Q&A z tiskové konference na Fan Festu

Q: When we were hearing the keynote, typically you announce the region. But this time you didn’t do that. You only said new areas. Was that intentional?
A: That is a very good question and I’m trying to figure out how to put it into words. You did notice that the WoL is becoming the WoD. But as where they’re headed, we do know but we do not want to disclose the name of the area just yet. As you may be aware we are very focused on it being very story driven. As patch 4.5 is coming up we want the players to experience it first hand. We thought it was for the best to not expose the area off the bat. We’re sure players are already speculating. We welcome players to join in on that.

Q: I want to know is there any PvP information?
A: In terms of PvP we are going to be having the finals for the Feast championships. And Europe and Japan. Our first focus is to continue that momentum. If we introduce too many changes it may throw off the players. So our current goal is to maintain the current status. But in terms of content in general. There will be more in the PLL tomorrow. Please look forward to it.

Q: I found the fact 32 bit support dropping interesting. It happened with PS3. I would like to know if there’s any specifics on why Shadowbringers is technologically different to need the dropping of 32 bit support.
A: I may or may not be grasping the question but there are a few reasons we are ceasing support for the 32 bit platform. First of all the number of players who play 32 bit os is less than 2%. We have about 1.8%. The second reason is the issue of memory with 32 bit os. No matter how processor is the memory is capped at 2GB. Which is 1/4 of the PS4. It creates a bottleneck to create content. If we do not have enough memory to run those it will prevent us from adding more features.

Q: With the announcement of additional datacenters. Is there any plans to encourage growth in regions that are not supported such as Oceania?
A: I wont say we don’t have any plans at all but we still have not yet pushed those discussions yet. But just as I mentioned we do want to continue challenging ourselves and we have noticed the number of players are growing. We understand some players are not comfortable with latency and we would love to allow those players to play comfortably. We hope when discussions progress we will announce it as soon as we can. Especially we do understand about the Oceania region. We are definitly looking at it.

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about the trust system? Could it make FFXIV the next single player Final Fantasy experience?
A: We don’t want to make the game a single player game at all. We believe it’s a challenge we’re taking on as a MMORPG. I am also a MMO player so we understand it is necessary for a lot of people to play together. But at the same time there are players who play Final Fantasy and are more comfortable with a stand alone single player game. And they don’t want to play with other people or party up. But the challenge we are taking on is for the option especially for Main Scenario quests to be able to go through solo. Thats the basic concept for the trust system. That being said playing through the main scenario with a NPC will become more challenging. Or the NPC wont allow you to clear or even enter the content. We hope players can learn the basics of the MMORPG and shift into playing with other players. And the trust can act as a buffer.

Q: The current raid meta is pretty much a solved puzzle where the classes are always the same composition, when you’re adding multiple new classes it could just be classes shunned to the side. Is there any plans to correct this in the next expansion?
A: From what we have observed with players going into Alphascape, we believe there aren’t jobs that are shunned. We believe it’s fairly balanced. We believe it is our job to balance the game properly. This is something we have to face as a MMORPG. That being said with the expansion we want to visit how we are balancing jobs and add a another layer of adjustments. And we have plans for implementation of the new jobs and how balance will shift. But that will be revealed much closer to the launch and we will take the time to explain then.

Q: Why and when did you decide to create Fan Festival events and invite fans to make announcements for the expansion?
A: First and foremost this Fan Festival is our third time doing this large event. Even before I was tasked to handle FFXIV I have always been a fan of MMORPGs. Having a large event for one title and having a community come together to celebrate a title I felt was proof a title has succeeded (Ex Blizzcon, Everquest, FFXI). It was about 8 years ago when I took on the rebuilding. At that time if I had brought up Fan Festival people would have laughed at me. We had to rebuild the game first and to now do a world tour and share and relay that appreciation was a goal I had since taking over FFXIV. We strive to bring to our players content they can enjoy so we are able to take that and put it back into the game and show our appreciation through these events. We also feel maybe just having an event wouldn’t be enough which where we feel the announcements and excitement comes in and brings meaning to the events. We are very apprecative to have a CEO who supports these events. He came out as a Blue Mage! We do hope to be able support this cycle..

Q: Speaking of Blue Mage. What can you tell us about Blue Mage or Limited Jobs? Will they be able to join Duty Finder or be a form of solo progression?
A: We will answer this tomorrow in the PLL. Please stand by until tomorrow.

Q: A lot of players were upset that Ultimate isn’t present in 4.5. Should we expect 2 fights in the next expansion? What’s the plan going forward?
A: Are you trying to kill us? Just to clarify when we were planning UCoB we did have plans to bring in a battle for 4.5. The plans were there. Once UCoB came out and we worked on UWU we hadn’t started working on the development of that third battle. Once people started to beat the content and people were fatigued from the battle and people had the expression that if they had to do this every half a year it would be too much. We felt that it may be too much so we decided to cancel the content for 4.5 and shifted out focus to the expansion development instead. We know it has a sort of drug like effect for people who have beat it and want a new one from people who beat UWU.

Q: Can you go into detail about in game content for crafters and gatherers?
A: With any expansion will be adding new elements to DoH/DoL. It just so happens that one of the biggest contents you can experience is the rebuilding of Ishgard. With the rebuilding of Ishgard, which relates to the lore, although the Dragonsong war has ended there is a disparity between the common folk and the nobles. I can’t go into detail due to spoilers. But you will see the different classes come together and will see the narrative come together. They will interact with the game for an extended period of time. We want very few in the world to be able to create some of these recipes. We feel it’ll be something you haven’t seen yet.

Q: Do you plan to add more 4 player content similar to the MHW cross over?
A: The potential is there but there’s no plans for the release of Shadowbringers. But once the expansion is released it’s possible.

Q: When you announced merging TP and MP it’s a massive change. But there’s like a lot of UI changes as well. How big of a UI overhaul will we get in Shadowbringers?
A: So you may be aware with any MMORPG there are many different things you are keeping track of (DPS, Cooldowns, HP, MP, etc). And adding in another layer is extremely challenging for the development team as well. In terms of the resources we already utilize is not that massive from an engineering overhaul. We’re just converting one resource to another. We do have to be careful of balance due to the change. But as you had mention the UI team is definitely struggling through this transition. The party window will have to go through an overhaul. They facepalmed when they heard of the change.

Q: The game is available in several languages but not spanish. Any plans on bringing it to Spanish?
A: The reason is very simple. There are games that have been translated to Spanish from Square Enix. But with FFXIV because there are so many live updates in such a large volume unlike a stand alone game it’s going on real time so the translators will have to work with the development team to translate to a target language. We do work with external companies but we would need someone to work consistently with us and do not currently have the ability to support the load of translation for Spanish. We do strive to deliver our games all around the world and allow them to experience the game in their language. We hope one day we’ll have the opportunity to jump on Spanish.

Q: There is an incredible amount of polish on FFXIV but the content has fallen into a predictable pattern. What will you do in Shadowbringers to shake things up and keep players engaged?
A: I actually get this a lot but you have to understand to update at this pace will have to allow us to keep a pattern so to speak. We do understand that is a pattern that can be predicted but that’s why we introduced Eureka and Deep Dungeon and we’ll have the Blue Mage soon. So we do introduce some things which break up things but people don’t seem to include those in their consideration. We are making the effort to shake things up once and a while and the development team would be happy if people recognized there are new elements and I want to believe we are working really hard and are trying to shake things up once and a while and it can motivate our development team to put in the effort.