Yoshi-P tells PC Gamer that he is "not shocked" by mixed DT reception

[Hanayumi]

I work in gaming and have seen shit like this on both ends of the product. I have two guesses.

1. Things were changed partway through production. Executives, consultants, etc... meddled by saying something (everything?) needed to change and this is what we got. I kind of lean a bit more towards this explanation because there's the backbone for an actual story and clear progress, but it feels like its guts were ripped out and replaced with lots of pointless filler.

Edit: Also, the fact that only the story is dogwater makes me think this is the case. If resources were spread too thin, encounter design, job design, etc... likely would've been garbage as well but those were OK (though PCT was overtuned).

2. Resources weren't available and CBS3 was spread too thin. CBS3 has said they're working on multiple games, and Yoshi-P's attention has been split with the production of XVI. Between him delegating to other people, and resources directed elsewhere, this may have been the best they should push out.

It's also possible it's some combination of the two.

A lot of folks dont realize this, but they mentioned it a few times now a decent portion of the FFXIV dev team had new leads come in with Dawntrail with old leads simply supervising or moving onto other projects (Current rumors of FF17 and FF9 remake.)

[MartinFreeman]

Personal prefernce and all. Personally, I hate the JP voiceover because it feels like everyone is overacting like it's a shonen anime. The English version is, for the most part, how people actually talk.

No one talks as if their nose is stuffy 24/7.

It's not, people have been through this multiple times and Sena herself says she has a hard time doing female voices. If she screams or strain her vocal cords more then it'll sound like a male voice, thus why the screams are bad. Source: Her twitter. It's not purely the direction, the fault is on Sena as well for struggling to maintain a certain tone/amplitude.

It's almost like...wait for it...that he's not female!

[BigBoom550]

A lot of folks dont realize this, but they mentioned it a few times now a decent portion of the FFXIV dev team had new leads come in with Dawntrail with old leads simply supervising or moving onto other projects (Current rumors of FF17 and FF9 remake.)

I'm suspicious of the consultant/executive angle myself. The fact that you can *almost* see a good story in there has me wondering if they were told to make a story as long as endwalker by the execs but needed to have a certain type of character because the consultants said so, so they had a character they didn't want to focus so much on being stretched across empty space.

Obviously you can't ignore the execs, but you need to listen to the consultants to justify hiring them. So now you've got a character never written to be deep being forced to have depth by uninterested writers who don't have ideas for 90% of the space, then get their ideas with any teeth cut out leaving us with... this.

The writers have handled darker topics, I doubt the Disneyfication was their call.

[Daralii]

A lot of folks dont realize this, but they mentioned it a few times now a decent portion of the FFXIV dev team had new leads come in with Dawntrail with old leads simply supervising or moving onto other projects (Current rumors of FF17 and FF9 remake.)

They're newer, but Daichi Hiroi has still been working on XIV since 3.0 at least. If the others have also been working on the game for a comparable amount of time, they shouldn't derail so badly so quickly unless there is zero oversight.

[Morphiana]

Did I want a stronger reaction from Yoshi or more explanation as to why they went this direction if they don't see the problem with it?

Yes

Will I get it so soon after DT's release while SE is still heavily marketing the game and is competing directly with WoW's new expansion that just came out this week?

No, Yoshi isn't going to kneecap his own marketing department considering the timing.

[PassinLay]

Did I want a stronger reaction from Yoshi or more explanation as to why they went this direction if they don't see the problem with it?

Yes

Will I get it so soon after DT's release while SE is still heavily marketing the game and is competing directly with WoW's new expansion that just came out this week?

No, Yoshi isn't going to kneecap his own marketing department considering the timing.

SE is still heavily marketing the game

https://imgur.com/a/PJItAbi

Great marketing technique, that 38% positive reviews on steam really proves that lmao.

[CNitsah]

They're newer, but Daichi Hiroi has still been working on XIV since 3.0 at least. If the others have also been working on the game for a comparable amount of time, they shouldn't derail so badly so quickly unless there is zero oversight.

