Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Final Fantasy XIV - Face-to-Face with FFXIV's Naoki Yoshida - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Final Fantasy XIV - Face-to-Face with FFXIV's Naoki Yoshida - MMORPG.com
Final Fantasy XIV is enjoying its most successful year since its relaunch as A Realm Reborn in 2013 — so there’s probably no better time to speak to the man credited with its success. Last week, I had the chance to do just that, and sat down for a face-to-face conversation with producer and director Naoki Yoshida.
Comments
Interesting to note the acknowledgement of in and out players, and the design decisions based around the person to have interests outside of the game.
It does take a similar mindset to enjoy the game, with the recognition that some things won't happen tomorrow, or even the day after.
Consequently, the game isn't for everyone - what game is? But it does offer tremendous enjoyment and challenge for people who like the longer term pattern of traditional mmo's. And from it's player numbers, it appears to be doing this very effectively.
Long may it continue, and hopefully encourage other companies to look again at producing quality long term mmorpg's.
This reminds me of when I used to watch Salon Takeover and the salon owner was half a million in debt and Tabitha would come in and suggest changes and the owner would say Tabitha was a moron and didnt know anything about running a business.
I'm sure you did enjoy the game at launch but for every person like you who liked it, thousands hated it. The game launched to horrible reviews and lost epic amounts of players each month. There was no way this game would have survived if not for the changes.
So, as usual, he confuses "adding more variety and options" with "making it more complicated", giving it a negative connotation, to make it sound like a "bad thing". He should be in Cable News; he can spin with the best of them.
I still can't decide if he thinks MMO players in general are that dumb, if it's FFXIV players specifically, or if he simply lacks confidence to create such a system, but passes it off as "not wanting to complicate it for the players" instead.
Meanwhile, numerous MMOs have added lots of options for gear and builds to accomodate players who'd like to try different playstyles, and the players have handled it just fine. Even in FFXI, while a certain group chased the latest and greatest Meta-du-jour, plenty of others assembled different builds, or sought to experiment with alternative setups that better suited their ideal playstyle.
Translation: "We deliberately stunted the potential of our gear system so we can have an easier time of it, and don't have to work as hard".
Well, okay then. I guess that falls in line with the track they've been following with the rest of the game as well...Make everything as simple and dumbed-down as possible
This bit is just cop-out grade BS. Not everyone cares about having to have "best in slot". I'd wager most don't.
Meanwhile, there are many others who would like the *option* to try and find other builds that suit them personally, or accomodate a change in playstyle. This is exactly the case in ESO.
Yes, there are the "meta builds" that a portion of the community follows, to have "BIS", and such. But there's also *many others* who seek out alternative builds that allow for a greater variety of playstyles to be supported.
The point is, it provides *options* to the player. Those who want to follow the "BIS Meta", can do so. Those who want to follow guides for other types of builds can do so - there's plenty out there. And those who'd like to experiment and come up with their own variations can do so as well. There's a lot of players who enjoy theory-crafting and trying out different ideas to see how they work. But screw those people. A small portion of the playerbase wouldn't make the most of such options, so no one gets to enjoy them. Way to think big, Yoshida.
If Yoshida truly believes people wouldn't experiment and find alternative builds and playstyles - even as an alternative to their BIS Meta builds when they're not doing end-game content - then he's more out of touch with the genre than I thought.
More and more people are starting to question aloud, right in SE's own forums, and elsewhere, whether Yoshida is still the right captain for this ship, or if it's time for him to step aside and pass the wheel on to someone more qualified, with more vision and courage, whom doesn't treat his players like idiots.
Comments, excuses and cop-outs like these, and so many others, are an example of why. Sad.
At high levels FFXIV has classes of varying speeds, so if you want to press buttons as fast as possible then play a Bard, Dark Knight, Ninja or Monk.
As to the interview, it's the usual mixed bag of hope and cluelessness:
- The classes may be more 'balanced' than ever (at least on a striking dummy), but there are still clear winners and losers in actual content. The real issue however is that a number of classes just feel less fun to play in 4.X than they did in 3.X, especially at less than the level cap (which on volume, and depending on your daily activities, is most of the content in the game).
- It's good to hear they are considering more world content, that Eureka won't just be Diadem 3.0, and Deep Dungeon 2.0 will be something more, yet they still won't address the issue of 'new' dungeons being irrelevant before they are even released.
- It will be interesting to see what sort of customisation Eureka offers, but gear is only complicated (despite being ‘simple’) because they make it so... i.e. The game does not tell you what the actual effects of various stats are; if I want to up my damage should I take Skill Speed? Crit Rating? Direct Hit? Determination? Tenacity if I'm a Tank? NFI > thus iLvl.
This is not to say they haven't and aren't doing a good job, but at this point FFXIV is really starting to feel like the same thing repeated over and over again with none of the fundamental issues ever really being addressed properly (3.X > 4.X class changes and cross-role :cough: )