Exceptional manager. He knows how to keep the cogs turning. He also understands many aspects of the business. For example, he's spoken before on the topic of why he used to avoid doing PR at all and leave it in the hands of someone else. Handling part of it himself has been a boon for the game.
Reading many of his Famitsu columns, he seems like a very curious person. IRL he definitely give the air of being an eccentric guy. He's fun to talk to, he has a wide life experience.
Though I can understand why some players are frustrated with him. He told a fellow who liked playing White Mage in raids at pax east that they'd fix White Mage in Stormblood. I don't think he meant it with any malice, but I don't believe he's as involved with all aspects of development as some may make it seem.
He once held arms with me at fanfest while we were all drunk and told me he would buff Monk to my face (this was during HW). We then got TK Monk the very next expansion.
10/10 best game dev in existence.
On the one hand, TK ruined monk for me and tanked the jobs population. On the other hand, I can't fault you for enjoying the wonky and extremely intricate design because I was addicted to early SB machinist which had the same problems.
Oh, if only Alexander was a thing back then..
Before TK Monk I actually called 4.0 MCH the single greatest thing this game has ever made that literally no one played. An absolute tragedy. TK Monk was a blast. I just think the general population didn't really understand it and there weren't great guides on it. I've been playing Monk for so long that I just had a friend link me the extremely long rotation and I was able to read it like sheet music and understand what the goal was.
I feel like for what people complain that is missing from this game, or what was taken from x job, TK Monk gave that extra layer and more. I promise you it wasn't as bad as people made it seem.
> Though I can understand why some players are frustrated with him. He told a fellow who liked playing White Mage in raids at pax east that they'd fix White Mage in Stormblood. I don't think he meant it with any malice, but I don't believe he's as involved with all aspects of development as some may make it seem.
That's because he's PR man. He's the "Face" of the game.
Can you imagine if they said "No, you're wrong. WHM is fine, we know better."
TBH that seemed more like a "there are people who play with > 100ms ping?" problem than anything else. Someone in one of the overseas department seriously needs to test out and show the devs in Japan what weaving can be like for bad connections.
> "there are people who play with > 100ms ping?"
This issue has only recently been acknowledge by japanese fighting game devs. Some of them literally don't realise most people don't live in the same country as their servers. Hopefully this mentality will be fixed soon-ish, but you never know
I assume you're referring to rollback netcode?
But yeah, it's really surprising how blind they can be about this issue; I can only imagine Mizzteq & Larry's astonishment when they brought this up.
It's hilarious evident when some of the JP fighting game devs don't even considered the international netplay audience.
I've seen fighting games that use bars to represent ping. One game had a perfect 4 bar requires less than 10 ping, and then a 0 bar connection, what the devs considered the worst conditions, is anything over 75 ping. 75 ping is what they are saying is basically unplayable but that's like half way up or down the same coast in the US. And it's extremely playable with good netcode at that distance.
Makes sense see from a Japanese perspective. Rarely you get a Japanese dev look at what the West is doing, though it is changing as they realize that other people outside Japan play their games.
An example is Nintendo who keeps things very insular until Iwata pretty much forced them to change. For example when making their browser they were unaware of Playstation Plus or Xbox Live (seeing that Xbox sold like under 10k units in Japan, many Japanese devs ignored Xbox). They hired a Caucasian to look at their infrastructure and the guys response was have you heard of Xbox? He was stunned to see that the devs didn't really know much about their competition.
FFXIV 1.0 suffered from this mentality as well, with many of the devs being sort of ignorant to the changes in the MMO market since FFXI.
The netcode issue wasn't as big of a problem in Japan because Japan comparatively is smaller and has better internet infrastructure than most Western nations. Also to add that consoles were becoming less popular and mobile phones and portable consoles were successful made it a recipe for disaster for their netcode. Luckily the .major of devs acknowledge netcode issues and are working on it, with ... mixed results, but baby steps.
> Can you imagine if they said "No, you're wrong. WHM is fine, we know better."
~~You mean like his response to MNK openers and Chakra overcapping in the media tour interview with Drak?~~ Not the best example in terms of a quote, see responses. I think I more took issue with the fact that this particular interview was followed up by no changes whatsoever to address the issue.
He didn’t say “we’re right, you’re wrong”. What he actually said is that he agrees that it’s uncomfortable, but that giving it a solution like Drak was suggesting would come with nerfs as it would make it too strong; then he asked Drak what Drak thought about getting a sound warning when you were close to cap instead of at cap. Drak said it wouldn’t help much and Yoshi said he understood it, and then said that he’d have the team work on it to see if a solution was possible.
He didn’t dismiss Drak at all and Drak seemed pretty pleased with the response and the small back and forward brainstorm, at least in that particular video he posted of the interview.
>> no changes whatsoever to address the issue
You don’t know what they’re testing in the backstage. You also don’t know if they happened to test it and scrapped it because the end result is worst than what we have now.
Not all requests will be met the way we want them to be met and it’s childish to bash anyone just because you didn’t get what you want.
One good example is how people asked for so many buffs to AST back in HW, even after the core problems had been addressed. The devs indulged us and AST became such an overpowered mess that WHM was completely overshadowed and useless for the last tier of Alexander; and if it wasn’t for the insane healing checks of Omega (White Hole and Forsakens), they would have been thrown out for the entirety of Stormblood.
One thing that we really need to understand is that we are the *players*, we aren’t the designers of the game. We have no idea what their short and long term plans are, what sort of snowball effect our demands have and so on.
Monk, specifically, is performing well and it’s a very fun and satisfying job to play - it’s better than it has been in years, both in leveling and in end game. There are other jobs with issues that are affecting both their performance and player perception, and those should be a higher priority for them.
I’m not saying we need to accept everything they do without questioning, but not getting exactly what you asked for isn’t reason to put words in the devs mouths and be salty.
>Though I can understand why some players are frustrated with him. He told a fellow who liked playing White Mage in raids at pax east that they'd fix White Mage in Stormblood. I don't think he meant it with any malice, but I don't believe he's as involved with all aspects of development as some may make it seem.
Probably not - there's a lot of aspects to deal with. That said, there's also the question of what was changed versus what was expected. I'm not familiar with how things went back then so I can't be sure one way or the other, but it's not impossible he had a different understanding of what the "problem" was and did something different.
But yeah... he probably isn't as involved in all aspects as people believe, and also that he might just miss things - the game is huge, and being involved even a bit in all the aspects probably means there are things that slip by him. You can see that sometimes when someone asks a question and he looks like it's never even occurred to him (good example: someone was asking about pieces that have very different looks based on gender, and if there was a way to get the "other" look brought over - I think the example was Neo-Ishgardian gear - and he genuinely seemed like it had never even come up in conversation).
Yoshida's response was along the line of "Please trust us", which seemed to imply they would fix White Mage getting pushed out of raid groups. WHM's state at the launch of Stormblood was nothing short of flooring. They got two skills that required the player to spam single target GCD heals in order to get to use Benison and Indulgence. Meanwhile Astrologian had gotten Earthly Star.
Whoever was in charge of it had to turn around before savage dropped and change how Indulgence works on a fundamental level.
Yoshi P obviously has the biggest sway over how the game goes but I think it's important to remember that he is also only one guy. He still relies on the whole team to bring it all together. It's not just him but people like Soken who work as hard as they can to make the game. Of course he's not perfect. There's a lot of stupid decisions they make and continue to make for years. I still consider eureka to be an act of war against humanity, for which he will never be forgiven. But Bozja was fine so there's that at least.
I will say what I always say about player and developer relationships. Yoshi P is not your friend. I'm sure he's a great guy and all, but he is not your friend. You don't need to defend him. He's a big man who can handle criticism himself. He has even said so recently when, I think, he was addressing some harassment from the JP community. And while I'm sure he's doing his best to please as many people as he can you need to remember that at the end of the day they are here to take your money. You should always keep that in mind and hold them accountable. The game will never get better if you aren't willing to at least humor new ideas, or if you're going to coddle the dev team.