But the game did not derail that badly. Only the writing part has been falling that hard. in all other point, the game has been pretty consistent since ShB. Some points have become better, a few took a step back, there was some planning mistake (removing the exploratory zone and relic which was THE catch up/waiting/long running content for people that did not want to go play other game, and not replacing it by something else that serve the same purpose is probably THE biggest mistake they've done over the past 5 years). When you talk about the quality of the content, it's stable. It's just that writing is the selling point of the game, and when it fails, every small problem we used to ignore sticks out like a sore thumb.

[Astronis]

I feel like the disconnect comes because yoshi isn’t answering the actual problem people have with wuk lamat. The core of her character is……fine (a bit SB lyse but not terrible)

It’s the fact that she is so omnipresent in the story it shoves the other characters aside including the WOL. The only character that manages to cut through her omnipresence is Sphene but zarool ja, bakool ja ja, koana, Otis, erenville and krile all basically got left on the cutting room floor for more wuk lamat.

The way I read his statement, he does address this in a very round about way. "Showcasing the character to the players" is...basically exactly this. If they'd showcased Wuk Lamat differently (like, say, not shoved in our faces right up front and center the entire time but rather a little smaller and off to the side with room for other characters, or written the story a little differently so she came off better, etc., lots of options), she wouldn't have caused such a bad reaction with the players. That's exactly true--shown to the players differently, Wuk Lamat wouldn't have drove so many of us up a wall. She's a perfectly fine character that got shown to the players in a way that was a serious disservice to the character and thus to us.

He's not saying it directly, but he is saying, 'Yes, we botched how we handled Wuk Lamat.'

We'll see in the patches how the relatively unexperienced writing team goes forward with it, but it sounds to me like the FFXIV devs have heard loud and clear what the players have been saying.

[Alchemii]

The way I read his statement, he does address this in a very round about way. "Showcasing the character to the players" is...basically exactly this. If they'd showcased Wuk Lamat differently (like, say, not shoved in our faces right up front and center the entire time but rather a little smaller and off to the side with room for other characters), she wouldn't have caused such a bad reaction with the players. That's exactly true--shown to the players differently, Wuk Lamat wouldn't have drove so many of us up a wall. She's a perfectly fine character that got shown to the players in a way that was a serious disservice to the character and thus to us.

He's not saying it directly, but he is saying, 'Yes, we botched how we handled Wuk Lamat.'

But also he stated that he believed she had a parent complex and wasn't confident. Based on what we saw, this isn't the case. She didn't show having any kind of "complex", Koana kinda did, but not Garfield. More importantly the "confidence" thing makes absolutely no sense with how she acted throughout 90% of the story. In short, I don't think Yoshi-P actually looked over the final story that was present. It seems like he saw an early draft, then it was changed and nobody told him.

[MisterNublet]

I feel YoshiP is off the mark as to why people dislike Wuk Lamat, or maybe it's a PR stunt but the character of Wuk Lamat wouldn't be made better by being more confident

It's the former. Yoshi-P has been completely out of touch with FFXIV and has been for a very long time now. His PR responses just highlights that he's guessing what the issue is without actually looking into any of the feedback or complaints they're receiving.

He was surprised to find out that NA/EU couldn't play certain jobs due to ping related issues. He was surprised that NA was suffering from the same raid designated data center issue (Aether). He told healers to go play Ultimate if they wanted to have any kind of enjoyment when playing their role. When there was a healer shortage in PF, he begged players to play healer instead of addressing or figuring out why.

FFXIV has been stuck in the "You think you do, but you don't" phase for a while now since ShB and EW's MSQ helped mask somewhat the otherwise poor design choices made elsewhere in the game that they're still continuing to ignore player feedback about, but DT's MSQ just made everything stick out even more. On the other end, WoW is looking to put out another strong expansion by listening, talking, and working to their playerbase.