Infos on the Real game Direction? WHEN?!

[ShinigamiKayla]

If we look back at FFXI as a reference its been shown that Pvp has never really taken off in an online FF game. Both Brenner and Ballista never really took off and because in FF the jobs have clearly defined roles i think balancing those roles would be nigh on impossible for pvp content. If Se can pull it off though and attract new players good, but its one area of FF that doesnt interest me.

the ffxi play style was also a little horrible to pvp with... combat should be up for it in 2.0 we shall see~ i am looking forward to pvp being done right =3

[SkyeWindbinder]

How seriously do other mmos take pvp? Are separate fan sites/groups(a la fighting game communities) made because of it?

Not sure. I never got THAT into pvp on any mmo I've played. I did play pvp and enjoy it, but I never really made a career out of it. I just don't think FFXIV is the game for people who are looking for anything more than a luke warm shallow pvp experience. I'm sure it will still be a lot of fun, I just sincerely doubt the devs are going to focus on it as much as some other mmos that have pvp.

[Exn]

This was in [NDA]. When you first get started, you will have [NDA] that will get you [NDA] with the [NDA] to work in 2.0. So, [NDA] are [NDA] as long as you [NDA].

I hope that helps satisfy the need for new information.

I assumed the porting in Alpha was just because it was Alpha. I was looking more for some actual mention from the Dev's or something regarding it, not just assuming however things may or may not have been in Alpha are how they will be at launch. And, it wasn't a need for new information.. just fact checking a post made by another player.. but thanks, I guess.

[Sorel]

Well Dragonheart... while all those games did some things well they messed up terrible in other ways to the point that .... If Final Fantasy XIV ARR does all those basic things well and some things more than well it will be able to compete even without any innovation at launch.

You bring up quite a bit of good points there, Dragonheart. A few I never even considered before. I totally agree with having PVP ready at launch for the reasons you mentioned. If the game doesn't have PVP at launch it could hurt the game's initial launch and subsequently have a detrimental affect on overall sales. Just as you state, reviewers and websites will probably be critical of the game for that reason, and that reason alone. As silly as it may seem to most of US that follow the game, or maybe don't care for PVP much, or that played 1.0 that didn't have it.....trying to attract as many players as you can to your new shiny MMO has to have it all.....and ALL at launch.

No MMORPG to date has ever launched with every feature that every other MMORPG had at the same time as the launch. It would be a fools errand for any game development company to even try. Features have to be prioritized, and strangely enough, this community told SE what the priorities were in our responses to the Player Polls (see links below).

First Player Poll Results
Second Player Poll Results
Third Player Poll Results

As you can see, PVP ranked either last or second to last in OUR priority (it never breaks out of single digits). Now, that doesn't mean that SE is not putting any PVP in the game ... it just means they are going to work at getting the stuff we said is REALLY important right and in at launch.

Character Development, Content, Graphics, Combat, User Interface, Economics.

Those are what reviewers are going to look at to determine if FFXIV:ARR is going to be great. If all of those are as good or better than the current MMORPG line up, they will easily forgive that you don't get to build a house, or kill your fellow adventures, or have flying mounts right at launch ... especially if you you have things like Gold Saucer and Crystal Tower at launch.

[Orophin]

Wait.. I totally missed that. So what, all teleports are free now? When did this happen!?!

Pretty sure this was announced in either an interview or translated magazine article (probably the latter of the two) saying that anima was going away and we'd use gil to teleport.

If we look back at FFXI as a reference its been shown that Pvp has never really taken off in an online FF game. Both Brenner and Ballista never really took off and because in FF the jobs have clearly defined roles i think balancing those roles would be nigh on impossible for pvp content. If Se can pull it off though and attract new players good, but its one area of FF that doesnt interest me.

To be fair, the PvP in FFXI was added later on, kind of as an afterthought. PvP is being introduced in FFXIV from the get-go, so while it hopefully won't influence PvE too much, it'll definitely have its place.

[CrystalWeapon]

I assumed the porting in Alpha was just because it was Alpha. I was looking more for some actual mention from the Dev's or something regarding it, not just assuming however things may or may not have been in Alpha are how they will be at launch. And, it wasn't a need for new information.. just fact checking a post made by another player.. but thanks, I guess.

It was announced that they were abolishing anima in a Gamewatch interview in December. It was translated by Soukyuu in the Translations (JP to English) thread.

This is the translation.

Edit: The part about anima is in red in case you don't want to read the full thing.

[ Gamewatch Interview | 121228 | Source ]

-- What were your impressions from the live broadcast?