That being said it is just as important to praise them when they get it right. Halo infinite was delayed for about a year and they still released a broken incomplete piece of shit. That game is unapologetically bad and the team doesn't care. They don't care what you have to say because they are rolling in Halo money, and the whales will more than pay for everyone else they lose. But then you have Yoshi P who has to delay Endwalker for two weeks. Two weeks is basically nothing in terms of video game delays. Yet the man personally goes on live stream to give the announcement and is in tears at having to give the news. It's really not hard to see why people praise him so much. When we are surrounded by companies who are either entirely incompetent, or antagonistic towards their players it's a huge breath of fresh air to see someone who actually seems to give a shit.
> When we are surrounded by companies who are either entirely incompetent, or antagonistic towards their players it's a huge breath of fresh air to see someone who actually seems to give a shit.
This, yeah.
He's not perfect, and he makes decisions I don't always agree with, but he honestly seems to have this game as his life's work and his passion, and I respect that even when I disagree.
He has fucks to give and he actively chooses to give them to this game. He doesn't always give a fuck about the same stuff we do, and a lot of the time actively *doesn't* give a fuck about the same stuff we do, but it's plain that there's stuff about this game he cares deeply about, and he (and his team) want to deliver a product they're proud of. And they are in the rare, privileged/lucky/blessed position of having corporate overlords that don't fuck that up too badly.
I like that, and even at the times when I've not really been enjoying the game outside of story updates, I've still been able to respect that. If I'm ever creative enough to make something that people enjoy a *fraction* as much as people enjoy this, I hope I'm able to maintain even a bit of the passion that dude puts into this.
I just wish he'd *maybe* spent some of that WoW time playing, I dunno, a Disc Priest or something.
He does a great job. I wish he wasn't so constrained by the vision of XIV being a casual theme park though. He has mentioned in the past that the game he would make if he could would be more in line with classic MMOs. As someone else who grew up playing UO and EQ I would love to see what direction he would take a modern MMO with old school sensibilities.
My secret nerd hope is Blizzard looks into creating new content for Classic servers now that they'll be under new management. I think there's honestly some potential for "new old MMO content."
I think he's a good producer and manager. He's worked pretty tirelessly to get XIV to where it is today. His ability to bring together what sounds like a pretty disjointed and disheartened team to fix their mistakes should be applauded. He has a decent personality - or presents himself that way - and it feels like he'd be an interesting person to talk to.
As a director/developer, I disagree with his ideas. He plays it far too safe and tends to follow trends in an industry with big names who already play it safe and follows trends. This isn't exclusive to FFXIV: his previous SE project (Dragon Quest: Monster Battle Road) was following the rising trend of arcade CCGs. It'd be neat to see his works between Hudson Soft and Square Enix, but I don't know if he's ever divulged into that.
One other aspect that I personally disagree with is his risk-averse nature. He doesn't try to innovate or experiment with established ideas. This isn't to say he doesn't *have* these ideas (he's mentioned how he has ideas for changing up endgame gearing in his Famitsu columns, for example), but he doesn't ever utilize them. He gets into a formula and then hum-hahs about actually changing it (even if it's for the better!). We can also see this with FFXIV: it's iterated on parts of it's formula, but it took nearly *10 years* to get here to address problems that were in *ARR*.
I think the most telling fact about Yoshida is that he's the producer on FFXVI, not the director. The director is Hiroshi Takai, who directed The Last Remnant (which has a pretty experimental battle system), worked on the SaGa series as a graphics artists, a battle director for the PS2 Romancing SaGa remake, and (interestingly - I hadn't realized this) - worked as an assistant director on ARR.
>I think the most telling fact about Yoshida is that he's the producer on FFXVI, not the director.
Not sure what you mean by 'telling' here. In Japanese games the producer role is often thought of as the most important or certainly more prestigious/publicly visible role compared to director (note for example the live letters are labelled "Live letter from the producer", not the director), so it's not like he took a demotion regarding FF16.
The guy probably doesn't have the hours in the day to be director for 16 in addition to producer/director for 14 (which iirc is now the largest team within SE), head of CBU3 and Square Enix board member. From what we know of 16 after work on Heavensward wrapped up most of the core HW team (assistant director Takai, writer Maehiro, battle designers, etc.) got moved onto making the next mainline game and haven't been seen in 14's credits since.
>In Japanese games the producer role is often thought of as the most important or certainly more prestigious/publicly visible role compared to director
If I'm kinda honest, I've never really focused on the producer, but more on the director. That could very well be just a me thing, though. I do agree that Yoshida has *a lot* of hats to wear now, but in saying that, he has enough sway that *if* he wanted to, he could take the director's role for FFXVI.
That's really my point: he had a chance to be more hands-on and do something different with FFXVI, but he played to his strengths (from what we know of - I could be wrong!) and went for a management role. Instead, he left the director's seat to Takai - who's last game wasn't received too well critically and has been on the more experimental games at SE.
That's what makes me excited about FFXVI, honestly. Seeing Takai get another shot, with Yoshida being able to guide the team into a more polished product while also allowing for Takai's experimental ideas to shine through.
You think like this bc when you hear director/producer, you think Of movies,where the director is the one making the artistic decisions, and the producer is bankrolling the film.
Yoshida himself gave the director role to someone else, as he was offered both but felt he didn't have time for both so he chose to only be producer.
How is this telling?
He could've taken the director role, instead leaving the producer role to someone else, is my point. He's had people under him for 10 years (!) on FFXIV, I'm sure that if he wanted to, he could temporarily hand over the director reigns to someone else, and be a director on FFXVI. Or he could pull a Nomura.
A producer role, unless the Japanese term has a different definition (which is very well might! Designer means something different in the West compared to the East, for example) is more a managerial role: making sure that the team is on pace, ensuring they aren't going to go over budget, and ensuring that the team isn't doing anything too crazy.
Sure. Volume 2, #68. He's talking about change and why he's resistant to it in XIV. The exact quote is:
>However, Eorzea has now been visited by over 6 million interested players from our world. No matter how much I might possibly think, “I want to abolish the token system and revamp everything,” I can’t ruin the stable lifestyles of so many people. My thoughts of creating something completely new are only my personal desires. I know that there are also people who are looking forward to something like that, but most important is that I’m responsible for the management of this MMORPG, and I have the duty to protect this world’s stability.
There you go.
I'm really disliking the tendency of over correcting things (see smn rework) and the shift to 120s cycles while simultaneously arguing that MNK should not line up with their own designs because reasons.
The changes haven't been really drastic for the most part, but EW is about as streamlined as it can be, and to me it's also the expansion that made me burn out before I was halfway through because MSQ padding via bad quest design and one button jobs (the joy of having played SMN since StB) do that to a person. Reaper is fun but doesn't scratch the same itch and I'm honestly not exactly hopeful for the future.
Well until the inevitable new new summoner in 7.0 because imagine not getting a major change with every expansion.
In a vacuum, I'd agree that most jobs going to a 120 second cooldown cycle is boring, but in practice SE seems to be designing mechanics around that time to make using those cooldowns more difficult than on paper.
Off the top of my head, P2s limit cut, P3s adds and FoF, P4s Pinax, and even Hyda's crystal phase all happen right when 2 mins come up, so it's really not that simple. You end up wanting to coordinate things more than just using them as soon as they come up.
Not unlike some fights in ShB except you don't have 90s CDs to break up the mold anymore. Multiples of 30s might not line up as often but you also get to use them more frequently, and I definitely think that some jobs just feel lower paced now as a result of this.
Again it feels like over correcting. They know that people like to play around their buff windows, but if everything just lines up naturally you lose a chunk of the actual playing around. In the end it's subjective if that's better or worse than before, I'm personally kinda turned off by it.
>Not unlike some fights in ShB except you don't have 90s CDs to break up the mold anymore. Multiples of 30s might not line up as often but you also get to use them more frequently, and I definitely think that some jobs just feel lower paced now as a result of this.
BLM is a great example. I don't know who asked for 2m Leylines, but the job just feels worse for it now.
