Mogtalk interview with yoshi p

[Vahlnir]

Holy hell in a handbasket, all of of Yoshi's comments about PVP are downright embarrassing to read.

I respect the rest of his answers, but I don't see how he can feel PVP is anything but a hot mess right now.

I don't see how tournaments would ever work when there is plenty of 'foul play' occurring as is.

Yoshi P:

[Tridus]

Why do people hate instant death mechs?

Why do you have healers when mechanics kill you instantly and healers spend most of their time DPSing? Non lethal mechanics where a healer can recover eventually give healers stuff to do and can lead to wipes if people fail too many times in most MMOs, but healing here is so overpowered that it doesn't really work in most content. One shots mean I can't do anything to save someone from a mistake except Raise.

[RiyahArp]

Rival Wings was fine actually, and the only real issue they didn't address was healer potency. It's not a bad mode at all, especially once they balanced it the first time. What they needed to do was address healing at that time, because it was pretty blatant how strong and unbalanced it could be in a mode that was more defensive than other pvp modes. That they refused to do that kind of killed the mode. Stupid Feast balancing dragged it down.

[WellFooled]

Triple Triad carried over fairly well, after all. I'm worried about them killing Blitzball at launch by making it into a 'menu' game. Squadron missions aren't exactly the epitome of engaging play.

If there is one piece of feedback I can offer based on this interview that I would beg the development staff to consider: Please, no more menu games. Retainer ventures? Nothing but clicking through menus. Airship and submarine voyages? Nothing but menus. Squadron missions? Menus. Chocobo training, feeding, coloring? Menus. Gardening? Menus.

All of the above items sounded amazing on paper, but in practice are incredibly boring because they consist of nothing but clicking a few words on a screen. Please, I'd rather Blitzball not be added then turned into another item for this list. That said, if it were added to FFXIV just like FFX (You collect npc from around the world as players, level them up through use, teach and equip a variety of abilities, you actually CONTROL them during the game, etc), but with some additions I would be more than happy with its inclusion.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I really wish people would just STFU about making things harder, because it would ruin healing in this game. There's no way healers are going to like having a gimped healset with encounter designs that routinely bring people down to 25% health on mistake, and have constant movement and damage. Old MMO healing generally was much less mobile, much more slower paced, and with much less of a tight player limit.

And I wish people who stop insisting everyone needs their hands held throughout the entire game or they will fall apart. The whole DPS dilemma regarding healers stems from the fact you will spend more time DPS than healing in this game. In fact, there is not a single piece of content that cannot be solo healed. Even Ultimate does not require two healers, though obviously it takes skill to be that proficient at any role. Nevertheless, your insistence healers need to be able to essential carry parties assure the green DPS meta will continue. "Gimping" healing potency would force them to special at their actual role in lieu of being pseudo DPS.

Put another way. Do you prefer the current system where healers are expected to DPS or a system that encourages healing and fights don't have to rely on OHKO mechanics to be threatening?

[RiyahArp]

Put another way. Do you prefer the current system where healers are expected to DPS or a system that encourages healing and fights don't have to rely on OHKO mechanics to be threatening?

Yeah, I'd rather have the current system. You're asking for it to be made dramatically harder for one single class by forcing GCDs that are optional and can be used either for DPS or healing into pure healing. We have an example of that in Feast, and even though you can't one hit someone in Feast without proper timing and coordination, it's horrid to play as a healer in it. If you need two healers at full output to handle encounters in this game, you've just reduced their ability to slip up, regardless of lack of one hits. If you only have one, well, good luck with that, get used to wiping and being kicked as a dps because I can't cover for you when you stand in the bad.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Yeah, I'd rather have the current system. You're asking for it to be made dramatically harder for one single class by forcing GCDs that are optional and can be used either for DPS or healing into pure healing. We have an example of that in Feast, and even though you can't one hit someone in Feast without proper timing and coordination, it's horrid to play as a healer in it. If you need two healers at full output to handle encounters in this game, you've just reduced their ability to slip up, regardless of lack of one hits. If you only have one, well, good luck with that, get used to wiping and being kicked as a dps because I can't cover for you when you stand in the bad.

You realize in the average dungeon, I will spend upwards of 80% casting Stone IV, Holy, Aero II or Aero III, yes? Both the healers in my static spend over 60% of their time casting DPS spells. No other MMO has its healers play pseudo-DPS who occasionally heals yet that is precisely how healers in FFXIV operate. Reducing their potency won't make healing "dramatically harder." It will make it so you have to spend more time healing than DPSing.

[Alleo]

He's spot on with Blitzball, and I'm glad he recognises its a lot of development for something that would last a week if that.
But that's exactly the sort of thing that should be put to the community, getting ideas to make it something that is fun and more importantly, last more than a couple of times.

