Famitsu interview with Yoshida after NA's FanFest

[Ametrine]

I'm on the fence with the jump potions as right now the game is really not the friendliest or most intuitive for newer players.

I think an intermediate hall teaching the methods of rotations, aggro management in the heat of a fight, etc. would benefit everyone.


But as a player who loves the lore and story, it bothers me in a strange way that the creators are encouraging new players to jump a huge amount of content they clearly spent a huge amount of time on. Like, money to keep creating verses artistic integrity. I mean, you can't keep someone from starting halfway into a book or show, but, at least don't dumb it down for those who started at the beginning.

[Mugiawara]

They're going to be giving players the option to skip all content up through Heavensward, so that hardly matters.

What they need to do is step to with classes and make necessary skills like Provoke, SC, B4B and whatever DPS ones to the jobs.
Fix SMN for the mess that it is because of it being in a class with SCH and call it even. Because of classes, SMN is in nightmare mode.
We need to get rid of classes because it's just a mess of a system and there's no saving it.

[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.

[Yasuhiro]

I'm curious where all the extra money for this expansion pack went if they only added 2-3 jobs, no new race, and less side stories. I really do hope they do a complete overhaul of the character customization. They added a lot of stuff in HW with a smaller budget.

Yoshida is renting out two castles for Stormblood, probably, that's where the money went.

[Ametrine]

I'm curious where all the extra money for this expansion pack went if they only added 2-3 jobs, no new race, and less side stories. I really do hope they do a complete overhaul of the character customization. They added a lot of stuff in HW with a smaller budget.

Logical explanations could be cost of the server rehauls or budgeting for more content to patches, or both.

But I'm with you on this. So far, Stormblood feels small since nothimg tangible is there for us to grab onto and get hyped for. I mean, Ishgard had the advantage in that we could actually, clearly see the city. I don't even think concept art of Ala Mhigo exists, and we aren't even going there, our new hub city is this little hamlet. :/

The severe lack of announcements at Vegas was a real hype killer.

[Khanscott]

Logical explanations could be cost of the server rehauls or budgeting for more content to patches, or both.

But I'm with you on this. So far, Stormblood feels small since nothimg tangible is there for us to grab onto and get hyped for. I mean, Ishgard had the advantage in that we could actually, clearly see the city. I don't even think concept art of Ala Mhigo exists, and we aren't even going there, our new hub city is this little hamlet. :/

The severe lack of announcements at Vegas was a real hype killer.

They said they were upgrading the servers during the keynote, missed details there but that was a thing during the budget announcement. I can see that being a big chunk of the budget right there, being the old servers were likely FFXI hand-me-downs held together by scotch tape and angel tears.

[Ametrine]

snip.

35mil though? HW had 12mil, so... As an example let's say SB has the same patch and content structure as HW, so that would amount to about 23 million dollars on servers alone. That sounds insane to me!

I can understand it would cost on the millions, but the idea that most of Stormblood's budget is on that is both disheartening and seems like a bad money management unless the really pull out something to guarantee subs that last years into the future.

Because Red Mage, Rhalgr's Reach, one pretty lady in Red, and a vague overhaul of certain stats and combat is a pitiful amount of content to get hyped over right now for me to understand that.

If they hold all the good stuff for later fests, they also run the risk of pissing off the players who attended FFXIV Merchlinefest Vegas '16 or bought the broken streams.

It's just bad news bears the more I hear about SB man....

[Eul]

That level jump potion might popular with people who had alt that bored to do long MSQ again. (I can't argue with newcomer here)

And I really glad no new race again, I prefer the improve the race they have right now like detailed skin, muscle tone, or anything.

[ZhaneX]

-Snip-

Even as pessimistic as I can be, it seems pretty obvious that SE wouldn't give away everything, or even hint at all the major updates coming in the Expansion, at the first big event leading up to its release. Especially when two more major events and even more minor announcements litter the path between now and then.

Yeah, it might seem unfair to those who went to or otherwise witnessed said first event, but...well, that's just how it goes. There's often not all that much to be said for "First!"

[Magic-Mal]

Eureka may be something like this.

You can boost your relic via only eureka but a 72 hour boss spawns if you kill it, it will make the leveling process faster.

Umm confused a bit. Are they saying the 72-hour boss is a boss that spawns every 4hrs? Or a boss... that takes 72 hours to kill? XD