Famitsu: Interview With Yoshida For Endwalker!

This is something that we try to keep in mind for all jobs, not just healers, so that we are making sure not to create an extreme difference in balance between all jobs.

The biggest difference will be the game experience, so on the aspect of putting up barriers, the method of approach, for both sides, will change.

For example, in the case of Scholar, they will be able to utilise fairy to heal and put up barriers when in combat.

On the other hand, Sage’s specialised weapon Nouliths, aren’t pets so their game experience will completely differ from Scholars when it comes to their offensive and defensive behaviour.

We of course plan to ensure there will be no issues when it comes to balance no matter who the players choose so that they will never face obstacles when clearing content.

I feel that it will depend mostly on player skill. Recently I’ve received feedback saying “There’s nothing much to do for healing” from the healers so we’ve increased the attack intensity on Eden Promise Savage, and made sure the damage received is tuned as tight as it can be.

Especially when early progression is concerned, if I were to put an example, having a composition of pure healers only would make clearing the content a bit hard to achieve. Without putting up barriers it will of course make things hard… so this flavoring aspect is why we purposely make our raid the way it is for this tier. Considering we split our job specifications for Endwalker, having one pure healer and one barrier healer will make clearing the content easier, and we plan to balance our content around that in mind.

I believe this has been mentioned earlier, but I do think some who utilises raid finder to do progression would think “so if I were to be matched with a composition of 2 pure healers, wouldn’t that mean it’s going to be impossible to clear?”, and they will have doubts about it.

In order to prevent that from happening, we’ll be adjusting our algorithm to match both sides (a composition of one barrier healer and one pure healer) as closely as possible.

The display will remain as healers. When it comes to instanced dungeons, any healer will be able to clear this, so there’s no need to worry about it. If we end up splitting the role, new players will understandably be confused about it, so we are going to make sure to not let that happen.

However, high end 8-man contents like Extreme or Savage will definitely be recommending a composition of one pure healer and one barrier healer, therefore we are not thinking all the way of putting a clear separation on how it will be displayed.

Although, if we’re reaching the point where we judged our current setup ended up causing any confusions, there is a possibility that we will adjust it. However, as of right now our development progress is barely over ⅓ here, so our verdict as of now would be to proceed without overdoing things.

We don’t think there will be any changes on the matter.

The conditions for accumulating Limit Break affects how many things are done in this game, including speedrunning.

If we put too much separation on classification here, we may end up creating a condition where doing certain stuff will create an advantage. Therefore we have no plans on doing further separation on the matter.

Currently there are tanks that may or may not be suitable to be main or sub tanks here, but considering they are all playable in their current state, we have no plans on changing it at the moment.

First of all, I’d like to touch on the numbers.

With future expansions like patch 7.0 and beyond are getting released, in case if we are to, say, add a new tank, we will end up having more than 5 jobs in that category (which will be more than the number of melee DPS).

Since there are many players who enjoy playing DPS roles here, for me personally, I would like to avoid situations where we do not add jobs that perform attacks during the release of an expansion.

To go into detail, currently among all the melee DPS we have right now, Dragoon is the only one who is standing at a special position here and if we are to talk about filling the slot, it’s natural that we will add it there.

Furthermore, on the question of “facing strict situations as melee DPS”, I believe the dev team is well aware of that issue itself.

It’s common in any other MMORPGs you see in the market where creating high end content with complex mechanics included as part of the design’s direction will see the existence of jobs or classes that have their movement and attack distance restricted.

How to get around this is something we’re currently trying to figure out which techniques to add to which jobs for Endwalker in order to prevent this issue from happening… In any case, we are making it so that Ranged DPS will not always get the advantage, and like how we create mechanics, we’re also currently thinking at a different axis rather than just adding jobs to solve the issue.

To give a decisive answer to that is actually difficult. (laughs bitterly)

I would usually approach Amano-sensei (refers to Yoshitaka Amano, the illustrator and character designer for many Final Fantasy artworks) directly and let him know my idea and concept for the logo, and he’ll illustrate them out after receiving the brief.

This applies to Final Fantasy XIV overall here but I think the story that is weaved throughout the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga does have the aspect of “hope against despair” here. For example, the same is also true for the image of that slight despair that was felt when the legacy of FFXIV was running, and from there comes the release of “A Realm Reborn”.

