Melbourne International games week Interview about content

[IvoryHawk]

yeah, watched it on Twitch when it was live.

I was shocked that after this long they figured out that *le gasp* making content takes time. imagine that... it doesnt just spin out of aether in an instant. shocker.

You just didn't read the article which this thread was about, but they are talking about making content that takes time to COMPLETE, it's not about them taking time to make the content, the whole thing was how they calculate how long lasting content takes, and are clearly making their calculations with people that log in for a few hours a day in mind and not the people that can finish the content in a few weeks at best and are left hungry for more content.


Ending statement:

"so I'm working a little harder to create it, so please look forward to it But don't retire, guys."

[Jeeqbit]

Dawntrail released ( Early Access June 28th) July 2nd and the first major content update in Early November.

WoW: The War Within released ( Early Access August 22nd) August 26th and the first major content patch is the anniversary event starting on October 22nd.

So that's 2 months for WoW. There used to be a 3.5 month gap for FFXIV in the past but now they account for holidays to give a better work-life balance, making it about 4.5 months.

Now you can make a lot of complaints about WoW but the point here is they have nailed a far better content cadence

What you may not be aware of is that their content cadence used to be notoriously bad. People used to say WoW took 9 months or more for a major content patch. What changed was they recently bought a company with 100 employees and reassigned those employees to work on WoW.

The reason they had to do this was because they were actually struggling to hire (good) developers. I don't know why that is - maybe their situation in the media at the time, but also there was a practical issue that to work for them people have to live in close proximity. The benefit of buying it was they were all in close proximity, ready to go, and had experience.

So you see, WoW was in a much worse boat patch cycle-wise before you played it. So if Square Enix were to replicate their methods, they would want to look to buy out a game developer with 100 employees so they can skip things such as hiring and (to some degree) training.

[Raven2014]

F2P is the very definition of a double-edged sword though.

...

To be honest, I'd almost definitely quit if gambleboxes found their way into this game. I've seen firsthand how they can ruin an MMO.

I'll be blunt, if you're the type who easily get hooked on gambling or have issue with impulse control, you should stay away from F2P gacha as far as possible. And what you said apply more to the old F2Ps game from probably 10-15 years ago. I said before I used to don't have a kind look toward F2P games for the same reasons you mentioned, but modern F2P are really attractive in term of what they offer.

After playing a few of them for a few months, most modern F2P seems to follow this pricing structure:

- Completely F2P players: can still play and get most things, but may demand heavy time investment.

- Monthly Subscribed players: ranging from 5$-15$ a months. Offer the same comfort as playing a traditional MMO.

- Whale players: for those who wants everything, and wanted to have them yesterday.


In my experience engaging with their communities, most people are in the 2nd category. You go to any of them and pose as a new players asking for advise on how to spend, that's what gonna be recommended to you, and that's what the majority of players self-identified as. Looking at the pay structure, it's very obvious there are some artificial wall against F2P players to nudge them toward paying, the monthly subscritions are extremely attractive value wide, while anything beyond that is just straight up exploitive, but only if you're the type who let yourself being exploited. So it's clear what companies are doing with their pricing.

To put it in perspective:

- In FF14 you need an average 2 months to BiS a jobs, costing $30.

- In F2P Gacha, spending $30 over 2 months

- In FF14, you can get gears very quickly if you're willing to RMT (probably in the hundred or thousand of dollar) clears.

- In F2P Gacha, they just put that options officially in the game.


As long as I maintain discipline, like I said these F2P games offer a much more modern and content rich experience comparing to FF14 becuase you know what? At least it feels Gacha games constantly invest the money they made back into the games, can't say that for FF14.

[Xeronia]

So that's 2 months for WoW. There used to be a 3.5 month gap for FFXIV in the past but now they account for holidays to give a better work-life balance, making it about 4.5 months.
What you may not be aware of is that their content cadence used to be notoriously bad. People used to say WoW took 9 months or more for a major content patch. What changed was they recently bought a company with 100 employees and reassigned those employees to work on WoW.

