Yoshi-P says the secret to keeping Final Fantasy 14 fresh

[strawberrycake]

The game is stagnating, and I know big changes are coming, even if Yoshida is not a friend of big changes at all. FFXIV is a business that for now runs well, so why change a formula that already works? That is the mindset of Yoshida and CBU III and IV.

The game needs to introduce some major changes to its core because people are slowly leaving due to the repetitive formula.

In Yoshida's words and I quote: "Dawntrail is going to te a revolution like 'A Realm Reborn', the game will be reborn once more". I'm not sure what that means. But I do think a "specialization" system with 2 specializations per job would be the way to go at this point, instead of adding new jobs every expansion. Either that or the job/subjob system that made FFXI so successful back in its time, but of course adapted to fit into FFXIV properly. The lazy excuse of "it's hard to balance" does not work here. That's pure dev laziness translation for "we don't want to work on balancing this or that".

Also, limit break should be individual and every character in an instanced dungeon should have their own individual limit break bar instead of one shared by the entire party.

We know DRG and AST are set for a rework and we'll see that in a few months probably. We're due another keynote with job changes and new skills but I think that precisely that pending keynote is going to be something quite big that will affect the game's core. So they're saving it for the last.

I can def agree with htis, but we also run into the issue of them playing into the bit way too long and way too hard. To Say there is no change coming would be a massive lie, the problem is that they never like to just sit down and tell us all the new neat shit they are working on that will keep people.

I guess the best way to put it is, They wanna throw a surprise party but not everyone cares for surprises.

[Supersnow845]

I feel like they always spend alot of time hyping up changes that mean nothing or go nowhere remember when SB’s most exciting feature was being able to swim and dive, and then it turned out to be nothing at all

I don’t doubt change is coming with DT but I don’t know it’s going to be the actual type of change people are looking for

[VentVanitas]

The game is stagnating, and I know big changes are coming, even if Yoshida is not a friend of big changes at all. FFXIV is a business that for now runs well, so why change a formula that already works? That is the mindset of Yoshida and CBU III and IV.

The game needs to introduce some major changes to its core because people are slowly leaving due to the repetitive formula.

In Yoshida's words and I quote: "Dawntrail is going to te a revolution like 'A Realm Reborn', the game will be reborn once more". I'm not sure what that means. But I do think a "specialization" system with 2 specializations per job would be the way to go at this point, instead of adding new jobs every expansion. Either that or the job/subjob system that made FFXI so successful back in its time, but of course adapted to fit into FFXIV properly. The lazy excuse of "it's hard to balance" does not work here. That's pure dev laziness translation for "we don't want to work on balancing this or that".

Also, limit break should be individual and every character in an instanced dungeon should have their own individual limit break bar instead of one shared by the entire party.

We know DRG and AST are set for a rework and we'll see that in a few months probably. We're due another keynote with job changes and new skills but I think that precisely that pending keynote is going to be something quite big that will affect the game's core. So they're saving it for the last.

I hate to say it but if they don't actually change anything about combat/encounter design then a spec system would be functionally worthless. the benefits of such systems is the ability to make jobs more versatile and customizable across a variety of content, but this game does not have that level of variety (not counting Eureka/Bozja because they already have their own form of job customization with essences/lost actions).

whenever this topic comes up I always see people immediately and mindlessly parrot "nooo we can't have specs/subclasses because people will just pick whatever is most viable" as if they don't realise that raiding is not the only form of content people play in an MMO, however when it comes to XIV the problem is that dungeons and boss fights is pretty much the whole game. don't get me wrong, I'd love any excuse to do away with the rigid trinity system XIV has, but we're kind of too far into the game's life and I realistically don't see them significantly changing encounter design to accommodate for things like specs/subs.

I mean, they could always make a middleground and just have the area zones that don't do anything except house FATEs and be set pieces for the MSQ be whole field instances on their own so essence/lost action gameplay is more prominent, but SE doesn't have the cajones...

