Yoshida's latest interview, Comic Exhibition Taiwan 2025

[Hallarem]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...n_taiwan_2025/


Sure seems like a lot of PR speech again and more lies about them "implementing a lot of player suggestions" and pushing the dumb DT "vacation" angle.

Funniest part though is how the "Garlemald was never planned" people get finally silenced in this by, I quote:

"We planned to use 5.0 till 7.0 to end our decade-long Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc and bring everything to its climax. Originally, 6.0 was meant to focus on the Garlean Empire. However, 5.0's reception exceeded our expectations, so we decided to condense the Empire's storyline to allow for greater developments."


I frigging knew Endwalker was a rushed smushed package to rush to the end. They should've taken their time and done it in two expansions. No wonder the pacing was so off.

[Auro_Seldaris]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...n_taiwan_2025/


Sure seems like a lot of PR speech again and more lies about them "implementing a lot of player suggestions" and pushing the dumb DT "vacation" angle.

Funniest part though is how the "Garlemald was never planned" people get finally silenced in this by, I quote:

"We planned to use 5.0 till 7.0 to end our decade-long Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc and bring everything to its climax. Originally, 6.0 was meant to focus on the Garlean Empire. However, 5.0's reception exceeded our expectations, so we decided to condense the Empire's storyline to allow for greater developments."


I frigging knew Endwalker was a rushed smushed package to rush to the end. They should've taken their time and done it in two expansions. No wonder the pacing was so off.

"5.0's reception exceeded our expectations, so we decided to condense the Empire's storyline to allow for greater developments" , when translated from Yoshida Speak, means "We were afraid if we went into a slower-paced, more thoughtful exploration of war, nationalism, and the consequences it has on people and the world that all these people that flooded in during ShB would get bored with 'Dr. Zhivago but in a Fantasy Land' and unsubscribe, so we speedran it to get to the HYPE EXCITING FINALE."

Well, I've been saying this for YEARS now, and looks like I was right. I knew from the moment that Zodiark was the very first trial that we were on a speedrun.

Clearly, the Moon was supposed to be the "mysterious unexpected last zone" and Zodiark was supposed to be the Final Boss of Hypothetical Garlemald Expansion. Which would lead into the Final Days being the patch storyline, leading up to What We Know as Endwalker. This would have given every plot element room to breathe. It explains why "The Telophoroi" are really just "Fandaniel and Zenos and some minions" instead of an actual cult who want to bring about Armageddon. It explains why the Telophoroi towers, which would have been a good way to reuse older zones and revisit them to fight Terminus monsters and topple the towers, kinda just... fall down, offscreen. By extension that explains why the Final Days mostly only happen in Thavnair - they were originally meant to be happening all over the world during the Hypothetical Garlemald Expansion patch cycle.

But instead, they were idiots and rushed it when it should have been a two-part finale. Almost all finales are better as a two-parter. Imagine what a rushed mess Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film would have been if they had tried to cram a massive final book into one movie. People make fun of how Peter Jackson's film version of The Return of the King has "6 different endings" but think of how many characters and plots would just have... not had a finish if they had rushed the ending. The finale of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica , "Daybreak", was a three-part finale, because there was so much to wrap up in the ending of the show - and it still is debated to this day on whether or not it truly succeeded.

If all the haters could put one dollar in the "We Were Right About Endwalker Being a Rush Job" jar, that would be nice, thank you.

Instead what Yoshida and co. did in their infinite wisdom was rush the ending to get all that leftover plot from 1.0 (which he has admitted he hated being saddled with) out of the way to get to the story he REALLY wanted to tell.Which was... Dawntrail, I guess. "Dawntrail is a vacation" , once again translating from Yoshida-ese, means "this is an excuse to make players pay us for the privelege of stalling for time while we come up with.... something for the future plot"

Which wouldn't have been necessary, btw, if they had just stuck to the plan. Hypothetical Garlemald Expansion > Endwalker would have given them plenty of time to figure out what to do next. Their spinning their wheels with DT wouldn't have even been neccessary if they had just stuck to their own plan.

Yeah, I think I would have rather had a thoughtful Garlemald expansion and been knee-deep in a better-written and not rushed Endwalker by this point, than the EW Rushjob and the Dawntrail Sloppa.

[yesnt]

Instead what Yoshida and co. did in their infinite wisdom was rush the ending to get all that leftover plot from 1.0 (which he has admitted he hated being saddled with) out of the way to get to the story he REALLY wanted to tell.Which was... Dawntrail, I guess. "Dawntrail is a vacation" , once again translating from Yoshida-ese, means "this is an excuse to make players pay us for the privelege of stalling for time while we come up with.... something for the future plot"

I’ve been thinking about this. FFXIV, as we knew it, really ended with Endwalker. But they can’t just walk away from the game, it’s a major cash cow. Still, it seems like they’d rather focus on creating new titles than building on what’s already there. So what do they do? They sideline the existing lore, shift the setting to a new continent, and act like everything before Dawntrail essentially doesn’t matter. That way, they can effectively make a new game without the effort of developing an entirely new MMO. Instead of expanding the story meaningfully, they recycle plotlines from other Final Fantasy games, reuse old assets, and rely on the loyalty of the playerbase to keep things going. The reason why Dawntrail feels so off is because it is disconnected from everything we learned to love.

