Melbourne International games week Interview about content

[Supersnow845]

To add to this: If you haven't noticed in the past PLLs they've been aggressively trying to hire new people to join their team, and a telling thing is they are now down to "we don't care about your existing credentials, but if you are willing to learn we will train you". Which to me reads there isn't a large pool of ready developers in Japan. Blizzard has the advantage of being in an English-speaking country and with English being the global lingua franca, but Japan doesn't have that luxury. Dawntrail could very well be the very first game several members of the team shipped. Sure there are people whose dreams are to work at Square Enix and Blizzard, but one needs you to know business level Japanese.

Also, asking them to speed up the current cycle would do more harm than good. They did say they have 2 years of planning ahead, and while flexible, it isn't THAT flexible. I've said this elsewhere, but the first time we'll see a lot of this feedback implemented realistically will be 8.0.

A 2 year turn around is absolutely unacceptable in this day and age especially when half the time the only “feedback” they seem to take on board is how popular the content is as a means of determining whether to keep it rather than actually taking onboard the content of the feedback

If a piece of content had 3 seperate releases (say criterion, savage, alliance raids or piecemeal content like IS) they should be ready to iterate on the feedback for the second iteration after getting it for the first. Not waiting till the next expansion to maybe fix the problems if they decide to keep that content in the next expansion

Aglaia being horribly undertuned should not have doomed euphrosyne AND thelia, they should have been ready to pivot to fix euphrosyne

[Jeeqbit]

To add to this: If you haven't noticed in the past PLLs they've been aggressively trying to hire new people to join their team

Yes and not only that, I have regularly checked for their job listings in Japan for a few years now and they had positions open for pretty major things relating to content, such as dungeon design and more programmers specifically to work on FFXIV. The times they didn't specify what it was, they usually at least say CBUIII (and its associated location) and make it obvious it's FFXIV by describing the type of game it is.

I couldn't begin to say the number of positions for dungeons designers I'd seen over the years, as well as people making things like models, programming, UI, etc. So it's seemed to me like they've at least had applications open. Except the last several months I've checked they haven't had many positions open (but these things tend to be seasonal with many companies and covid could have been making it hard to recruit). Nevertheless, let's check it right now:

• Game Designer (Scenario Designer) - writing scenarios for the new content added with each patch, creating materials to communicate the world setting that shapes the game to the artists and level designers, writing flavor text, naming various places, NPCs, items, creating all text displayed in the game. Planning settings for the story, land, characters, items, etc., as well as creating and adjusting data and proofreading text.
• Community Planner - Managing the official forum , creating various texts for announcements, taking and editing images and videos, planning and operating the community, etc.
• Translator
• QA Tester (this is logical as they have over 100 of these)
• Graphics Engineer (this wasn't specifically for FFXIV, but considering the ongoing graphics update...)

reads there isn't a large pool of ready developers in Japan.

It's probably true because Japan is a bit cut off from the rest of the world compared to, say, Europe and America which have a lot of nearby countries on the same island. Add to this the language barrier with anywhere not speaking Japanese or a similar language. There is also the "aging population" issue in Japan where they don't have so many children.

I have, for quite some years at least, noticed them going out of their way to advertise certain jobs in a live letter or on twitter or even plugging it during a development panel (where they explain what a person's FFXIV job involves), when they are struggling to fill it.

[AnimaAnimus]

It isn't even just F2P games at this point as Raven2014 pointed out. I started playing WoW very casually due to a friend being curious about it. Just to compare timelines here:

Dawntrail released ( Early Access June 28th) July 2nd and the first major content update in Early November.

WoW: The War Within released ( Early Access August 22nd) August 26th and the first major content patch is the anniversary event starting on October 22nd.

Now you can make a lot of complaints about WoW but the point here is they have nailed a far better content cadence and this only is addresseing retail. For your WoW sub you also have access to all the Classic servers as well along with any event mode they put up like Plunderstorm or Timerunning past expansions. I know Blizzard may be an unfair comparison as they do have a large team and now Microsoft's backing but they absolutely have nailed release schedule.

TWW also released with Delves already in place, which was a fun little piece of content that you could group or solo and gave us a fun lil piece of content to do in the meantime that was leaps and bounds more interesting than 4 square arena bosses.

And the biggest twist, this time FFXIV needs to take a look at how WoW is handling their story and try to replicate the experience cause TWW story > Yawntrail. They also need to look at how Bliz, for all their faults, actually sat down, looked closely at player grievences and thought good and hard on how they could address them. Where as SE looks at random comments or tweets and does random things that only that 1 or 2 streamers wanted, put minimal effort into it, then get shocked when they get negative feedback.

