New interview from JP 4gamer site

[Holland]

the only one of those things that is foundation in an rpg is the area design, the foundation of the game is the engine, and online is the servers. The truth is battle class system etc, are not the foundations of an rpg. Just because you do something a alot doesnt make it a foundation.

the foundation of any rpg is progression, story and adventure. you can swap any and many battle systems in. Alter it, change it, add to it whatever, its not required.

the foundation of something, is something every building has, and cannot do without, without not being a building.

The fact is battle class systems and econmoy are all features, and they are things they can change on the fly as long as they have the other things. You could litterally swap out the entire battle system from one ff title to any other, battle is just a feature of an MMO, and it is a feature they decided to do first because they wanted to. In fact neither the class system nor the battle needed a complete rework for this game to succeed. It does however need content.

At this point all they are building is leveling game, and a battle game. I have played rpgs where you tell people to attack, and you see a flash, and a pixel image shakes. that is not the foundation of the game.

Battle system is one of many foundations of RPG's. How the mobs are created, how to beat them, how they react, how you react to their attacks, spells, abilities, how to traverse through dungeons and clear stages, etc. Is based on the battle capabilities of your character. So if you were to suddenly swap a battle system for another, you would need to redo the design of a dungeon, how monters deal attacks, cast spells, activate abilities, you would need to redesign how your character clears dungeons. One of the main content-related features an MMO has, revolves around battles. Seeing all these ramifications (me listing just two, shows how fundamental a battle system is.) is quite obvious Yoshida and his team decided to do the right thing. I am no game developer, I just play the games, I dont understand how, based only on common knowledge, can you say what part of a game is fundamental or not. If you are indeed a professional game developer, my apologies.

Edit: What makes me, a person who is not a Game developer, be so sure that is a fundamental part. Well, the FFXIV Director/Producer said so. So why not?