[Daralii]

I’ve been thinking about this. FFXIV, as we knew it, really ended with Endwalker. But they can’t just walk away from the game, it’s a major cash cow. Still, it seems like they’d rather focus on creating new titles than building on what’s already there. So what do they do? They sideline the existing lore, shift the setting to a new continent, and act like everything before Dawntrail essentially doesn’t matter. That way, they can effectively make a new game without the effort of developing an entirely new MMO. Instead of expanding the story meaningfully, they recycle plotlines from other Final Fantasy games, reuse old assets, and rely on the loyalty of the playerbase to keep things going. The reason why Dawntrail feels so off is because it is disconnected from everything we learned to love.

But they need to periodically remind the old guard that it's the same title to keep them subscribed, so here's the Scions, Vrtra, and Footfalls anyway.

[Jeeqbit]

act like everything before Dawntrail essentially doesn’t matter.

If that was the case, prior MSQ wouldn't be required.

Instead of expanding the story meaningfully, they recycle plotlines from other Final Fantasy games

It's always been intended to be a final fantasy themepark ie. a coming together of the different final fantasy games with multiplayer features. That's how they've seen it since the relaunch in 2.0. They reused lots of things from the start such as ifrit, titan, garuda, black mage, chocobos, shiva, ff11 mobs, cid, bahamut, gold saucer (ff7), ivalice (ff12), absolute virtue (ff11), weapons from ff7, Quezacotl from ff8, eden (ff8), archfiends (ff4), magus sisters (ff4/ff10), lots of FF9 stuff in DT, ff11 alliance raids.

They do this because everyone's definition of final fantasy is different depending on which ones they've played. So by making it have elements of all of them, all final fantasy players will find something familiar.

reuse old assets

Standard and expected for a game developer to make maximum use of models they put lots of work into. I would too if I was developing a game, unless I decided to use AI, but players would be very upset if they were using that so reusing will have to do.

[yesnt]

If that was the case, prior MSQ wouldn't be required.

Yoshi literally considered a new starting point for new players. Dawntrail can be followed without much knowledge about the prior world building. Also, you can buy story skip. So, it's not like prior MSQ was ever required for anything.

However, making prior MSQ optional wouldn't make sense from a business point. It gives the players a reason to subscribe to the game and play through the expansions for months or longer.

They do this because everyone's definition of final fantasy is different depending on which ones they've played. So by making it have elements of all of them, all final fantasy players will find something familiar.

It's not just a couple of elements, though, if we are being honest.

Now, since you disagree, please elaborate which part of the MSQ was absolutely mandatory to understand Dawntrail.

[Jeeqbit]

Yoshi literally considered a new starting point for new players. Dawntrail can be followed without much knowledge about the prior world building. Also, you can buy story skip. So, it's not like prior MSQ was ever required for anything.

It's required if you don't buy anything from the shop. That's what I mean.

And although I am sure that he pondered this, he said that journalists come to him and say how much they loved the MSQ. He was saying that they did not view it as some sort of hurdle, but rather something they enjoyed. That wouldn't happen if said MSQ was not required to begin Dawntrail.

That's why the people who ideally need to skip are those being rushed by a friend to get to endgame to raid with them. Or who don't have the attention span for stories generally and would not be the type to watch Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.

However, making prior MSQ optional wouldn't make sense from a business point. It gives the players a reason to subscribe to the game and play through the expansions for months or longer.

While true, I really do not think Yoshi-P cares about that (based on every statement he has ever made). If he did care about statistics and numbers, he would not be so relaxed at how the player numbers have crashed since Dawntrail.

It's not just a couple of elements, though, if we are being honest.

It's not, but my point is it's never just been a couple of elements and that going through the game seeing all these references, then suddenly having a problem with it in Dawntrail is a surprised pikachu moment.

Now, since you disagree, please elaborate which part of the MSQ was absolutely mandatory to understand Dawntrail.

It's not about what is required but that it is functionally required to do one quest to get to the next.

[Villa101]

Instead of expanding the story meaningfully, they recycle plotlines from other Final Fantasy games,

they have done this from jump. You just used to like it

[yesnt]

they have done this from jump. You just used to like it

Because they did it in a meaningful way which my statement implies.

[Supersnow845]

^to be fair under that schedule that would have left what amounts to elpis->labarynthos->ultima Thule as the totality of 7.0 and I don’t think it would be possible to make that plotline stretch any further than it did already. Elpis already feels like it goes on for 5 hours too long and I don’t even think elpis is 5 hours long

EW was too rushed but each part of EW couldn’t really adequately be stretched to fit two expansions and a patch cycle without serious pointless bloat or additions we cannot guarantee they would have added or not. The final days are too time sensitive to drag out over patch cycles (it’s why we removed everlasting light in vanilla ShB) but if you pushed all of the final days to 7.0 then 6.0-6.5 wouldn’t have anywhere near enough content as I feel like people overestimate how much people would have wanted a “sympathetic garlean” expansion, and if we spent 3/4 of it opposed to garlamald we would just be retreading SB