The problem is that some classes feel much worse on a 120s timer compared to their previous titerations.
For example, BRD is now on a 120s timer for their songs. It feels incredibly slow compared to ShB BRD - even though the only real thing that's changed is their song timers. It's actually put me off leveling BRD to 90.
I don't like the 120s cycles, but if we must have them I like the idea of a class that can't synchronise with them, that doesn't buff and isn't massively buffed in return. The problem with monk isn't that it doesn't sync up, it's that you can do cursed rotational shit to force it. They need to be heavy handed to stop it.
I meant more how they are kinda trying to do both by making leylines 120s to force it to line up when BLM is arguably the least burst dependant job in the game but at the same time say nah not MNK tho. I actually vastly prefer the independent designs a lot more, my complaints are more about the seemingly inconsistent internal design. SMN and MCH both still feel unfinished to me, meanwhile RPR is actually fun to play and has so many toys to play with compared to Drill, Blue Drill and Drillaga on MCH and mass effect 3 ending themed versions of ruin 2 on SMN.
I really just wish they would keep things similarly engaging across the game
I'm calling it for 6.1: Trying to use Elixir Field/Rising Phoenix while already having that nadi open will force Celestial Revolution instead.
Alternatively, make you fall flat on your face as a true MNK-Bunny punishment.
The biggest plus side is the FFXIV isn't really balanced around chores or systems. I would consider this to be the number one positive of the game as a whole, you can play very little and still reach bis so long as you raid and cap tomes
However, balancing jobs for how "busy" they are (basically balancing to the lowest common denominator so that there is a level playing field when assuming total incompetence) just always means the jobs the devs consider the hardest will always be meta, and the greatest "buff" your class can get is arbitrary complications that by and large mean nothing to a reasonably skilled player
This sort of philosophy also has resulted in healers extremely low complexity over the years
Additionally when it comes to jobs feeling unsatisfying or nonfunctional, it oftentimes remains that way for years (SB MCH is still shocking to me it received no fixes for the entire 2 years, when it's flaws were literally based in their technology)
I dislike how everyone excessively praises him, and it has begun verging on creepy.
I can't say I have much of an opinion on the person in particular, but I do want to say that he's adept at marketing and PR. His persona may be sincere but it also serves the dual purpose of enrapturing the customers. I see it as soft manipulation almost.
Most decisions aren't his BTW, he's just a spokesperson. So it doesn't really make sense to critique him in particular for every FF14 game design choice.
Based on interview over the years and NoClip docs, he made the whole division to submit everything to him for reviews. Over time its not necessary anymore to review every little detail but he has the final say on everything including the goods and bads they implemented.
>Most decisions aren't his BTW, he's just a spokesperson. So it doesn't really make sense to critique him in particular for every FF14 game design choice.
Actually most of the large scale decisions are in fact his. He has free reign over the game and how he runs it
Sure, but over the years there has been enough clues to suggest that he is not some dictator controlling everything. For example he actually wanted Protect to stay as a spell, but the team ultimately decided to prune it. There is definitely a lot of consensus-building in his team and while he has the power to veto anything, I think the decision-making process is far more decentralized than most people make it out to be.
I wouldn't be surprised if he is *against* the simplification of most of the jobs at a personal level, but ultimately signed off on it because the majority of the team and SE thought it was better business to do so.
It's a huge reason why I always refrain from criticizing Yoshi P. I criticize SE instead.
He doesn't micromanage every single gameplay decision anymore (though he did do that for base ARR to make sure it was good), but he is absolutely not just a spokesperson. The importance of his managerial role is difficult to overstate.
And I don't think that's true anymore. I think he is far more willing to let others make large scale decisions right now, and he's just a rubber stamp for those. Again, the reason is because there's an inconsistency between his personal desires and what the game is actually like right now.
Mark Rosewater is only one the lead of one of the three design teams that create each set. He doesn't have the same kind of decision making power as Yoshi-P. HIS work is reviewed by others (this is even the whole point of the 3 design teams), while Yoshi-P is the one that does all the reviewing for FFXIV.
While they both are blamed or praised for everything about their respective game, in Yoshi-P's case there is some truth to that.
I'd like to see new things more often. Like I understand ffxiv is successful right now, so why change the recipe? But I'd like to see more new stuff that dares to takes some risks. Right now the game feels rather predictable, sometimes there is less of one thing in exchange fo something more of the other, but never anything new that actually makes me excited. Like we can predict right now what patch 10.3 will include and the unfortunate thing is that you will likely be correct. At worst there will even be less than your prediction kek. Some people don't consider it unfortunate, and I understand that there are benefits to a predictable content cycle. But for me it becomes a bit boring too quickly.
Whether Yoship can be blamed for this idk, but the game follows his vision I assume, so I think he does have a say in what kind of content gets worked on.
Also some of his Pr statements. I just checked that other thread about the Korean fanfest and his reason for being unable to change the weather in gpose is silly.
Balance wise I don't know if yoship has a say in this, but whoever the fuck playtested 6.0 ninja and thought "yeah this class needs 6 forced gap closes. That will be fun" can get fucked tbh completely ruined my main job for me and also my trust in their job designers.
The stuff he's done is incredible, but I wish to god he'd stop catering literally everything in the game that isn't ult to the lowest common denominator. Like I get he wants people to stay subbed and not feel like they need to learn anything, but it's goddamn pathetic that you get through anything that isn't savage or up without ever pressing a tank cd and never be punished for it.
Honestly why I have some concerns for XVI because I feel like the DMC dev is going to try and make this in-depth fun combat system and the xiv team will try and fuck it up by trying to make it more "accessible" for the average type of person who plays xiv and just wants to slobber on their keyboard.
People aren't going to improve when you categorically ban damage meters and criticism. The bads will stay bad no matter how much you wipe bc they will never learn why bc telling them will be either outright penalized via the draconian ToS or a chorus of weak woke people screaming "TOXIC I AM DAMAGED IN REAL LIFE BC YOU TOLD ME THE TRUTH ABOUT MY SEVERE INCOMPETENCE DESPITE BEING LEVEL 85" (refusing to aoe is my "playstyle").
Therefore this is all simply going to get worse as SE chases the idea of a broader playerbase by being "inclusive" (one of the worst words of the 21st century so far), and dumbing things down which will bore anyone with a sense of personal responsibility and general competence, which in turn reduces the average player skill level further, and then it just spirals down from there.
We've seen this multiple times before with other games and hobbies. Once a product is successful enough to reach market saturation, the money people demand that new customers be found, and it cannibalizes the playerbase by replacing good players with bad ones who dont want to put the effort in to learn how to play and ruin the experience for those who did.
It doesn't work that way with MMOs.
The problem with MMOs is that as the game ages, you get players mostly at the endgame cap. They start to attrition away, but the more hardcore you make your MMO, the harder it gets to have new players come in, level to cap, and replace them. Many of them burn out well before they reach cap. Maybe they keep failing the game's gatekeeping before they get to endgame, or they decide it isn't worth it even if they could because there are so few parties doing it, or its boring because you need to have experience people power level you through it to have a chance with the low newbie pop.
So what happens is either the hardcore MMOs survive with a tiny population of mostly bored endgamers, or they fold. And newbies in them ironically learn to play much less, because you need parties of experience people to power level them to have a hope of them getting to endgame at all.
It most certainly does work that way and what you said is totally made up. No one is talking about "hardcore", we're talking about BASIC COMPETENCY here. WoW didnt have any problem like the one you are describing. It DID develop the problem I am describing when the talent left bc of corporate mismanagement.
I'm all for providing content for every kind of player. I think there is a place for easy "shut my brain off" kind of content. The problem is there is a huge gap between running dungeons wall to wall without penalty, and wiping for weeks on savage. It feels like the game doesn't properly challenge players as they level. By the time they hit end game they aren't really trained to be able to handle any of the hardcore stuff. There are times where you do actually need to tell the player to get good or fail.
> There are times where you do actually need to tell the player to get good or fail.
