[Velhart]

4gamer recently did an interview with Naoki Yoshida on his plans to improve FFXIV. Here is the article, it is in Japanese though.

http://www.4gamer.ne...87/20101226004/

Someone in ffxivcore.com was nice enough to give a synopsis of what it says while it is being properly translated. I tried Google translate, but the words were too mixed up to read, haha.

Quote

some random things that appeared interesting to me (no guarantees for accuracy)

The first part is mostly about the re-organization of the team and the company...

- they are still in the process of re-organisation and he cannot say when it will be completed
- next steps are going to be "organization/sorting of information" (possibly talking about rumors, as in, telling which are true and which are false, not sure about that) and finding the reason for the hardware problems (lag issues? or maybe sys reqs?)
- there will be a comment posted on the lodestone on 01.01 explaining more about this and their plans and expectations for the next year

Next part is about the game itself

- the first time he played the game was when he got assigned to his new post
- this means the first improvement of the UI was not his work
- "ease of understanding/interaction[of/with the game] comes before "making it interesting [for the player]", since a player cannot judge what's interesting about the game and what not if the interaction doesn't work properly.
- this one is to be taken with a grain of salt! He was asked, what SE meant when they said FFXIV is f2p until they think it's ready. He said "until the customers are satisfied with the service". Mwa-Ha. Never? xD
- they are currently trying to make a system to be able to communicate with the players better (bi-directional communication, it seems)
- the most important thing to them atm is to make sure that if they promise something will be implemented, it really does.
- they are currently investigating what has to be done to get back out trust and make the service worth paying for.
- as far as i understood what he is saying, they base the decision on what to fix next on the feedback. So go submit some

Next part is about the UI

- if I understood him correctly, he is thinking about implementing a similar addon-system for the UI as WoW depending on the feedback.
- he is not satisfied with the UI himself and that was the reason he asked Minakawa to be added to the team as he believes Minakawa won't lose to anyone when it comes to designing an UI (Who is Minakawa, pardom my ignorance)

About lag

- they are still working on optimizing the latencies, one of the reasons why the team got a new technical advisor, Hashimoto Yoshihisa

About re-organisation

- They are trying to work as efficiently as possible, concentrating at one issue at a time instead of trying to improve everything at once.

- He doesn't see FFXIV as finished and thinks the game will adapt itself to meet the expectations of the majority, BUT getting the player's trust is of higher priority (probably telling us to not expect too much)

- They categorize updates into 2 types, the ones making it easier to play the game (interaction?) and ones adding new content. They are thinking about how to balance those 2 types and whether there might be a be a way to satisfy both expectations

- As for the reason known bugs are not being fixed fast, he says it is because of the strict schedule the quality assurance team has to work under - they don't have enough time to test the patches before they have to be released.

- Solving these types of problems is one of the first steps the new team is taking

About a public test server

- he says he played some NA MMOs and understands the demands for a test server. The reason SE didn't want one was because they thought it was a waste to set up a server for ~3000 players and only see about 100 of testers online a days. His personal opinion, however is that it's still worth it and even though he definitely wants to make a test server, he can't promise when.

- he also adds that even though they want more direct feedback and communication, it doesn't make sense to concentrate too much on the idea of a test server.

About graphic and the fact that recent updates made some improvements to framerates

- they don't really want to change the graphics themselves to suit the slow systems like WoW does as it makes FF lose it's own quality and style.

- they will continue to work on optimizing the system, but it is currently not of very high priority. He also mentions the PS3 version of FFXIV hinting that this should be the solution for those with weak PC systems. (Ha. Ha. Sure, if they bundle a PS3 with each copy of FFXIV for free)

About the PS3 version

- The reason for delaying the PS3 version this time was the fact that all the problems of the PC version piled up to the point of them wanting to concentrate on fixing those problems first.

- Since there were problems with the PS3 version itself, they thought it would be better for all players playing under same conditions for now - on the PC

- At the end he assures that SE has not given up on the PS3 version and will definitely release it

EDIT: Page 3

Quote

About Yoshida himself:

So far he was working on DragonQuest Monster Battle Road Series(?)
He has been playing games for about 13 years, his first multiplayer game was Diablo, played for about 1 year. After that he played Ultima online for about 2 years and a half before moving on to Unreal Tournament. Next he started playing Diablo II LoD, stopping after 1 year and a half, moving on to Dark Age of Camelot which he played for 6 years. He also gave WoW and Everqust a try.
He was mostly involved in developing consumer games so far (i guess they mean the offline games by that?), he had some experience in developing MMO related projects too.
Even though his job atm is to understand how to make the most of the FFXIV client, he has to keep himself informed about the competiotion like WoW at the same time. He mentions something called Dungeon Finder, i guess it's an addon for WoW? It seems as if he's trying to evaluate which ideas from other games could be put into FFXIV.