Like I said in the broadcast, I was pretty nervous. The reason is not the broadcast being live, I've had experience with this with the producer letter live. The reason was that this broadcast was the first that wasn't aimed solely at FFXIV players, so there were also people not interested in ffxiv watching, so I was rather worried about the results. Luckily the viewers seemed to be excited so in the end it was fun. However, in case the servers crashed, there were bound to be some people saying "this is definitely going to fail". It's like when you host an event in DQ to defeat the Demon Lord and the servers crash in the middle of the battle, people would definitely label it as a failure. So it was pretty bad when it really happened.

-- How was it to be appearing together with Hiroyuki-san?

It was a lot of fun. I was tempted to invite him to a drink after this. I've been keeping an eye on 2ch ever since I got into the gaming industry, but it's the first time I spoke with him directly. I was wondering how the reactions from the live broadcast would be and looking forward to it.

-- Seeing the touch interface was interesting. Will it also be usable in battle or for chatting?

For chatting, a keyboard is definitely necessary. For a full tablet interface a software keyboard will be needed, so there are a lot of things to be done before the tablet UI can be completed. However, the touch interface of win8 is surprisingly easy to implement. Also, since we wrote our engine to be flexible, integrating touch was easy to do as well. I didn't know about it until last night when I came by our devbooth and saw it and was like "Ah, that nice". They said "we wanted to increase the precision before showing it..." but I replied with "Well, I'll be taking this to the nico broadcast tomorrow." *laugh*

-- Since when have you been thinking about a touch interface?

Autumn of 2011. Or rather, since E3. It was one of the various co-operations we had not only with Microsoft but also a lot of other companies. [I just can't seem to get this part over correctly D:] There are a lot of negotiations going on with regards to the launch of ARR. For a successful launch, simply releasing the package is not enough, I think we also have to do a lot of negotiations and generate enough buzz. Since there has been only little PR so far, we are going to increase it to reach new customers.

-- Do you plan to implement the touch UI at launch?

No, it won't be there at launch. The way it is now is just for us to evaluate the tech and to work with several manufacturers. Basically, what I'm thinking about is to be able to play FFXIV at home on your hi-spec PC, on a notebook before a business trip and on a tablet while travelling.

-- You said there is going to be a "very high" preset, but will there also be a "very low" one?

The "unknown ultrabook" *laughs* I showed the touch UI on actually has lower specs than the worst machine with core2duo. I think that the fact it was still able to run the game is quite satisfactory. Setting the minimum specs below that wouldn't make any sense.

-- Any chance the specs will change in the future?

Since the main goal for Alpha was to stress-test the servers, we first selected people with powerful PCs, slowly inviting people with weaker hardware to find some sort of balance. We will be continuing with this approach in the future, welcoming a lot of feedback from low-spec players, so a change in minimal specs is highly possible. Same can be said for the high-end specs: the very-high preset is still being tuned, so the requirements will rise. There won't be any major changes in specs overall however, so if you go by the alpha specs, you should have comparable performance later on. Lowest spec is definitely core2duo and 8800GT.

-- You announced the abolishment of anima, but how will this affect the airships/ferries/mount systems?

The reason for this will be told in the main story, so basically, you will be able to use ferries and airships when you want to travel. Teleport will serve as a "fast travelling" method. For example, if you arrive in Gridania and your friends tell you "there is a FATE in Ul'dah!" and you realize you have no anima left, that'd be quite disheartening. For that reason, I think it's fine to be able to leap around the world freely.

As for ferries and airships, I'm thinking of attaching them to some content. For example an event where the airship gets attacked by sky pirates, something like that should be interesting I think. For the ferry, something like a kraken or another sea monster attacking could be implemented. That way, there should be some reason to use a ferry or an airship. What's left are mounts, which should have some use as well. I think mounts can be counted as a way to add atmosphere to the world and as a means to explore it once, and beign able to switch to fast travel after that. As a next step, I'm thinking of incorporating ferries and airships into battle content.

-- What about making monsters arrive in town by ferry/airship?

That's a possibility, if we prepare the zone accordingly. FFXIV uses navigation meshes for path-finding, and there has to be one for each zone where you want to let the monsters fight.

-- What will the scope of beta be like?

I'm thinking of having nearly everyone in beta after the final stage of phase 3. Not just "tens of thousands", but "tens of ten thousands globally". However, with datacenters being spread across timezones, the total numbers will be spread out, as well.

-- What are the plans for CBT and OBT ending, respectively?

There will be periods after the phases to allow for corrections. This is in case we will receive more feedback than expected, so think of it as a buffer to be able to proceed with the next stage on time. If you look at the roadmap we released on December 27th, you might get the impression of "this will sure take a while". However, from our perspective we are still at the starting point. Our goal is not to merely satisfy current players, but also new users. This is why our testing should be on a level that people comparing [FFXIV] to other MMOs won't be a problem. So, once we have that, phase 4 will be the start of OBT.

