Yoshi-P's Thoughts on iLevel/Char Growth in FFXIVFollow

A Reddit user translated this interview with Yoshi-P. This segment made me think of the ongoing conversation we have on this board:

Reddit thread is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/53vzbd/game_watch_interview_with_yoship_translation/?st=iteu7z9t&sh=8f88b611

Here, Yoshi further clarifies the progression decisions of his development team, as well as the nature of building a successful game for today's playerbase. I'm sure this will make certain people mad, but for others it's why we play.

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Q. There's something i was curious about asking, and you know how people on the internet occasionally say "There's nothing to do in FFXIV" and i think that's because FFXIV's end game has no character growth involved in it. I assume that's because those players into that sort of character growth may enjoy it, but new players will have a hard time catching up.

A. I consider "If there's some sort of character development, the players into that stuff will enjoy it" is a faulty expression. The current FFXIV allows you to reach the level cap at a comparatively fast pace and players who feel they are "released from the burden of leveling a job" won't be able to enjoy the game as much if there is some sort of element that requires you to spend time on building up your character before you do other content. FFXIV has a wide range of players who all have different tastes. It's not like everyone can keep their motivation to run towards a long term goal that is extremely far away to grow their character.

Q. So not having elements to "let your character grow" is intentional.

A. I feel like people who are saying there's nothing to do or they are bored, are people who prefer the "FFXI type" game where the game itself is like end content, where there are almost unlimitted amount of elements to grow your character and keep building up. I do understand their feelings, but as a game that needs to fight on the global scale and this era makes it very difficult for us to choose that railway as an option.

The same applies to how, having elements like ice and fire on your weapon and equipment is rather meaningless with our game design. If the game system has elements as a huge factor and let's say you face a boss who is weak against a certain element. Those who don't have the actions or weapons that are effective will need to start back from re-learning a certain move or go get that fire weapon that melts the boss. That being said, this is actually really fun if you get into it. You feel like you're getting stronger as you work hard for it and you feel more satisfaction after beating that boss with your new weapon. However, you need to put in a lot of time before you fight this single boss and if the next patch adds a boss with a different weakness, you have to start from scratch and learn another move and go get that weapon that the boss is weak against.

If this continues to go on, there will be a moment where you lose focus and at one point you collapse. That sort of game system is highly addictive with fear and uplift alongside each other with the merit where it's harder to get bored because it forces you to continue spending most of your time. But, people nowadays don't have that time anymore. If FFXIV had that old school type system, with how busy i am now, i wouldn't be able to play the game. I'm not saying it's outdated, and the coming era might prefer those types of games and they still have a potential to succeed by changing the business scheme, but like i said before, it just doesn't fit FFXIV.

That doesn't mean we aren't doing anything. Like the Zodiac weapons and anima weapons, we'd like to implement a "time to win" type route, but that will not be the pillar of the game, not in FFXIV at least. This is just an imagination, but 10 years into the future we might shift into a team consisted of members who all truly love FFXIV and we might take our risk to release an expansion with that kind of character development involved in it, but at the moment it's impossible.

Q. So you're saying, not all the current players want a strong character build element in the game.

A. Even if we did change our policy, starting with new players having a hard time getting into the game, a majority of the current players will also be like "I was only able to keep playing because of the current system!" and the problem is, those people don't raise their voices and log in normally or just fade out after getting bored of the game. We need to watch out for those players with no voices. With the feed back, data from the logs, the duration of subs for each player in mind, it's a part of my job to balance the demand of the player base. You can't run an MMO with just "esthesiography", so it's like studying everyday and i'm always being sandwiched by both sides. I personally have an interest in trying out various things, but that by itself will just be my ego.

Back when we released "A Realm Reborn", it was a one shot deal so i looked at the market and situation then designed the game to revive FFXIV, but even now, it's not like i can just make 100% of what i'd like to design in this world of FFXIV, so i'm looking at the balance in between.

