Interview: Face-to-Face with FFXIV's Naoki Yoshida - Article on MMORPG website

[Shurrikhan]

Taking the RPG out of this game is what makes me move on to something else. Not everyone enjoys just copying a guide off some idiot on Reddit. Oversimplified classes and boring customization is a big part of why I dropped WoW and won't ever be going back.

Speaking as a long-time WoW player, myself, it's worth noting that default class complexity (baseline) and mutually exclusive complexity (e.g. talents) are very separate things, and that pre-combat choice can often come at cost of in-combat choice. Talents, for instance, can be made such as to newly allow or disallow baseline toolkit options. Unless the removal of any given part of the toolkit allows new things to be done with the remainder (think Decimation or Demon Blades) that are more attactive than the greater spread of original options (because of a greater number of new derivative options), then that ends up making customization one step forward and two steps back. There's a lot to get wrong, and often talent systems have taken the blame where that would more accurately fall on a gutting of baseline toolkits or a rebalancing of the individual abilities to make their use more obvious, but thereby narrowing the range of their use (e.g. AoEs that will never see ST use unless talented into, rather than crafting situations by which the key is still useful).

I don't really see your point? You used a lot of words to explain to me how Blizzard tends to poorly execute a lot of their systems? Sure, I know. That's why I don't play their games..

Not remotely. Here:

Basically,

Out-of-combat choices (i.e. in customization) are siphoned from would-be in-combat choices.

Fundamentally,

Character combat-related customization is limitation. It is, definitionally, denying assets already made unless you have selected all the relevant choices.

Effectively,

A particular class will still see only a given amount of complexity as per developer goals and time-budget. You can have that complexity available at all times, or split up such that only certain glimpses each are given through customization. Adding customization does not increase total complexity, but it may reduce effective complexity (sometimes for the better, sometimes not).

Stl;sdr:

Customization =/=> Complexity.
Instead, sometimes there's just enough, or even too much otherwise, complexity to pare it back via customization.

[Casanters]

A lot of words

I don't really see your point? You used a lot of words to explain to me how Blizzard tends to poorly execute a lot of their systems? Sure, I know. That's why I don't play their games.
Axing player choice entirely and making everything linear choice with outdated vertical progression models (straight out of Cataclysm, even), don't make a compelling game. And none of Yoshi-P's reasoning for why is anything that makes me even slightly confident that this is a game worth my time or money. I'm holding out for Eureka, but honestly, my expectations are extremely low and 4.2 will probably be the last time I bother with this game at all.

[Khalithar]

It is only when a generally strongest option is also given no effective weakness -- you know, that most obvious failure of balancing design -- that this becomes a technical issue, rather than just a product of oversimplification, misassumption, and bait for the officious and under-informed.

This sentence in particular got me thinking about an old quote from Ghostcrawler the old WoW dev, to paraphrase he said something along the lines of "it's amazing what players will go through for even a theoretical 1% dps increase" and it's most definitely a sentiment I agree with.

But when I read about the concept of "builds" I wonder what exactly do they mean in context for this game? I think there needs to be some establishment of what exactly people mean by that before any real meaningful conversation can take place. The only sort of "build" we have right now is "how do you meld your materia?" Do they mean they want secondaries to be more meaningful so that something like direct hit is as good as skill speed for every job? Or do they mean different ways of playing the same job, such as having the option of making a smn that forgoes DoT's entirely in exchange for higher potency ruins and having both be competitive?

Currently, materia and tweaking whatever are your best secondaries with the right gear (augmented allagan vs genji) are the only sort of "build" there is with everyone following the same model to maximize their dps. That brings me along to another question, are people saying they want more options than the "maximize your dps for every role" that is so popular now? Now all of these are subjective of course, but unless we can define what people mean by saying "more customization in builds" I feel that this conversation won't go very far.

[Ghastly]

People want to turn this into the worst kind of mmos that they've quit. You know the ones with 300 systems built into the combat where the grind is incredible.

No thank you, we have materia already.

[DarkDedede]

This scares me because they have a history of overcomplicating what should be simple features.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. I'm more than aware of the fact that non-battle related content is treated as the "red-headed step-iceberg" for this game. Still, it doesn't make me any less interested in hearing more details on their plans. I want to know if this new glamour system is going to be the next best thing since Desynthesis or Verminion.

One just doesn't casually mention a four-year long requested feature, disregard is as "non-battle content," state it would take an hour to explain, compare it to an iceberg, and then expect not to peak my interest.

Even though this is feature is simply "non-battle related content" I do hope they spend a good portion of a future Live Letter explaining it (or just release that portion of the patch notes, as a preview (I'll read it on my own time) ).

