Interview - Cost, Hiring, FT, Hardcore and Casual, Ultimate, Cosmic, Future of FFXIV

[Mawlzy]

He is definitely winging it (with bullet points that we see on screen with the slides). And winging it is good because people who use a teleprompter come across insincere.

Jeeqbit, there is a middle ground where key points are made with a degree of brevity. If Yoshi-P is a shitty public speaker, have someone else do it. Of the last handful of LLs these boards have devoted weeks and thousands of posts trying to decode wtf he was on about. It's a joke.

Or is this another example of streamers being gifted lengthy content with zero production costs?

[Alice_Rivers]

Jeeqbit, there is a middle ground where key points are made with a degree of brevity. If Yoshi-P is a shitty public speaker, have someone else do it. Of the last handful of LLs these boards have devoted weeks and thousands of posts trying to decode wtf he was on about. It's a joke.

Wouldn't this be fixed by simply issuing an official translation for official statements/interviews/Live Letters? It's not that hard for someone on his staff to keep a recording or a transcript to take back to the office and have SE's translators go over it with him to ensure that the intended meaning is conveyed. The only major changes I would make to Live Letters are to bring in a Q&A section and maybe bring in senior devs/writers to talk about stuff, make it more of an interactive affair.

[Hallarem]

Wouldn't this be fixed by simply issuing an official translation for official statements/interviews/Live Letters? It's not that hard for someone on his staff to keep a recording or a transcript to take back to the office and have SE's translators go over it with him to ensure that the intended meaning is conveyed. The only major changes I would make to Live Letters are to bring in a Q&A section and maybe bring in senior devs/writers to talk about stuff, make it more of an interactive affair.

Either they can't afford a translator anymore or they honestly don't give a damn.
Confusing communication is perfect for them, the way japanese people communicate anyway is in absolute circles where "NO" has 7 different forms. This is why it's so hard to decipher them. No roadmaps, no clear plans, no clear communication. No simple "yes" or "no" and nobody to hold them to a fire, except when some people directly question Yoshi P in a handshake line or something and report to the community later. I hope the Japanese community starts shitting on them, maybe they will actually start some meaningful changes after they turn off their consoles and start leaving.

"Its difficult"
"We shall see"
"Tssss..."
"A slight head tilt"
"Please look forward to it"
"We hope you enjoy it in the future"
"I will need to discuss with my team"
"Please give us more time to..."

All are a form of Japanese NO.

And we can CLEARLY see from all the interviews that the questions they prefer are usually soft, the interviewers are soft so a Q&A would be handpicked and soft to suit their agenda. They never really tackle any hard questions nor answer anything regarding the future with anything but vagueness.

[Mawlzy]

Wouldn't this be fixed by simply issuing an official translation for official statements/interviews/Live Letters? It's not that hard for someone on his staff to keep a recording or a transcript to take back to the office and have SE's translators go over it with him to ensure that the intended meaning is conveyed. The only major changes I would make to Live Letters are to bring in a Q&A section and maybe bring in senior devs/writers to talk about stuff, make it more of an interactive affair.

Yes, absolutely. The translations could be prepared ahead of time and published immediately after the broadcast if he really wants to get the maximum number of eyeballs on his "presentation."

And I very much like the idea of senior devs giving short explanations of developments in their specific areas. Apparently Yoshi-P is extremely busy with other projects. Maybe this never-ending confusion he produces is simply because he doesn't know what's going on.

[Jeeqbit]

Wouldn't this be fixed by simply issuing an official translation for official statements/interviews/Live Letters?

Official statements are translated on the lodestone, in blog posts or rarely on the forums. Live Letter slides are translated but exclude Yoshi-P's commentary. The important commentary is translated here albeit delayed. Keynotes are translated at Fanfests.

Whether interviews are translated depends a lot on the interviewer's desired target language. If it is an English interviewer they of course translate it for them and then it's up to them how to present it. Obviously, Famitsu is a Japanese website so they don't see the need to translate it.

They also often convey the same information again in interviews that follow, although it depends what they get asked.

have SE's translators go over it with him to ensure that the intended meaning is conveyed.

The main issue is that if they publish the interview themselves and do this in all languages, then it steals the content away from the journalists that interviewed them, who see it as their content to publish.

The only major changes I would make to Live Letters are to bring in a Q&A section

Q&As would be good again.

bring in senior devs/writers to talk about stuff

They have done this a lot at Fanfests and game conventions such as PAX. There are a lot of past Q&As with them in the Live Letter forum although I don't think we've had them recently in there.

The translations could be prepared ahead of time and published immediately after the broadcast if he really wants to get the maximum number of eyeballs on his "presentation."

The slides already are translated ahead of time. The commentary is unpredictable since he wings it, so that would take time to do, which probably explains why it does take time to put it into the Live Letter forum.

[Exmo]

I love the idea that senior developers will be able to communicate more clearly to a non-technical audience than someone with a decades worth of experience. You think Yoshi-P is a master of non-committal or confusing answers, just wait.

[Mawlzy]

The slides already are translated ahead of time. The commentary is unpredictable since he wings it, so that would take time to do, which probably explains why it does take time to put it into the Live Letter forum.

If this "winging it" has a material impact on the information being transmitted to the point it adds more confusion than clarity, mebbe it ain't a good idea?

Unless, of course, the entire purpose of his interminable rambling is to muddy the waters to produce plausible deniability downstream.

[Mawlzy]

I love the idea that senior developers will be able to communicate more clearly to a non-technical audience than someone with a decades worth of experience. You think Yoshi-P is a master of non-committal or confusing answers, just wait.

I'm not asking for a description of the coding and sub-routines. What we want to know is design philosophy and its implementation. What are they planning to do with the game and why?

A road map would be nice too.

[Exmo]

I'm not asking for a description of the coding and sub-routines. What we want to know is design philosophy and its implementation. What are they planning to do with the game and why?

A road map would be nice too.

A roadmap would interesting from a developer perspective but an absolutely terrible idea for the company given how everyone here treats the slightest mention of a development plan as a super best friend pinky promise. The truth is we need someone from the studio who knows how to filter design philosophy through PR speak.

[Jeeqbit]

A roadmap is an alright idea because they did that in a previous expansion. I think it was Endwalker. There is a roadmap at Fanfest but it's considerably more vague about when.