Twinfinite Interview

[Ceasaria]

It's an unpopular opinion but I think his job was done when he relaunched FFXIV, he's more like an ideas guy. It's patch 3.5 and I'm still waiting on those risks he said he could take with Heavensward was it Diadem? Verminion? Aether currents?

The risks are coming for Stormblood.
He said it himself, with Heavensward, it has relied on security (even if they tried new things).
For Stormblood, it will not be the case.

[Ririta]

The risks are coming for Stormblood.
He said it himself, with Heavensward, it has relied on security (even if they tried new things).
For Stormblood, it will not be the case.

Don't mean to sound cynical but I'll believe it when I see it lol

[Headhunters]

Another example, some players don’t even realize that you can put materia on weapon or gear.
ppl are dumb irl and their INT too low and this last interview made my patience fade over a better FFXIV, it's becoming too casual/stupid ppl friendly (not that it was alrdy enough b4).

[Kallera]

This doesn't have me hyped for Stormblood, quite the opposite.

[Derio]

I am guessing the bonus for leveling roulette will see a major jump. And potd will see a major jump in xp given.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

I don't care about customizable stats per se, but what I do care about is having gear with unique effects and traits. Think of like a Rod that does more damage with an elemental spell of that specific elemental day, or a Rod that boosts a certain elemental type attack. How about feet armor that make you run faster, but has low stats? or how about armor that extends the duration of certain abilities or buffs like Blood for Blood or Medica 2? How about having actual elemental weapons and enemies taking more damage to certain types of damage and resisting certain elements?

So many variables that could be added but are not for some reason. Things even casual players could pick up on and enjoy.

[Niyuka]

Gear doesnt exist in a vacuum. The reason we dont meld our gear is not complexity, because as a whole, Yoshi is right, people dont generally do complex stuff when they dont need to.

Gear exists in the context of content, and if the content doesnt ask you hard questions that you answer through proper gear optimization, its a complexity just for its own sake, and should be done away with.

Current dungeons and raids never require those melds or extra stats. In very few raid encounters do you ever hit the gear cap. I have successfully done, within 2 weeks of returning after leaving in 3.1, Baelsars Wall + Sohm Al hard under their item limit. (none of the group had more than 228), and it was not hard.

The content is too easy for the gear complexity to matter. Make the content numerically harder, and people will adjust. WoW had a MUCH more complex gear system during its prime, and 11 million players adapted.

[Serilda]

I love unique effects on weapons. What I don't love is how they then lead to really weird minmaxing. FFXI was an extreme example as you could switch gear mid-combat, so you'd have your shoes of +1 damage to sneak attack macroed in with sneak attack then you'd switch to your boots of +1 damage to trick attack macroed to that. Black mages carried eight different expensive staves everywhere to maximise their bonuses for each element rather than specialising in an interesting way, and every spell had a staff-swap macroed in if you wanted to do the most damage. It was sort of stupid in terms of lore - who changes clothes that often? And the best players had tiny inventories because of sheer amount of gear they carried everywhere they went to deal as much damage as possible.

FFXIV has a different system so it would never be quite that insane, but you'll still end up with people wanting to switch gear in between encounters and arguing when someone pulls too quickly for them to change their pants. I like the idea of changing gear around for certain fights or playstyles as-is (e.g. fending accessories to allow for clearing a fight with a particular strategy) but abilities need to be balanced very carefully or it just ends up overcomplicating things for no reason.

[LineageRazor]

Folks go on and on about gear optimization in FFXI, but that simply wasn't a thing most of the time. Why? Because gear was hard to get. Sure, you could theorycraft out the best possible setup, but when each piece of that dream team equipment requires months of dedicated work to obtain, not even the l33test of the l33t were going to expect you to have every single piece - and anyone insisting that everyone needed to have a Relic weapon (for a very long time, THE best weapon for most jobs, generally requiring at least a year of work to make) would be laughed off the server.

Additionally, very little of the endgame content was tuned to the point where it couldn't be beaten unless the majority of participants were decked out in the best of the best. Even if most of the alliance had one or two endgame pieces at most, if they knew the fight and they knew how to play their jobs, they could win. The only difference top-tier gear made was that they could win FASTER, and with a reduced chance of failure due to bad RNG.

This game, on the other hand, practically throws high-grade equipment at you at every turn. It's so easy to gear up, that the devs have to add artificial barriers to keep the fights challenging - specifically, enrage timers. FFXI had enrage timers, too, but not for the same reason; enrage timers were added later on specifically to prevent players from holding valuable monsters for extended periods of time, to ensure that when those monsters respawned it would be during a time period favorable to them (or, in the case of certain infamous monsters like Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden, to prevent groups from risking their real-life health whittling the monsters down over a period of dozens of hours rather than deal with the monsters' mechanics). Enrage timers are a mechanic that I detest; when learning a fight, you should be able to take as long as you need to to win. Your reward for practice and perseverance is that you're able to win faster.

At any rate, the prospect of gear becoming even SIMPLER is a depressing one, but honestly gear is so incredibly boring even now that it doesn't bother me all that much. Bring on the one-stat system! Get rid of STR DEX MND INT VIT PIE. They are a mockery of true RPG stats, where each one has some kind of effect, even if a given job benefits more from some than others.

[odintius]

Gear becoming even more simplified -.- Jesus at this point just take all the stats away and just give pdef and mdef and be done with it. Wasn't expecting anything close to what ffxi did, but adding gear set bonus or hell trait/ability enhacement materia isn't overboard imo. /sigh