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Follow-Up Answers from the interview with FFXIV Producer Hiromichi Tanaka
Zyuu83
Member Posts: 167
For your information,
Follow-Up Answers from the interview with FFXIV Producer Hiromichi Tanaka
12 questions and answers.
FFXIVCore.com - Final Fantasy XIV Fansite.
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Ya you know i read all of that,it is amazing ,either Tanaka is outright lying or being evasive I really don't know.
The reason is because of his so called claim to the game being in production for 5 years?ya right,it doesn't seem like hardly anything in designed from thought 5 years ago,it really seems like they are going on feel and maybe inside feedback.
I think the vagueness on things like flying,housing ect ect is because of their time frame.If they come out of the testing phase and realize certain things won't work,then you can bet other content will be left out,to make up for the lost time to fix things.If everything goes smooth and seems to work,then they will start to implement the most hyped ideas ,like housing of some sort.Personally i think whatever they do with housing will be weak and mean nothing.As in FFXI they tried to implement housing effects,but they were so meaningless,i doubt anyone got any advantage from it at all.
Honestly how can there be a solo and a large scale system?Either you can solo or you can't?Ya you can solo all right,but then if the rewards for the large scale instances are the best ,as they ALWAYS are,that will alienate the solo crafter and the solo/semi solo/casual players from having the same enjoyment out of the game.
The same will go for a system like FFXI that utilized AF,witch btw he seems to hint will be similar in this game.If everyone remembers,AF was no piece of cake,do not confuse a game that most people down the road had level 75 players to make things easier,when you had to do them at the PROPER level they were nothing short of a well balanced group,nothing close to solo.The only thing i believe will be solo will be your ability to login lol,to get the most out of the game ,and to be able to enjoy all the content,you will need large groups,you will not be able to do it solo or even semi solo.I also do not believe guildleves will be anything close to casual solo either,you will need to form a party just as you did in FFXI.If it allows solo,it will mean less/slower rewards,just as in FFXI,i cannot see it being any different at all,i think too many are drawing a fake picture for themselves.
To make a game casual or or close to being solo friendly means a game that is too easy and fast to play.That would leave them scrambling for new content every month,as the hardcore players will zip through everything too fast.There is no way i see Square allowing this to happen,no way at all.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
All I want is to play the game with my friends and have a good time.
I'm glad to see from that questionaire, that they're planning on making the game more solo friendly. Sometimes you honestly don't have the time to be wasting, siting in Jeuno for HOURS to get a party and god forbid you were not one of the "chosen" classes in order to make a party work. I remember well because I had to retire my DRG for a SAM job instead... yeah, I didn't mind it as much, but I would've preffered if I didn't feel like I was forced to in order to get into a party.
And to those that keep bi**ing and whining about the game becoming too solo? I hope then, that they make it HEAVILY solo! Like WoW solo! Why? Because I know that would feel like SE would not only be giving you the middle finger, but also shoving it you know where. Remember, you're not the only ones wanting to play this game, and if you're going to hurl insults at people who play differently than you, then you should be insulted in return, just so you know what it feels.
It all seems quite straightforward to me.
MMOs can take a long time to develop. Betas and such don't last long nor are they announced for a long time. 5 years makes sense, especially if they were looking at FFXI for things they wanted to do quite differently.
Not talking in detail about certain elements is very common in MMOs before release. It can be a bad sign if the elements they won't touch with a 10 foot pole are critical to gameplay, but that isn't the case with FFXI. At least, I don't think things like flying and a mog house make or break the game. I think his answers there are more than sufficient. Honestly, the housing in FFXI is not THAT advanced or hard to make, so I don't think there is any need for concern. Free-form flying doesn't matter that much as long as you can get to where you want in a reasonable amount of time (at that point, the exact system doesn't matter much at all).
Compare WoW to FFXI and you can see how things can be pretty solo friendly AND have large-scale battles. Now, I expect FFXI might well do this better than WoW, and I am hoping things are a bit more scalable with party-size in FFXI, but the latter might not be needed. Anyhow, if you don't have time to EVER group, then there is no reason to worry about the rewards the big group stuff will give you, since you won't need it for solo content (I imagine). However, FFXIV can easily improve on FFXI greatly by just making it so that you can gain experience and have a wide variety of options on what to do with yourself if you only have an hour or less to play. That makes things a lot more friendly (and the answers are pretty clear this is what they want at the very least).