Not having an endless element to build on your character is intentional and it's designed so you build up your item level instead. You don't obtain that by gaining experience points. You can clear content, take one step at a time to gradually get stronger, or skilled players can challenge harder content to run in front of everyone else. After reaching as far as you can go, it's true there might be nothing for you to do. In that case you can play a different job, craft or gather or play other games while you wait for the next patch which is no problem at all. We have kept that stance from the beginning and it's the core of FFXIV, so we have no intentions of changing that in the future. Of course, we do understand you will get bored of refreshing your item level at one point, but no matter what sort of game design you choose, you'll eventually get bored. I personally want to present a speech on this topic if i have the opportunity because it's such a deep subject, but today i'll finish it here.

For further development of the game, we are okay with adding totally new attractions such as using a huge area to explore or creating an area where you get one shotted unless you take the enemies out one by one, even if you have the best gear, but we aren't in the stages to place this in the center as the core of the game.

Q. During the 14 hour broadcast, you said you wanted to create an unexplored zone. Is that what you're referring to?

A. It's still just an initial idea, but we do talk about wanting to have something like that. FFXIV is designed where each job has a certain amount of capabilities to do mostly anything with 1 job, so an 8 man party is actually really strong, meaning that it's difficult creating monsters that trouble an 8 man party. So the base ends up being mechanically heavy. Placing a monster who hits like a truck and has a lot of HP is questionable for something that is fun.
At the moment we are slowly experimenting with the exploratory missions to observe how players move about and we are piling up experience on whether or not it fits the FFXIV system. We do have conversations about how we want to do something that is a compilation of all of what we experimented with.

This interview makes me appreciate Yoshi-P even more.

I love the part where he talks about the addictive nature of horizontal games and how he doesn't want that to crutch FFXIV.

Some players may disagree with his belief that folks who "run out of things to do" should just take a break and come back at the next patch, but I'd rather have a game that encourages taking breaks rather than a game that encourages an unhealthy lifestyle.

Eh, I think he's being too quick to dismiss post-cap variation among characters. Basically, it's possible to customize/grow without modeling XI's current JP system or even pre-ToAU merits. I mean, I get not wanting to feel so far behind, but you also get that "Nothing to do!" feeling if you're not about raiding/dungeon spamming, as those effectively ceiling other activities like crafting lower on the totem pole. And then there's the housing system...

People certainly won't like reading that he's okay with people taking a break/quitting for a certain period of time. That's effectively old-school MMO addiction rearing its head alongside the cancerous prestige element of gaming. But that's just the usual pleasing a small minority despite the majority that goes on in these games.

Yep, mine too.

As stated above, I'm glad that Yoshi recognizes the inherently unhealthy nature of games that cultivate addiction. And I think he has done a great job of making a fun game that allows for progression without making players feel like they MUST keep playing.

The game still needs more content like PoTD. The good news, though, is that more of this content appears to be on the way. I'm very curious to see how Squadrons/Tales develops over time, and I'm also excited to see the next phase of PoTD. I'm even looking forward to incremental changes with the Diadem. Although i235 gear isn't anything to get too worked up over, that's a great catch-up mechanic that will help at least one or two people in my weekly content static, which will help our group as a whole when we take on Sephirot and Nidhogg Ex. Heck, if we can catch up easy enough, maybe we can even try our hand with the first couple savage-level raid floors -- Yoshi said these are tuned to be easier than previous savage raid floors.

Bottom line, though, is that while it's OK for players to take breaks, there does need to be enough content in place so that people don't get completely bored and leave for months at a time. The ideal "break" would be short enough that people don't feel the need to unsubscribe. That's where I'm at right now. I look forward to clearing the bulk of a patch's content (which, to me, includes appropriately boosting the iLevel of my main job), and then I shift my attention toward other games (FFXI, Dragon Age Inquisition, Destiny) while logging into XIV for my weekly content static.

As a gamer, I'm very content with not always having to play just one game in order to keep my character adequately progressed. I can step on and off the treadmill whenever I want. That's a great feeling.

