FFXIV: RPGSite Interview with YoshiFollow

No. I hope you survive the shock, but someone has to tell you: There is no "final destination" in MMOs. No credits. No "You Win" jingles. No Maren fairy floating through the final screen because you didn't die once. As the final destination does not exist, you are left with the journey to enjoy. That journey better be enjoyable throughout its whole length.

I also disagree with your - understandable, since backed up by ever-growing sales and subscription numbers - opinion that the genre is doing well. I think it is not. I think I'm not the only one who smells the sweaty armpits of stagnation. Not yet in player numbers, but in conceptual innovation. We've been minmaxing, geargrinding, guide reading, youtubing, voicechatting, buttonspamming and bossraiding for more than a decade now. It's time for something new. The whole concept of grind in spot A, become a elite player, sacrifice your youth for drop B is rotten. That's not adventure. It's too predictable to be adventure. I'm not the Jesus who has a solution. But at least I smell the rot.

Yes, some aspects of older MMO mechanics are solid. Standing in the same place grinding the same mob for hours at a time is not one of them. It isn't the amount of effort people have an issue with, it's the lack of an alternative.

FFXI Had missions that the player could undertake with a group to achieve recognition with a certain nation. You definitely had to be a certain level in order to complete them, but you were in no way capped before completing the mission. It was a good way to earn some okay gear, and there were some nice rewards too - access to airships - I believe. It's been a while since XI...

But essentially leveling and missions were two entirely different aspects of the game. Leveling was a constant grind while missions were decently exciting and variable to a certain degree. Whether or not the two should be integrated, I'm not sure... I think it could be done well, but it would require nearly endless, original quests/missions. What I'm interested in is how they go about dealing with leveling, which has been the same for me essentially since Pokemon Red for gameboy, and probably in the market long before then. I'm all for new, innovative ideas, but I think it has to maintain the satisfaction of the old system somehow...

It's all personal preference

WoW seems to be essentially the same 4 or 5 quests repeated in different areas over and over again. Sure they have different names and different quest givers, but they are basically the same. Fetch 6 of these, kill 10 of those. I didn't enjoy leveling in WoW all that much.

For the majority of FFXI's lifetime, leveling a character involved creating a party, going to an xp camp, and killing the same mobs over and over until it was time to switch camps. I'm not saying this is any less of a grind than WoW, but I personally enjoyed it a lot more. For one thing, leveling took me all over the world, including down into some pretty gnarly dungeons (KRT, SSG etc.). I didn't mind the grind because there always seemed to be good variety; Went a lot of places, killed a lot of different mob types. And I made a lot of friends because you couldn't accomplish sh*t in that game without other people. And, to be honest, the grind was broken up with enough other questing activities like AF, limit breaks, mission ranks, expansion questing etc. etc. There seemed to be so much variety (at least to me anyhow).

So if 2.0 ends up being quest based like WoW, I will be disappointed. Not because I am right and other people are wrong, but because I know what I prefer, and repeating the same 5 quest types repeatedly until I'm level whatever just isn't my flavor. There was something really fun about showing someone a "secret" camp where they had never been, that gave badass xp. Or that time you had the perfect pickup party that just kicked ass for 3 hours and you finished off a subjob. And please don't give me the rose-colored glasses bullsh*t. I know there were also times when you couldn't get an invite on a specific job or the WHM force DC'd after a 30 min walk to camp. I know all that sh*t- I lived through it too. But pound for pound, out of any game I've ever played, I enjoyed FFXI's version of "the grind" more than any other because, most of the time, I didn't feel like I was grinding. That's why I hope 2.0 doesn't end up like WoW. Call me crazy, but for some reason I want Final Fantasy to be like Final Fantasy...

But like I said, that's just my preference.

EQOA for the PS2 was also like this (more mob grinding, not quest grinding).

I definitely agree that it was a TON of fun to find a new place to grind mobs, and then tell your friends about it. Eventually the place would get overcrowded with people, and then you'd go find a new spot :)

It also made it exciting when a rare item was dropped off of "trash" mobs.

when it wasn't a nightmare (when people could actually complete it), was it at least fun? did it work as far as leveling-mechanics go?

Hmm. Your wording is very grey area.

To be specific, Maat for those who walked off the beaten path, was an unapologetic test of your ability to utalize the job you played. For most, however, it was a potluck challenge about how lucky your random number generator was when you followed a specific guide.

Red Mage is an absolutely perfect yardstick for this, and is one of the most infamous Maat fights.


In this fight, the guy borrowed gear from friends, followed a set guide, and it went smoothly...

Yet...


In this one, the RDM meleed, broke the guidlines, and had a harder fight of it, yet, won.

Which one was utilizing the job better? The one that followed the guide and played like a Psudo BLM? or the guy who stood toe to toe, messed up a bit, yet pulled out a victory?

