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 Naoki Yoshida {new XIV producer} Interview

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Khalus Akuhei
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Khalus Akuhei


Joined : 2008-05-21
Posts : 4384

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PostSubject: Naoki Yoshida {new XIV producer} Interview   Naoki Yoshida {new XIV producer} Interview Icon_minitimeThu Dec 30, 2010 10:36 pm

Page I:

The first part is mostly about the re-organization of the team and the company...

  • * They are still in the process of re-organization and he cannot say when it will be completed.
  • * Next steps are going to be "organization/sorting of information" (possibly talking about rumors, as in, telling which are true and which are false, not sure about that) and finding the reason for the hardware problems (lag issues? or maybe system requirements?).
  • * There will be a comment posted on the Lodestone on 01.01 explaining more about this and their plans and expectations for the next year.


Next part is about the game itself

  • * The first time he played the game was when he got assigned to his new post
  • * This means the first improvement of the UI was not his work.
  • * "Ease of understanding/interaction [of/with the game] comes before "making it interesting [for the player]", since a player cannot judge what's interesting about the game and what not if the interaction doesn't work properly.
  • * They are currently trying to make a system to be able to communicate with the players better (bi-directional communication, it seems).
  • * The most important thing to them at the moment is to make sure that if they promise something will be implemented, it really does.
  • * They are currently investigating what has to be done to get back out trust and make the service worth paying for.
  • * As far as I understood what he is saying, they base the decision on what to fix next on the feedback.



Page II:

Next part is about the UI


  • * If I understood him correctly, he is thinking about implementing a similar add-on-system for the UI as WOW depending on the feedback.
  • * He is not satisfied with the UI himself and that was the reason he asked Minagawa to be added to the team as he believes Minagawa won't lose to anyone when it comes to designing an UI.


About lag

  • * They are still working on optimizing the latencies, one of the reasons why the team got a new technical advisor, Hashimoto Yoshihisa.


About re-organization

  • * They are trying to work as efficiently as possible, concentrating at one issue at a time instead of trying to improve everything at once.
  • * He doesn't see FFXIV as finished and thinks the game will adapt itself to meet the expectations of the majority, BUT getting the player's trust is of higher priority.
  • * They categorize updates into 2 types, the ones making it easier to play the game (Interaction?) and ones adding new content. They are thinking about how to balance those 2 types and whether there might be a way to satisfy both expectations.
  • * As for the reason known bugs are not being fixed fast, he says it is because of the strict schedule the quality assurance team has to work under - they don't have enough time to test the patches before they have to be released.
  • * Solving these types of problems is one of the first steps the new team is taking.


About a public test server

  • * He says he played some NA MMOs and understands the demands for a test server. The reason SE didn't want one was because they thought it was a waste to set up a server for ~3000 players and only see about 100 of testers online a days. His personal opinion, however is that it's still worth it and even though he definitely wants to make a test server, he can't promise when.
  • * He also adds that even though they want more direct feedback and communication, it doesn't make sense to concentrate too much on the idea of a test server.


About graphic and the fact that recent updates made some improvements to frame rates

  • * They don't really want to change the graphics themselves to suit the slow systems like WOW does as it makes FF lose its own quality and style.
  • * They will continue to work on optimizing the system, but it is currently not of very high priority. He also mentions the PS3 version of FFXIV hinting that this should be the solution for those with weak PC systems.


About the PS3 version

  • * The reason for delaying the PS3 version this time was the fact that all the problems of the PC version piled up to the point of them wanting to concentrate on fixing those problems first.
  • * Since there were problems with the PS3 version itself, they thought it would be better for all players playing under same conditions for now - on the PC.
  • * At the end he assures that SE has not given up on the PS3 version and will definitely release it.



Page III:

About Yoshida himself:


  • * So far he was working on Dragon Quest and Monster Battle Road Series (?)
  • * He has been playing games for about 13 years; his first multiplayer game was Diablo, played for about 1 year. After that he played Ultima online for about 2 years and a half before moving on to Unreal Tournament. Next he started playing Diablo II LOD, stopping after 1 year and a half, moving on to Dark Age of Camelot which he played for 6 years. He also gave WOW and Everquest a try.
  • * He was mostly involved in developing consumer games so far (I guess they mean the offline games by that?); he had some experience in developing MMO related projects too.
  • * Even though his job at the moment is to understand how to make the most of the FFXIV client, he has to keep himself informed about the competition like WOW at the same time. He mentions something called Dungeon Finder; I guess it's an add-on for WOW? It seems as if he's trying to evaluate which ideas from other games could be put into FFXIV.


About his view on developing an MMO

  • * He is aware there are differences between developing a MMO and a single player game, and is calling MMOs "theme parks", a collection of "attractions" to appeal to different types of people, motivating them to play the game. But simply throwing different types of content wouldn't be a good idea (I didn't really get his theme park example about Disney Land and Cinderella’s Castle), so keeping the general theme of the park, in our case the MMO is very important.
  • * He sees the base of a MMO in the economy and the balance between the production, consuming and gathering of goods, so it's important to him for it to work properly.


Some random questions

  • * His favorite FF is FF7 and he wants to somehow bring the powerful atmosphere and the impact of FF7 to FFXIV.
  • * He says that there will be more events since he likes them himself and calls MMO a service business, meaning not listening to the customers won't work. The events are fun for them and fun for the customers at the same time. That's why he thinks it's important to keep organizing them.
  • * As for what kinds of events except for the seasonal ones are planned, he cannot say - look forward to it.


The last question is about how confident he is about the future:

He doesn't want to promise too much and rather watch and see how things go. For now, they want to go step by step and not rush things and make sure they keep their promises. He mentions better communication once again...
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Angstrom Sanchez

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Joined : 2010-01-14
Posts : 505

Naoki Yoshida {new XIV producer} Interview Empty
PostSubject: Re: Naoki Yoshida {new XIV producer} Interview   Naoki Yoshida {new XIV producer} Interview Icon_minitimeFri Dec 31, 2010 4:00 pm

I think thats exacly what all mmo company's should do .

It will be nice to see a company actually do it for once.

/looks at SOE with evil eye's


Fixing the lag and Polishing the UI. Agreed Im all in.

This should not take them that long. 2 patches at most i hope.
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