บทสัมภาษณ์ Yoshi-P จากงาน Japan Expo
For the first time, "The Secrets of Eorzea" have had the opportunity to interview Naoki Yoshida during his trip to Paris to attend the Japan Expo! An opportunity we could not miss!
interview yoshida japanexpo2013
Together with the website "Mondes Persistants", we were able to speak with the producer of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn for nearly an hour with the assistance of Saori Hill, his interpreter.
Without further delay, discover all the details of this interview:
*As a reminder, the questions were translated from English to Japanese and the responses of Japanese to English, so there may be differences of understanding between the different performers.
• The Secrets of Eorzea (SOE):
On the Beta Testers Forum, Hiroshi Minagawa speaks of a famous interconnection between the game and The Lodestone, where posting comments and pictures on The Lodestone without interrupting the game would be possible.
Can you tell us a little more about it and the social networks sharing process?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
Thanks to the previous Lodestone, we analyzed the number of people who wrote blogs and their frequency of use. With the large number of existing social networks that require players to invest their time on them, connecting to The Lodestone to write a daily blog can be tedious for many players because it requires a lot of time.Usually you only write a blog when you have a lot of free time.
Our idea is to facilitate the communication between the game and the Lodestone for those who do not always have the time, for example, to load directly to the blog the screenshots you take in-game. We will continue to update these functions, of course. We are still debating on the final form of this system, but in the future, we would arrive at the possibility, for example, to send a tweet without leaving the game. Other things should be possible as well..
• Mondes Persistants (MP):
More than a month and a half before the release ... How do you and your team feel?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
The morale and motivation of the development team are very good. One of the major reasons is the large number of player feedback on phase 3 and, as you know, we were finally able to set up the PS3 version, This gavethe opportunity to play on both platforms (PC and PS3).
We received a large number of messages from people having fun playing the beta and more yesterday. We exceeded the the one and a half million registrations for the beta. We are pleased that so many people are interested in our game, and that many beta testers continue to play the full game because they enjoy it, knowing that everything will be erased at the end of the test phase. Usually, during the closed beta, players stop playing after a few days but this is clearly not the case in FFXIV! All of this makes us really happy and gives us alot of motivation.
• The Secrets of Eorzea (SOE) :
Can you tell us if The Lodestone will provide a API (applications to display information on a website or forum) or other tools to get information about our characters or our free company?
Community forums are very fond of these kinds of additions to their sites, something like a showcase that would be visible to all.
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
Yes, there will be a API on The Lodestone. There will also be applications for IOS / Android to look at your ingame status, of your friends, free companies pages, items for sale without connecting to the game, etc ...
Community members will be able to stay connected with each other even if they are not connected to FFXIV.
• Mondes Persistants (MP):
The scholar appeared on the web several weeks before the official announcement. Did this unveiling go as intended?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
We had planned to just put online a set of images of the scholar without comment or other information to let the community think and discuss its meaning. Is it a class? A job? Who is it? etc ... After that I would have told during a live letter that it was the scholar and announced its availability for the release but the image of group of jobs was displayed on the web beforehand ... but this is another story *laughs*
• The Secrets of Eorzea (SOE) :
The scholar was a great surprise for the community. This is an unusual job in different games because it appears as if it does not always have the same special ability. While some expected a hybrid white mage / black mage with its own ability (as in FFXI), how did you come to turn it into a pet job specialized in buff / heal?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
Until last December, we were not sure what would be the next job to be added but, we knew we needed a second healer because one was clearly not enough.
We talked on the subject of the class system, about the Summoner, a pet class system and were looking for something attractive and not too strange to be using healing abilities. So we kept this idea and thought that the scholar might work this way. The idea quickly caught on and was accepted without too much trouble. That is how the scholar has acquired healing abilities and a pet. Of course, this job was already quite popular, which waswas another good reason to choose it.
Class balance was already very good, but the addition of this second job healer should still improve it.
To be honest, when you think of the Final Fantasy series, there are not many jobs in these games that are able to heal like a white mage can. Few jobs could play this role so it was a challenge to find something different as a healing class * laughs *
• Mondes Persistants (MP):
With the arrival of new dungeons and raid gear, will the crafts stay relevant to high-level players?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
Well, there will always be an interest in the craft level.* The following answer is under checking due to some audio problems, we apologize for the inconvenience. The article will be updated once the answer has been confirmed *
• The Secrets of Eorzea (SOE)
Will you make the second jobs very different from their class or first job? For example, the Dark Knight is a very aggressive job and since you seem to want it to become the second Gladiator job (This has never been confirmed but since Yoshi-P always uses it as an example, you never know... ), don't you think Gladiator's abilities are in contradiction with his style?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
I see what you mean. We created the system, but we do not necessarily need to follow it all the time. For example, let’s say that the Dark Knight is the second Gladiator job (attention, it is still not a confirmation), when you get its job stone at level 30, all acquired Gladiator skills will certainly be modified to better fit the image of the Dark Knight.
It was just to give an example to explain that we are not going to destroy how players consider different classes / jobs. It could be an interesting way to introduce future classes / jobs. We will consider your concerns on this issue, rest assured.
This should make things more interesting, don't you think?
• Mondes Persistants (MP):
What kind of tools can the community expect from the new Lodestone, something like an items database?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
To answer your question, yes, there will be an items database on the Lodestone. We are currently fixing it because we found that it was showing things that are not released yet and we need to ensure that it never happens.
We would also like to provide additional information: how to obtain these items from quests, prerequisites, information concerning the monsters to fight, etc... But above all, we must ensure that unwanted data is not displayed prior to its release.
Similarly, we expect that these features will also be available on the mobile applications.
