach newbie tanks how to hold aggro because they don't bother to read tooltips and follow the bouncing ball, I see no harm in having tutorials. Especially for people who get boosted to 60...

That would be my only concern with the story skipping mainly. The story directs you to the location of your classes/jobs, by the time you reach a certain level you should know the icon for quests and want to explore to see what these quests give you. This introduces you do tooltips like you said but also the hall of novice where there's a lot of useful tips and gameplay descriptions. How would you or anyone suggest these things get directed to the user if they are able to skip seeing it or skip it all together?

Well you can skip all of this too right now by pressing escape so

Yes you can, but you are presented with it. Should you choose to skip it or ignore it and not go deeper into it, then I guess that is a single user issue. It wouldn't exactly solve the concern 100%, nothing will give us a 100% success rate. You have those who will learn because they're aware it is there, and those who will ignore it. So, how would you suggest you get people who will not know it being around when the game normally presents it to you? Sticking within the game itself. There is Player to Player talk, do you think that will be enough?

Or what would you suggest be done with the scenario? Or are we accepting the fact that the issue is with something we can't patch, the users? Though with your comment, they can already do it so maybe there's another solution? What would you suggest to address the current problems not being inflated by this and address the new concerns that come with it?

I'm curious to what the solution from yourself and others would be. Mainly because I'm unlike the others here, I have no real MMO history (XI forever.) but my variety doesn't have the range the others have who spent their lives in multiple MMORPGS. So for me, I came in knowing two people and never found issues with understanding what to do, where to go, rotations due to reading tool tips and doing guildhests along with the trial and error I get when I take what I have in theory and put it into practice. I rarely, if at all, look up rotations guides or guides in general unless I am trying content so old that it's expected of me to know something.

Does someone know how far you have to progress before you can use this "jump potion" and how it works?
[*]Does it only work after you unlocked the airships?...

Thank you for finding this. Since Kaitoo and others couldn't address the concern. I'm glad I was able to find the answer somewhere in there. Someone did mention the Chinese version of it and someone mentioned the reaction that the users that used it have gotten from the other community of players, but this was the one thing I've been repeating over and over yet no solid answer. If so, this puts away my concerns. You are correct those who want to learn their jobs will, and by 14/15 you'll either be excited to run your first dungeon to learn / find hall of novice, you would have been presented with the tooltips needed to get you going and guildhests. All of these things mixed with general curiosity to wanting to be good at your job is more than enough to make sure you're capable of hitting the ground at least jogging.

Though, much like you and others have said in other posts if they don't want to learn they will just fly by. Causing things to go sour later for either themselves or others.

[Kaitoo]

That would be my only concern with the story skipping mainly. The story directs you to the location of your classes/jobs, by the time you reach a certain level you should know the icon for quests and want to explore to see what these quests give you. This introduces you do tooltips like you said but also the hall of novice where there's a lot of useful tips and gameplay descriptions. How would you or anyone suggest these things get directed to the user if they are able to skip seeing it or skip it all together?

Well you can skip all of this too right now by pressing escape so

[Kaurie]

I'll admit this part annoyed me. Instead of easing people into content, they seem to want to keep the current difficulty curve and just make stuff that's harder for the top tier guilds. I personally don't see this working without making savage "easier" (and that might be their aim without actually saying it). So you'd have normal mode, savage mode, and ultra-savage mode for the Lucrecias and Angereds of the world.

Yeah it could. I really wish the difficulty progression followed a more linear path. It feels like (on a scale from 1=easy, 10=difficult) it goes 1-1-1-1-1-1.5-2-3-7-7-9-9. Kinda random, but the point is there.

The translation for this made little sense. Particularly the thing about tank stances. Can't comment on something that makes no sense, and I haven't had a chance to look at the article in JP to see if I can decipher it.

Tank stuff aside (as I don't tank and didn't read that part), it sounds like they are not pruning very much. They'll just revamp skills to make more sense (like Tri-Bind for Summoner in Heavensward). This does very little to combat button bloat which is currently a huge problem and will be a bigger problem with added skills. They also said they don't want to change the global cooldown, which disappoints me a fair amount. Ultimately, I am mostly disappointed as it seems like we are not really going to get much actual change with combat, and after announcing a revamped battle system, I was expecting and hyped for something fresh and exciting.

This isn't really a problem per se. All classes pretty much have the stats they gravitate towards, be it BRDs with Crit/Skill Speed and so on, so nothing is changing on that front other than instead of having stat budgets wasted on accuracy, you'd have the same stats on every piece of gear, which does look like a problem without actually being one.

All classes gravitate towards 2 stats is pretty much a problem, but even if that isn't, there is very little choice. You choose 2 of 3 stats. It's pretty boring in the most boring way. At least with accuracy, you needed to balance these stats while also meeting an accuracy requirement. They're basically taking one of the most mindless substat systems in any game, and making it slightly more mindless. While I support the removal of accuracy, I think the bigger issue is that the other stats need to be changed and more secondary stats need to be added.