How the players will manage to find hope within the “despair over the apocalypse” situation will also be included as the theme for this expansion. The heroes who will face the hardships with the despair looming around them… this will be the nuance I wish the players would understand here. I apologise however for not being able to provide a more clear answer to this question right now.

That’s correct.

I believe players will be able to get the full picture once they go through the expansion, thinking “So that’s what it is all about!”.

On the circular thing that was illustrated behind the title logo - now is it really the moon? Perhaps it might even be the planet Hydaelyn… and this is where I want players to enjoy the upcoming main story on Patch 5.5 and it would be good for players form various speculations at the same time.

When I thought of how to illustrate what hope means to myself and other people in a straightforward manner, I thought Paladin would be the most suitable one to represent that theme among all the jobs in FFXIV. When I think about who would be the first one to move forward while carrying the burden of everything even when cornered, this job would be the best to represent that… so it was a straightforward reason and also the major one behind this decision.

To tell the truth, I did struggle a lot on that. To me, instead of portraying something that subverts everyone’s expectations, I’d say the desire to surpass the scope of imagination is actually much stronger here.

For example, the initial story structure of Shadowbringers would have the aspect of how tiring it must be for the players to be referred to as the heroes, or the Warriors of Light. Then from there the (both sides of) story became subverted, and the concept I ended up presenting was to have players “taking up the mantle and fight as the Warrior of Darkness” in order to “fight against the light to take back the darkness”.

So for the story this time, I want to change the experience by flipping the story inside out and look at it from an opposite perspective, therefore by deciding that we would want to illustrate the conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga at this particular timing, we then affirmed our resolution to deliver the conclusion that befits the epic finale you see in any Final Fantasy titles.

The Final Fantasy titles you’ve played up until now usually have the final portion of the story where it went “The Magical Continent floats up the sky!” or “This world is going to end!”, correct? In Endwalker, I’d like players to think of the overall saga as a story with the volume equivalent to (a new game software) once we reach there.

We have Paladin’s major skill - Passage of Arms here so it would be hard to create something that surpasses this. (laughs)

But of course, just because our main character is using Paladin this time does not mean we’re giving it a favor… so this is something I can say that is not limited to Paladin but to all jobs here, this also applies to parts where people would go “We want that too!” and by making it look even more awesome would make players who have their own favorite job like them more.

These are the ones we are currently making here and we would like players to look forward to it. We really want to work hard to meet your expectations.

It would feel too persistent if all the music is made to be overgrandious like those you hear in those impressive epic movies. So I told him to “make the strength of the music buildup to be nicely distributed across the scenario”.

To both Soken and I, the song Shadowbringers did pose quite a challenge for us. You can hear the Crystal Tower theme halfway into the song and it did give a Final Fantasy feel in it, but once you think over removing that part, the whole song was overall a challenging rock-based song.

I do think the song is very well received among the players here so in this expansion I requested Soken to have him “present them in a bold way that befits the situation of how the story of “FFXIV”, the game served as the 14th title in the series is coming to its first major end”.

I’m also sure that Soken would once again go “this is impossible with this schedule!” but at the same time still do his best on the matter. So I’d like all the players to look forward to his work once again.

This answer may contain subtle nuances but the dev team referred to that as platinum.

When thinking of trying to adopt the expression of of dawn as reflected in “Dawning Moon” seen on the title*, I told the staff members that “it’s neither black nor white, but a platinum-yellowish glitter that can only be seen in that very moment”, and their response to that remark was a face that gives out an expression of “you sure are asking a lot from us”. (laughs)

You can see that there are barely seen elements we have included that show either a faint gold or yellow in the logo.

Though Shadowbringers began its story with unique weather conditions where the night never comes, we are preparing another surprise for the players once again in the game. We are going to adjust the game to fit the colour theme that we’ve decided here so I’d like the players to think that the game will provide a somewhat platinum feel here.

I apologise if the colour expression ended up being vague but the overall image would be to express the glitter that is born after running through and reaching the finale of the story.

＊The “Dawning Moon” refers to the Japanese title of Endwalker.

In regards to new field movement actions, I’ve shared with my team and let them know that it’s alright not to add any new ones for this expansion. Especially since this expansion will conclude the Hydalyn-Zodiark saga, we would like to focus on bringing the feel of “Wow, we’ve come this far now. This game is definitely about to end!” and flare up the tension, and the entire expansion will be devoted to portray that whole conclusive feel.