• The Secrets of Eorzea (SOE)
How do you see the future of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn with the arrival of DirectX 11 and the use of the new graphics engine of the game? Will you stop here in terms of graphics or will you continue to improve when it will be possible?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
Graphic quality will be greatly improved with DX11, but it will take more power to run the game with its maximum settings, this is something we must not to forget. For now, the adaptation of the PS4 version is our priority, DX11 compatibility will probably arrive a little later. However, note that the PS3, PS4, DX9 and DX11 updates will happen simultaneously.
• Mondes Persistants (MP):
The "Before Meteor" blu-ray will contain a promotional item. Can we expect other objects like this in the future?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
To be honest, we do not plan on releasing many of products with in-game items that you could buy. "Before Meteor" is particular because there is a lot of music and we had to climb a little higher the price compared to other similar products. So, we wanted to give a little extra, Also, since the release date coincided with the launch of the game, we wanted to celebrate with a special item in the goodies. We really wanted to make people happy with this item but it does not mean that we will add in-game items in all products to be marketed.
Le minion dalamud
We do not want players to buy all of our products just because of these dematerialized promotional items, but at the same time, we want to give something special to our fans to make them happy. Maybe we could make something special once or twicea year. We need to think of something exciting in order to obtain the in-game items.
Something we have in mind, for the moment, is the opportunity to earn in-game items if, for example, you play for a long time. So if you play a lot, you could possibly win something special to reward you for your loyalty.
• The Secrets of Eorzea (SOE)
How will the user interface (UI) evolve? Will users have the ability to createmods, or interface elements, and to add them to their interfaces and share them with friends; how is that going to work and what will be the guidelines and protections against hacking?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
For the first 6 months after the release, we will focus on improving the interface based on players feedback. After these six months, we will provide the tools to allow players to create their own add-ons.
Honestly, we do not intend to adhere to strict guidelines for the creation of mods, we wish to leave the creative freedom to the players so that they can create and test new ideas. For example, it is perfectly possible to see the development of a specific UI for healers and one for the tanks that would better show who is getting hate, or improve the management of healing. Being too strict severely limits the imagination of designers and reduces the interest of mods.
On the question of security, there are of course concerns, there could be viruses or trojans on some add-ons, and this is something that users should be aware of and accountable for the risks in the use of mods. We also plan to work on a special website that will allow players to download add-ons that will be consistent without needing to check. But if, for example, a friend created a mod and there is a virus in it, we will not be able to help. There is therefore a risk that the player must take and remember.
• Mondes Persistants (MP):
Why did SE chose to implement two types of subscriptions, standard and basic?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
This is something quite special to FFXIV. When I saw the subscription model of the first version which costs 12.99€ for the first character and 3€ for the secondary character, I found the system quite confusing and I wondered why it was necessary to pay more to have more characters, it was something with which I was not very comfortable.
Personally, I would like to play multiple characters with a single subscription, so I wanted to introduce the standard model. At the same time, many players have played in FFXI and they used to have a minimum price for a single character, which is why we left the basic model.
Thus, there is a model for every audience, so if you want more characters, you will get the standard subscription, with which you can have up to 8 people per server at no extra cost, and if you only have one character, you will take the basic subscription and pay a little less.
• The Secrets of Eorzea (SOE)
During Phase 3, Legacy players noticed the loss of some stats and bonuses given. For example, on the artifact armors (offensive magic, boost to Dragoon's Jump ability, etc ...). Will they come back in the future? If not, why did you remove them?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
We are still trying to finalize everything so it is still difficult to answer yes or no and it depends on several parameters. At some time, some stats may return and others disappear because they are no longer required to ARR gameplay.
As I mentioned in a post on the official forum, the FFXIV ARR jobs artifact armor are scheduled to match FFXIV content, which means that what you had in V1 was not necessarily needed in ARR. Stats that have disappeared were deliberately removed because they were no longer needed for these jobs to pass the contents of ARR. This will make sense when you play the end game content. So for now, do not worry, your concerns should disappear at this point because everything has been redesigned for ARR, especially the end game content.
Currently, some hardcore gamers, especially Japanese, have done analysis on the latest jobs and find that Dragoon and Monk and are a bit too powerful. * laughs *
• Mondes Persistants (MP):
What do you think of the constantly growing amount of events content created by players in MMOs? Will you consider something like this for FFXIV?
• Naoki Yoshida (NY)
I enjoy practicing RolePlay, not only on PCs but in general, just like in Ultima Online where you can create your own cities and content so I understand how pleasant it is.
I'm really interested in the content generated by the players, however, this does not mean that this will happen soon in the future, I think we, the development team, must first bring a good FFXIV gaming experience to players. At this point, it might be interesting to see the development of content generated by players. In any case, I'm not against the idea.
Besides, if you're really interested in the creation of game content, do not hesitate to join the development team * laughs *
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Interview by Auxalie and Ookami.
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Many thanks to Naoki Yoshida for allowing this interview with a smile despite the fatigue that was probably accumulated, to Saori Hill (Senior Community Manager in SE London) for his interpreting and his kindness, to Potichat (Community Manager in SE France) and Elmoria (community Manager of the Francophone community in SE London) for their role in obtaining and organizing this interview and for their good mood!
To the team of “The Secrets of Eorzea”, whether in France or abroad, thank you for the support while preparing the questions. A special mention for Auxalie, who moved both heaven and earth to be able to attend to this interview. And managed to get his autographed book V1 collector's version as well as get a picture with Yoshida san.
This interview should have been published much earlier but real life complications deemed it otherwise.. We have done our best to bring it to you as soon as possible!
We hope you liked this first interview and that it is the first in a long line of many interviews yet to come! But, in the meantime, visit our website for more information about Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn!
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