Reddit Interview with Yoshi-P and Yusuke Mogi

[DrWho2010]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/wiki/pax_2020_interview

this particular answer satisfies me immensely. esp the last paragraph.

Reddit: Players are still interested in difficult 4-player content. We've seen the expansion of very large scale difficult content through Baldesion Arsenal, but is there any plans to take it the other direction and give us some hardcore 4-man content perhaps similar to Mythic Dungeons in WoW?

Naoki Yoshida: Right now, we are developing a raid that is similar in format to the Baldesion Arsenal, but we have not started work on any high-difficulty four-player content.

I feel there may be a disparity between the number of people actually voicing their desire for this type of content and the number of people who would actually play it. While implementing this isn’t out of the question, I will say I’d like to be very careful in our considerations of how we’d make this a reality.

[linay]

While implementing this isn’t out of the question, I will say I’d like to be very careful in our considerations of how we’d make this a reality.

I would like to say please consider keeping the current full clear design of dungeons, and if you are implementing Mythic+, please at least remove the timer aspect.

[frostmagemari]

Naoki Yoshida: Right now, we are developing a raid that is similar in format to the Baldesion Arsenal, but we have not started work on any high-difficulty four-player content.
I feel there may be a disparity between the number of people actually voicing their desire for this type of content and the number of people who would actually play it. While implementing this isn’t out of the question, I will say I’d like to be very careful in our considerations of how we’d make this a reality.

The only reason there would be a disparity between the two groups (people asking and people that would play) is because very few people want hard content for the sake of the content just being hard. There needs to be a carrot to go along with that stick, and the team has shown that they are not good at creating a reward that will entice people for more than a month or two before other rewards outpace those offered by the hard content; and then it falls into people simply not wanting to do it because they're not going to get anything out of it.
People didn't hate the original harder ARR 4-man content because it was hard, they grew to hate it because (A) Other dungeons gave better rewards (B) it found its way into the roulette and only offered the same roulette rewards as the other substantially easier 4-man content that existed.

I mean, take the Mythic+ from WoW (as this was mentioned in the framing of the question to Yoshida; The mythic dungeons become progressively harder the further you go on from the base mythic dungeon, adding in extra dungeon-wide mechanics you need to worry about (etc...) in addition to mob strength. Now, I found these fun, but at the same time they could be frustratingly hard if you're pushing the edge of what your gear could handle; but after you finished the dungeon, you got a suitable reward that allowed you to keep progressing.
Now, you can argue on how WoW has become systems ontop of systems, and the reward structure was a problem in itself at times; but you can't deny that you had a reason to do them outside of just wanting to do something difficult. You normally got something that could aid in the progression of your character.
The dev team here doesn't design things that way. They make one reward for the content, and thats all there will ever be; and when you outpace that reward, no matter who you are, you're not going to punish yourself (and friends) by wasting your time on something that gives zero benefit.

[xxvaynxx]

no matter who you are, you're not going to punish yourself (and friends) by wasting your time on something that gives zero benefit.

Ultimate?
Ultimate gives you nothing but a title and weapon with no benefits other than to look pretty. It has the same ilv as the raid weapon and just adds I think extra mat slots which isn't much unless you like to parse and even then, it's not gonna give you a huge edge over people that just cleared savage.

[frostmagemari]

Ultimate?
Ultimate gives you nothing but a title and weapon with no benefits other than to look pretty. It has the same ilv as the raid weapon and just adds I think extra mat slots which isn't much unless you like to parse and even then, it's not gonna give you a huge edge over people that just cleared savage.

Those are benefits. You get a unique title and a weapon; And then after you get those benefits, you stop doing them. People don't do the Ultimate fights just because, they do them to get those rewards and then leave the content alone once they've gotten those rewards.
Ultimates are exactly what i mentioned.. do a thing, get your stuff.. then stop doing the things entirely.

[ForteNightshade]

Those are benefits. You get a unique title and a weapon; And then after you get those benefits, you stop doing them. People don't do the Ultimate fights just because, they do them to get those rewards and then leave the content alone once they've gotten those rewards.
Ultimates are exactly what i mentioned.. do a thing, get your stuff.. then stop doing the things entirely.

This is not true. Most players willing to tackle Ultimate do so for the challenge of defeating a very difficult fight. Would as many people clear it without rewards? No. But you'd still see a good chunk of the people running Ultimate still doing it for a clear.

Heres a fight in an MMO that follows 0 MMO rules, makes one archetype almost completely useless 50% of the way through the encounter, and is almost impossible to do if someone is having latency issues. The only things of note from it are that it unlocks mentor roulette and has a really ugly mount.

"Why arent people playing this?!?!?!?!?!?!"

When the best strategy for that fight is running four Warriors, it's not exactly a good selling point.

[frostmagemari]

This is not true. Most players willing to tackle Ultimate do so for the challenge of defeating a very difficult fight. Would as many people clear it without rewards? No. But you'd still see a good chunk of the people running Ultimate still doing it for a clear.

You have an extreme minority being willing to tackle Ultimate now, even with its rewards. You wouldn't see a chunk of anyone running Ultimate for a clear if it was simply a fight and no reward from it; you would see a tiny fraction of the community try for it.
It would be similar to the one player that did a solo sam run of all 200 levels of PotD; sure, you'll have that one guy, but that's it.

[Satarn]

I suspect the disparity they think there is is in part due to the monster hunter trial. That isn't touched anywhere near as much as the rest of the content. I can feel for their concern.

People don't do the MonHun trial, because it's a shit trial.
It also isn't actually challenging - just tedious, annoying and not really following the trinity properly, while somehow also trying to enforce it and failing to do so, given the most efficient way is to cheese it with 4 tanks, despite only the shitty add being actually tankable. They could've simply given us a normal boss without cast bars and AoE markers - it's not like there aren't enemies that work like this already, even if only for a couple of attacks - but instead they tried way too hard to make something that doesn't actually work in XIV's engine, while discarding anything the game is good at.

If they're using Rathalos EX as a measure of how interested players are in "difficult 4 man content", then I guess we've got as much hope of getting it, as for tanks and healers to get fixed.

Ultimate?
Ultimate gives you nothing but a title and weapon with no benefits other than to look pretty. It has the same ilv as the raid weapon and just adds I think extra mat slots which isn't much unless you like to parse and even then, it's not gonna give you a huge edge over people that just cleared savage.

Ultimate is done mainly for challenge, but it's also actual THE hardest content in the game - which comes with certain prestige. EX/Savage level difficulty dungeons wouldn't carry this much weight, so they'd need to put some sort of rewards behind them.

I don't think it would hurt to get extra way of obtaining gear though. Especially if they'd be implemented in the catch-up pathes, together with ally raids, then they could serve well for obtaining something like savage-level gear for alts. They could put some sort of a weekly restriction of these as well and they wouldn't be making savage irrelevant.

[EaMett]

I suspect the disparity they think there is is in part due to the monster hunter trial. That isn't touched anywhere near as much as the rest of the content. I can feel for their concern.

Another interview, another day where healers aren't mentioned. I would like to know if they've even acknowledged the bugs SCH's been having to deal with.

[Ramesses]

I found Yusuke Mogi's comments about the design intent towards new characters very interesting:

"...Relatively new characters (introduced in Stormblood and beyond), there would be cases where I would receive some basic ideas for the character and draft a design, and from there a story was added to provide more flavor."

Very interesting from a creativity standpoint.