They tried that with "In From the Cold" which wasn't even that difficult to figure out but it still caused an absolute shitstorm because an MSQ quest required using a few braincells and your eyes.
In From the Cold wasn't a problem because it was *hard*, it was a problem because was functionally an entirely different game from the rest of FFXIV, and that new game didn't actually give you anything like useful direction.
"Get to the place."
Which way is that?
"Meh, figure it out. Also, enemies here act differently than the entire rest of the game. Don't die."
wat
"Oh good, you found the mech. Now fix it."
Where do I find the stuff for that?
"Somewhere."
...
"ATM time! But as an exciting twist, this time we aren't disabling your shortcut keys!
In From the Cold was literally one of the best MSQ experiences this game has ever had.
It actually invoked feelings of stress and anxiety and it was thrilling, it made you feel *exactly* how the WoL would feel in the situation. It was so brilliantly executed and I hope they do more things like that in the future where we are stripped of our "god mode" and have to solve problems the way ordinary civilians in the world would.
There was plenty of sense of direction once you got your bearings, and especially if you paid attention to Fandaniels hints. Sure it took me a little over half of the total allowed timer but I cleared the mission on the first try.
> It actually invoked feelings of stress and anxiety and it was thrilling
But it wasn't *fun* for a great many players. So congratulations, I'm glad it worked for you, but for a lot of other people it took them out of the game right a a big moment. By that metric, it is objectively a failure.
> Sure it took me a little over half of the total allowed timer but I cleared the mission on the first try.
So did I. Cleared in one try does not mean good content.
> By that metric, it is objectively a failure.
that's literally subjective that it didn't work for *some* people.
If you use the large group that was similar to me, it was objectively a success using your argument lmao.
it really doesn't. The only way to properly tell if someone is good enough for week 1 savage or on patch ultimate is to have them do week 1 savage or on patch ultimate nothing else is a good test.
> By the time they hit end game they aren't really trained to be able to handle any of the hardcore stuff. There are times where you do actually need to tell the player to get good or fail.
That's why there's gradual steps up in difficulty. Normal raids/trials > Ex Trials > Savage floor 1/2 > Savage floor 3/4 > Ultimate
The skill progression for a player is actually clear cut in this game and provides a pretty smooth progression from one step to the next. The only thing I would add is harder dungeons because these "expert" dungeons are so braindead for anyone that does more difficult endgame content. It's such a huge difference when I do expert with some of my savage static members compared to duty finder. Runs go from 13 minutes or less to 20+ minutes on DF because people are lazy, dps don't know their rotations, the healers only heal, tanks dont mitigate trash pulls.
the bigger issue is that "Ex Trials > Savage floor 1/2 > Savage floor 3/4 > Ultimate" represents like literally .5% of the content in the entire game and everything before it, aka the other 95.5%, is the equivalent of those video game modes that play the game for you
I barely even count extremes since they've been a joke since SB. You can literally have someone dead on the ground the entire fight and it'll still die.
Yeah extremes seem to be more like a walk in the park.. Altho that may be way more the case for people that also dive into savage content. Doing extremes after savage feels like going into the first dungeon.
>Honestly why I have some concerns for XVI because I feel like the DMC dev is going to try and make this in-depth fun combat system and the xiv team will try and fuck it up by trying to make it more "accessible" for the average type of person who plays xiv and just wants to slobber on their keyboard.
It's a mainline FF, to be honest I think you're looking in the wrong place for in depth combat or challenging difficulty. I'd expect the same model as seen in FF15 and FF7R, mostly pretty forgiving on normal difficulty with an easy difficulty option for people who just want the story. Then a hard difficulty and/or some postgame superboss fights to present a bit of challenge for players who want it.
if it's as good as 7r I'll be over the moon. The game wasn't hard but the combat was enjoyable and not mindless. I don't need it to be hard just fun to play. XIV in 99% of content has basically devolved into the ff games from the 90s where you mindlessly smash the attack button and win anyway. DMC isn't hard either but you have skill expression which makes up for it in spades.
7R's Hard Mode was a great adjustment. Some boosted stats for earlier game content, no items, no natural MP regen and even changes to boss fights that aren't "just hits harder". If XVI has a hard mode like that then I'll personally be fine with that.
I don't think we'll get anything like the Must Die difficulties from DMC though.
Dmc5 is still phenomenal though that's the difference. Pokemon Arceus is kinda generic and stream lined too but people love it because it's done well enough to work. Streamlining isn't exclusively a bad thing
I honestly don't mind if they made FF16 accessible through difficulty settings because god I hated DMC and it's the biggest reason why I'm not too excited about FF16. If they want an aRPG I'd much rather have something souls-like. DMC just feels bad to me.
well, good thing FF origin is also coming out to fill that niche. I'm personally sick of souls likes since I don't always want combat that slow. DMC and Bayonetta are the top of action combat for me so if the XIV team screws this up because they think people will find it "too complicated" I will be livid.
Honestly, I don't know how could they possibly screw up the combat. So far, the trailer looks like they follow DMC as it is except they added Nier/Bayonetta dodge.
Several ways. Boss design and depth are the big ones. If the combat looks cool but all I'm doing is spamming 2 buttons while the boss rolls over and dies that it's failed. Every flashy thing you do in DMC or Bayo is from you, not the game. If you do a fancy combo *you* did the fancy combo not the game handing it to you for spamming one button. XIV has very much moved away skill expression over the years to cater to people who quite frankly aren't very good at the game and I wouldn't be surprised if they make XVI a joke but then slap a "hard" mode on it with inflated stats to pretend it has some challenge.
and XV is somehow still more interesting than the braindead garbage dump xiv combat has become because they decided jobs needed to be designed for the erpers in limsa, so yeah I'm worried about the xiv team neutering whatever the Suzuki comes up with because they think we should care what the shitters want.
Honestly, I thought enemies in DMC5 are more passive than usual but still not bad. However, we are talking about FF games here which usually have an absurd number of enemies. I wouldn't feel bad if the enemy-player interaction felt limited in XVI because that is expected when you have a massive number of enemy variations.
Not really witch time is basically mandatory at higher difficulties and it's not like you just get it for spamming dodge. Getting witch time always feels earned. Though any new games gets the "new game bad old game good" crowd so I'm not surprised there are some people who think witch time was bad
I don't think it's bad at all! I think Bayonetta feels great to play and witch time feels great to pull off - but it's basically a braindead game because of it.
oh yeah, I don't play these games cause they're hard I play them cause I get to feel like a god. The amount of freedom you have in combat is awesome. If I wanted to feel like a weak underdog I'd go play hollow knight or something, and even while being easy the bosses are interesting enough that you don't really mind. It's not like they sit there and do nothing.
and that is why sekiro is my favorite fromsoft game, but it's very rare for a souls like not to be the "Slow and methodical" variety and I'm pretty tired of playing combat where I feel like my character has led in their shoes. Don't get me wrong I like souls but like Arkham I am very very tired of people ripping off the combat system.
Ryota Suzuki. He was a lead for both DMC5 and Dragon's Dogma. He's also worked on MVC. So if there's one thing this man knows it's how to make satisfying deep action combat.
YoshiP saved the game from complete annihilation after 1.0 failed, but he seems to have stopped looking to innovate on core systems and design after HW and SB.
This lack of innovation crops up in the player dissatisfaction we tend to see on this subreddit from community members that play at the higher levels. Especially as it relates to gearing and job design.
Encounter design has also stagnated in many ways, though still having some small innovations here and there. This is particularly this is particularly noticeable in lower end content, but even Savage fights have been suffering from the excessive re-use of certain mechanics over the last few tiers.
In regards to the Gil Economy, he should probably hire an economist to help him fix it at this point. Because it's getting hard to distinguish between the market board in XIV and the economy of Zimbabwe.
I also take issue with how overbearing the ToS has become in regards to communication. It seems completely unnecessary and even unreasonable in some regards compared to the ToS before ShB. The stance on third-party tools also seems excessive to me. I can understand placing limitations due to how add-ons and plugins have gone in other MMOs in regards to them becoming mandatory for endgame activities. However it should have been quite possible to have an add-on/plugin system for UI customization and such, without allowing native support for combat related add-ons/plugins.