[CaedemSanguis]

It isn't even just F2P games at this point as Raven2014 pointed out. I started playing WoW very casually due to a friend being curious about it. Just to compare timelines here:

Dawntrail released ( Early Access June 28th) July 2nd and the first major content update in Early November.

WoW: The War Within released ( Early Access August 22nd) August 26th and the first major content patch is the anniversary event starting on October 22nd.

Now you can make a lot of complaints about WoW but the point here is they have nailed a far better content cadence and this only is addresseing retail. For your WoW sub you also have access to all the Classic servers as well along with any event mode they put up like Plunderstorm or Timerunning past expansions. I know Blizzard may be an unfair comparison as they do have a large team and now Microsoft's backing but they absolutely have nailed release schedule.

first major content patch is the anniversary event starting on October 22nd ???

the next major content patch is the nest raid tier/m+ season

[Kaliesto]

I don't know if any of the teams playing some of the F2P games on the market currently. I'm playing Wuthering Wave right now and after allocating a monthly budget similarly to FF14 (15$/month), the value honestly do not even compare. One of the thing it makes me realize is just how ... dated FF14 is. Writing, graphic, cutsceen, voice is either on par or a step above FF14. And the world exploration really make FF14 open world play feel like a game from 20 years ago.

One of most significance difference is just overall how ... smooth everything is. Transition from zone to zone, dialogue to cutsceen ... comparing to FF14's where you constantly going into a 2-3 seconds black screen when you need to switch from one thing to another. I didn't care much until the beginning of DT where the constant cut to black-screen became apparent due to how many unnecessary cutsceens there was. But now that I'm getting used to the smoothness of modern game it really hits home how bad the engine FF14 is. In a way FF14's cut to black now feels like the Starfield's loading screen meme.

And this is not something I think they can fix even if they want to. There is no deniable how limited the game engine of FF14 is. They really should have not rushed to conclude the Hyadelin story line. Between Omega, Garlemard, Zodiac they probably had enough for 2 expansions after end walker. They should have used that time to sunset FF14 while working toward a new MMO's engine for the next story. I don't think FF14 is so old now that it won't have what it takes to carry for another 10 years.

Also. you get new content every 1.5 months

When you put it that way maybe its time for FFXIV to retire when Meracydia is out.

[ovIm]

So recently Yoshida had an spot at Melbourne International games week and mentioned they're making content that will take time to complete, and to please "please not retire guys"

Reads to me like he is finally getting the message people have been saying for years on end.

Though at the same time, his wording worries me. "content that will take time to complete" in FF14 speak usually meant awful grind (like kill 1000 S-Ranks / Play 5000 PVP Matches grind) up until now.

A few days ago, I read somewhere on the forum that players wish for Yoshi-P to make "content where you lose track of time", which I found a nice way of saying things.

[Jeeqbit]

Reads to me like he is finally getting the message people have been saying for years on end.

Maybe, but he could just be referring to the Field Operation and its relic grind. Maybe Cosmic Exploration too. We'll have to see.

Though at the same time, his wording worries me. "content that will take time to complete" in FF14 speak usually meant awful grind (like kill 1000 S-Ranks / Play 5000 PVP Matches grind) up until now.

1,000 S ranks isn't as bad as people think. I had finished it 2 months after Dawntrail release. So very possible to do casually within the 2.5 years of the expansion.

But I agree generally that most achievements aren't fun. That's why I go for mounts instead. I find those goals more reasonable than the achievements which go all the way to 10,000, 500,000, 1 million and so on. I just don't think hunts are that hard to get anymore due to world visit and DC travel.

I'm down to repeat content because each time can go differently (especially with random parties), but only to a point. For example, I get a little burned out from extremes after 25-50 runs, which is why I've liked them awarding 2 totems.

From a development standpoint they have to repeat content, otherwise they put all this hard work into content only for you to see it/look at it one time. Now they can do this like Crystalline Conflict, Frontline and Rival Wings for example where each time can be very different, but if all the work that went into those maps is used only 1 time it's rather inefficient.

[ovIm]

1,000 S ranks isn't as bad as people think. I had finished it 2 months after Dawntrail release. So very possible to do casually within the 2.5 years of the expansion.

[Stasya]

that will take time to complete

"we did not even start on making things promised for dawntrail, please continue sub"

[SeriousPan]

I wish they could have done an interview in my country when things in XIV were going well and things were mostly positive. Kinda sucks to have them down under when my enthusiasm's at an all time low. I guess it's nice they remember Australia exists - maybe they can start actually selling physical stuff on the SE store to us though?