Basic concepts like that would remain he said. That's a far cry from every element being exactly the same. It could well be possible to solo such quests OR bring a group. If you bring a group, then the game adds more mobs or toughens the mobs present so the difficulty remains about the same. Why bring a group to do the quest then? Maybe you get better drops or maybe simply for the fact it is FUN to do things with other people (honestly, grouping doesn't have to be forced on people...we're social creatures and generally like doing things with others as long as it isn't painful).
So because you are wildly guessing at how things will work you think the Square people must be lying since your guesses don't line up with what they've said? Why won't Guildleves be solable? It seems HIGHLY likely that not only will you be able to solo them, but you'll be able to pick your group size if you want to quest with other people. Doing it with others just makes the difficulty scale up (and it is already clear they've programmed scaling difficulty for Guildleves as that's the basic concept behind how they work). In fact, if I recall correctly, they've essentially said they are soloable OR party-friendly:
All you need is SCALABLE CONTENT, properly tuned, and things won't be too fast at all. You seem to have a very limited imagination on game design here.
We can only hope, right? EVERY other MMO game seems to want everyone to solo. I've not been hyped at all about FFXIV because SE seems to want the same thing for their new game.
Sadly, I don't think you are correct in your assumptions, Wizardry. You'll get the solo-bore fest game you apparently want, while myself and others like me still do not have a new group focused game on the horizon.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
We can only hope, right? EVERY other MMO game seems to want everyone to solo. I've not been hyped at all about FFXIV because SE seems to want the same thing for their new game.
Sadly, I don't think you are correct in your assumptions, Wizardry. You'll get the solo-bore fest game you apparently want, while myself and others like me still do not have a new group focused game on the horizon.
Grouping should be a choice, not a forced mechanic! You have to start realizing that you are not the only one playing this game. Some of us either don't have the time to start looking/forming parties, or preffer to do some adventuring and maybe find a friend or two to group with WHILE adventuring. If players are deterred from going out into the world like FFXI did, and having adventurers SIT in Jeuno while looking/forming parties because players can't handly most mobs on their own (at least the mobs that give some decent xp), then guess what? We ain't having fun!
I'm glad they're making it more solo friendly, and I'm glad some of you "leet" kiddies are grinding at your teeth because of this. Some of you players have become so damn self-involved, you didn't realize the folly of such a strict rigid mechanics and how it was essentially, shutting/discouraging new players away. As I said elsewhere. I'm starting to think that really a lot of the crying done here by the advocates of the same rigid gameplay, is being done by those players that want to hold on to some ridiculous imaginary "hardcore" title
Again, if the old FFXI system was so great, then why did they have to make so many changes to make it more solo friendly? Why are they mentioning that they're looking at WoW to make their new game more solo friendly? Here's a hint, because they were probably loosing a good number of players, and not getting many new ones. In the end, SE will want to attract as many players as they can, and yes, that means those of us casual players that ARE fans of the FF franchise, but don't have 6+ hours EVERYDAY to dedicate to a game, get serious! Some of us have lives outside MMO's!
A lot of people on here are also being Chicken Littles about the whole thing, making wild and baseless accusations about the changes to the game that don't really jive with what the Devs have said.
A lot of people on here are also being Chicken Littles about the whole thing, making wild and baseless accusations about the changes to the game that don't really jive with what the Devs have said.
Such as????? it's hard for me either agree or disagree with you if you don't even mention them
I'm referring to the "OMG being remotely solo friendly CAN NEVER WORK AND WILL RUIN THE GAME FOREVER" kind of thinking. Wizardry seems particularly bad at this, since he seemingly can't see obvious ways to completely avoid the massive problems he claims FFXIV has in its design.
Hmm, I have longer posts detailing my thoughts, but I get the feeling no one reads them, so I am trying to keep things as short as the apparent attention span in here (which is kind of annoying, since I have ADHD so if anyone should be having attention span problems, it should be me!)
I'm referring to the "OMG being remotely solo friendly CAN NEVER WORK AND WILL RUIN THE GAME FOREVER" kind of thinking.
Hmm, I have longer posts detailing my thoughts, but I get the feeling no one reads them, so I am trying to keep things as short as the apparent attention span in here.
