Melbourne International games week Interview about content

[Raven2014]

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

Let me share you this story:

"In ancient China during the time when country was still split into 7-8 different kingdoms, one king ask his minister "how can I attract more talent to our kingdom?" The minister replied "it's simple, just make sure you shower me with great wealth and reward for my achievements". The king did that, and in a few years his court were filled with talents people from other kingdoms".

You know what's the moral of that story? You can buy talent. If anything, the fact SE's willingly scrapping the bottom of the barrel tell me more about their hiring practice than anything else ... and that's not good.

Instead of wasting ton of money in NFT, instead of funding the gigantic bloated of a game called FF15 ... those money were spent on FF14 instead, do you think you even have to sit here and use the "limited talent" as an excuse? Like ... common, you really buy that? It's not like you don;t see killing tittles and great game at other companies. And before you even think about coming up with other angle and excuse, don't bother. I'll tell you flat out right now, it doesn't matter what I'm saying is right or wrong, it's perception. That's why it's a psychology issue.

If I pay 10$ and feel I'm getting dirt, it still pisses me off. But even if I pay 30$ but feel I'm getting premium, that would please me. And that's one of those things I feel modern F2P understand far more than any of triple AAA developers do. When you play these games, you feel like the money you spent are being invested back into making a better game, you feel you're being catered to. As opposed to playing AAA games it feels like you're being offered the least amount of service at the highest possible price, and the money you spent are not being used to create a better experience.

[Daralii]

Let me share you this story:

"In ancient China during the time when country was still split into 7-8 different kingdoms, one king ask his minister "how can I attract more talent to our kingdom?" The minister replied "it's simple, just make sure you shower me with great wealth and reward for my achievements". The king did that, and in a few years his court were filled with talents people from other kingdoms".

You know what's the moral of that story? You can buy talent. If anything, the fact SE's willingly scrapping the bottom of the barrel tell me more about their hiring practice than anything else ... and that's not good.

Instead of wasting ton of money in NFT, instead of funding the gigantic bloated of a game called FF15 ... those money were spent on FF14 instead, do you think you even have to sit here and use the "limited talent" as an excuse? Like ... common, you really buy that? It's not like you don;t see killing tittles and great game at other companies. And before you even think about coming up with other angle and excuse, don't bother. I'll tell you flat out right now, it doesn't matter what I'm saying is right or wrong, it's perception. That's why it's a psychology issue.

If I pay 10$ and feel I'm getting dirt, it still pisses me off. But even if I pay 30$ but feel I'm getting premium, that would please me. And that's one of those things I feel modern F2P understand far more than any of triple AAA developers do. When you play these games, you feel like the money you spent are being invested back into making a better game, you feel you're being catered to. As opposed to playing AAA games it feels like you're being offered the least amount of service at the highest possible price, and the money you spent are not being used to create a better experience.

My understanding of how the current CEO's been restructuring things is that the company as a whole is now cutting corners on the products that have been successful and moving a lot of the talent and money that would be assigned to them to new projects instead. CBU3/CS3 was very open about a lot of the key staff for XIV being reassigned to XVI(which undersold), and after that either got moved to managerial positions or were reassigned to the unnamed project they're working on. I've also seen rumors that they were working on an FF9 remake that got scrapped after 7 Rebirth undersold, but nothing concrete.

[Valence]

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

They did exactly that long ago in HW when Void Ark proved so underwhelming and boring that Yoshida apologized and lo and behold, Weeping City and Dun Scaith were the best alliance raids we've had back then. Even earned the nickname to Mr Ozma.

My only conclusion is that they do not think that EW's alliance raids undertuned enough to worry about it. Tells a lot about their approach to the game tbh.

[BabyYoda]

Let me share you this story:

"In ancient China during the time when country was still split into 7-8 different kingdoms, one king ask his minister "how can I attract more talent to our kingdom?" The minister replied "it's simple, just make sure you shower me with great wealth and reward for my achievements". The king did that, and in a few years his court were filled with talents people from other kingdoms".

You know what's the moral of that story? You can buy talent. If anything, the fact SE's willingly scrapping the bottom of the barrel tell me more about their hiring practice than anything else ... and that's not good.

Instead of wasting ton of money in NFT, instead of funding the gigantic bloated of a game called FF15 ... those money were spent on FF14 instead, do you think you even have to sit here and use the "limited talent" as an excuse? Like ... common, you really buy that? It's not like you don;t see killing tittles and great game at other companies. And before you even think about coming up with other angle and excuse, don't bother. I'll tell you flat out right now, it doesn't matter what I'm saying is right or wrong, it's perception. That's why it's a psychology issue.

