Interview - Cost, Hiring, FT, Hardcore and Casual, Ultimate, Cosmic, Future of FFXIV

[Exmo]

We need a man of action, not a man of PR

What does this mean? Are you expecting him to fire all the other developers and make an MMO by himself? It's software development not WWII.

[Router]

I think it's funny that he's using Quantum as an example of a difficulty that appeals to "all players" when a good chunk of casual players won't even unlock it due to needing to steer a premade party through 100 floors of DD first

[Hallarem]

I think it's funny that he's using Quantum as an example of a difficulty that appeals to "all players" when a good chunk of casual players won't even unlock it due to needing to steer a premade party through 100 floors of DD first

I wonder what "out of touch" in Japanese is

[moodud]

Regarding hiring, apparently recently sqex was hiring a Project Manager, with pretty low salary (about half the expected rate).

So, yeah.

[Astronis]

Yeah I recognize that, but why do you suppose that SE is not vague with business partners, but is continuously vague with their paying customers?

You recognize that a lot of the player base is ridiculous and will hold a grudge for years over a misunderstanding, and yet you wonder why they would communicate vaguely to us but have a working relationship with their business partners that is concrete? I'm going to go ahead and assume because their business partners aren't, as a whole and in general, ridiculous people who would hold a grudge for years over a misunderstanding.

SE can control who they partner with to do business. They can't control the people who buy their product--and a lot of us, no one in their right mind would ever, ever, do business with.

[Fawkes]

I think it's funny that he's using Quantum as an example of a difficulty that appeals to "all players" when a good chunk of casual players won't even unlock it due to needing to steer a premade party through 100 floors of DD first

They changed it so you can queue your way through the whole thing, and they added more start points. Getting to the top should be as casual friendly as completing the story of a previous DD.




And the fight seems to have customizable difficulty where you can submit more items to make it harder. I guess if it's casual friendly or not depends on what the base difficulty is.

[Mawlzy]

You recognize that a lot of the player base is ridiculous and will hold a grudge for years over a misunderstanding, and yet you wonder why they would communicate vaguely to us but have a working relationship with their business partners that is concrete? I'm going to go ahead and assume because their business partners aren't, as a whole and in general, ridiculous people who would hold a grudge for years over a misunderstanding.

SE can control who they partner with to do business. They can't control the people who buy their product--and a lot of us, no one in their right mind would ever, ever, do business with.

You have a dimmer view of players than I do, but even if you're right, the solution is not to create grey areas that lead to misunderstandings and thus grudges. Quite the reverse.

Treating customers as annoying miscreants who are messing up an otherwise well-oiled machine is how we got in this mess.

[Astronis]

You have a dimmer view of players than I do, but even if you're right, the solution is not to create grey areas that lead to misunderstandings and thus grudges. Quite the reverse.

Treating customers as annoying miscreants who are messing up an otherwise well-oiled machine is how we got in this mess.

Yeah, maybe. Cynicism borne from seeing players do the same thing over and over for a long, long time. Not everyone of course, but enough that I've watched game devs get burned by it so I don't really blame them for being less than forthright even if that might not be the best way to handle communication.

I don't think the vagueness is really treating us like miscreants who can mess anything up just from not being told upfront any plans...that's how the fast food businesses do it, after all. Don't tell us anything until things are set in stone. And when they make a dumb mistake, they silently pull the ads or the product in a week or two and pretend it never happened, most of the time. No, the vagueness and PR-speak definitely isn't treating us with any great respect, it just strikes me as necessary defensiveness when the player base in general are also not being respectful (not that we owe them any great respect! They are not our friends and we are not theirs!). The way we can mess up SE's plans is after the fact, making our voices heard (and our money vanish, if that's how we feel about it) when we've got the end result in hand.

[Mecia]

I understood cost immediately because its not the first time hes talked about development staff and the surrounding elements. I want to believe he wants the best for XIV but its mostly out of his hands because decisions flow down from SE management, such as the issue of 'cost'. This unfortunate PR speak happens because he cant just throw his employer (SE) under the bus. SE sucks and is still chasing CoD money.

Anyway, what i want from CBU3 first and foremost is the unfuckening of jobs.

[Hallarem]

Vagueness is one thing, straight up lies is another. I quote on implementing things on feedback:

"Yoshida Naoki: Adoption rates vary drastically by content. Our core deciding factor has only thing: ‘Does this make the game more fun?’ For UI/HUD, we adapt more than 90% of the time. The reason is simply because our players interact with these interfaces far more than developers. Feedback like ’this change would be more convenient’ is invaluable, so we usually adopt it."

"For combat balance, we assign each job a difficulty level and adjust its power accordingly. If a suggestion makes high-difficulty jobs too easy (e.g. 60 points worth of skills nets you 80 points of DPS), we aren’t not going to take the advices. But suggestions that maintain difficulty of the job while making gameplay more fun or fluid are welcome."

"I always remind my team that our players paid money and time to play your game and some of them even give you great advices. That our team should always treat our players as partners for development and not to reject good ideas out of developer pride. If an advice makes the game better, it will be fine to fully adopt everything."

Insert players wanting them to add improvements to their friendslist and other systems for years now. Insert his powerpoint presentation on what NOT to do as a dev, that they have broken multiple points on. They aren't infallible, mistakes happen, mistakes can be forgiven. But they should not lie to our faces about it and pretend they listen to us dilligently. I'd rather have a "we have our vision and feedback is always welcome." instead of blatantly lying and saying they listen to us when they clearly don't.