Regarding that Finaland Interview...

[Arrius]

They've taken a hard stance on their decisions for both glamour restrictions and housing.
You can't expect an interview to ask about it and him to respond with "Yeah well tough luck."

This is his way of politely telling you tough luck.

And, honestly, it's better that way.

[LineageRazor]

*Snip*

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that FFXIV is a failing game, or is even in remote danger of losing its status as a AAA MMO. People come here from WoW, of all places, hands down the most successful MMO of all time. WoW is getting old, certainly, and it's reasonable to expect folks looking for something new - but several MMOs have come and gone since FFXIV's been active, just about all of them flash-in-the-pan, and FFXIV's still chugging along.

Undoubtedly, FFXIV has a sub-standard housing system. A large part of this is a failure on Yoshi P's part back in the early days of ARR - and that failure was overambition, not lack of it. He had a vision of actual towns of player houses, not just the same old instanced stuff you can find in almost every other MMO. His reach exceeded his grasp, however. The initial, FC-only wards worked well enough, but wanted the same for private housing - and his devs couldn't give it to him on the scale he wanted with the infrastructure they had available. But they had this ready-made FC housing right there, and still mostly empty... It's easy to say "Yoshi, you should have taken the safe, boring path and given us all instanced houses!" now, but back then players were just as excited as Yoshi P was about real player towns.

Honestly, I think that 95% of the whining about houses would come to a halt if SE would give apartments the ability to do actual, outdoor gardening. Give them a patio, or miniature greenhouse extension, or something. Perhaps that is something they should consider.

[Kirsten_Rev]

See, here’s the problem with this statement. People are still subscribed and paying SE money. You want things to be shaken up and changed, then stop giving them your money. I promise you that they’ll hear that far more readily than the entitled cries of people who want to keep a house in a game they no longer play. When you unsub, SE has to consider that you will never come back or else they waste resources that currently subbed players can use.

You hear an argument you don’t like and right away use the “white knight/fanboy/fangirl” defense and that’s dumb. I don’t care who is in charge of the game. All I care about is that they make a game I’m happy to give my money to and play. And while there are things I’d wish were different, and it might come as a shock to many of the people on these boards, some of us actually like this game.

A couple of notes.

Firstly, ceasing play really isn't productive for anyone. Sure, it can generate change, but it also effectively means severing your ties with your in-game friends, abandoning the parts of the game that do work quite well (such as the broad strokes of the storyline), losing your house if you have one, etc. It's very much a 'nuclear option' from a player point of view. It's also as likely as not going to push SE to invest fewer resources in XIV, rather than more, which isn't something most of us want. Again, just because they behaved one way when XIV 1.0 failed, doesn't mean they will behave the same way if, say, XIV 5.0 fails.

Secondly, I wasn't using a white knight / fanboy / fangirl defense. It's perfectly acceptable to like XIV. I do too. Anyone subbed should like the game they're playing. That does not mean one cannot hold an objective opinion of Yoshi-P's performance over the past few years, which has been pretty bad. Has it resulted in an awful game? No, not yet, and it might never reach that point - but XIV isn't anywhere near the level of quality it could have been at, and as a player, that's distressing. It makes it harder for me to recruit friends to play the game; it makes it harder for me to really invest myself into the title. Those are issues I'd like to see remedied.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that FFXIV is a failing game, or is even in remote danger of losing its status as a AAA MMO. People come here from WoW, of all places, hands down the most successful MMO of all time. WoW is getting old, certainly, and it's reasonable to expect folks looking for something new - but several MMOs have come and gone since FFXIV's been active, just about all of them flash-in-the-pan, and FFXIV's still chugging along.

I'd agree, which is why I never said it or at least, never intended to; I didn't find that statement in my post but I didn't parse it word by word either. I do think Yoshi-P has failed as a director, but it's hardly caused enough damage for XIV to become a failing title a la 1.0. I do think it's lost its status as a leading, bar-setting AAA MMO, however.

I also don't put too much stock in the conversions from WoW or the long-term popularity. The Final Fantasy franchise is far more popular than most of the flash-in-the-pan MMOs that have released over the years (there are a couple of exceptions that featured far more broken MMOs, like Star Wars). It's also more or less the only MMO available on consoles, which gives it a built-in advantage over others. And it is, objectively, an incredibly fun game until one hits level cap and begins branching out into what else the game has to offer. Most of the serious flaws - the bland content cycles, Eureka, housing, Eureka, glamours, etc. - only make themselves truly visible once someone's invested quite a bit of time into the game. This is almost certainly the reason XIV continues to survive, actually: SE gets enough time out of the average player before they let their subscription lapse out of boredom.

Still, a strong bottom line does not a great game make.