Depending on how you approached Maat, it was more about luck than skill. A lot of FFXIV fights currently takes the luck part to a minimizing level. If you don't have the skill to meet certain circumstances, you die outright. To Kill a Raven, Ifrit, Garuda, Moogle, are all examples of this. You can't COMPLETELY take luck out of the equation, mind you, but the trend of fights in this game has really pressed for teamwork.

Making it a requirement to reach max level? Mmm, I'm not sure what I think about that - it screams too much "go hard or go home" which is a bad gameplay mechanic. The fights for Job Quests in FFXIV, especially Warrior and Dragoon's final job ability so did it right, IMO. Jobs are optional, but are the most desired for parties. Jobs are a party function, therefore the best advancement quests for jobs requires you to learn how to play as a team as the job is designed. More quests along that vein I can agree with an encourage. But let's not restrict raw leveling to it. That's a mechanic used to split the player base, not unite it.

Edit: Swaped out example for an actual 70 RDM

Edited, Aug 10th 2012 6:45pm by Hyrist

(Let me preface this by saying that this response isn't directed towards Filth, as much as it is directed towards people with the mentality of "game shouldn't contain anything that I can't defeat/accomplish in 10 minutes or the first time I try it". Filth just happened to "verbalize" an opinion that baffles me to this day.)

I guess you could call the Maat fight a roadblock, but then I'd have to ask roadblock to what? You can't "win" an MMO. If you mean roadblock to reaching level cap, then so is every single xp mob you fought as well. It's the contents of the game. It's what you pay money to do. So if it's a roadblock, or not fun, then maybe the game isn't for you. It blows me away how people say that FFXI was so sh*tty because it was so grindy, yet they played it for 8 years.

As far as the Maat fight specifically- yes you had to farm up a testimony, which had a sh*tty drop rate. And it involved killing mobs that were in dangerous areas. And you needed to ask people to help you farm. And this meant you eventually had to help them farm something in return. And there was probably death and homepointing involved. And then you still had to fight Maat and win. And it was challenging. But on the flip side... all that time people spent helping each other overcome these roadblocks actually established a pretty damn strong in-game community because noone could go out and solo the damn game like people can nowadays. To accomplish anything meant cooperation and teamwork, which is what made it fun in the first place. Why the hell would people want to pay a subscription fee to play an MMO by themselves???

And guess what- when you beat Matt, you announced it in your linkshell and people got excited for you. And you got really @#%^ing excited. Why? Because it wasn't easy. Noone gets excited when you hit level cap in WoW. Big deal. But during FFXI's earlier years, getting a job to 75 was a huge @#%^ing deal. I suppose this drove some people away, because it was a roadblock. It was hard. But there was a whole population of people that relished that difficulty. Because the fact that the game had a certain degree of unforgiving-ness (ok, I made that word up, but it fits) made succeeding at some random task like G5 actually feel like an accomplishment. Now maybe it might seem lame that doing something in a video game can give a person a sense of accomplishment, but hey, it's my hobby- I don't knock you for collecting stamps or comic books or whatever- to each his own.

The point is, FFXI was the last game I played that seemed challenging in any way. I actually got angry at that game. Leveling BST infuriated me. But I kept playing because it made me feel something other than Meh. And when I did "accomplish" something, it felt good. I haven't gotten that in any game since.

I'm sorry if this seems inflammatory to some people, I just can't wrap my head around what seems to be the current trend in MMO's- where you can easily solo to level cap in a few days playtime, and anything that is hard or time consuming is "bad content." It seems like it's all about getting to "end game" as fast as possible.... but for what? Probaly only 10% of my time playing FFXI could be considered end game. The other 90% was spent ENJOYING the journey. When I started playing WoW everyone was like "get to 85 as fast as possible so you can actually play WoW." I level by doing the same quests over and over by myself. Everyone stands in town at level cap waiting for raidfinder to group them etc. Where is the adventure in that?

Well, I can't comment on FFXI's current state of affairs because I haven't played since the level cap was 75. But I remember that when I was playing, there was definitely skill involved in endgame content. If people didn't know the role of their job during boss fights, alliances wiped.

And I will respectfully disagree with you on the "grinding the same easy boring mobs" statement. It all depended on how you liked to level. XP parties could be very challenging if you wanted to push the envelope with the speed of pulls and the amount of overcamping you would try. Yes, there were certainly parties that were slow and boring and basically safe and easy. But if I made the party and I was pulling, I liked to keep it interesting .

My point was, I really enjoyed the journey of FFXI. I felt like I accomplished things while I was playing. It had replay value for me because different jobs had vastly different roles so 1-75 was totally new as BLM as compared to WAR. I feel like that stuff was made possible by the way you leveled. I interacted with actual people instead of just NPC's. But like I said in an earlier post- it doesn't make it right, it just makes it my preference.