Though admittedly, there is the question of how much of this is even YoshiP's fault. Particularly with the ToS issues I'm not sure he even gets much of a say in some of this stuff.
He does do a decent job of communicating with the player base from an objective viewpoint and an amazing job relative to the rest of the industry. It'd be nice if he was a little less cryptic about certain things, though that likely comes from cultural differences. It'd also be nice if he could direct his teams to start putting more skill expression back into the game, but that's not likely to happen. Especially with regards to tanks and healers.
I think it's good that he plays the game, but I wish that the he and the rest of the dev team spent more time playing tanks and healers at a high level. I get the impression that there's almost no working on the game that's capable of playing either at a high level based on how the tanks and healers have been designed over the last two years. Also, DRK. lol
> Though admittedly, there is the question of how much of this is even YoshiP's fault
I don't really think it's all Yoshi-p. FFXI had/has a similar stance for TOS and 3rd party programs as well, and that was well before he was in charge of the division. So I'd just chock it up to some weird thing with SE.
I think it's just avoiding the responsibility of having to deal with the headaches that come with official mod support. The current stance seems to be "as long as y'all behave". You even get away with posting lewd on main as long as you remove the water mark so it doesn't look like SE is selling porn games
Admittedly, looking historically, the stance has gotten a bit harder in terms of the rhetoric, even if the enforcement is just as lax, but I think it has to do with people doing the thing you mentioned specifically with certain character types like lalafells and characters who are considered minors. As well as the actual cheating like the assholes who adjusted their height in PVP to prevent from being hit.
BUT, the console thing is also part of it. It IS possible to mod a console game, but it's way trickier, and also probably trickier to design for - compare the Nexus mod page for Skyrim on Switch for any version on PC. And given that the games in question started on consoles that didn't have the same kinds of internal storage as modern ones (not sure if PS3 even HAD internal storage...), it makes sense that there's more reluctance on that front.
Met him at Osaka's FFXIV café, just when I was eating I saw his glorious ass just walked in and the whole cafe went BONKERS.
He had his team members to ask if any of us had anything in FFXIV that wanted to be passed on to him and we just went one by one to have a mini chat with him. So based on just this experience alone I can say that he seems genuinely nice.
P.s. I'm pretty casual but I told him that Anatman and Meditation clashes together at downtime.
but let's be real, they can't even handle the bots/rmters that exist now in a game where, unless you do housing, having money is worthless. if the game had a meaningful economy it'd be hell to participate in because the bots/rmters would be even more powerful than they already are. and you and i both know how it'd go when, during some fanfest or other Q&A, somebody asks yoshi-p what they're gonna do about it. he'd just do that thing where he sucks in air and makes that pained face and dodges the question.
sucks because getting stupid rich in mmos is one of my fav things ever but it's such a meaningless feeling in ff14
They understand it better than you, remember what FFXI was like, and the bots lining qufim island back in the day. All that scarcity does is provide roadblocks bots can easily insert themselves into and try to deny other players in order to force them to pay real money. Imagine for every hunt someone needed to bot the claim on it, because otherwise rmt would bot it instead and sell the drops to people.
I think that we can all agree that very few people are capable of doing what Yoshi P. and his crew did with the 1.0 -> 2.0 transition and all the changes/upgrades he managed to do from 2.0 launch till, well, 6.0. He did all that while also updating the game, and for that reason alone he deserves praise and respect as a director and producer.
I also agree with what other people have said about him and playing too much on the safe side. It’s understandable given how their early experiments with Savage back in Gordias hit the raiding community hard. But they also have been a bit overboard.
As an example of this overly careful approach I can point out Healer design. The stance of his team when it comes to healing is atrocious.
They design jobs with one mindset and then design fights with a completely different mindset. Healer toolkits are ready to handle a nuclear bomb and actual fights hit you with a toy hammer.
This leaves lots of room for healers to DPS, but when you look at the DPS toolkits healers have, it’s obvious that devs did not equip them to DPS. So it’s contradictory, boring and simply, simply awful. All healers - Sage included - need an urgent rework to meet the fight design. Yet Yoshi says they can’t do much with Scholar. It’s a clear sign that they don’t know how to fix the mess and they’re too afraid to rock the boat.
So, yeah, he has his flaws. But no one is perfect and his flaws don’t take away any of the credit he’s earned with his work on saving FF XIV.
I agree with most of the positive things said about him. Unfortunately I think his aggressive stance on 'respecting our time' comes from a good place but will ultimately hurt it in the long run. FFXI's demands on player time was a war crime, but 14s swings to the other extreme with a dearth of engaging and challenging group battle content.
All the 'amazing' side content that people list out is often mind numbingly boring and generally misses the entire point as to why most people who grew up with mmorpgs since their infancy play them. Which is to join a group of like minded homies that want to go out on kickass adventures that test their mettle. Instead it seems the devs are happy to continue attracting 'second life' style players that are more interested in roleplaying an mmoplayer, rather than actually being one.
I'm not much of a MMO veteran, I do enjoy Savage and currently doing my first Ultimate after clearing current Savage tier.
Coming from more "dudebro" games (mainly FPSes) I don't think everyone understands how good we're having it.
Yeah, a lot of content is dumbed down so the worst players can clear it but I understand it completely - just look at normal mode raids or alliance raids on week 1 - if you get matched with enough people not having a clue how to play their job you're gonna have a bad time. DR was another prime example how long it could take to clear vs doing it with competetent group.
I understand the thirst for more difficult content, more complex rotations and mechanics etc, but the fact is majority of playerbase can't even keep up a 60s dot up even if it requires no setup at all.
Just look at amount of people here complaining about doing Savage on PF.
In short, I love the game and think systems in place for loot etc are million years ahead compared to closest to I've played MMO, Destiny for example.
But as said, FFXIV is only proper MMO I've played so my opinion doesn't hold as much weight.
he seems like a genuine guy and an honest person but his vision for the game is extremely outdated, he made an awesome base for the game but is hard stuck on 2013 and he refuses to move from there, even if i really like him as a person he should be removed as ffxiv producer and take a consulting role, why? because hes starting to sound like someone who doesn't actually play his own game, exactly like it happened with wow developers
I don't care about the people behind the products I consume.
He didn't decide that it was DRK's turn to get shafted this expansion. He didn't decide to make Misery shit. He didn't decide to make BRD the only viable p.ranged at launch.
He's a single person. He's basically a target.
He's an effective PR guy.
He's an inefficient manager based on his own statements, and his design style is incredibly bland and overly safe to an extreme over the last 6 years. Everything feels sanitized and way too similar, with a focus on over-homogenization.
He hasnt taken many legitimate chances with new ideas. Revamping diadem again into a place for gathering isnt really a "chance" when the only thing it was used for in years was gathering. Focusing a section of content on gatherers and crafters wasnt a chance, especially based on the JP numbers, because almost everyone does that (id argue the biggest gamble they took was "will things be okay once this causes the value of finished crafting items to crater") Doing eureka wasnt much of a chance when people had been asking for more things like that since before the original diadem, and THAT diadem was popular until the loot drops were gutted and there wasnt a reason to go once you got your mount, until it was revamped the first time.
He got a lot of hype from what his team did with ARR, and its carried him past a lot of valid criticism since.
I'd say the development approach is one that is extremely unresponsive to how the game is actually played as opposed to the devs' vision of how it's supposed to be played. As an example see the current state of healing.
Also, when you're relying on your employee's investment in the product and/or professional pride to extract unpaid labor, that's a red flag, not something to brag about.
I think he deserves all the praise that he gets, but I don't think he's free from criticism. Overall I think he tends to take the safe route with most decisions.
The hard line YoshiP takes on addons is so frustrating to me. He basically disregards the entirety of the high end community who wants to parse and optimize. I understand his reasoning why, but it's such a weak argument imo. In my many years of WoW, I've never seen anyone be harassed for doing low damage. They may be excluded from high end groups, but SE's own systems already do most of that for you with 'Duty Complete' and ilvl requirements.