I also liked this comment:



I've always argued that hardcore raiders are the vocal minority, and that players like me tend to be the silent majority. According to Yoshi, I've been correct.

Edited, Sep 23rd 2016 10:49am by Thayos

The majority he is referring to includes players like myself. We're the ones who are happier with the current system because we're not punished for being busy and not having consistent playtimes.

That makes the minority the progression-oriented players who want the game to be more time-intensive with more ways to advance their characters. And in FFXIV, that's the raid community.

So yes, the vocal minority are raiders, and the silent majority are the casuals/alienated midcore.

I have no need to twist anything. Just read Yoshi's passage in the OP.

It feels like much more these days than say back in the day and that's regardless if you're 'older with responsibilities' or not. Games these days just aren't designed like they used to be. Some are fun but some can easily suck the fun out of it due to poor design decisions, like many mobile games.

They're extremely fun but then it hits you with "energy" or tries to force you to pay if you want to keep playing. Not even to get an advantage, to just play normally lol.

For XIV, the clear rates shows they really need to redo this game's itemization. You can get through A12S without even the tome gear or sophia weapons, so the ilvl honestly is meaningless (mostly due to boring stats) so yeah, people (of all playstyles) get bored pretty quickly when nothing is really...different. As much as people in the community loved to rag on XI, I never felt bored even if I did the same thing a lot because I had more than enough options for entertainment that ALSO benefited progression. XIV is really 1 path, even when there's 3 paths in front of you, there's realistically only 1, that leads you to get bored pretty quickly in an MMO.

Good, so the stats on endgame drops now are just as meaningful as they were during the best years of FFXI.

I see no problem here.

I basically agree with this. I mean WoW basically has item levels/vertical progression system and quite frankly it is so much better in just about every way except graphics and the fact that it isn't FF. Even then it has become a worse game than it used to be in terms of how well designed dungeons are (exception somewhat being the new Kharazan) etc even if Legion was better than the last few expansions.

I have never actually disagreed with SEs decision to make FFXIV a generic WoW clone because quite frankly they could not really take the risk of flopping a second time with ARR. I think they did the right thing, but that does not make me happy about the state of the game. Especially considering they seem so extremely afraid of even developing the game years/expansions later and I am not even talking about horizontal progression because that has always been off the table since the day they decided to make XIV a vertical progression game. I think the biggest issue I have always had with the game is what I quoted above, it just isn't fun regardless of whether I have something to do or not because the content is just badly designed compared to the games they tried to copy. I think XIV with its patches are good at adding good amounts of content. I think they are extremely bad at designing content (this goes for mechanics of classes etc as well). Regardless of the idea that the game is made for people to not play it.

Also, I like that he alludes to/recognizes the fact that whilst it might have been the best choice for SE and the world it was in when ARR was developed he realizes it might not be the best anymore for new games and the future. Considering pretty much every single mmorpg that has any hype is just about as far away from XIV as it can be confirms just that. The mmorpg world is changing yet again and it is away from what XIV is. I remember Hyanmen always talking about how people who liked XI should go home because XIV and its style was the future. Well apparently the future didn't last very long lol. Anyway XIV is what it is and there are people who like that which is great, but I do think they have things to learn and though I do believe they should stay true to the people who enjoy what it is, they should still try to develop somewhat instead of being stuck like they have been since release.

One thing I would just add though is that I think what annoys me about what the genre has looked like for a long time is the idea that casual = no long term goals and easy content when for myself who is definitely a casual, casual just = short play sessions. A game can have many different approaches and for me as long as I can achieve things within short sessions I am good to go. A dungeon does not have to be 10 min of gameplay. It can actually be 5h of gameplay as long as I can quit in the middle of it and continue on the next time I play. It would be more fun for those who play a lot and would not necessarily need to scare away those who play less. I mean there are problems with every system, I just wish there was a broader view of what a being a casual likes and can do.

Edited, Oct 5th 2016 8:57am by Belcrono