Sadly his second opinion on Blitzball sound just like Sqadron 2.0 and if the players cant really play this at all and only train then I am not sure if that is truly fun. Maybe a combination would be great. We will gather and train them but we can also play it together with our NPCs against other NPCs. But just training sounds just like another "lets click once and let them do stuff and forget them till their training is done".

[Alleo]

I can understand his frustrations in regards to Blitzball, as every game would be a rather long endeavour, and in a game with plenty to do - no-one will end up wanting to do it. Think of Lord of Vermillion, for example. They tried to push it so hard but in the end it just failed horrifically. Chocobo Racing is another classic mode that was quite simply ruined (mostly through its structural system) and no-one plays. TT was not carried over well in the fact that your decks are limited to the point of obscurity and tournaments are simply wintraded with no true rewards or recompense.

If the only way to implement Blitzball in this game, is to make it another Squadron like thing..well maybe its simply not for this game and the time to create that should be used for different content. IMO not every single Mini Game from other FF should be in this if it does not go well with the game itself. You will just have another rage coming to you. If a match is truly quite long (I dont know Blitzball that much) then yes its probably too long for an MMO (TT does have short games) especially if you put another grind behind it. IMO a mini game should not be something that you need the most of your time to do it good..it should be something that you can do in between stuff that will be used as a bit of a break from all the other content in this game. LoV failed (IMO) because it was way too complicated for a mini game. Simple one vs one battles between NPCs or players and a way to train them would have been enough.

So if Blitzball in any way takes too long and is complicated or boring..then you will truly just have another LoV..thats why I dont understand why its even necessary to be in this game.

About rival wings:

It seems that its still a bit more used on the japanese servers. At least thats what some reddit users wrote. So again it seems that they love to look at the japenese market and not the rest of the world..or they truly just take the first few weeks and see it as a success if its used there..which would just be really bad.

[kikix12]

*deep breath*

Well, now I have what to specifically discuss. So here goes.

This is a MMO, the underlying mechanics are that of a turn-based MMORPG in "server ticks" of about 3 seconds. Because of latency in North America, you can have players anywhere from 6ms in California to 500ms in Australia and Russia. Only the underlying turned-based mechanics allow such players to play together and not have the person with the fastest connection wipe the floor with everyone else.

This is an issue that all multiplayer games have. Yet playing multiplayer, not necessarily with your neighbors only, is exactly how sport games are played the most. The latency doesn't affect them?! I'm sure it does.

I'm also afraid that turn-based or action-heavy in term of latency means almost nothing. Almost, because so long as the cooldown of abilities is above the latency or if its client-sided there is no difference. Only in games where cooldown is below latency AND server based (like Blade and Soul) is there a difference because low-latency players can spam more abilities in the same time.
"Turn-based" style, or rather, active ATB style, is no different in how much it hurts players with high latency. The fact that I can use abilities every 2.5sec instead of every 0.5sec doesn't change the fact that when I see fast attacks markings (like Titan's wrath of the land or whatever it's called), it is often too late for me to move out of them before server will register a hit, because the time the information travels to me and then back to the server is about as long as the charge of the attack on worse days.
The cooldowns that are long are there to reduce the necessary physical and mental ability to make fast decisions and quickly use varying buttons. Nothing more, nothing less. It's got nothing to do with latency. Or at least...it does nothing for latency.

Now, for Blitzball, or any other sport game, requires a real-time mechanic that can't be cheesed by the person with the fastest connection. So you would literately have players pointing to places on the field and pick "move,dribble, pass (to player), shoot (goal)" etc, and you would need whatever number of people are required to play the game. In FFX there were also stat boost/debuffs. Realistically FFX's Blitzball was also just turn-based. It was not in any way like the other sports games.

Wrong. Again, you are assuming that a sport game requires something that it does not. As you said yourself, original blitzball was not entirely real-time (it was not turn-based either, though). It had "battles" which were basically a rock-paper-scissors matches, but the movement was real-time. And that's actually not entirely uncommon. I do agree though that developers would need to work on minimizing the latency issue for it especially, but some degree would not be gamebreaking as you make it believe.
As for however many players...it's anywhere from 1 player to a number of players equal to the amount of characters on the field. Unless developers will decide to give it specific number. That's the whole point of computer games. To provide AI for whatever characters there are no players for.

So the closest you will get to anything would be slower than the PvP games, and not as a fun as a result unless it was "solo", a la the squadrons.

PvP suffers from latency as well, and yet there are fans, despite many people considering its design rather poor. Why would blitzball require perfect solution to latency issues when nothing else (other sport games, other activities in FFXIV etc.) does? It's too bad, but that's how MMO's go. High latency=sucky gameplay. It's unavoidable and it affects EVERYTHING in EVERY MMO game. People like that have to deal with it somehow or...change game. And I'm saying that while I myself suffer from high latency.

So between actions, you'd be allowed to move, but as soon as someone has the ball, or tries to intercept it, there would have to be some QTE for the success/fail action.