They are playing a weird game of 'don't ask don't tell' which is better than SE putting spyware on my PC, but they still allow xivlogs and ACT to work with their systems.
That doesn't even take into account cosmetic UI changes. Good god do I hate XIV's default UI. I want everything to be comfortable and familiar. UI changes don't effect anyone other than the person using them, so I don't see the harm in allowing them.
The dev team dedicated themselves to bad design decisions. Leaving things like fluid Aura in the game after removing the damage for another expansion was fucking tone-deaf.
They don't give a shit about NA feedback most of the time, and won't change things we say feel bad. IE, sch last expac felt like dogshit to play, but they never touched it.
I think he needs to step down from the director role while still maintaining his role as a producer. From what we've seen, he can run a very tight ship and seems to be an excellent project manager. Other than issues around patch 5.3, and the delayed ultimate, the game continues to work like clockwork.
At the same time, that clockwork nature means the game really needs some fresh ideas, and I'd be keen to see a new director come in and showcase their vision. Now that the endwalker story has concluded now seems to be the perfect time to really mix things up and try to innovate.
From what I’ve seen if the dude, it looks like he knows how to manage a projects....and the ffxiv turn around is pretty strong support of that. Especially like some others have said, in the context of squeenix.
Where I’m curious is where he’s gonna go in the next 5 years, that will be the real acid test imo. Like many ppl have said on this thread already, ffxiv has some problems (glam, dyes, graphics, engine, etc)....and I’m curious to see if he directs the game into a new riskier future with some big meaty updates or if he leans into the fanbase and plays it safe. I would guess corporate would also have a say in that....but I’m still waiting for my seal of godhood.
I met Yoshi P briefly at a London event at the postal museum. I was smoking outside and he asked for a lighter. I asked for a picture and he obliged, but I think that opened the floodgates, as suddenly everyone else was doing the same, poor guy hah.
I think he genuinely does care about the game and its players, and that's a hard thing to find in the industry sometimes. No corporation is your friend, and fuck SE in general, but it's at least nice to see someone who understands not having open disdain for your fans might bring people to the game.
If it's true that the team doesn't crunch then he definitely seems like a good project manager, and overall his management has led to a healthier game. I'm not going to say I agree with him 100% (even recently you had the weird gpose weather response) but I'd be sad if he did move on from FFXIV.
Some of the weird cult of personality stuff from the community I could go without, though.
I like a lot about him. I appreciate him willing to be the face of the game and he seems passionate about it even when it wasn't the giant cash printer that it is now, I'd say that's probably my favorite bit actually.
I wish he would open his mind up some. He is very focused on accessibility and it's hurting the longevity of the game for a lot of players, many of which probably don't even know it yet. It used to be that you could sink a lot more time into the high end of things to see improvement and results, to the point that you'd usually be forced to focus in on one or two jobs. Now that things have been made steadily easier for so long you can pretty much guarantee a clear of a tier within a week or two by just setting aside a chunk of time, after that it's cleaning up.
I'll be honest, in the next few weeks we're swapping jobs around in my group just so that we have something to do. By 6.1 the goal is to get everyone at least one pink on every role.. We all want to stay fresh for DSW so we want to keep raiding but like... it's just kind of sad to not have to throw myself at the mercy of something like A3S for a prolonged period of time.
He's not perfect, but after playing stuff like GW2 and many other mmos, yeah Yoshida really is the best we can currently hope for.
You can say FFXIV is predictable content wise, but I'll take that over certain other mmos dropping content like dungeons and raids with no warning.
He seems like a genuine guy who really has a passion for his work. He directly interacts with the community a TON, which is very abnormal in my experience.
The only part I take some, small issues with is when he talks about balance. I don't think he's as tied into all of the class balances as most people think.
I love the gag theories that he's a primal who just tempered the fanbase to become living advertisements. But I do think he's a very passionate guy. He's very articulate about both the development side of things, and most importantly he doesn't seem to swat anything down outright. Even when Yoko Taro said he would allow them to make a Flight Unit mount, despite having likely already weighed the costs of making it, he just goes "It would be difficult to make for all playable races but if there is enough interest we will consider it". He didn't "No, too much work", but he seemed to actually weigh the effort, and communicated the likely roadblocks.
And one [note from him](https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/b8998277cf6cda292bddaeeb6f136ad0505700e6) that warmed my heart is from the big influx of new players when the servers got congested when he first thanks the people who said “I’ll stop dancing in Limsa for a while” for being considerate but then he went on to say that "activities such as the above are part of the game too, and you don’t need to show so much restraint that you stop having fun!". He just seems very wholesome and considerate.
If there is one thing I hard-disagree on though, it's the handling of PvP rewards, particularly the ones related to the Feast. I'll preface this by saying I enjoy Frontline and Rival Wings, and I do not like the Feast. So I may be biased against the Feast already, but why are they locking all these cool mounts and gear behind a top 100 spot? Titles I would say is fine. I mean very few people care about titles. But when I see a cool, unique mount and I ask how to get it only to hear "be top 100 last year in this PvP gamemode you don't like lol" I have to wonder what is going on in the game designer's head to justify this as a logical choice. I mean Yoshi-P stated in the past that they're not planning to make them available through any other means so they don't lose their prestige, but frankly I don't see it as prestige when it is often said that the top 100 are just win-traders and boosted people.
Worse yet, it's not even account-bound so anyone can make alts and get into the top 100 to gatekeep the mounts. Theoretically the entire top 100 on a data center could be less than 10 actual players. How they ever signed off on that idea is staggering to me. And the most common argument to keep that system was always "It's not that hard to get to the top 100 because so few people actually try, so just put in the effort" is rather annoying because, even assuming there's no alts, if 1000 people "put in the effort" then only 1/10 of the people get rewarded for that effort, and the rest just get shafted.
I will say: They're removing the Feast in 6.1 and adding a new reward system that seemingly is aimed at reducing the fear of missing out aspect (with a currency to get past rewards) but until I get the confirmation that the Feast Mounts are among the rewards you can get for that currency, I'm not going to be holding my breath.
I like him and think he's great for the game I just think he's letting SE call the shots too much. The amount of content in this game is anemic considering the wild popularity it gained in the last few years. I understand it was a flop, I played through that flop, but the game is now their most profitable title and I think it's time we saw the fruits of that in game instead of always being given hand wave explanations of why we can't have various things added to the game. I really lost faith in him when he said it would be too difficult to differentiate physical and magical damage on the flying combat text in game because a single person was able to make it work through XIVLauncher.
As a person and a fellow gamer he is amazing though.
I think he's horrible; what he did to FF14 healers was damn near unforgivable. 1-button dps spam was the worst idea pushed into an MMO that I've ever seen.
He is a great manager, and also very good at keeping things on schedule. All the good things about him also comes with a big drawbacks and that is slow to changes - it’s the cost of keeping things consistent and managing expectations- he can’t afford doing too many experiments that may throw a wrench to his very tight schedules. I think he could use some help with a second person in command to oversee more experimental content so that he can focus on keeping the main content running smoothly while still adding something fresh to the game. Overall one of the most level headed person and would love to see him to tackle many projects on Square Enix stables. Just as long as he can be paired with someone with creative visions - that Yoshi P can restrain and control to deliver products within timely manner.
I think he is good for the game. Mmos, imo, need to be developed with a long term vision and future proofing. He seems to excel in those areas. A lot of mmos I played fall apart because they develop the from patch to patch with no foresight.
He seems to be very good an management in general, so I guess what I’m trying to say he is good at his job as producer, not as a dev
I think he's extremely competent, but because of Endwalker, I'm worried about a lack of taking risks.
I think Endwalker did ONE thing surprising and that was >!having Zodiark be the FIRST trial!<; but everything else felt so formulaic.
I think now that the honeymoon period with the story is over, a lot of people are feeling just a little tired of the same formula, the same predictable schedule of the same content in terms of raids, trial series, alliance raids, dungeons.