[Heroman3003]

I feel like they always spend alot of time hyping up changes that mean nothing or go nowhere remember when SB’s most exciting feature was being able to swim and dive, and then it turned out to be nothing at all

I don’t doubt change is coming with DT but I don’t know it’s going to be the actual type of change people are looking for

Im not usually a doomer in that regard, but it's true that sometimes they put a ton of emphasis on minor aesthetical things. I can see Dawntrail's version being LADDERS. One of area trailers featured a character climbing a ladder, if memory serves me right, so I could see it being same to DT as underwater was to Stormblood and the NPC Following You Around And Talk Points With Them for Endwalker.

[Rithy255]

This game is a great social sim & decent story, or if you like dance fights, but not much outside of that. Not to say I dislike the game, as I enjoy it but that's mainly for interactions and not the content as much anymore.

The issue isn't even that it's stagnated or stayed the same, the Issue is that all the "innovation" that the game has had is removing something that was seen as "annoying" to players, with nothing to replace it, all of the recent innovations have been Visual upgrades, New glams, Portraits, Ui Improvements. I guess PvP? but that suffers from the ingame latency.

The Issue especially for the PVE combat system, the core of the game isn't that the job design has changed, it's the fact that the only changes have been to remove something or make something the exact same, because the Idea that one job can't perform slightly better or have meaningful upsides has led to the current design, At the end of the day you can balance everything by making it all function the same but the fact is then that it will lack Varity outside visual differences.

Personally I want PvE job design to improve as it will make redoing things on a different job feel like a new experience, it would certainly improve long waits before story or new fight content more interesting for me. I'm not even asking for it to be like older expansions, because a lot of the things from older expansions were removed for a good reason (not all).

[Cynric]

This discussion is based on this article.

https://www.gamesradar.com/yoshi-p-says-the-secret-to-keeping-final-fantasy-14-fresh-is-taking-everything-thats-good-about-console-games-and-placing-it-into-the-mmo-world/#:~:text=Final%20Fantasy%2014%20producer%20Naoki%20Yoshida%2C%20lovingly%20referred,it%20like%20it%20isn%27t%20an%20MMO%20at%20all.


Apparently, not thinking of Final Fantasy 14 as an MMO is "the secret to not running out of ideas". Yoshi-P says the secret to keeping Final Fantasy 14 fresh is "taking everything that's good about console games and placing it into the MMO world".

My personal thoughts, I don't really know how to feel about this statement. I want to agree but then I look at what they did with FF16 and it feels like they did the exact opposite. They took FFXIV and threw it into a console game. If their idea of a console game is FF16 turned into an MMO (i.e FFXIV) then I just ain't got much faith in the game improving anymore beyond what we have currently have.

FFXVI looks more like Devil may cry to me with a XIV skin on it. Honestly I kind of like it, I just wish I could play it.

I dunno about freshness, some stuff about 14 is fresh but usually when they try new things everyone says they hate it then they want it back an expansion or two later.

I don't really mind what he said all that much. I've more than got my moneys worth from the game.

All that aside though, he's responding to a question so its kind of like what do you want him to say.

[Jojoya]

Might help to include the entire paragraph from the very short article (rest of the article doesn't even talk about what he says).

In a group Q&A session (translated by Automaton) during the Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival 2024 in Tokyo, Yoshi-P explained what he thinks compels players to continue playing the enduring MMO some 14 years after its initial release. The producer said approaching the drawing board with an open mind not limited by the confines of a traditional MMO is "the secret to not running out of ideas." He added that, along with thinking of the game in the context of a Final Fantasy game instead of an MMO, "taking everything that's good about console games and placing it into the MMO world" is key to keeping things fresh.

Already off to a bad start. The author is just copying part of a summary of a summarized translation of a long joint media interview article.