With that in mind, the focus will be completely on how the player would control their character, progressing and at the same time experience the story and proceed to win many battles, and enjoy the adventure along the way. It’s because we precisely think that this would be the best game experience that we can offer that we made our mind to deliver this expansion pack with this experience in mind, therefore we want the players to pay their attention on this part. This is the first reason why we did not want to include any new actions this time.

And the other reason would be… well I’m sorry but I don’t think I have any more ideas for this. (bitterly laughs)

Considering this expansion is about traveling to the moon, and I was told by the dev team that “is it going to be zero gravity?”. But then I told them, “Wouldn’t that be the same as swimming”, as well as cases where you would no longer be able to land back to the ground once you jump high. (laughs)

Considering all the basic controls that revolve around game experiences are already in the game, I do think it’s not necessary to forcefully implement any elements just for the sake of it, and doing so would just end up having to go through such nuisance to make it work.

With that, my message to the dev team was mainly “You don’t have to do that”. Rather, I’d welcome anyone to let me know if they have any good ideas in mind! (laughs)

I believe that even in the real world, there are still researches going around that try to figure out what is the true nature of the moon, what lies at the far side of the moon, as well as what will happen to our universe in the future.

On top of that, there is a moment here where we have illustrated the bigger picture of “our own moon” and through that, players would get the feel that “I see, so this is how the FFXIV dev team defines the moon”, and that’s our goal here.

Furthermore, when you start looking up the moon, there is this sense of mystery that arouses your imagination…that’s the kind of thing we want to do here. Although the nuance may seem vague for now, we do plan on putting forward our portrayal of what we think the moon is like, since this is Final Fantasy we’re talking here.

By the way, the moon somehow has oxygen, so there will be no such thing as having any suffocation gauge that will appear on the screen, nor any elements that stop you from being there for long periods. (laughs)

That aspect and its backstory will be told in the story so please look forward to it.

The concept of this content is about “slow life” here so for example, elements that pit the players to compete against each other, or forcing the players to explore an area in an extremely efficient and speedy manner will be prevented at all costs. Although it will still require some form of communication with others, please think of this content as something you can do largely solo.

Regarding the aspect of commerce, we do plan on creating a system where you can plant crops and grow specialties in this inhabited island that you will spend time exploring, and with the game’s distribution system, you can trade or even exchange the results of your crops and specialties for gil and rewards.

We are not planning to include any elements that require any players to work hard because someone else has completed this particular achievement. It’s just that we want players to be able to explore and develop the island at their own pace.

You can use this place to contain and admire your favourite minions earned throughout the game, or you can bring animals into the place and grow them too. We would like players to enjoy them casually, and we’ll do our best to include elements that don’t require any form of competition against the players so they don’t have to worry too much about it.

Since this involves the scenario here so I don’t think I’ll be able to touch upon the updates too directly.

I’ve received many questions from players around the world where they wanted the feature to “expand to being able to clear 8-man content alone”, or “wouldn’t new players be happy if they can use the Trust system for old content?”. Personally I do want this feature to be expanded all the way through and by doing so should allow more players to have the chance in using this feature.

However, the algorithm of the Trust system is created with a strict, full-scratch method for each instance dungeon and it is thanks to this that the NPCs can move very smoothly here… therefore it required an enormous amount of development cost to make it work. We know this arduous process should be reduced, and we have to figure out how to incorporate this feature for a more general purpose use.

These are the challenges that we are facing right now. Although I cannot disclose the details right now, we’ll be happy if players can take that we are currently heading into expanding the feature into that direction.

Regarding the instance dungeons that will be encountered along with the story progression, all of them will be Trust compatible for the upcoming release of Endwalker. At the very least players should not have issues progressing the dungeons when they run through the story.

Of course, last but not least we’re also planning on having members of the Scions fighting their best in the battle and those moments will be included as part of the game experience.

To begin with, the stats provided by the accessories in terms of single item alone does not particularly have any effect on the overall stats.

Of course the impact on the stats would be big once we accumulate all the stats provided by the accessories, but just removing the belt alone affected only a small amount of stats in terms of its numbers.

However, in order to prevent the playing feel from being drastically altered because of the removal, we do plan on adjusting them appropriately so players do not need to worry about this.