Oh yeah, I see what you mean, and completely agree. I've never been completely against grouping, and in fact encourage it. But to go so far as to start alienating casual/solo players I think is ridiculous.
I'm starting to think that the FFXI crowd here should honestly stop trying to make any comparisons between FFXI and 14 in an effort to argue what they want, don't want to see. Why do I say that? Because from what I've read and seen, this game is going to be so completely different in terms of game mechanics, that honestly, I don't think that the same mechanics in XI will work in 14. The fact alone that you can ALMOST switch profession at will, is a mechanic more casual/solo friendly (as well as group friendly) so the whole "Well I need to wait until I can find a healer" argument that you'd see often in XI, will in essence become moot.
From what I've read it doesn't look like they'll have a dedicated healing or tanking class. If you read over what has been released on combat, they talk about how they want to move away from the Tank-Healer-DPS system and make combat more strategic. That will be something that makes grouping a LOT easier to do as well. And it doesn't mean everyone is the same or there won't be depth to the combat system, a quick counter-example to such claims is real life where small group missions can easily have various specialists and a lot of tactical depth and a fantasy game with magic certainly allows for more options than this -- of course, plenty of other fantasy games that aren't MMOs have not used such a system. I'm pretty enthused by this, since I've gotten pretty burned out on the Holy Trinity combat system and am looking forward to something new on the MMO scene. I'm thinking combat might involve a lot more movement and position than we've seen before as well as quickly reacting to changes on the battlefield (that's just my guess though).
From what I've read it doesn't look like they'll have a dedicated healing or tanking class. If you read over what has been released on combat, they talk about how they want to move away from the Tank-Healer-DPS system and make combat more strategic. That will be something that makes grouping a LOT easier to do as well. And it doesn't mean everyone is the same or there won't be depth to the combat system, a quick counter-example to such claims is real life where small group missions can easily have various specialists and a lot of tactical depth and a fantasy game with magic certainly allows for more options than this -- of course, plenty of other fantasy games that aren't MMOs have not used such a system. I'm pretty enthused by this, since I've gotten pretty burned out on the Holy Trinity combat system and am looking forward to something new on the MMO scene. I'm thinking combat might involve a lot more movement and position than we've seen before as well as quickly reacting to changes on the battlefield (that's just my guess though).
I really hope that's not the case as the only two class types I thoroughly enjoyed in FFXI were tanking/healing/buffing based. Hopefully there will be more support oriented classes, though I guess time will tell.
From what I've read it doesn't look like they'll have a dedicated healing or tanking class. If you read over what has been released on combat, they talk about how they want to move away from the Tank-Healer-DPS system and make combat more strategic. That will be something that makes grouping a LOT easier to do as well. And it doesn't mean everyone is the same or there won't be depth to the combat system, a quick counter-example to such claims is real life where small group missions can easily have various specialists and a lot of tactical depth and a fantasy game with magic certainly allows for more options than this -- of course, plenty of other fantasy games that aren't MMOs have not used such a system. I'm pretty enthused by this, since I've gotten pretty burned out on the Holy Trinity combat system and am looking forward to something new on the MMO scene. I'm thinking combat might involve a lot more movement and position than we've seen before as well as quickly reacting to changes on the battlefield (that's just my guess though).
Did they not use a similar system in one of the older FF games? (I think it was FF3) where you could essentially change profession/mastery almost at will? I think they even re-used it in FFX-2. The only difference here it seems, is that what determines what profession you can change to depends on what armor/weapon you have with you. Personally, I'm glad they're taking this route, as you said, it gives more depth, more options for solo players as well as group players.
Also, with what you say regarding them moving away from the "holy trinity" (tank-healer-DPS). I'm glad that this new combat system will make it easier to group because to be honest, it was always so damn boring having to sit and wait sometimes for HOURS for a party to get moving if they couldn't find a WHM, or PLD, or SMN/WHM.
W're going to try to dig up some more information and publish it in FFXIVCore as soon as possible. Stay tuned for some really interesting tidbits.
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Sounds great! I hope we get some more info on what the combat system is going to be like. They've been pretty vague on that, but it sounds very promising.
We have some very fresh FFXIV information coming up on FFXIVCore fairly soon.
FFXIVCore.com - Final Fantasy XIV Fansite.
FFXIVCore.com on Facebook, Twitter, Square Enix Members, YouTube & RSS
Awesomesauce.