Thread: JP interviews [pre-6.5]

Originally Posted by Theodric

After seeing how Yoshi-P referred to himself as a former MMORPG player in a recent interview I really do think it would be best if we had someone in charge who is a current MMORPG player.

I'd like the game to be designed by someone who is passionate about the genre and willing to innovate, rather than increasingly tweak things to appeal to individuals who don't actually like MMORPG's all that much and simply want to treat it like a single player experience with some very light multiplayer elements from time to time.

If you advertise a product as one thing, encourage people to invest in it and then decide to take it in a completely different direction then it should not be at all surprising to see criticism arise as far as I'm concerned.

Honestly at this point I think he is just a former WoW player that's now killing off all the stuff in WoW that made him quit playing it...

Originally Posted by Cidel

There's some tone-deafness involved here too. I still remember during the Ivalice raids that the devs for whatever reason decided to remove "Need" on loot to the massive backlash of nearly the whole playerbase. They went ahead with it anyway because I guess it was too late to back out. Of course they reverted that idea less than a month afterwards, but the fact that they didn't even take feedback into account before implementing it speaks volumes to their hubris and general detachment from feedback.

I don't recall the timeline of their announcement and release, but would it be likely that the patch was already "locked in" at the time they said they were changing the loot rolls?

It's also not that big a deal that they went ahead and tried it for a few weeks before reverting it. Zero long-term effects, and maybe people would decide that they actually liked it.

They need to rethink the purpose of 'relic' weapons. It shouldn't be something that just falls on you incidentally while you are working on unrelated tasks. I also think by this point we should always be getting armor alongside it. I really like last expansion's bozja and law's order sets. Armor and accessory options in this game are actually more lacking than weapons, since extreme trials always give weapons. Dungeon armor is worthless, it's not a relevant item level to be considered.

Originally Posted by SannaR

I am a little sad that Island Sanctuary won't be continuing in 7.0 as it wasn't that bad and just needed a few improvements. Hopefully whatever the cozy lifestyle thing coming in 7.0 will take what they learned from Island Sanctuary and use it to give people a better experience. I guess those who insisted that we were going to be getting a 2nd Island were wrong. Part of its problem was a community problem in that we made it into a spreadsheet simulator and not deliver on things it never said it would be.

The improvements needed for the Island Sanctuary are so deep-seated that they really do need to start over to get rid of them. The unlikeable mammets who are the core of all the activities, the buildings explicitly designed to house mammets and not yourself, the lack of choice about covering your allegedly personal island with mandated facilities that take up loads of space, the emphasis on running your most profitable elements not through interacting with the island but by relying on a spreadsheet.

You can't lay the blame for "turning it into a spreadsheet simulator" on the players. The whole island channels into that spreadsheet – it's the way you convert materials into money and EXP so you can make progress, and the expectation to figure it out this excessively dense chart of supply and popularity for yourself is simply not fun.

The thing with these "side systems" is that it's not remotely the same genre as the action-RPG game we signed up to play, but things for the RPG (glamours, story interaction with characters) are locked behind this spreadsheet sim that has been dumped on us. Of course people aren't going to put the time into learning it unless this other gameplay style also appeals to them, which seems like a fairly limited number of FFXIV players.

Originally Posted by Iscah

The improvements needed for the Island Sanctuary are so deep-seated that they really do need to start over to get rid of them. The unlikeable mammets who are the core of all the activities, the buildings explicitly designed to house mammets and not yourself, the lack of choice about covering your allegedly personal island with mandated facilities that take up loads of space, the emphasis on running your most profitable elements not through interacting with the island but by relying on a spreadsheet.

You can't lay the blame for "turning it into a spreadsheet simulator" on the players. The whole island channels into that spreadsheet – it's the way you convert materials into money and EXP so you can make progress, and the expectation to figure it out this excessively dense chart of supply and popularity for yourself is simply not fun.

The thing with these "side systems" is that it's not remotely the same genre as the action-RPG game we signed up to play, but things for the RPG (glamours, story interaction with characters) are locked behind this spreadsheet sim that has been dumped on us. Of course people aren't going to put the time into learning it unless this other gameplay style also appeals to them, which seems like a fairly limited number of FFXIV players.

Yes, it would have been nice if the mammets wouldn't be so visible. I also don't understand why they made the main one have a different personality in the English version than in the JP. As supposedly they have a nice if not cute personality. When I said the playerbase made into a spreadsheet simulator is that it is how the playerbase goes for the quickest most efficient way to do something. As you could still make money from it without using what others have figured it out. Will you make as much or enough to count for the two achievements? Maybe not. I hope the devs use it as a stepping stone and a base to use if they're going to continue with other things in this vain. Sort of how they took the 1st couple of iterations of the Diadem and turned them into something better.