And...what's the problem with that?! It was like this in the original blitzball and it still did garner some fans. It's all about how the game as a whole will be designed. This game flow itself in no way is unfun.

Like I don't realistically see any way of pulling this off and it being fun, regardless of what you think the value of Blitzball is itself.

There is no value in blitzball in and off itself. It's all about how it will be made. I just in general like "combat" sports where there are actual super-attacks and such, despite disliking sports in general. So it is something I may be interested in depending on how it will be implemented.

Look at the Triple Triad, Lord of Verminion and the Chocobo Racing.

Lord of Verminion is a poorly-made strategy game. Something I said in this very thread is a horrible idea. A strategy game NEVER should be made as a mini-game in anything due to how specific they are in their target audience. And even as a strategy game, its implementation is truly horrid. I order the minions to ATTACK a monster, yet they pass it, taking that order to attack as an order to move to where that monster was at the moment of the click. This is not how strategy games work for a reason. If I order to move, they should move. If I order to attack, they should attack, following the target till one side dies or I change the order.

Triple Triad isn't half-bad when you feel like burning some time on something, especially since you can cancel it (when going against NPC's at least). It suffers for multiple reasons though.
1) NPC's cheat. They have no limit to how many cards of what rank they can use at all. That makes the game lose value. No one likes playing against cheaters. Rules being equal for all are EXTREMELY important in a card game.
2) The deck setup is locked behind achievements. That means that you will completely suck until after you put forth quite a fair deal of effort. This however, together with the above cheating issue, means that the early stages of the game are horribly unfun all the while that stage is unavoidable. As a game done in spare time, that's unacceptable.
3) Triple Triad obviously doesn't allow you to 'progress' in the context of the game itself. At the same time, it's impossible to play the game outside of very few designated areas. That means that players, when they have a bit of spare time waiting for someone to come back after going to open the door for example, simply cannot play it. Why, I'd be more than happy to play triple triad in dungeon while waiting for someone disconnected to log back in, or waiting for someone to return after having to go do something etc. But I can't. And I can't do it in any other situation where I would want to, either. Either my progression needs to suffer (aka. I need to stop doing everything else and go to specific places to play it) or I can only play against cheating AI...which requires me to go to specific places as well, obviously.

Chocobo races?! Well, they are just too simple. And too RPG'ish for races. The chocobos don't react to orders properly, some chocobos can be vastly faster etc. It just cannot be fun as a multiplayer game due to that.

The "call a play" coach mechanic is easier to pull off, and not requiring assembling enough players to play, it could be done as 1-on-1, so whoever has the ball, you get a QTE of "pass/shoot/dribble" and that pretty much makes it work like it did in FFX.

Player amount never was an issue. It's no different from FIFA and other sport games. And those sport games certainly are no couch-based games. Yes, giving commands is one way to play it. I don't dismiss it either so long as it does have actual active elements to it. So long as I see the players as they flow by, they react to my commands etc. It's just a bit different control scheme there and it does not turn into strategy game either. But you seem to be misunderstanding what a sport game needs.

But this is going to be something that takes a long time, you're not going to play a match and then logoff. If your "team" never logs on again, then what? Start over? What if your new team sucks? What if you get d/c'd?

Again, you are assuming that this game will need more than one player per team, while there is no reason to believe that being the case. Player would just control any one character while being able to give commands of sorts to all character, even those they do not control at the time. And all problems are solved. You will always be logged on when you log on clearly, and that's all you need for ranking. Of course, it is possible for the game to permit multiple players per team. Then it turns into something akin to any other PvP. Why would it need to be given special treatment?! You got disconnected...so what?! You can get disconnected in PvP and suffer for it too. Too bad. It sucks, but can't be helped. At least the game can replace your character with AI if it is multi-player game, or "pause" it if its not, with an auto-surrender if you do not log in within a minute or so (unless there are other players on your team that will just have to take the burden if they don't want to surrender).

Hence, my point of I don't see any kind of "realtime" sport being viable here. It would have to be all single-rounds, not tournaments, and if you just PUG it, you stand no chance of actually getting anywhere since people could form "static" teams.

No wonder you don't see it if you just assumed it would be in a very specific way, while completely ignoring the fact that nothing is set in stone. Now, it would be a bit more reasonable if you assumed it would be a faithful representation of blitzball from FFX, but no. Your idea of how it would HAVE to work have nothing in common with it but the name and swimming in a dome, all the while assuming all the worse case scenarios. Sorry, but you are simply overlooking way too many things in the very limited view of sport games you seem to have.
1) There is no reason why it could be played with one person per team.
2) There is no reason why it couldn't have "time stops" for battles, to give few seconds to make decisions.
3) There is no reason why, if there would be teams, it wouldn't depend on those teams logging in. That's how statics work after all.