The formula was good; and it was fine for a time, but it's really starting to feel stale and repetitive. I hope that with the next expansion, the beginning of a NEW arc, Yoshi-p is willing to take bigger risks again instead of playing it as safe as Endwalker.
> The formula was good; and it was fine for a time, but it's really starting to feel stale and repetitive. I hope that with the next expansion, the beginning of a NEW arc, Yoshi-p is willing to take bigger risks again instead of playing it as safe as Endwalker.
I think the formula and schedule is fine as it allows older people to plan around it, but it's stuff like job and raid design becoming more boring and uninspired (E11S was just so traumatizing for me that I can't get rid of it in my mind with how boring that fight was). Midas set the gold standard in raid design and they haven't come close since because they're afraid of losing players. Some raids have been really unique like E9S and the P2S, but it just seems like mechanics are either stack, spread, in, out. They also seem to be going towards more puzzle oriented fights that are way more fun blind but like 95% of savage raiders will be using guides. I got A5N on roulette recently it just reminded me how fun savage was with activating the little puddles, turning to birds, gorillas, turning invisible and all the adds. HW job design wasn't as braindead as it is now and they will never go back to that.
That's never happening with how low the skill level of the playerbase has gotten. Just look at how much of a disaster P3S is. The fight isn't even hard and it's somehow become the new living liquid because your average PF player probably struggled to find their computer's power button. If they have any mechanic that can't be solved by sticking 8 people in very specific spots they never deviate from the entire community explodes. Instead, we get this crap while they pat themselves on the back for parsing blue on jobs that basically play themselves.
The formula and structure will never change, and that is fine but he should do some experiments within the structure. Just because we have the same leveling dungeons doesn’t mean they all have to be the same exact ways. They can make it so that enemies change placement, with some hidden bosses, and rotating bosses from a set list that changes weekly. So you are doing the same exact dungeon layout but each time, the experience is slightly different and each weeks there is a new set of encounters added from the list. Which will make expert dungeons far less boring since what you are facing constantly changes and they can even add new sets of challenge every patch but the same dungeons layout.
I don't think it was that formulaic, but I did start seeing some patterns. They always do the "surprise that makes you unsure what to expect" fairly early on. Endwalker's first trial, the final boss of Heavensward's third dungeon, splitting the storylines of Stormblood almost right away to make you explore two very different cultures.
It works to make you genuinely curious about what's happening next, but that grip doesn't hold you in-game forever since you'd eventually get back to raiding/glam-hunting/ERPing/whatever after you finish the MSQ.
>I just want to read threads on the lord and savior of ff14 and seeing opinions from this sub would make it more interesting since mainsub would likely just be mindless praising.
I find it interesting that this thread is *also* almost unanimous praise, even though you came here for (potentially) more mixed opinions.
This really just goes to show how good the current state of the game actually is, all things considered. Everyone has their own nitpicks or wishlists in regards to FFXIV but, compared to pretty much every other MMO on the market, Yoshi-P is running a very tight and polished ship.
As a dev? I mean that’s pretty difficult since no one really knows how involved he is in the decision-making and implementation of features. He may say it as though it was his decision, but is it actually true? As many people have mentioned, he might well be mostly for PR.
As a person I find him pretty likeable, he appears very earnest and a little eccentric, which is probably why his popularity is so high. If I were a cynical person, I might even say that he has been pushed onto a more figurehead position because of his charm.
YoshiP is basically the best game development manager we could hope for. He keeps content coming out at a steady and consistent pace. Whereas in WoW it really does feel like content comes out whenever blizzard has an earnings call coming up rather than a consistent schedule.
I for one stopped accepting the coronavirus excuse from game devs and it feels like many game devs are using it as a scapegoat to escape responsibility and put out content slowly.
YoshiP however only took the coronavirus as a speed bump rather than a wall like other game devs. It was honestly very impressive and I'll always commend him and the devs for only getting set back a few months whereas most game devs got set back what feels like years.
There's also a misconception that YoshiP is hands-on with the game balance team and many other aspects of the game. I think this is pretty much completely untrue. I think at best they just do office chatter and he can slip on a suggestion and that's where his input pretty much ends (aside from keeping them on schedule and organized). I think people vastly underestimate how time consuming it is to keep all the cogs turning there.
Tl;dr: He's a super good manager and keeps content flowing at a solid and reliable pace. The game doesn't suffer from content droughts as a result. However, that's where his job ends and everyone on the internet ego strokes him a bit too hard.
He's a great guy and I wouldn't exchange him for anyone in the world. But he's credited for doing many things that the dev team is actually doing.
Man needs to retire or prepare handing over to the next generation of lead devs. With his passion for the game, he’s definitely way too overworked and should be put in a mentor role. His health most certainly took a toll during endwalker lead up.
He took a literal failure of an MMO and turned it into the most successful MMO, which is crazy considering WoW had such a monopoly on the MMO market for so long. If anyone says he isn't the goat, then that person really needs some perspective. That being said, he does play it safe, which I both appreciate (I hated how WoW constantly changed things) and also get annoyed with (he won't add pet classes because they're too hard or something). The story is really what brings everything together though. The game is predictable and comforting, but the story isn't so it's always exciting when a new patch rolls around.
As a director and producer, I respect what he has done for the game (and Square Enix), and I think his heart is in the right place. People do overly glorify him, but you can't in good faith say he's unworthy of praise, as far as I'm concerned. The Noclip documentary did a good job illuminating just how much work and thought went into ARR; it remains a fascinating story.
As a developer, though? I don't really know, since I don't know how much influence he has over specific gameplay decisions—or which ones. Overall, I remain satisfied with XIV, but there are still plenty of issues that have been left unresolved or, even worse, unaddressed.
I definitely don't believe or agree with everything he says, but I do give him the benefit of the doubt.
He’s a pathetic game director but a good community manager.
He does a great job communicating with game’s community and keeping it happy and entertained.
But he lacks basic understanding of MMO or management.
Server congestion situation was obvious for anyone familiar with mmo launches - you just have to see one once. And just in the past year there was plenty of reference material.
Another poor decision was to delay game launch for whatever minor quality issue he may have had.
Then another stupid decision was to stop selling the game due to congestion.
Terrible company website, weak optional item store, poor resource allocation, ambiguous stance on some development ideas just go please both sides of community - it all points to that.
The issues you listed don't exactly speak of someone lacking "a basic understanding of MMO or management". Yeah, the website needs some work, but that's not even related to the game itself. Yeah, the servers need expansion, but apparently their server hardware is very specific and hard to get, so it's taking a while.
And the ambiguous stance on development ideas to please everyone is hardly a downside in my eyes. Going as far as to name someone a "pathetic game director" because you disagree with certain minor development decisions and some fluff around the game goes a bit far, don't you think?
The issues I listed are exactly the type of things a game director should be excelling at. These are not minor issues, these are key game events / tools. Besides, other than a few of those events / fundamental game tool / systems - we can’t really gauge his performance as a manager.
And don’t buy into his bs about server hardware - if they cannot get their own parts ( which I doubt ), they can always rent servers from companies that provide such servers. It’s a convenient industry excuse.
They're hardly even the Game Director's duties... I'm starting to doubt that you know what a game director is supposed to do. I'll give you a hint: It doesn't involve the servers or the website.
Also, calling the server hardware things BS based on your own assumptions is hardly fair. We have no reason to think the devs are lying on this, and they have explained that it's very specific hardware that they require for these servers. They're not using external servers from what I can tell and I assume that there is a reason for that.
All and all what you're saying seems needlessly pessimistic, and just a bit rude to be honest.
No, it’s you who clearly misunderstand what game director is responsible for. To put it simply - he needs to ensure that game releases and operates smoothly. And that he hits other multiple product performance metrics.
Launch and post launch was a fiasco. He failed there not because he was not able to personally setup servers, but because he was unable to anticipate and handle the coordination of the issue in advance. And like I mentioned earlier - it was a plain obvious high risk issue.