So Yoshida just completely forgot what the point of some of the content not being appealing to every single player was? Because if so it's a matter of time before he decides the completion rate for raids is too low.
Yeah I think it's time to move on from Instant Reward XIV.

Originally Posted by Noumenon

The Manderville Relics have the highest completion rate of any relic so far. The more elaborate they make the relic content/grind, the fewer people make one.

Not a bad idea, Yoshi. Due to the disparity of clears between normal raids and savage raids, we will no longer be designing raids of the savage and ultimate difficulties for Final Fantasy XIV Online.
Saves me the weekly headache, I guess...

Originally Posted by SerMicha

Not a bad idea, Yoshi. Due to the disparity of clears between normal raids and savage raids, we will no longer be designing raids of the savage and ultimate difficulties for Final Fantasy XIV Online.
Saves me the weekly headache, I guess...

Honestly kinda wish I could Dr Strange it and view a future where this happens. It wouldn’t completely kill the game but roulettes would surely have more hiccups.

Biggest impact would probably be in the crafting market since several very stable items would tank, potion market would collapse literally overnight (I’ve personally never seen casual players use combat potions) and you wouldn’t see the exorbitantly high prices for crafted gear week 1 of release.

The last Alliance Raid might be stronger than usual this time.

Both the scenario writer and battle team for Myths of the Realm were made up mostly of younger/newer people.

They have adjusted the rewards of Alliance Raid Roulette to be consistent with how much time you'd spend in a given instance to make up for the ilevel-cheese removal.

Good. Obviously I think we're going to see a bit of an outcry though. People will definitely complain about the last a-raid being too hard, and we'll essentially have this awkward discrepancy between the first two raids and the finale.

The a-raid roulette changes are nice, but I'm already seeing people planning to bypass it. There's FCs advertising that they have alt characters specifically meant to join their daily roulette parties to queue people into CT.

Yoshi and some development staff did feel bad at times for changing/removing mechanics for Trust support, but felt that it was important both in terms of maintainability and playability in the future as well as giving a better on-boarding process should 4 new players all match into the same dungeon.

Trust implementation and management was very hard and usually took a skilled veteran on the development team to do.

No concrete plans on making old 8-man content doable with Trusts. It's easier to do Trusts for 4-man content, so some of those fights might have to be made 4-man if it ever happened, but Yoshi feels strongly about having the final boss trials always be 8-man. No firm decisions here yet.

I know these forums hate the trust system, but if anything we needed trusts for the trials more than we needed them for the dungeons. It shouldn't have to come at the cost of converting the trial to a 4-person duty or changing mechanics though. Pretty sure the simple fact is that it can be done but they don't want to waste resources on it.

Their data says a huge number of people have engaged with Variant Dungeons in their own way.

The 6.51 Criterion dungeon will receive an increase in rewards compared to the past two. They will consider feedback on this before determining the 7.x Criterion rewards.

There will be a title for clearing all 3 Criterion dungeons from 6.x, but they are considering how else they could reward that to see if they can get it in in time.

Yeah, this isn't really enough. Crit needs more in order for the rewards from it not to be locked later on in its lifespan. There's a reason why people interact with the Variant Dungeons and a reason why you're probably not providing us with the stats on how much interaction Crit has received.

6.55's relic step will be tomes again.

Not happy, but at this point they might as well keep going. Just give us a proper relic next expans...-

hey settled on tomes due to looking at data for how many weapons were made by players in past relic content. Yoshi acknowledges though that: "However, there are some people who say that this reinforcement method is ``sloppy'', so it's difficult... Some people may dislike doing elaborate things like the old weapon enhancement content, while others may feel that the enhancement methods like this one are not enough. I think this is probably not compatible."

They settled on tomes as these days playing multiple jobs is much more common, and they think tomes being something that naturally accumulates as you play makes it best suit your individual playstyle.

The Manderville Relics have the highest completion rate of any relic so far. The more elaborate they make the relic content/grind, the fewer people make one.

There is an inherent conflict between people that "enjoy weapon enhancement as content" and people that "want a system that makes it easy to obtain weapons". Satisfying both is very hard.

They will take feedback into account for 7.x's relic series.

Not entirely sure what sort of drugs they're on to come to this conclusion. Past relics were designed to be somewhat of a grind so yes, there will be less players with past relics. The average/casual players were never intended to own every single relic, and these relics were never intended to be your regular weapon to help you gear multiple jobs.

I've seen a lot of bad faith arguments before but this is beyond that.

If you want to make gearing up easier then you have other routes. If you want to change the relics because you want to appeal to a broader audience then just say so instead of attempting to provide a poor argument using cherry-picked data.

The Fall Guys collab will be limited time, periodic content and not a permanent fixture.

Why limited? Aren't we against FOMO over here?