-- Please tell us more about the goals set by the beta roadmap released on December 27th

Once we commence the beta, our goal will be to get in touch with as many people as possible. Starting with phase 3, free companies will be introduced, so that communities can be created. We won't rush the release of course, but I think even people wishing for that will be able to get a good impression of the game at that stage. The alpha that ended on the 27th already had a scale way beyond a normal alpha, so there is no way we can keep a traditional scale of an anticipated MMO this time either.

For example, it will be possible to use the character data from FFXIV 1.x, basically playing the beta as a lv50 character. This will lead to a certain separation of perspectives between players, so I hope everyone can have fun while playing together and give us a lot of direct feedback again.

Yesterday, an alpha player asked me "what do you think about the danger of the community falling apart because of the long waiting period?" via /tell. I replied with "It's painfully clear to me". However, just as I've been telling the media, our goal is to be able to satisfy our customers. If we have to put up with a period where people will be losing interest, then so be it. Because I believe that if something ends up being genuinely interesting, people will definitely come back. We are tempted to release faster ourselves, because we don't want to lose after all. We want to make a game that is able to win, or at least one that can fight for itself.

-- You did not announce the beta schedule in the live broadcast, what are the plans?

I can't tell you more than you can get from reading the beta roadmap *laughs*. Mid-february. The roadmap also describes all the details of each phase. If you are interested in what each phase will be focusing on, please take a look at the roadmap.

-- How many worlds will there be in beta?

In phase 1 there will be 5-10 worlds, with more worlds being added with each following phase. We are going to increase the limits depending on the amount of people wanting to play. Looking at official release, since we are using the same server infrastructure as DQX, we will be monitoring our respective user count and adjust the server numbers accordingly. Since we're the same company, there shouldn't be any problems with managing this. However, it's different for the datacenters overseas since they are hosted by outside companies. We will do our best to make sure there will be no problems with that either, though.

-- In the large-scale monster killing event [shown in the nico broadcast], the monsters were appearing and disappearing, will this be fixed in the beta test?

This is because in the alpha version, there is no priority for a model to be displayed. When we were testing the server load, there were no problems with, say, 100 models being displayed. However, with the niconico event, there were about 1000 players concentrated in one spot and because monster models are not prioritized, this is how it ended up. Party members will have highest priority, followed by monsters on the hatelist as well as linked monsters, with other free company members being last on the priority list. This will be implemented in beta.

For beta and onward, in case the model display limit is reached, player models will be removed from the display list in favor of monster models. At the moment, the display limit is set to 100 models, but there is a concern of memory usage. It should not be a problem for high-spec PCs though, so even limitless should not be a problem. We thought of increasing it to 300 or even 500 as long as the load doesn't become too heavy. It is still fixed at 100 for now, but removing it won't be a problem.

[Exn]

Pretty sure this was announced in either an interview or translated magazine article (probably the latter of the two) saying that anima was going away and we'd use gil to teleport.

Ah, thanks. If anyone can still find that source that would be great. I personally prefer a separate resource to be consumed other than gil (of ALL things..), but meh, what ya gonna do..

[Exn]

This is the translation.

Thanks CW! Much appreciated.

[CrystalWeapon]

Thanks CW! Much appreciated.

No problem. They elaborated in a later post that you would have to first visit a location to unlock it. I'll try to search for that post as well, but for now I'm going lay down. Splitting headache and what not. ;P

[HiirNoivl]

No MMORPG to date has ever launched with every feature that every other MMORPG had at the same time as the launch. It would be a fools errand for any game development company to even try. Features have to be prioritized, and strangely enough, this community told SE what the priorities were in our responses to the Player Polls (see links below).

First Player Poll Results
Second Player Poll Results
Third Player Poll Results

As you can see, PVP ranked either last or second to last in OUR priority (it never breaks out of single digits). Now, that doesn't mean that SE is not putting any PVP in the game ... it just means they are going to work at getting the stuff we said is REALLY important right and in at launch.

Character Development, Content, Graphics, Combat, User Interface, Economics.

Those are what reviewers are going to look at to determine if FFXIV:ARR is going to be great. If all of those are as good or better than the current MMORPG line up, they will easily forgive that you don't get to build a house, or kill your fellow adventures, or have flying mounts right at launch ... especially if you you have things like Gold Saucer and Crystal Tower at launch.

FF MMO players have pretty much bought this game already at this point.

I think Dragonheart is referring to attracting and retaining the attention of all the other MMO players out there who look for PvP in a game, not to mention those who buy off of non-FF blogs, websites who will rate the lack of PvP as a Minus on their scorecards.