Interessing 1UP article with Yoshi P. interview

[Dragonheart]

On September 21, 2010, Final Fantasy XIV was released. On December 10, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada canned most of the lead staff, delayed the PlayStation 3 version indefinitely, and admitted that FFXIV failed "to meet customers' expectations." Even in an MMORPG industry that's laden with flashy launches and dizzying failures, it was a pretty crazy three months.

Once the dust settled, it was up to Naoki Yoshida -- the new producer and director of FFXIV -- to pick up all the pieces in early '11. "With Final Fantasy XIV," he told Famitsu magazine this week, "we lost the trust of a lot of people when the PC version was released, so the first issue to tackle was to really improve the PC version and get players so start thinking 'Wow, they're serious about this, maybe I can trust them after all.' With MMORPGs, the trust that gets built between the developers and players is indispensable."

Ten months later, Square Enix was ready to lay down the gauntlet. Pay subscriptions are coming back soon, constant improvements promised to the current FFXIV, and a completely remade "Version 2.0" due out, alongside the long-promised PS3 version, in late '12. "We are maintaining and improving the current FFXIV with everything we've got," Yoshida said, "and at the same time, we're also remaking everything. It's really unheard of -- we have a group of over 250 people divided into two teams, each working on one part of that overall project. That's how serious we are, and that's how sincere we want to be with our players. That was the purpose of our announcement here."

Even Yoshida admits that despite this massive commitment, FFXIV is potentially fighting an uphill battle to win the hearts and minds of gamers. "I have a lot of experience as a player of MMORPGs," he told Famitsu, "and I know completely well that no MMORPG has ever fully recovered from losing its players' trust. Some games have successfully switched over to the microtransaction route, but that's another story. Because of that, right after the team got reshuffled, I told everyone 'We need to do something that's never been done before, so I hope you're ready.' I examined whether we were even able to provide the basic service necessary for a current MMORPG in the long term, and the first sticking points that came up were the UI and the servers. We decided at that point the UI had to be completely remade, and we felt the servers also had to be redesigned from the ground up as well. We decided pretty quickly what direction we needed to go with that."

Why didn't Square Enix decide to just stop service of FFXIV at that point, as countless voices across the Internet suggested (and continue to suggest)? "The proposal was certainly on the table to halt service and start from scratch," said Yoshida, "but FFXIV is a full-on numbered title in the FF series, and besides, I didn't want it to end leaving players with bad feelings toward it. The players who are still on the game right now are just the people Square Enix can't afford to lose. Everyone from Yoichi Wada on down firmly believes that. I thought it'd be possible to keep it going while constantly striving to improve it, and so we decided early on that we couldn't close the service, no matter what."

It's true, certainly, that improvements to FFXIV as it currently stands have been proceeding at a pretty fast clip since that fateful staff reshuffle. "We picked up on everything we felt FFXIV needed overall," Yoshida recalled, "and while we maintained the game and started on the full rebuild, we got feedback from players and decided where we wanted to go with the current game by March of 2011. We finally got to everything we felt the current FFXIV needed at a bare minimum -- the chocobos, the airships, the summon battles -- with the 1.19 patch on October 5, and we'll continue with further updates in the future."

As for the Version 2.0 reboot? "The reborn FFXIV can be thought of as what we'd think is the ideal start for the PC and PS3 version," Yoshida noted. "You can carry your PC characters and their stats over to the new FFXIV, and there won't be any wipes. There will be new worlds to explore for new players, of course, and while this is still under consideration, there may be worlds divided up by languages."

And the PS3 version? "The resolution won't be as high, so the backgrounds will look at least a bit different, but I don't think you'll notice the difference unless you zoom in pretty closely. The graphical engine will be changed over to one that uses the PS3 as a base, so low-spec PCs will be able to run it, while high-spec PCs can take in more of the beauty and display more characters onscreen at once."

Wait -- even the graphic engine is changing in the new FFXIV? "Yes," answered Yoshida. "and I imagine that this new engine will also impact the atmosphere of the characters a bit. When the new FFXIV launches, we're thinking about giving players the ability to do a character remake in case they don't like how their current ones look with the new engine."

Can Yoshida and his team do what's essentially the impossible here? We'll see next year, it would seem.


http://www.1up.com/news/final-fantasy-xiv-boss-road

[Xmbei]

Thanks for posting the article I read it earlier but had no time to post, only one request take out the article and let those that want to read it click the link >.<

Though it is the first fairly positive article by a gaming site I have read recently on the future of FFXIV.

edit: oh wow just noticed the cool upgrade for the forums in game character avatars!!! woot!

[ellohwell]

If the graphics change for the worse, then this will be another huge mistake. Hopefully it will only be worse for low end PCs and PS3 though, but there still seems to be little assurance that graphical quality will stay the same or be better than present.

[3Jane]

It sounds as if there is no final decision regarding the creation of regional servers. Personally I hope they don't go that way.

[Dragonheart]

It sounds as if there is no final decision regarding the creation of regional servers. Personally I hope they don't go that way.

I hope that they thinks a lot about this. Every game on the earth, even the worst f2p , has dedicated regional server. They can't make this mistake again. It was ok with XI 10 years ago to have server only in jp, the did the BAD mistake to do the same with XIV, but not again with 2.0 please.

[Betelgeuzah]

It doesn't matter where the servers physically are. They can lock the ping at 200ms and everyone will stand on an equal ground. This isn't an fps, the game doesn't need <50 ping.

[Tsukino]

It doesn't matter where the servers physically are. They can lock the ping at 200ms and everyone will stand on an equal ground. This isn't an fps, the game doesn't need <50 ping.

The servers will stay in Japan no matter what we get anyway. They're just talking about language-specific servers anyone can choose to play on, to appease people too ignorant and afraid of people speaking other languages to realize global servers are a good thing for the game and its players.

[Colino]

I'd rather play with everyone, JP ONRY and complaints aside, it's still more fun to have everyone around IMHO.

And like others said this isn't an FPS or a Fighting Game, we don't need GGPO like netcode or low latency solutions, it's a freaking MMO.

And regardless even the "regional" servers will be in Japan, so it'd simply be a language difference.

[Rizon]

If the graphics change for the worse, then this will be another huge mistake. Hopefully it will only be worse for low end PCs and PS3 though, but there still seems to be little assurance that graphical quality will stay the same or be better than present.

I read, in another interview, that SE plans to use a customize version of the Luminous Engine for the PC.

[Eugenics]

Language-specific servers, Yes please.