About his view on developing an MMO

He is aware there are differencies between developing a MMO and a single player game, and is calling MMOs "theme parks", a collection of "attractions" to appeal to different types of people, motivating them to play the game. But simply throwing different types of content wouldn't be a good idea (i didn't really get his theme park example about disney land, cinderella's castle and a horror house <.<), so keeping the general theme of the park, in our case the MMO is very important.
He sees the base of a MMO in the economy and the balance between the production, consuming and gathering of goods, so it's important to him for it to work properly.


Some random questions

His favorite FF is FF7 and he wants to somehow bring the powerful atmosphere and the impact of FF7 to FFXIV.
He says that there will be more events since he likes them himself and calls MMO a service business, meaning not listening to the customers won't work. The events are fun for them and fun for the customers at the same time. That's why he thinks it's important to keep organizing them.
As for what kind of events except for the seasonal ones are planned, he cannot say - look forward to it.


The last question is about how confident he is about the future:

He doesn't want to promise too much and rather watch and see how things go. For now, they want to go step by step and not rush things and make sure they keep their promises. He mentions better communication once again...

I definitely like what I am hearing so far, and this looks like a man you can trust, I mean come on, he makes a kitty cat face.

This post has been edited by Velhart: 30 December 2010 - 02:48 PM

[rambus]

oh so thats what you ment in the other thread, thats cool. sounds promising.

I would love SE to to get back on track making quality games and such.

[Aleera]

Velhart, on 30 December 2010 - 11:11 AM, said:

and this looks like a man you can trust, I mean come on, he makes a kitty cat face.

[Velhart]

Added the third page on the top post.

[Banter]

Aleera, on 30 December 2010 - 12:35 PM, said:

rofl

[WolfwoodOfTrigunMax]

Oh, he played Blizzard games. I got a good feeling.

[What?]

EASY MODE INCOMING

[Corrderio]

Only thing I really didn't like was the last bit about he has plans about keeping seasonal events. This game needs actual content instead of stuff that only comes around a few days a year.

Hopefully crafting isn't a partial requirement like the Christmas/New Years events were.

[Banter]

Corrderio, on 31 December 2010 - 12:52 AM, said:

Only thing I really didn't like was the last bit about he has plans about keeping seasonal events. This game needs actual content instead of stuff that only comes around a few days a year.

Hopefully crafting isn't a partial requirement like the Christmas/New Years events were.

I don't see a reason why you can't have both.

[Albela]

corrnoobio is so simple-minded.

this seems like good news, but it will take 2 years until this nonsense game is playable.

[Corrderio]

Banter, on 02 January 2011 - 04:30 AM, said:

I don't see a reason why you can't have both.

To me it just seems stupid making these events when there's a ton of other things that need to be fixed.

[Albela]

two different things, two different teams. come on now Corrnoobio, havent you heard of double-tasking?

[Corrderio]

Remind me again why you came back?

[XyonBlade]

Events don't necessarily have to be holiday related. Monster Hunter 3 has events that repeat multiple times a year. Something where, there's two events always going on, each event lasts 2 weeks, the events are staggered so that when one event is in its first week, the other is in its second week. And maybe each event repeats 4 times a year. Could allow for 13 unique events to happen where the goals could be defeating HNM type monsters where you need an alliance. An "event' system like that would be nice, and it would be better content than the holiday events. Then content that you can do any time of the year is good as well.

[Banter]

XyonBlade, on 03 January 2011 - 06:54 AM, said:

Events don't necessarily have to be holiday related. Monster Hunter 3 has events that repeat multiple times a year. Something where, there's two events always going on, each event lasts 2 weeks, the events are staggered so that when one event is in its first week, the other is in its second week. And maybe each event repeats 4 times a year. Could allow for 13 unique events to happen where the goals could be defeating HNM type monsters where you need an alliance. An "event' system like that would be nice, and it would be better content than the holiday events. Then content that you can do any time of the year is good as well.

Having them that often makes it less of an "event" and more of just standard MMO fare.

[XyonBlade]

Thats your opinion, we just happen to have different opinions, I'd consider it like an event.

[Banter]

Hey guys, let's have the same thing going on ALL THE TIME but try to pretend that it's special in its own way!

[XyonBlade]

Why do you feel the need to attack everyone with sarcasm, even those who don't attack you?


If you have one levequest or series of quests leading up to a monster that can only be done 4 weeks a year, or 8 weeks a year. Isn't it an event when that happens? Its not going on all the time. The rest of the time there are other series of quests that themselves can only be done 4 or 8 weeks of the year.

Events don't have to be once a year, they can be one a week, or once a day. The definition of event is very generic in that regard.

[Banter]

The traditional MMO event is usually held over the course of about 2 weeks, with varying times between each event. They're generally used to celebrate some sort of Holiday IRL, and not just be a filler quest that can randomly expire on you.

[XyonBlade]

All fair points, but that doesnt limit an event to holiday related in game content. Event's could be anything that has a set start day or time.

But I do agree with the sentiment that the 14 dev team is wasting time if they spend it working on events that are holiday related without making the year round content better or the core of the game better.