Also, if this new feature has some sort of quest or story related content, I hope it includes Redolent Rose in some form or fashion.

[CaTi]

Taking the RPG out of this game is what makes me move on to something else. Not everyone enjoys just copying a guide off some idiot on Reddit. Oversimplified classes and boring customization is a big part of why I dropped WoW and won't ever be going back.

It's a fair point. I'm with you on that. But as I said when someone works out the best thing, everything else becomes so much fluff ( especially with the obsession over 1% faster clears in this game). From a dev perspective they have to balance idealism with reality. And the reality is that in this day and age a lot of people want quick and easy access to the hardest content and the best gear, especially if they've been out of circulation for a while. This system lets you do that on a minimal time investment and I'd bet they'd lose more subs than they'd gain changing it.

[RLofOBFL]

How the hell does he think tanks are balanced??? Everything DRK does, PLD does better.
Dps? PLD is ahead by over 100, up to 300 at the highest levels.
CDs and utility? Sentinel > Shadow wall, Sheltron = TBN, Divine Veil > TBN, Cover > nothing, Passage of arms > nothing, Dark mind >= Bulwark, Hallowed ground > Living dead(unless benediction?).

=_= admittedly I will still play DRK bc it's fun but still this is rather disappointing to hear.

[kikix12]

Hallowed ground > Living dead(unless benediction?).

How would Benediction make Living Dead even reasonably comparable to Hallowed Ground?! The one and only advantage it have is the cooldown being shorter, but at 5 minutes, it's still far more than necessary to take advantage of it in any fight which you have reasonable chances of winning.
What is better, 10sec (nigh-)invincibility or 10sec of not dying (from most attacks)? Hallowed Ground will make sure your HP doesn't even fall down, giving healers ample time to get the tank to full HP with normal heals. Living Dead will be wasted if it won't fall down originally, then the tank will still take damage thus making the healers have to use their emergency heals anyway. But if healers failed to keep the Dark Knight from falling below 1HP due to lack of healing power against mobs, it won't help at all. The Dark Knight will die almost instantly from damage anyway. And using Benediction not only reduces the protection period (or risks wasting it and the tank dying anyway due to PING/lag), but also invalidates all the healing done previous (by the other healer, for example).

Not to mention, the very simple truth. What is better. An "ultimate" skill that works on its own, or an "ultimate" skill that needs another classes "ultimate" skill to work?! I'd say that Hallowed Ground is twice as powerful simply based on that fact, since the healer can keep the Benediction for later.

All in all, Living Dead is absolutely horrid. It is nowhere as good as Hallowed Ground in any normal situation.


And if the developers don't want issues that come with customization, then why even bother with gear?! Make player stats fixed for their level and voila. Couldn't be any simpler than that. Leave gear for glamour, so the problem of unique gear being shared by multiple different jobs is no longer an issue either.
Of course, that would suck. Dungeons already have very little to offer once you do them for the clear and then for however long it takes to get experience till it stops being the top-spot for it. Adding stuff like random bonuses or sets would increase that length significantly, even if the random stats would be small. And set bonuses would make players actually consider going for a full set from dungeon, instead of just focusing all the intent on limited few highest level content, and just going with whatever while leveling. Adding unique bonuses, like movement speed or decreased cast times (without actually decreasing cooldowns), mana reduction etc. would add variety, and it's very hard to set the "BIS" gear with such non-stat bonuses (that borders on impossible depending on the variety and nature of the bonuses). And if Yoshida himself said that its by design that some classes are worse in this content but better at some other content, then it should be perfectly fine for some gear sets being better in this or that content (like, that extra run speed in fights with lots of running around, or cast time reduction in frequent AoE's that aren't necessarily large though).

[Thayos]

Now all of these are subjective of course, but unless we can define what people mean by saying "more customization in builds" I feel that this conversation won't go very far.

Perfectly stated. Thank you.

Players often talk about the desire for more customization -- which I, too, think would be great -- but customization has to answer the question, "For what purpose?"

Without additional purposes, why waste time customizing?

[Zfz]

“If we show people the requirements now, they’ll start to prepare for it, so we’re going to keep the information until we’re close to the release.”

I'm a little disappointed by this. It means whatever they have in mind for housing isn't "fair and sqaure", but is something that can be prepared for.

Remember the last time he said the same thing for housing? It was before housing was first released, and the reason was that housing prices were many times higher than he originally promised.

Perhaps all they're going to do is to make the prices so high that nobody can afford the new plots, so that everyone has to wait for discounted prices, and call it "fair and square".