This is the original translated summary: https://automaton-media.com/en/news/20240110-25344/

Here's the original article if you read JP or want to use Google Translate for it: https://automaton-media.com/articles...240110-278529/

Google translates what appears to be the relevant paragraph as:

Another way to avoid running out of ideas is that if you were to make FFXIV thinking of it as an MMO, you would run out of ideas. In that respect, I was really lucky to be part of ``Final Fantasy.'' It's a game that grew up on consoles, and many Japanese people, especially those of us who are the main generation of developers, didn't start playing games with MMOs, and there are still many who grew up with offline gaming experiences of home video games. Surprisingly, the MMO industry hasn't taken on the challenge of seeing what would happen if that idea were turned into an MMO. I think this is the strength of ``FFXIV'', and it allows you to think of ideas like ``What would you do in FF,'' or ``What would be fun to do as a new FF,'' in an MMO. Surprisingly, I think this is the secret to not running out of ideas. It's like the freshness of translating the goodness of consoles into the world of MMOs.

Sounds to me like YoshiP is talking more about how to adapt things that were popular in the previous Final Fantasy games into MMOs, especially FFXIV in this case. I suppose that works for getting ideas but those ideas aren't new ones. They're remakes of old ideas. Certainly they're a way of getting the attention of those who have fond memories of playing the games that originally had those ideas in the past but are those ideas as satisfying the second time around?

Reuse of names is fine. Reuse of details beyond the name to the point that what we will be getting is mostly predictable by those who played the original isn't. That's where 6.x MSQ fell flat. Too many players knew more or less where the story was going before it was even released.

[MonteCristo]

The game is stagnating, and I know big changes are coming, even if Yoshida is not a friend of big changes at all. FFXIV is a business that for now runs well, so why change a formula that already works? That is the mindset of Yoshida and CBU III and IV.

The game needs to introduce some major changes to its core because people are slowly leaving due to the repetitive formula.

In Yoshida's words and I quote: "Dawntrail is going to te a revolution like 'A Realm Reborn', the game will be reborn once more". I'm not sure what that means. But I do think a "specialization" system with 2 specializations per job would be the way to go at this point, instead of adding new jobs every expansion. Either that or the job/subjob system that made FFXI so successful back in its time, but of course adapted to fit into FFXIV properly. The lazy excuse of "it's hard to balance" does not work here. That's pure dev laziness translation for "we don't want to work on balancing this or that".

Also, limit break should be individual and every character in an instanced dungeon should have their own individual limit break bar instead of one shared by the entire party.

We know DRG and AST are set for a rework and we'll see that in a few months probably. We're due another keynote with job changes and new skills but I think that precisely that pending keynote is going to be something quite big that will affect the game's core. So they're saving it for the last.

agree on all of this

[ty_taurus]

well, really what other thing is there to do? if you don't like the direction the game (or anything) really is going, you vote with your wallet and choose not to patronize said thing anymore. that's the biggest impact any one consumer of a product can do.

If only there was a place where players could discuss the strengths and weaknesses of an ongoing game, a place where feedback could be given and discussions about said feedback could be given with the mindset of communicating that feedback, and what feedback is sound, to the development team that could make more informed decisions about how to approach things in regards to that feedback. Something like an official forum that players are regularly directed to specifically for giving feedback and suggestions.

[Banriikku]

FF14 is not fresh, it is a FF take on MMO. Thats it. And since ARR the formula stayed the same.

Also what the heck means "concolse game" ?
Its a game with a certain aesthetic or control sheme?
God of War and Monster Hunter World are damn good games. I played all of them on PC and console and none of them were a "pc game" or "console game" except control's and first release platform. Besides those 2 points there is no diffrence.
Sorry but he is like a TikTok LifeCoach "Water is wet, fire hot and if you eat less Burger King its better for you". What is his next take ? "if you put water on a heat source it boils" Sorry but this man needs PR Training or a break, maybe both.

Otherwise, looking at other games and taking whats good and fun and implement it in FF14 is a good idea.
Question is, at what point does this begin aka "When?" (<---- This is a joke)