In order to answer your question once again, we do plan on reallocating the stats and its parameters provided by the equipment we’re planning to remove elsewhere. On the other hand, the fact that our plan to downscale on stats for the upcoming expansion will have a big impact here so even if we are not changing inner formula calculations, the degree of the results brought by that change may be more pronounced compared to the results felt by the equipment slot removal.

However, even if that’s the case, we do plan on assuring that the change will be to the point where players will not even notice it and will gradually feel at ease.

Incidentally, when I brought up the question of the issue related to Materias, the dev team immediately responded to it and prepared a message to the players stating “there is no need to remove the Materias and we’ll do something about it so there is nothing to worry about”. So once the belts are given to Calamity Salvagers for safekeeping, you can once again approach them to have the Materias removed from the equipment so there is no need to prepare in advance at all.

Including desynthesising and all, that’s possible.

Aside from not being able to equip it, the only other change would be to add something like “This equipment was once thought to have protected adventurers’ waists” in the description section, I guess. (laughs)

Not only the rules will be changed but everything including the map as well.

Currently healers are in the state where they have the biggest responsibility and burden here and depending on their role in healing, their decision may affect the outcome of the battle.

On the other hand, there were strong inclinations where healers don’t feel motivated due to how taxing healing has become.

So our plan right now is to have all participants have self healing, and battle by utilising the speciality and characteristics of each job.

I think there is a rule in The Feast which is to “take down the enemy”, but having this rule alone will not guarantee survival.

The element of occupying your opponents base will also be added here so by moving away from the aspect of just “take down enemies” will bring out the casual aspects of this content as well as and its strategic gameplay through utilising the map.

Furthermore, other than the rating match, we’re making this game to cater to players who aim for a more free and flexible play; and those who only want to raise their PvP rank and fight their way through to get rewards, and either side will be able to match up and play.

As for the rewards, the content will offer not only equipment, but also rewards that will entice the players and fulfill their needs, and that’s what we are working on right now. We hope to provide you more details on that part in near future.

We’re planning on separating them starting with the next small scale PvP content.

Whether this means The Feast will remain or not I haven’t decided.

We may close down The Feast for the time being, and that’s what we can say for now. We want to fully commit and focus on the new content here and obtain feedback for the new content, and when that happens, we may end up splitting our playerbase if The Feast remains open, and the adjustments will be hard to do.

Therefore, the possibility of closing The Feast temporally is high.

I’m positive that he was summoned to Norvandt (The Heroes Gauntlet instance dungeon), therefore his story would continue from what happened during Stormblood. (laughs)

Regarding Hildibrand, there were some concerns where his content may have become stale, repetitive and lacking. Therefore we wanted to let the content rest for a bit and have him recharged a bit before we bring him back. Since he’s a character that is very well beloved by fans around the world, there were many voices and feedback on how they want to see the continuation of his adventures, therefore we are preparing for his return and do our best to answer the expectations of our players.

So please look forward to his return… I guess this will do for now? (laughs)

No, not at all.

We’re improving the rendering on the Playstation 5 and allow players to play with slightly better graphics. The rest will remain basically the same. However, we do think of reworking the graphics engine in the future.

All the assets we’ve created for the past 10 years ended up in enormous amounts here and on top of that, the data folder structure will have to be restructured in order to make this work. In addition to that, there’s also a demand for 4K texture support.

To begin with, I think we will have to change the way we work on creating the graphics in order to do this.

For example, to make the mantle flutter even more, we will have to change the concept called “bones” that are located on the rig, install a physics engine on it, and it is necessary to perform physical adjustments on each character in order to make this work. Doing so will end up overperforming here, so in order to deal with this, we will have to ensure that it will be possible to turn off the character physics calculations of other players. But if we do so, the mantle visual seen on other players will end up cracking because of this.

All of these elements will have to be included and fixed from the ground up, and considering we want to deliver the best game experience due to the importance of the end of Hydaelyn-Zodiark arc as well, the progress is currently put on hold for now.

However, we are indeed laying preliminary arrangements, and we are conducting research here. This applies to the Data Center Travel that was announced earlier but we are moving our projects forward on a multiyear basis here. so in a way, players are able to go on exciting adventures with the current spec required and this will be unchanged for now, and I want players to be able to do so without worrying too much.

However, you can interpret this whole answer as “Yoshida did mention that he wants to do this”, and I don’t mind if you tell readers that.

Adding to that, it would be great if you could also let them know that it will be a tremendous amount of work involved here. (laughs)