[Interview] Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: E3 Interview with Yoshi P. - What's in Store?

SBFord

This year at E3 I took part in a round table interview of Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P) director and lead producer on Final Fantasy XIV. Also at the table were the fine folks from Gamer Escape. Read on for what Yoshi - P had to say about what he and his team has in store for FFXIV.

Read more of Rob Lashley's Final Fantasy XIV: E3 Interview with Yoshi P - What's in Store?

ZenTaoYingYang

awesome read. was suprised I did not read it until now, the fact we will be able to enter as 24 man into frontlines will be amazing , also NINJA!

Foomerang

Vertical progression for crafting and gathering classes and golden saucer. All I really care about heh.

Gravarg

Can I mug and steal as rogue and ninja?  I'd be disappointed if I couldn't...FF is the only IP I love to play rogue, thief type because you can steal

Dreamo84

Mmm Golden Saucer might bring me back!

PNM_Jennings

I was vaguely hoping ninja would be a tank. There are too many DPS classes, and not nearly enough healers and tanks. My only disappointment with the announced content. I'm really excited for frontlines.

Chrisbox

Really excited for whats coming.  Tanks and healers are currently slated to release with the expansion they said, If I had to guess...march?

lunatiquez

Indeed, we need more tank & healer classes. That Golden Saucer tease is interesting, more minigames than what you can get in VII. I'll be back.

Dreamo84

It really is such a beautiful game and after you get some skills under your belt the slower combat is actually enjoyable. It's the only MMO I liked healing in. Unfortunately for me the focus entirely on end game gear grinding content turned me off from investing more time. It's never been my thing, I need more activities to do.

Solar_Prophet

I miss this game terribly. Hopefully by the time personal housing is released I'll be able to subscribe again.

rojoArcueid

i love that Yoshi P's favorite FF class is Cecil's Dark Knight. I hope that is a sign for a future class in XIV. Cecil was a fantastic character and i would definitelly play a Dark Knight any day in XIV.

Pratt2112

MMORPG: On the newest trailer that just came out it says there are two million adventurers. Is that subscribers? Total accounts?

 

Yoshi - P: That’s our total unique account number. 2.2 million is the number of registered accounts. If you look at the number of actual characters is closer to around 7 million.

 

A solid question specifically asking if it's just Total accounts, or Subscribers. Very straight-forward, unambiguous question, looking for a clear distinction to be made. Kudos to MMORPG.com for asking it.

 

Alas... Yoshi-P dodges it by talking "registered accounts", and then number of characters, which he wasn't even asked about. Quite conspicuously, he never even hints at 'subscribers'. 

 

More standard PR-speak; throwing around the big numbers that ultimately don't matter, while avoiding the numbers that do.

 

Registered accounts only mean "this many people have bought the game at some point (including 1.0 players whose account info was carried over to 2.0) and registered the game". It says nothing, absolutely nothing, about how many are actively playing.

 

The 7 million character statement... again.. a big, impressive-looking number meant to make people "ooh" and "ahh", but which has even less significance than the number of registered accounts. There's no way of knowing how many of those characters are alts, or how many (alts and mains) are even on active subscriptions.

 

Further, the MMORPG rep didn't even ask about number of characters. He's asked a direct question, and Yoshi-P responds with pure PR talking points.

 

I wonder what ever happened to the Yoshi-P of 1.0-1.23, and all throughout 2.0's development whom was frank, up-front and answered questions honestly? I kind of miss that Yoshi-P.

 

Now he seems to have become nothing more than a PR mouthpiece.

 

Disappointing, considering SE proudly reported their active FFXI player numbers, for at least 7 years straight (until it started dropping, then they switched to the "number of characters!" tactic as well), I can't help but think the numbers aren't quite where they'd like them to be. Maybe they'll release a yearly report for XIV like they do with XI. And maybe that report will have the actual breakdown. We shall see.

