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Final Fantasy XIV - Eorzean Question Time Recap - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Final Fantasy XIV - Eorzean Question Time Recap - MMORPG.com
Fans had the opportunity to submit questions to Naoki Yoshida for answer during the Eorzean Question Time. For 40 minutes on Sunday morning Yoshida answered questions that were pre submitted on Saturday from the venue or from the Forums. The following is a highlight of what was asked and answered.
Comments
The dps checkes are already creating a toxic environment. With or without official parsers it exist.
Dummies do not work because there are no mechanics. Any one with half a brain can maximize a rotation on a dummy.
I have seen people do 50-60% less dmg in fights compared to equally geared ppl. Yet they can kill the dummy. And yes they are the dps issue in the fights.
History says he's correct to think that way.
It'll be interesting to see what he couldn't talk about does - I'm fairly sure he'd tired of the question and wants to do something about it.
Avatars are people too
that's the impression i got lol
A lot is lost in both translation and not hearing his voice in person. The jokes he makes. Trying to leave the stage on hard questions, etc. There are even a few questions that aren't here, that were asked during the interview. Though for the most part, he said that he'd talk to people regarding certain ideas that seemed feasible. With regards to a question about replaying old instances, he said it would likely be hard due to the quest flagging system, but gave it a few moments of thought and then came back with a ballpark idea of how it could be done, if they are willing to make a new system and work out a tremendous amount of debugging.
Though this isn't an interview or talk that is similar to other games. Yoshi-P is the head guy, the producer director, and so there isn't a half-hearted promise of "I'll talk to the dev team" by a worker, as he has the final say in a lot of things; that is he has to give the thumbs up to specific things, and has a lot of influence on what is done.
But as a whole, he has no qualms with saying no to something that just can't be done or doesn't fit the vision. A common response to making classes easier was "play it more" or "get good". They do a good job in implementing fan ideas they like with all the frequent patches, as well as hearing requests such as new hair, emotes, furniture, inventory expansion, furniture expansion, specific popular systems like Triple Triad and Blitzball (which they said they are officially working on, but have hit a few technical hurdles). Though they don't just flat out bow to the casual crowd and make everything 1-3 buttons, either. Instead, they just make sure to update systems and add rewards worth learning how to do things for.
And since he's the big man, why can't he say something for sure? Likely because his team is swamped with work on expansions and patches and adding to the stress without looking into the issue and checking in with specialists might turn him in a bad guy. Saying "yes" or hyping things without realistic opportunities to bring such would be pulling a Molyneux. Instead, they add caveats and maybes on features that are already made, in case something goes wrong. Or say they don't have plans, but throw out a few ballpark ideas on how they'd go about it if they had the time to do such.
This whole game in general feels like its built from the ground up to be simple as it can be and follow all the modern standards to the point that its boring. If it wasnt for the classic SE stuff (looks nice, good music and decent story) it would have been another f2p clone we have seen 100 times now.
You're acting like rotations are difficult to figure out in MMOs. They are not. Besides, it's not like a parser tells you what you're doing wrong. If you can't figure out your rotation, I highly doubt you have the ability to figure it out on your own, parser or no parser. "Human on the internet" thing should be a consideration. These games are played by humans on the internet.
You're right, though, about the issue of exposing balance issues. People are always itching to exclude people and desperately seeking any excuse they can find to not party with someone.
I remember in ffxi, certain classes literally lfp for hours. Why? Because it took maybe 20 seconds longer to finish a fight with them in the party.
That's been his attitude for a while. It started to show near the end of 2.x, but really hit full stride with 3.0.
I mean, he's had a playerbase asking for various types of content and new challenges to make the game more varied and engaging and interesting, and he's said "No", because, of course, "it would be too difficult with our limited resources". But then he takes a large chunk of those "limited resources" and implements "Lords of Verminion" - a system *no* one was asking for, which was born of an off-hand joke, and which fell into obscurity almost immediately on release.
I've been calling him "Dr. Noshida", or "Naoki NOshida" for months now because of how often he turns down requests and suggestions from his players.
And as usual, he gives these drawn out explanations about "why things can't be done" or "why things would be difficult" or whatever... and they're all things *other MMORPGs have had, or been doing for up to a decade now.
He thinks he's being clever or shrewd with these answers he gives. All he's doing is demonstratin that either he is completely out-of-touch with the genre, or he assumes everyone else is.
He reminds me of some of the BS-artists I've worked with in the past. They do a lot of talking and give all these super complicated sounding explanations to impress their boss, whom has no clue what they're talking about, but figure "well, they know what they're talking about!". Meanwhile, those who know better realize they're talking a lot of nonsense.
I mean, he explains adding a butt slider would "cause texture stretching", as though that answers the question definitively. Only it doesn't, because again, other MMORPGs figured out how to implement such things already. All he's basically saying is "We can't do this, because we're not skilled enough to know how".
"Are you for real? You want me and my team to spend time and resources on something that ridiculous? Who wants something stupid like that when they can get actual content, actual gameplay? Get lost with your idiotic ideas, we're hard at work on the actual game, not some perv preference."
And then, just for me, he would go on and talk about how all that time and those resources will be spend on getting rid of the huge amount of loading screens by making the world seamless, no PS3 to take into account anymore anyways. Because I hate them, and he is awesome like that.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Well, as we'll never if such a "real" reason exists, we can only rely on his public answer being the real one.
To suggest "that's not really why, that's just what he tells us" paints the picture of someone whom, despite building a rapport and trust on "open and honest communication with the players" since he took over 1.0, openly lies to those same people when it suits him.
I'll go with the idea of not assigning malice to that which can be explained with incompetence. And saying "no butt slider because stretching textures would be too much of a problem to solve" rings pretty loudly of incompetence, to me.
That said, I'd actually prefer if he came out with a response more like yours. "We could do something like that, sure, and it would make some people happy. But we feel it would be a better use of those resources to implement something new that everyone can enjoy".
He could also come out and say "We could, but I think it's a ridiculous request and can't take it seriously enough to even shelve it for future consideration".
I could respect an answer like those. The issue isn't that he declines to do it, it's the ridiculous explanation he gives for why. "It would cause texture-stretching" is not a show-stopper. It's something the developers/artists would work out in the process of implementing such a thing. It's not something that makes it impossible entirely.
Again, other MMORPGs have implemented similar features like that, and far more advanced, for the past decade at least. "Texture stretching" doesn't seem to have prevented it.
Also, that Yoshida seems to almost mock the idea in his response strikes me as bizarre. A 'butt slider' is right in line with the strong aesthetic focus much of the player base has in this game. He's the one responsible for that culture. He's the one who chose to incentivise so much of the content by rewarding glamours, hair-styles, dances, mounts, minions, etc. It's his design choices that have ultimately brought about the "glamour is the real endgame" theme.
So, for him to respond as he did seems indicative of someone who's not only out of touch with the genre for the past decade+, but perhaps with the priorities and focus of a large portion of his own playerbase as well. Or maybe he's just indifferent, which would be worse, in my opinion.
Sad.
Still sucks to this day to see what 1.2x was turning into then to see it scrapped and become the standard and simplified snooze it now is.
As for Yoshida he is inexperienced and is not doing much that he doesnt almost always lift from WoW it seems. Things like butt sliders im not surprised from people begging for it because this MMO has turned into a fashion show game more than anything...so i expect it.