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

[Jeeqbit]

https://www.famitsu.com/article/202507/48601

Cost and Hiring

• He knew people wouldn't understand what he meant and that he shouldn't bring up "cost".
• But if he can't do something, he has committed himself to always explaining why. So he explained and well, you know the reaction he got.
• Hiring more people doesn't mean more output. He says leaders (ie. project managers) are important, and good leaders are very hard to come by.
• There are hundreds of developers working on FFXIV.
• They have assigned personnel to FFXIV as a priority.
• They are planning to significantly increase the number of QA teams but again lack of leaders is a concern.
• They have been trying to increase the number of developers over the last 10 years but the absolute number of Japanese developers is insufficient.
• Now, a lot of people who grew up playing FFXIV are applying to the development team, so a lot of developers now grew up playing FFXIV.
• However, few people have experience developing for a large-scale MMORPG, so it's still challenging.
• They are not giving up hiring. But due to the challenges with finding people with the necessary skills and experience, the growth of FFXIV has been competing with the rate at which they can hire people with the right skills and experience.
• He says overseas developers are interested, but it's challenging because they need to be able to speak Japanese, which obviously most of them can't.

Forked Tower

• They intended 24 people to be able to clear it, but certain mechanics have made it harder than intended.
• Changes will be made to it in 7.3 so that the intended amount of people can clear it.
• The next one will be developed better so more people can participate.
• Developers are working on a normal mode for the next one "at any cost".

Addressing the Divide Between Hardcore and Casual

• They previously had tried to handle this by making different content types aimed at different types of players, which made sense.
• However, Yoshi-P has decided it will now be better to try and make all content work for all players where possible.
• Obviously this begins with Pilgrim's Traverse (the deep dungeon) but he intends to expand the concept to other content.
• Depending on the offering given, either the HP or the outgoing damage increases by a factor of 1.15 (so, an extra 15%)

Ultimate

• Still said it will be released during 7.x.

Cosmic Exploration

• In ARR, crafting was designed to be done with macros due to how repetitive it is.
• However, in Cosmic Exploration it gets repetitive. They believe it's too simple and that the thinking has stalled.
• They have 70-80 staff members playing it to figure out if what they are making is enjoyable and making adjustments based on that, including making more unique sound effects and just making the experience actually fun.

Future of FFXIV

• "I don't think that FFXIV is perfect in its current state, and I'm keenly aware that we're facing major challenges precisely because we've built it up over so many years. After receiving a variety of feedback, I've finally been able to put it into words, and patch 7.3 is the time we're beginning to make concrete changes."
• "I believe we can only gain trust and confidence by continuing to build on it one step at a time, so we want to approach this as a new starting point for us as well."
• "Of course, I don't expect all content to suddenly reach the level I've talked about today. But I want to do my best to show you a glimpse of that and my determination"

Variant

• Will be a bit different to previous versions.
• "We've changed the flavor so that it can be enjoyed by a wider range of players, and we've also prepared new mechanisms. In this way, we aim to create each major piece of content so that it can be enjoyed by a wide range of players"

Fanfest

• "It's customary to announce new expansion packs at the Fan Festival. It seems like the date and venue have been finalized, so we're hoping to make the announcement soon."

[Bryson]

He didnt' say it will be released during 7.x

Yoshida: This time, the Pilgrim Traverse secret boss, where you offer 40 offerings, is pretty close to an ultimate, but it still requires four players... Of course, we're planning on implementing one more in the 7.x series, and we're currently in the middle of working on it. As I've said many times before, developing an ultimate is incredibly difficult

Having said that, this is far more reassuring than anything he's said in the past. This is the first time he's ever mentioned 7.x and the 2nd ultimate in the same sentence. The previous live letter he made no mention of 7.x for the 2nd ultimate. Last LL all he said was "make no mistake the next ultimate is in development."

[TaleraRistain]

Leaders doesn't always just mean project managers either. In software it can sometimes be the senior software developers that you have mentoring, training, and providing oversight on the junior software developers.

And I'm glad he addressed the "more people means more production" because that's not just not universally true. More people can lead to less production. You might have to retask senior employees to bring junior employees up to speed, so you lose production until the point they can work independently. Or if you bring in new management, you might create more management levels that can blockade things getting done. My company follows the Lean philosophy and while sometimes new headcount is the answer, sometimes it's also a change in processes. And we try to fully understand what the effect of a new person is going to be on all elements of the process before we arrive at that conclusion.

[Catwho]

Leaders doesn't always just mean project managers either. In software it can sometimes be the senior software developers that you have mentoring, training, and providing oversight on the junior software developers.

And I'm glad he addressed the "more people means more production" because that's not just not universally true. More people can lead to less production. You might have to retask senior employees to bring junior employees up to speed, so you lose production until the point they can work independently. Or if you bring in new management, you might create more management levels that can blockade things getting done. My company follows the Lean philosophy and while sometimes new headcount is the answer, sometimes it's also a change in processes. And we try to fully understand what the effect of a new person is going to be on all elements of the process before we arrive at that conclusion.

Good old Brooks Law. "Adding more people to an already late project just means it's going to become even later."

[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.

[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.

[Hallarem]

With Yoshi P, I'd say believe in his actions and not his words. That's the nicest way to put it.

[Shinku_Tachi]

With Yoshi P, I'd say believe in his actions and not his words. That's the nicest way to put it.

And that's the way you should see it. That's the way everyone should look at it, really.

It's 100% clear that Yoshi-P and the leadership at CBU3 got comfortable "suffering from success".

• "I believe we can only gain trust and confidence by continuing to build on it one step at a time, so we want to approach this as a new starting point for us as well."
• "Of course, I don't expect all content to suddenly reach the level I've talked about today. But I want to do my best to show you a glimpse of that and my determination"

Like you said, lets see if his deeds match his words going forward.
I know they can do 5 star work on this game when they *really* set out to do it. They've done it before. I hope they'll do it again. ^_^

[Kranel_San]

With Yoshi P, I'd say believe in his actions and not his words. That's the nicest way to put it.

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