If I pay 10$ and feel I'm getting dirt, it still pisses me off. But even if I pay 30$ but feel I'm getting premium, that would please me. And that's one of those things I feel modern F2P understand far more than any of triple AAA developers do. When you play these games, you feel like the money you spent are being invested back into making a better game, you feel you're being catered to. As opposed to playing AAA games it feels like you're being offered the least amount of service at the highest possible price, and the money you spent are not being used to create a better experience.

exactly,

I am one of the people who is willing to buy an expansion for double the price if it was good, I bout it for 30$ and I am willing to pay 60 dollars if content is great and schedule get back with more valuable content for post expansion,

I play free games casually and I love how it feels to me I am the center, target audience and the person who is the game centers too and I know High-end hardcore players do feel the same thing, but in FFXIV I feel like it is either one of them or never, this scares me how later on no one will be the target audience for this game other than people who attach them selves on game that they love it and hate it.

[ReynTime]

My understanding of how the current CEO's been restructuring things is that the company as a whole is now cutting corners on the products that have been successful and moving a lot of the talent and money that would be assigned to them to new projects instead. CBU3/CS3 was very open about a lot of the key staff for XIV being reassigned to XVI(which undersold), and after that either got moved to managerial positions or were reassigned to the unnamed project they're working on. I've also seen rumors that they were working on an FF9 remake that got scrapped after 7 Rebirth undersold, but nothing concrete.

Yoshida has gone on record before Dawntrail launched that Creative Studio 3 is not involved in the IX Remake. And the studio in charge of VII Rebirth moved straight to the third and final episode so they're not involved in the IX Remake either, if that's even happening.

[Kes13a]

Yeah this guy is 99% working on SE and 1% white knight. There is NO qa testers beside devs themselves.

Prove me wrong. TOP p3 bug you will find it if you actually play (yet players had to playtest). If you care about this game even more, you can notice SMN talent bug for DT (and yet actual devs rejected bug report on this forum about it, while poking fun of people who pay subs because their bad work culture does not allow to work more than one month every 4 months).

"trust me bro they are working HARD on this game"

trust me bro.... unless you played WoW where it was WELL KNOWN that players were play testing their releases.. on release... you have no idea what you are talking about. compared to that fiasco, and paying to play a beta.. in FFXIV we actually have it pretty good. some things will always get through, but its no where near what Blizzard used to push out as "finished releases"

[Swordsman]

Ain't buying it. It's time for them to show us new content, not tell us about it nonstop while doing nothing to alleviate the painful long content lulls this game has.

Yeah this. It's sad that it's got to the point where the players have to be skeptical about what the devs say, but this happens for a reason. For now I'll believe it when I see it.

[Jeeqbit]

A system, or rather various systems, I can work on which allow me a casual approach to gain and access power for my character.
Gear, power systems, and various other things which I can gradually optimize. I can launch the game, put an hour in and still feel like I made progress in some way, shape or form.

I see. Of course, this game wants to make the game still playable when you don't have a lot of power so they just let you buy it.

The good news is there is a potential opportunity for them to change it in 8.0 if they go ahead with Talents, Skill Trees or Abilitiy Points to replace leveling. Of course, they probably won't make it something you grind (beyond effectively leveling), just saying it's an opportunity for such a change.

To me personally though, I see mounts as part of my character growth and I think there are others that see it as achievements or titles or glams.

daily quests, rep grinds

We do sorta get this in the form of beast tribes and custom deliveries through the patches.

I can't help but notice FF14 has been trying to do that for years (i.e extending patch time and decrease amount of contents)

From my perspective, they just wanted to stop burdening players like they did with the tedious Atma grind in ARR. I think grinds like that slowly pushed them to where we are now with one-and-done content, because some people don't like grinds. They also wanted to focus development on "second life" content like Ocean Fishing but the side effect is it makes people feel there's "less" content since they don't take Ocean Fishing or Island Sanctuary seriously.

[Stasya]

trust me bro.... unless you played WoW where it was WELL KNOWN that players were play testing their releases.. on release... you have no idea what you are talking about. compared to that fiasco, and paying to play a beta.. in FFXIV we actually have it pretty good. some things will always get through, but its no where near what Blizzard used to push out as "finished releases"

How much SE offers per character? Why do you need to bring up other game here?

Is this what is in your "how to talk with people on forums " textbook rules? Say wow bad ff14 good?

[Kranel_San]

"Do not retire"

This means the subscription numbers are dwindling. That's good, maybe then it will mean more effort into keeping the players.