It's really not as easily reducible as "personal preference." Yeah, people have their preferences, but there are fundamental psychological and sociological trends that decide whether or not a game feature is generally enjoyable. As a result, there are approaches that are for the most part objectively better, if you're trying to quantify enjoyment. For example, WoW is objectively the best MMO, even though I personally don't care for it at all (and much of its success has to correct for sociological bandwagoning). I still have to acknowledge that it applies "the rules" well.

If we operate on the assumption that SE wants to make the best game it can for its general audience, personal preference goes out the window. There's a right way and a wrong way when you're considering the personal preferences of millions of potential players. You can make a pizza with nothing but sardines because your cousin Tommy likes it that way best, but don't expect to win any "World's Greatest Pizza" awards on the grounds of "personal preference."

And even more than that, most players don't know what they like until they like it. I didn't like shooters, didn't think I ever would, and still don't... oh, except for Borderlands. See, because I thought that I could rule out one feature that I generally didn't like: "shooters," and extrapolate that to say that I don't like shooters. But I do, when they're executed according to my other preferences. And that's what it comes down to: the entire execution, not whether you'll always like one feature or mechanic. That's why game design is a form of systems design. It's not one feature, but how all the features come together.

Pretty much everyone can enjoy a design feature that they don't generally like when the system is designed well. You may not like playing basketball, but I bet I could come up with a game that uses a basketball that you'd enjoy. It's the same for any video game feature.

Edited, Aug 10th 2012 7:53pm by Kachi

Eh, there was tons of challenging content in XI. Dynamis and Sea were some of the least of it, Assaults were generally a decent challenge, some of the CoP mission fights were incredible, and then you had the absurdly difficult things like Salvage and Einherjar. Did they ever even figure out how to legitimately beat AV? Haven't played in a few years, obviously, but I remember there being plenty of challenging content where you couldn't necessarily count on the same basic strategies to see you through, even more so if you didn't have an ideal configuration.

Depends on your definition of legit. I guess it could be called legit to send in waves of Kraken Club DRKs, but there really weren't any linkshells that were willing or able to fund something like that solely for the purpose of defeating an otherwise impossible fight. The only other ways it has been beaten was by circumventing natural game mechanics, a.k.a. 'hax'. It's been beaten beyond the level uncapping, but I would disqualify that being that the expansion is well beyond what should have been it's intended completion and nearly all of the items have now been rendered useless.


Prior to level uncap there were only a handful of strategies needed to clear 'challenging' content. Tank and spank(either mitigation or shadows), kiting, hate swapping(dual tank) or the occasional every man for themselves chaos.

Post level uncap there isn't much you can't take down using these strategies with a new one added. The newest addition to strategies only involves having SMNs for Perfect Defense, having SCHs for Embrava and the rest of the usual suspects.

I personally think that most of the 'challenge' of XI came in beating the horrendous RNG boss. There is the new Neo Nyzul which hasn't been proven to have been beaten(to my knowledge at all, but certainly not regularly if it has) without the use of flee tools.

XI's problem is that they keep introducing abilities that are far too overpowered and instead of normalizing them to the content, they design and implement content in an attempt to compensate. Basically, you're cornered into using the 'cookie-cutter' group composition and 'gently place face on keyboard and roll' tactics to win. I wouldn't even know where to start, but fixing enmity would be as good a place as any, I guess.

As much as I like the fact that you considered Melee a part of RDM's job, try justifying that to a party back in 06.

I would say it was more of a testament to understanding the basic mechanics of the game, than specifically knowing any one job in particular. That meant the fight itself was flexible and really isn't what you claim as far as 'someone must know x job to mastery'.

A brand new player couldn't fight themselves out of Sarutabaruta in the old days of FFXI, let alone a Maat fight, yet all a THF had to do was successfully steal form Maat once to win their fight, so your argument that Maat was a measuring stick for players isn't accurate at all.

Perhaps it was intended as such in concept, and yes, many people had to try multiple times to win. But ultimately the Maat fight never felt relevant to the job in particular. Dancer, Scholar, Blue Mage, Corsair, Puppetmaster - they all felt more relevant to the character involved, even if it was just a different NPC. And I'd say that FFXIV's job quests for many of them have felt more relevant than Maat's fight ever was.

In the future I hope they make more objective based job quests for them. Say for instance, one of the Trials for Dragoon is to maintain power surge 3 for a specific amount of time while having to hunt down and sometimes avoid enemies.

Or for White Mage, having to keep a specific NPC's HP up above a certain level and/or revive additional allies.

Objectives that are truly specific to the job's specialties, instead of a solo fight with hidden triggers.

Edited, Aug 13th 2012 4:19pm by Hyrist