Eurogamer interview with YoshiP (Dec 10, 2019): consoles, fixing ARR, inventory, etc.

[DynnDiablos]

Happy I am going through ARR now in its original form with my second character before it changes. I like it the way it is.

[Shougun]

Happy I am going through ARR now in its original form with my second character before it changes. I like it the way it is.

Personally a both rather than purely destroy person, if I can help it lol (so I'd not like to remove something entirely if possible), but I think ARR could do with a lot of polish / adjustments. There were more then a few moments where I just shut off parts of my brain because I didn't care or wasn't engaged enough. There was / is quality moments and clearly quality work through places in it (imo) but at times I pushed through because of the promise of something better / to get by it (I see this a lot throughout the net too, when people are like "why is it so slow", people saying just stick with it- which while I think is true I also think is not a good thing that it needs to be said).

HW I didn't really have that at all, each expansion I feel they've improved some concept (though it was hard to beat the theme of dragons lol, love me dragons), and with ShB maybe if I think about it I might find some gripes but in the sense of the journey (doing MSQ) I had zero moments where I was like "pfffff shaddup npc, I literally don't care what you're saying" (moments I did have in ARR).

Part of the reason when people brought up skip potions and the LONG journey to get to current expansion that I was trying to introduce a new sort of fast start, a 2-3 hour experience that brought people in with a tighter gameplay loop and a bit deeper into the combat level (rather than starting at like level 1 it'd be like start at 30 and then hit open world at 50). In a tl;dr think the alternate start mods from skyrim. I know some people did indeed think ARR was flawless, and I don't want to tear at the devs because I've had worse intros to an MMORPG but I also don't really think incredibly fondly at the beginning (honestly I still think to WoW, which I've tried nearly all the starts for each race and like most of them more). Of course I play FFXIV over WoW and it's past that point once the world opens to you that I'm confident to say I'd rather play FFXIV over playing WoW, but just in terms of first step into the game / experience "personally" ARR is okay (with some great moments and some moments I pushed rather than 'played' through).

[Sloprano]

"How much work is involved in adding jobs and upgrading classes with every expansion, and do you think you'll be able to keep adding two jobs each time?

Naoki Yoshida: The current jobs class available for FF14 is a lot compared to other MMOs out there in the market. As you said, there's a lot of work involved. The work the team is putting in to adjusting jobs is really mathematical - handling 0.1 per cent, 0.5 per cent... it's a mark of detail to make sure that the balance is there. To tell you the truth, frankly speaking, the dev team doesn't want to add any new jobs because it's so hard! But because players and the community and everyone is expecting new jobs, that keeps them going forward. You can safely assume and expect new jobs in the future for a while. "

This just fuels my fears that they being more set on tweaking not even percentages but just permilles to make changes only recognizable with tools not allowed under the EULA is what gave us eighty levels of 2.5 cast, 30s dot and barely anything else on Scholar instead of the fun and interesting things Blu is getting. Until they actually saw otherwise I cannot believe current iteration was tested with anything other than bots and simulations where the thought "does this feel good to play" never came up.

[Rasikko]

I personally feel that some people's expectations of these "ARR fixes" are too high and should tone it down...

[Shougun]

I personally feel that some people's expectations of these "ARR fixes" are too high and should tone it down...

Not sure if that was directed at me, but if it was just to be clear none of what I thought "would be nice if it happened" I think will actually happen lol. I think they'll do exactly what they said they'll do to ARR which is cut some of the fat off the story, and perhaps slap in a few fast travels.

I don't expect or think they will do some grand redesign.

Just that I think the a quick start scenario has a lot more value and has increasing value as time goes on. In the sense that beyond just being a spiced up start (something I don't, imo, feel FFXIV has beyond the first cutscene), it also allows players to get to current content within a few weeks to months of average play time (from ARR to ShB if you're new and not guided by someone else will be around 200+ hours, significantly more time than the average player spends on a huge single player rpg), add potentially add more lore to the game (like if they added an Ishgard start), and be a form of quest content for all players via their new game+ tool (so it's not just for new players, slap a mount or glamour and a lot of current players will do the quest chain too). While also not actually locking out old content, since new game plus would let them go back if they so felt like it (and perhaps to keep a strong encouragement to do so they can have it reward them the major rewards from that MSQ branch if they go back like the free fantasia / magitek mount in ARR).

Better than (imo) a free jump potion which will explain nothing about the game to new players, give them no guiding sense or general play of their character at a higher level, generally has a more cheap vibe, and wont add content / a start style that may be more enjoyable to those who are a bit more high octane / exploratory (which is why, at least again imo, I prefer WoW's starts that build up to big city reveals and get you into content a lot faster). I made this suggestion before WoW's announcement but now that's out I can say it's akin, ish, to WoW's new design (for the next expansion) where you can choose a previous expansion as your start and get to the perfect level to jump off into that new expansion (rather than having to go through them all, in a sense a pick your own starting point concept).

[VenKitsune]

My landline is a flatrate built-in into my internet contract. I think it was 3,99€ stand-alone, but then it faces technical and contractual problems (roaming / ownership of the phone lines troughout my country etc.) VOIP does not. Discord is really poor and me and my cousin often have to re-connect several times because it's inaudible. That means, in fact, that 0% of the calls are properly established. That is not just "asking for a bit of money", that is basically acting like a phone company. "Want calls, pay us", despite there are ads - at least I look at random games that I don't play, I see League of Legends ads, and Minecraft ads,... A VOIP call cost maybe like 5 Cent/hour, and I am sure those ads cover it by far, especially since I am on Discord like daily but do only call once a week.

People need to stop over-estimate the cost of things. FFXIV also does not need 10€/month for "servers" and "support staff". It's just moneygrabbing. We pay full-price for the game that should contain everything upcoming, then we pay monthly and then again for the expansion packs. We do we pay for milestones when we pay the milage already? Discord is the same: Daily ads for poor, low-bandwidth calls and still they want money. My landline is more reliable and cheaper after all, and that should not be the case that landline wins over VoIP cost-wise.

Those are not "Ads" - Its a dashboard. If you're seeing "ads" for minecraft, that's because either you or your friends have played it recently, and so you see the update news for it. Discord does have a game store on it, is that what you're referring to?
I've literally never ever had any problems connecting calls on discord (I've never paid anything to them) - Thats your own problem, not discords.
Also how is a lanline more reliable? The quality of voice is from the 1980's to keep it compatible with phones from that era that people still use.
How is a voip call 5 cents an hour? Take the FF14 Reddit Discord for example...It has almost 27,000 people on it. Does that cost 5 cents an hour? And what did the server owner pay? Nothing.

Also, why all in bold?