Gamasutra Interview with Yoshi-P and Sage Sundi

[BelgianRofl]

Thanks, my good man.

Although the bit about the cigar was a lie. I don't smoke.


Abriael... Let's face it... Belgian Rofl is the most well-known name character in all of Final Fantasy XIV. Whether you like it or not, this is the truth. Square-Enix had no reasonable choice but to post the bit about the Auto-Attack in a thread and section in which I have never even visited.... Battle Environments.

My post calling out to SE for just some scrap of news about what they plan to do with the battle system was posted in Battle Mechanics two hours prior.

All you have to do is put 2 and 2 together.... http://i.imgur.com/y8Lax.jpg

[Vicious]

Yoshi-P has a task force dedicated to reading my posts and acting on them.

Don't be surprised if i add this to my signature

[quantumsaint]

I swear you two (Abriael and Belgian) were hired by S-E to make the forums more interesting.

[BelgianRofl]

You think this is fun... You should check out Uldah in Besaid sometime.

[SilvertearRen]

You think this is fun... You should check out Uldah in Besaid sometime.

No kidding. Feral Ren speaking here. :P It can get crazy in there.

[Abriael]

You think this is fun... You should check out Uldah in Besaid sometime.

temptations temptations...

Very often you'll hear developers in the West say that you can't recover from a bad launch. Obviously, that's not your philosophy, but I was wondering what your thoughts on that belief are?

NY: One of the reasons I believe that it's very hard to recover from a bad launch is that with many Western MMOs, because the teams are so large and they require such a large budget -- because of all the assets and all the things they have to make -- a lot of those projects rely on investment, and it can't be done by a single company alone. So, that's why if you fail, then you fail.

And then when a game, like a large Western MMO, has a large launch and it fails, then the investors start to pull back. Then the money stops flowing. And when the money stops flowing, the development teams have to make their development team sizes smaller, which means they can't get enough content for the fixes, or they have to go to a different payment model like free-to-play.

Basically the control of the development is crushed. They want to change it, they want to start over, but it's prevented by that lack of the budget.

On the other hand, with FFXIV, operations and development are all funded 100 percent by Square Enix, so as long as we decide to continue backing the project and we don't give up, we can continue to provide things to the players, see what they want, then go back and retry things, redo things. Basically, it comes up to us. We're not at the strings of the investors.

Well this part was certainly interesting.

back on topic, after someone tried to derail it with his ego-trips. I'd say this is indeed quite an interesting statement. While it's a tad smug to state that "Only Square Enix can do it" (there are others completely self-funded games out there, while they're quite few), it's rather true.

being the publisher AND the developer is a rather big advantage, and the fact that SE is continuing to invest in the game while putting revenue on a long-run course, is quite the proof that he's not just being smug.
Of course there have to be results, or even Square Enix will pull the plug, but he seems to be rather confident of being able to achieve those results.

When Tanaka and Komoto were the fulcrum of development and being interviewed, it was rather visible that they didn't have that much confidence, especially during the final stretch between GC and the release. While Yoshida shows quite a lot of enthusiasm (unless I completely misread him, he seems to actually be looking forward to seeing the reactions to his work), they had the typical dead expression of someone walking towards a death sentence.
I initially chalked it to (mostly Tanaka's) attitude of being always pretty flemmatic and "cool" during PR contacts, but things were further than that.
If you pay attention to some filmed interviews you can actually see them wince at some of the more pressing questions.


Yoshida knows that he's not in a perfect situation, but he knows that (for now) he has the financial backing and the team to get something good accomplished.
Also, it's pretty clear that he's betting his career on this task. It can easily receive a massive boost if he's successful, but it can also paint a quite definitive stain on his resume. And honestly, when he accepted the job, the chances of the second option turning into truth were quite a lot higher.

Accepting the role of captain of a ship with several holes on the hull sailing in the middle of the ocean isn't something everyone would do.

I can only respect someone with the guts to actually accept such a challenge. Japanese people almost never put their career on the line this recklessly (and not even westerners actually, but for a Japanese it's even more extreme).

[Vicious]

I swear you two (Abriael and Belgian) were hired by S-E to make the forums more interesting.

Belgian does make these forums interesting

Abriael.. well Abriael can't stop quoting people and has to make a fight that should have ended long ago continue until it consumes an entire thread.

[BelgianRofl]

He's not betting his career. He's not the one who convinced Wada at the shareholder's meeting that he could singlehandedly turn this game around. He was recruited to run the project. If the game fails, it is ultimately Tanaka's fault (which is ultimately Wada's fault for hiring Tanka - which is ultimately the Shareholder's faults for voting Wada as president). Yoshi-P is the best thing to happen to this game. He understands what must be done to fix the game - while keeping the fanboys in love with Square-Enix.

The die-hards claim that they love the systems in the game, but the hard truth is that these systems need to be changed in order for the game to succeed. Another hard truth is that the systems definitely will change. Another hard truth is that the fanboys will continue to play the game even after the changes.

Some have made an interesting point that the player's polls were just a PR stunt. What if this is true? What if Yoshi-P and crew already know what they're going to do, and they're just using the polls from the community to figure out how to word their descriptions of the changes they're making in a way that will trick the fannies into going along with them.... That's mY conspiracy theory..


OK abirael, i'm leaving for the weekend. Just bought a new Plasma TV so i'll spend the weekend watching Blu-Ray movies and drinking Dr. Pepper. I'll see you next week! Have a great weekend everyone!!!!

[gifthorse]

I mostly enjoy demolishing flawed arguments and crushing silly delusions of grandeur Makes for great entertainment while working, and you're quite perfect for that.

But mind you, you're free to continue thinking that your continuous barking gets anything done. I'll continue to support the ones that actually provide constructive feedback, to which Yoshida and the team continue to directly answer, while completely ignoring you

Sometimes I pity your thinking patterns.

[SilvertearRen]

He's not betting his career. He's not the one who convinced Wada at the shareholder's meeting that he could singlehandedly turn this game around. He was recruited to run the project. If the game fails, it is ultimately Tanaka's fault (which is ultimately Wada's fault for hiring Tanka - which is ultimately the Shareholder's faults for voting Wada as president). Yoshi-P is the best thing to happen to this game. He understands what must be done to fix the game - while keeping the fanboys in love with Square-Enix.

Agreed. Part of me wishes XIV will fail, so that Tanaka would lose his job along with Wada; another part of me so fervently hopes that the game will be a smashing success by the time the PS3 version launches. It's a real toss-up on what will happen...