jpgames.de Gamescom 2015 interview with Naoki Yoshida

[SecretCrowds]

http://jpgames.de/2015/08/gamescom-2...naoki-yoshida/

Some points:

No plans for 1 vs 1 dueling system. Jobs not balanced for 1 vs 1

3.1: new 24-player raid content after the Crystal Tower
3.1: big update for Goldsaucer
3.1: exploration using your airship.

Snowboarding won't make it for next winter season

No plans to make harder version of old primals. Better to make new primals.

Next cross-over event decided

Housing: Working on abandoned houses
Housing: Changing and moving house
Housing: Ishgard plots or more plots

EU data centre: There will be 4 to 5 days maintenance

And regarding inventory

MMORPG.de: After the 3.0 patch player struggle with inventory space. Are there plans for more inventory space or some other method to keep more items?

NY: The whole development team are Final Fantasy XIV players and also want more inventory, so we understand the situation you are in. There are actually two reasons why we can not expand the inventory. It may look simple in game, but actually the size of data for only one item is really huge. If you look at the inventory and compare it to other MMOs, Final Fantasy XIV has the biggest inventory.

We have a few 100,000 players in all worlds at the same time, and every 15 seconds data will be going to the servers and stored, so a lot of data is transmitted. If we have more items in the inventory, there will be more data to handle; times a few 1,000 bytes per item per character. That’s going to be a high load on the servers. There then might be some risk that your data is not safed properly, and we want to avoid this risk. That is why we are so careful with expanding the inventory. It is not that we don’t do anything at all, we are working on this issue by optimizing the backend data so that the data will be read properly with less stress. If there is no high server load, we can probably work more on actually addressing this issue. This is the first point.

Another issue is that when you use the Duty Finder, you will go to the contents server. But when your character is going there, you bring all your items to the server. If you have more items, you have to wait a longer time to go to the server, you will feel a lot of stress. This optimization process takes a lot of time and we are working on it slowly, but that is the only way we can actually keep your game experience and the desire for more inventory space.

Although we won’t be able to expand inventory straight away, we want to make it more convenient to use retainers. So you can e.g. access all retainers in certain areas, rather than one by one.

[zcrash970]

4-5 day maintenance? T_T

[Felis]

4-5 day maintenance? T_T

only for the Chaos server group (EU servers)

One example: HQ and non-HQ items. Do we really need them anymore? They don't really serve any valuable game play function that could be better accomplished in another way.

Be happy that it is only NQ and HQ. And not NQ, +1, +2 and +3 (like it was in the first half of 1.0) ^^

[Brickshouse]

4-5 day maintenance? T_T

The thing is they will need the time to transfer all the data from the servers in the Americas (where EU servers are currently hosted, think Canada) to Europe down the main cable under the atlantic. Now think if the chaos server cluster has 1m players on it, all the data to each character (and players have multiple) could be 100mb you are probably looking at petrabytes or even exabytes+ of data to move, test, do server load tests once data is accross, check for errors etc. etc. Its not something that can be done in a few hours or couple of days.

Also don't forget cost I doubt they would be spending less than £3m to move the servers.

[pushin_tin]

I'd rather pay a one time $10-15 dollar fee for an extra retainer and OWN it, instead of renting one with increased sub cost. Allow us to craft from retainers like in GW2, and make it less cumbersome to manage equipment sets from the retainer, and I'd happily pay for extra.

[FaileExperiment]

It's not so much that we need more inventory space (though yes, we do). It's that they've created a need for us to want more inventory space. And they keep doing it.

One example: HQ and non-HQ items. Do we really need them anymore? They don't really serve any valuable game play function that could be better accomplished in another way.

Another simple example is Aalexander: instead of creating a single resource, or using resources we already have, they created a brand new token system which introduces not just one, but several new items into the game. Each of these items takes up an inventory slot, and it's common to have several at one time, because you need to save up a certain number of them before you can turn them in. It solves some problems, sure, but it's hard to understand why they would choose this method, and then turn around and say inventory is a problem. They are the ones making it more of a problem with each patch.