Also, in regards to the sub-standard housing and Yoshi-P's excitement... I still don't have much sympathy. Being a project director primarily involves accounting for things that players can't see: budgets, infrastructure capabilities, long-term scalability of a given system, etc. I get being excited by the neighborhood idea, I really do - it's a great one. But any halfway-decent planning process should have considered the infrastructure and long-term scalability, at which point it would have become obvious that they simply wouldn't be able to execute it properly. Once that conclusion is made, the onus really is on the person at the top to make the tough call.

[Mesarthim]

The problem here is that's there's no purpose in being in the housing wards and nothing to do there.

I'd wager for example if you shifted tome / scrip vendors and the things like primal and omega sundries vendors and a few other things into the housing wards they would be vastly more populated places. Which would also go a long way to taking server load off other zones.. and reducing lag a lot.

Remember how long mor dhona took to load in arr comparedto any other zone. Or iddyllshire in hw. Or the reach now...

Yeah I'm not sure what they were really going for with this ward system in the long run. I live in the same ward as my FC by sheer dumb luck but I'm rarely at the FC house. I'm only even at my own house because I use that as my craft spot voluntarily, or to afk, both things people can simply do in places like Limsa etc. All they're doing with the current system is basically using up more resources for a housing system that could have been made much, much better than it actually is.

Which reminds me of something I've brought up to some people I know: "Did Square Enix ever really have a vision for this game when they made it?"

But I do agree about expanding locations for various npc vendors. Kind of limits where I use tomestones.

[OurMom]

I don't get how he's out of touching. He can't add more housing space without probably re doing the entire infrastructure which would probably mean bring the game down for an extended period of time. So he's mentioning an alternative, apartments, honestly why is housing so important? This isn't Aion, BDO, nor Archeage where housing is actually needed or provides something useful, it's just all glamour. Is it because it's limited or what?

The restrictions with glamouring is in 99% of mmos out today, the ones gone, and the ones to come. Devs just aren't going to budge on that for whatever reason. Yoshi is out of touch when it comes to a lot of stuff but an optional glamour house and actual glamour aren't any of the reasons.

[Vahlnir]

I don't get how he's out of touching. He can't add more housing space without probably re doing the entire infrastructure which would probably mean bring the game down for an extended period of time. So he's mentioning an alternative, apartments, honestly why is housing so important? This isn't Aion, BDO, nor Archeage where housing is actually needed or provides something useful, it's just all glamour. Is it because it's limited or what?

The restrictions with glamouring is in 99% of mmos out today, the ones gone, and the ones to come. Devs just aren't going to budge on that for whatever reason. Yoshi is out of touch when it comes to a lot of stuff but an optional glamour house and actual glamour aren't any of the reasons.

It's not so much what he said, it's how he said it. He came across as what some would consider passive aggressive, which is unbecoming of a game director, and certainly not how he used to be. He could be frustrated, which can happen to anyone, but if you can't respond to the "hard" questions responsibly, perhaps someone else should do it for you.

[Hestzhyen]

It's not so much what he said, it's how he said it. He came across as what some would consider passive aggressive, which is unbecoming of a game director, and certainly not how he used to be.

I think the translation is a bit suspect in this case- it certainly didn't seem like a quality effort. Leaving aside the tone a lot of sentences and statements felt stilted. The intentions were there but I wouldn't take the text verbatim.

That said, YoshiP beats around the bush a lot when he doesn't have a "good" answer. In cases like this- long-standing requests for cross-role glamour options and losing housing- direct answers would be much appreciated (the housing one particularly since it's a major sore spot for the community). If you just don't wanna do it, tell us. Stop intentionally missing the point and leaving things ambiguous.

[Vahlnir]

I think the translation is a bit suspect in this case- it certainly didn't seem like a quality effort. Leaving aside the tone a lot of sentences and statements felt stilted. The intentions were there but I wouldn't take the text verbatim.

That said, YoshiP beats around the bush a lot when he doesn't have a "good" answer. In cases like this- long-standing requests for cross-role glamour options and losing housing- direct answers would be much appreciated (the housing one particularly since it's a major sore spot for the community). If you just don't wanna do it, tell us. Stop intentionally missing the point and leaving things ambiguous.

Oh, if it was translated poorly that's fine. I mentioned at the beginning of the thread that I was open to that possibility. But if it wasn't...there's a slight issue. And yeah, I think people would appreciate blunt answers more than something that, in the end, makes little sense. People might not like what they hear if he would be brutally honest, but he would be respected for it.

[Floortank]

I've seen this before and I keep hoping there's just some misunderstanding or translation error. He thinks wearing paladin gloves as a white mage is ridiculous? His response is ridiculous.

You're reading it wrong, as he doesn't state his opinion on what it looks like.

Personally I agree--I don't want the job gear to go across roles.

[NanaWiloh]

Agreed. I'm glad the hard questions are being asked live. Now we just have to word them correctly to paint him in a corner.

When it comes to housing they will paint in you a corner asking you for proof. Door swings both ways they can corner a player just a easily, cause if you think they will just take your word..your mistaken.