 

 

 

 

 

nbtscan

Why do people care about subscription numbers so much, especially for a game they don't play or even remotely care about?  As someone that plays the game, I don't need to know how many people are playing every quarter.  All I need to hear is that content is coming out in their normal 3-4 month schedule, as that is indicative that the game is still doing well enough to continue developing content for it.  When the day comes that I hear about mass layoffs and patches taking longer and longer to come out, that's when I'll be concerned.

ChipOreo

Originally posted by TangentPoint

MMORPG: On the newest trailer that just came out it says there are two million adventurers. Is that subscribers? Total accounts?

 

Yoshi - P: That’s our total unique account number. 2.2 million is the number of registered accounts. If you look at the number of actual characters is closer to around 7 million.

-Snip-

 

 

He ansered the question once, reworded it and answered it again, which still ment the same thing as the first answer. The 7M number was unnecessary but it's ment to fool people whose reading comprehension is a little. . .meh. . .*hint* *hint*

 

Chrisbox

Originally posted by TangentPoint

MMORPG: On the newest trailer that just came out it says there are two million adventurers. Is that subscribers? Total accounts?

 

Yoshi - P: That’s our total unique account number. 2.2 million is the number of registered accounts. If you look at the number of actual characters is closer to around 7 million.

 

A solid question specifically asking if it's just Total accounts, or Subscribers. Very straight-forward, unambiguous question, looking for a clear distinction to be made. Kudos to MMORPG.com for asking it.

 

Alas... Yoshi-P dodges it by talking "registered accounts", and then number of characters, which he wasn't even asked about. Quite conspicuously, he never even hints at 'subscribers'. 

 

More standard PR-speak; throwing around the big numbers that ultimately don't matter, while avoiding the numbers that do.

 

Registered accounts only mean "this many people have bought the game at some point (including 1.0 players whose account info was carried over to 2.0) and registered the game". It says nothing, absolutely nothing, about how many are actively playing.

 

The 7 million character statement... again.. a big, impressive-looking number meant to make people "ooh" and "ahh", but which has even less significance than the number of registered accounts. There's no way of knowing how many of those characters are alts, or how many (alts and mains) are even on active subscriptions.

 

Further, the MMORPG rep didn't even ask about number of characters. He's asked a direct question, and Yoshi-P responds with pure PR talking points.

 

I wonder what ever happened to the Yoshi-P of 1.0-1.23, and all throughout 2.0's development whom was frank, up-front and answered questions honestly? I kind of miss that Yoshi-P.

 

Now he seems to have become nothing more than a PR mouthpiece.

 

Disappointing, considering SE proudly reported their active FFXI player numbers, for at least 7 years straight (until it started dropping, then they switched to the "number of characters!" tactic as well), I can't help but think the numbers aren't quite where they'd like them to be. Maybe they'll release a yearly report for XIV like they do with XI. And maybe that report will have the actual breakdown. We shall see.

 

 

 

 

 

What exactly did he dodge? How has he changed drastically over an interview? I'm just seeing a whole lot of derp in everything you wrote.

They asked him what the adventurers ment, he told them it ment registered accounts.  They never asked how many unique subs he has so he didn't dodge anything.  You give kudos to this site for asking it meanwhile anyone who follows this game even slightly knows it doesn't have 2.2 million unique subs, it was a worthless question.

So because he decided to throw in how many characters were made, Yoshi-P is a changed person and nothing more than a PR mouth-piece? There is no logic behind what you're saying.  Have you watched any of his live letters? The e3 presentation? Follow him at all on the forums? Yoshi-P's primary concern is the FFXIV fanbase and delivering content to us on a steady basis, and so far he has been.  This interview changed nothing about him.  

Forrealz

Man i really like the MMo as a whole but not having no Voice Overs kills the MMO for me, I was really hoping that they would maybe consider adding voice overs but doesn't look like it will happen to bad because thats something that pushes people away.

Ramonski7

Excellent news. Currently my sub is in a holding pattern with FXIV. I'm actually taking a breather while rogue/ninja rolls out. Just started playing Defiance since it went F2P. Regardless, I'm also stoked about golden saucer.

If anything, FFXIV is shaping up to be a mmo with a nice chunk of content to burn through. But that won't be true unless they do add all that stuff after 2.3.