The reason they had to do this was because they were actually struggling to hire (good) developers. I don't know why that is - maybe their situation in the media at the time, but also there was a practical issue that to work for them people have to live in close proximity. The benefit of buying it was they were all in close proximity, ready to go, and had experience.

So you see, WoW was in a much worse boat patch cycle-wise before you played it. So if Square Enix were to replicate their methods, they would want to look to buy out a game developer with 100 employees so they can skip things such as hiring and (to some degree) training.

Oh I was a former WoW player that left in WoD, I am aware of how horrendous the patch schedule used to be. The point is they did make efforts to fix that issue in Dragonflight and have kept to it pretty well all throughout DF and now TWW because they addressed the issue which is something SE needs to maybe consider looking into. I know they are constantly trying to hire based on Live Letters but perhaps they need to look into other means to do so or adjusting the production pipeline to fit what they have.

[Carin-Eri]

I'll be blunt, if you're the type who easily get hooked on gambling or have issue with impulse control, you should stay away from F2P gacha as far as possible. And what you said apply more to the old F2Ps game from probably 10-15 years ago. I said before I used to don't have a kind look toward F2P games for the same reasons you mentioned, but modern F2P are really attractive in term of what they offer.

But there are still older MMOs around that do still use that 'old F2P' model as they have the sort of playerbase who tolerate it; the sort that several people have bemoaned here - the sort who complain about what they don't like but give the game company their money anyway, which sends a message to said company in the only language the company understands or cares about.
Which was one of the reasons I quit the game I used to play; I didn't want to support their business model.

As for lootboxes - was never that bothered about them myself when I played an older game that pretty much built it's business model around them, but certainly had friends who were addicted to them and at least one whom got themselves into a LOT of debt because of them.

[ExESGO]

The reason they had to do this was because they were actually struggling to hire (good) developers. I don't know why that is - maybe their situation in the media at the time, but also there was a practical issue that to work for them people have to live in close proximity. The benefit of buying it was they were all in close proximity, ready to go, and had experience.

So you see, WoW was in a much worse boat patch cycle-wise before you played it. So if Square Enix were to replicate their methods, they would want to look to buy out a game developer with 100 employees so they can skip things such as hiring and (to some degree) training.

To add to this: If you haven't noticed in the past PLLs they've been aggressively trying to hire new people to join their team, and a telling thing is they are now down to "we don't care about your existing credentials, but if you are willing to learn we will train you". Which to me reads there isn't a large pool of ready developers in Japan. Blizzard has the advantage of being in an English-speaking country and with English being the global lingua franca, but Japan doesn't have that luxury. Dawntrail could very well be the very first game several members of the team shipped. Sure there are people whose dreams are to work at Square Enix and Blizzard, but one needs you to know business level Japanese.

Also, asking them to speed up the current cycle would do more harm than good. They did say they have 2 years of planning ahead, and while flexible, it isn't THAT flexible. I've said this elsewhere, but the first time we'll see a lot of this feedback implemented realistically will be 8.0.

[Supersnow845]

To add to this: If you haven't noticed in the past PLLs they've been aggressively trying to hire new people to join their team, and a telling thing is they are now down to "we don't care about your existing credentials, but if you are willing to learn we will train you". Which to me reads there isn't a large pool of ready developers in Japan. Blizzard has the advantage of being in an English-speaking country and with English being the global lingua franca, but Japan doesn't have that luxury. Dawntrail could very well be the very first game several members of the team shipped. Sure there are people whose dreams are to work at Square Enix and Blizzard, but one needs you to know business level Japanese.

Also, asking them to speed up the current cycle would do more harm than good. They did say they have 2 years of planning ahead, and while flexible, it isn't THAT flexible. I've said this elsewhere, but the first time we'll see a lot of this feedback implemented realistically will be 8.0.