It's these and a million other nonsensical choices that add up to our overall inventory issues. I'm not saying they should stop introducing new items or anything, but there are obviously better ways to handle inventory than what they have been doing. For example, Alexander could have been handled with one token type, and it could have been added to the currency menu instead of inventory.

Weird choices like this make me wonder what the heck the disconnect is at Square. It's obvious some people aren't talking to other people there.

[Iromi]

I'd rather pay a one time $10-15 dollar fee for an extra retainer and OWN it, instead of renting one with increased sub cost. Allow us to craft from retainers like in GW2, and make it less cumbersome to manage equipment sets from the retainer, and I'd happily pay for extra.

Exactly! Not even F2P games do this. You just pay a one time price and get more inventory for good.

So they are claiming there is no way to make space...okay so...then what are the paid retainers for? Pretty sure that is space...o.O So confused SE

[Kosmos992k]

The mentioned 'solution' to housing is not a solution at all, it might slightly ease the situation, but it fails to address the central issue, the number of plots per server is a small fraction of what is needed to give the majority of players any hope of getting a house. As much respect as Yoshida-san deserves, this is an abject failure on his part to address the situation and player concerns. I feel much the same way about his response to the loss of identity for WHM, he seems to thinK more powerful heals somehow fix the identity issue caused by homogonizing and nerfing many of the things specific to WHM. Removing their trait advantages on SS and Protect is a real kick in the nuts for WHM.

[Belhi]

The mentioned 'solution' to housing is not a solution at all, it might slightly ease the situation, but it fails to address the central issue, the number of plots per server is a small fraction of what is needed to give the majority of players any hope of getting a house. As much respect as Yoshida-san deserves, this is an abject failure on his part to address the situation and player concerns. I feel much the same way about his response to the loss of identity for WHM, he seems to thinK more powerful heals somehow fix the identity issue caused by homogonizing and nerfing many of the things specific to WHM. Removing their trait advantages on SS and Protect is a real kick in the nuts for WHM.

I think his point was the things WHM gets after 50 make up for it in Job identity. WHM is a very different healer to either SCH or AST. Its less subtle and more powerful. Homogenization is only an issue when the Jobs start to feel too similar. Granite skin and Protect are poor ways to define WHM.

WHM job identity is in raw powerful healing output. They are the BLM of healing pumping out heals on a scale the other healers cant match. Their major restricting factor is Mana. The post 50 abilities only strengthen this feeling of a healing artillery gun. They are the masters of reactive healing. How does damage mitigation make them less homogenized vs healing Jobs that specialise in mitigation?

[Kosmos992k]

WHM job identity is in raw powerful healing output. They are the BLM of healing pumping out heals on a scale the other healers cant match. Their major restricting factor is Mana. The post 50 abilities only strengthen this feeling of a healing artillery gun. They are the masters of reactive healing. How does damage mitigation make them less homogenized vs healing Jobs that specialise in mitigation?

Perhaps part of the difference between us is that I am not looking at this from an endgame efficiency point of view, and perhaps you are. Yoshi clearly is, hence his comments abot waiting until the interviewer hit 60. I'm sorry, but I don't measure much of this game based on raid or end game utility. The look and feel, personality and how something plays matter more to me.

I never quite saw WHM as just being about the big numbers. The point, and problem, is that specific things that set the WHM apart were removed. Things that set something apart are key aspects of that thing's identity. I mean it's all nice and well to be a healing bazooka, but that narrows the scope of the role WHM filfills compared to how it was before. I understand that the expansion brought 3 new jobs, but look it this way, some (not all) Bards, White Mages and Paladins are upset and feel that many of the changes to the game, their job and the new jobs have removed some of the things that set them apart, some of the aspects to those jobs that made them unique are no longer unique, or no longer work the same way. I don't know, to me alienating players of three original jobs seems to be an issue, especially as two of those three are in roles we are already short of.