A 2 year turn around is absolutely unacceptable in this day and age especially when half the time the only “feedback” they seem to take on board is how popular the content is as a means of determining whether to keep it rather than actually taking onboard the content of the feedback

If a piece of content had 3 seperate releases (say criterion, savage, alliance raids or piecemeal content like IS) they should be ready to iterate on the feedback for the second iteration after getting it for the first. Not waiting till the next expansion to maybe fix the problems if they decide to keep that content in the next expansion

Aglaia being horribly undertuned should not have doomed euphrosyne AND thelia, they should have been ready to pivot to fix euphrosyne

[Ultran]

We asked for most of those changes since 6.0

And now we have 7.0 and people again ask us to wait for 8.0

Will we then have to wait until 9.0 when 8.0 releases? Yes, it needs time to develop and plan new content but there comes a point when you have to look at your projects and at your playerbase to compare what you are developing with what people are asking for or what you are not offering. And if there is no longer an overlap then you reach a point when you have to cancel some plans and change directions, because finishing the work on stuff that no one, or barely anyone, wants to play is just a waste of ressources.

[Raven2014]

But there are still older MMOs around that do still use that 'old F2P' model as they have the sort of playerbase who tolerate it; the sort that several people have bemoaned here - the sort who complain about what they don't like but give the game company their money anyway, which sends a message to said company in the only language the company understands or cares about.
Which was one of the reasons I quit the game I used to play; I didn't want to support their business model.

As for lootboxes - was never that bothered about them myself when I played an older game that pretty much built it's business model around them, but certainly had friends who were addicted to them and at least one whom got themselves into a LOT of debt because of them.

Then none of what you're saying really related to anything I'm saying. That's why I specifically said "modern F2P" in my post. All of the F2P I play are 2020+. I hate the fact that every time F2P comes up, the discussion immideately shift to the gambling/addiction because people seems to get stuck with the old bias/stereotype that's hardly applied any more. I wasn't talking about that, what I want to pointed out is objectively speaking, a lot of modern F2P games are just simply ... a better game, specfically they feel like a game made after 2020, whether FF14 felt like a PS3 era game most of the time.


And you know what, I guess that's why you see the shift in Yoshi's tone in this interview. Comparing to the old F2P games, FF14 did really stood a step above and Yoshi knew he was offering something better than the rest of the market. That's why he could say "it's ok people to quit and play other games" because he knew players always gonna come back to FF14 simply because it was the better value. But now I think he's waking up to the fact that it's no longer the case, and the modern F2P games are giving his game a real argument about where players can spend their money.

[Jeeqbit]

To add to this: If you haven't noticed in the past PLLs they've been aggressively trying to hire new people to join their team

Yes and not only that, I have regularly checked for their job listings in Japan for a few years now and they had positions open for pretty major things relating to content, such as dungeon design and more programmers specifically to work on FFXIV. The times they didn't specify what it was, they usually at least say CBUIII (and its associated location) and make it obvious it's FFXIV by describing the type of game it is.

I couldn't begin to say the number of positions for dungeons designers I'd seen over the years, as well as people making things like models, programming, UI, etc. So it's seemed to me like they've at least had applications open. Except the last several months I've checked they haven't had many positions open (but these things tend to be seasonal with many companies and covid could have been making it hard to recruit). Nevertheless, let's check it right now:

• Game Designer (Scenario Designer) - writing scenarios for the new content added with each patch, creating materials to communicate the world setting that shapes the game to the artists and level designers, writing flavor text, naming various places, NPCs, items, creating all text displayed in the game. Planning settings for the story, land, characters, items, etc., as well as creating and adjusting data and proofreading text.
• Community Planner - Managing the official forum , creating various texts for announcements, taking and editing images and videos, planning and operating the community, etc.
• Translator
• QA Tester (this is logical as they have over 100 of these)
• Graphics Engineer (this wasn't specifically for FFXIV, but considering the ongoing graphics update...)

reads there isn't a large pool of ready developers in Japan.

It's probably true because Japan is a bit cut off from the rest of the world compared to, say, Europe and America which have a lot of nearby countries on the same island. Add to this the language barrier with anywhere not speaking Japanese or a similar language. There is also the "aging population" issue in Japan where they don't have so many children.

I have, for quite some years at least, noticed them going out of their way to advertise certain jobs in a live letter or on twitter or even plugging it during a development panel (where they explain what a person's FFXIV job involves), when they are struggling to fill it.