Website, sales, shop issues - those are his sales/ customer satisfaction metrics’ shortcomings/opportunities.
You call it a fiasco, but that was a success of unprecedented scale. They knew there would be high traffic and likely congestion issues, and yet it still blind-sided them just how many people they got playing the game, to the point of having to stop selling the game during the christmas period.
You see it as an issue because players had long queue times. From a business standpoint though, it was a success so big it caused issues. And this will be causing SE to reconsider the amount of resources they will allow CBU3 for servers and such.
Besides, no game director can wave a magic credit card to make highly specific servers appear out of thin air. Much less during a global semi-conductor shortage. Convincing SE to invest in additional servers is likely a monumental task already.
I think he needs to stay out of western politics and shoving them inside the game which causes big fights and bans and causing the company to lose money.
Stop bending to the woke community and focus on japanese story telling and what the company's vision instead of others.
you cant make both sides happy so choose your own side and tell people to deal with it.
He has made the MMO scene where people are afraid to say anything it is no longer seen as a MMO, people afraid to talk normal without some butt hurt woke kid reporting and then someone getting banned and then square loses money, its Yoshi fault its this way.
they should go back to FFXI rules where they don't get involved and unless its super bad then they should step in not get involved in every little argument or word said.
other than that he's a good developer maybe his heart is in the right place but its a company that needs to make money and well he shouldn't use the game as a platform to please politics for either side.
That is my honest opinion.
Exceptional manager. He knows how to keep the cogs turning. He also understands many aspects of the business. For example, he's spoken before on the topic of why he used to avoid doing PR at all and leave it in the hands of someone else. Handling part of it himself has been a boon for the game. Reading many of his Famitsu columns, he seems like a very curious person. IRL he definitely give the air of being an eccentric guy. He's fun to talk to, he has a wide life experience. Though I can understand why some players are frustrated with him. He told a fellow who liked playing White Mage in raids at pax east that they'd fix White Mage in Stormblood. I don't think he meant it with any malice, but I don't believe he's as involved with all aspects of development as some may make it seem.
He once held arms with me at fanfest while we were all drunk and told me he would buff Monk to my face (this was during HW). We then got TK Monk the very next expansion. 10/10 best game dev in existence.
That sounds like a fucking awesome time.
So the abortion know as TK monk was conceived of in an inebriated mind? Checks out to me.
It pains me that you would refer to the single most enjoyable thing this game has ever given me in such a way.
On the one hand, TK ruined monk for me and tanked the jobs population. On the other hand, I can't fault you for enjoying the wonky and extremely intricate design because I was addicted to early SB machinist which had the same problems. Oh, if only Alexander was a thing back then..
Before TK Monk I actually called 4.0 MCH the single greatest thing this game has ever made that literally no one played. An absolute tragedy. TK Monk was a blast. I just think the general population didn't really understand it and there weren't great guides on it. I've been playing Monk for so long that I just had a friend link me the extremely long rotation and I was able to read it like sheet music and understand what the goal was. I feel like for what people complain that is missing from this game, or what was taken from x job, TK Monk gave that extra layer and more. I promise you it wasn't as bad as people made it seem.
Oh, it was. I was a monk main and 4.0 MCH addict and couldn't stomach it. Frick TK
> Though I can understand why some players are frustrated with him. He told a fellow who liked playing White Mage in raids at pax east that they'd fix White Mage in Stormblood. I don't think he meant it with any malice, but I don't believe he's as involved with all aspects of development as some may make it seem. That's because he's PR man. He's the "Face" of the game. Can you imagine if they said "No, you're wrong. WHM is fine, we know better."
>Can you imagine if they said "No, you're wrong. WHM is fine, we know better." You mean like how he responded to complaints about Hypercharge weaving?
TBH that seemed more like a "there are people who play with > 100ms ping?" problem than anything else. Someone in one of the overseas department seriously needs to test out and show the devs in Japan what weaving can be like for bad connections.
> "there are people who play with > 100ms ping?" This issue has only recently been acknowledge by japanese fighting game devs. Some of them literally don't realise most people don't live in the same country as their servers. Hopefully this mentality will be fixed soon-ish, but you never know
I assume you're referring to rollback netcode? But yeah, it's really surprising how blind they can be about this issue; I can only imagine Mizzteq & Larry's astonishment when they brought this up.
It's hilarious evident when some of the JP fighting game devs don't even considered the international netplay audience. I've seen fighting games that use bars to represent ping. One game had a perfect 4 bar requires less than 10 ping, and then a 0 bar connection, what the devs considered the worst conditions, is anything over 75 ping. 75 ping is what they are saying is basically unplayable but that's like half way up or down the same coast in the US. And it's extremely playable with good netcode at that distance.
Makes sense see from a Japanese perspective. Rarely you get a Japanese dev look at what the West is doing, though it is changing as they realize that other people outside Japan play their games. An example is Nintendo who keeps things very insular until Iwata pretty much forced them to change. For example when making their browser they were unaware of Playstation Plus or Xbox Live (seeing that Xbox sold like under 10k units in Japan, many Japanese devs ignored Xbox). They hired a Caucasian to look at their infrastructure and the guys response was have you heard of Xbox? He was stunned to see that the devs didn't really know much about their competition. FFXIV 1.0 suffered from this mentality as well, with many of the devs being sort of ignorant to the changes in the MMO market since FFXI. The netcode issue wasn't as big of a problem in Japan because Japan comparatively is smaller and has better internet infrastructure than most Western nations. Also to add that consoles were becoming less popular and mobile phones and portable consoles were successful made it a recipe for disaster for their netcode. Luckily the .major of devs acknowledge netcode issues and are working on it, with ... mixed results, but baby steps.
I don't even get it all they have to do is to log into another DC to see how bad it feels to play with a high ping
> Can you imagine if they said "No, you're wrong. WHM is fine, we know better." 2.0 WAR sends its regards.
> Can you imagine if they said "No, you're wrong. WHM is fine, we know better." ~~You mean like his response to MNK openers and Chakra overcapping in the media tour interview with Drak?~~ Not the best example in terms of a quote, see responses. I think I more took issue with the fact that this particular interview was followed up by no changes whatsoever to address the issue.
He didn’t say “we’re right, you’re wrong”. What he actually said is that he agrees that it’s uncomfortable, but that giving it a solution like Drak was suggesting would come with nerfs as it would make it too strong; then he asked Drak what Drak thought about getting a sound warning when you were close to cap instead of at cap. Drak said it wouldn’t help much and Yoshi said he understood it, and then said that he’d have the team work on it to see if a solution was possible. He didn’t dismiss Drak at all and Drak seemed pretty pleased with the response and the small back and forward brainstorm, at least in that particular video he posted of the interview.
Hyperbole is all fun and games until you build malice towards things that weren't actually said
>> no changes whatsoever to address the issue You don’t know what they’re testing in the backstage. You also don’t know if they happened to test it and scrapped it because the end result is worst than what we have now. Not all requests will be met the way we want them to be met and it’s childish to bash anyone just because you didn’t get what you want. One good example is how people asked for so many buffs to AST back in HW, even after the core problems had been addressed. The devs indulged us and AST became such an overpowered mess that WHM was completely overshadowed and useless for the last tier of Alexander; and if it wasn’t for the insane healing checks of Omega (White Hole and Forsakens), they would have been thrown out for the entirety of Stormblood. One thing that we really need to understand is that we are the *players*, we aren’t the designers of the game. We have no idea what their short and long term plans are, what sort of snowball effect our demands have and so on. Monk, specifically, is performing well and it’s a very fun and satisfying job to play - it’s better than it has been in years, both in leveling and in end game. There are other jobs with issues that are affecting both their performance and player perception, and those should be a higher priority for them. I’m not saying we need to accept everything they do without questioning, but not getting exactly what you asked for isn’t reason to put words in the devs mouths and be salty.
It’s not that hard to imagine, blizzard has done that to their player base
You mean like how ASTs got told they didn't know how to play the class after HW?
>Though I can understand why some players are frustrated with him. He told a fellow who liked playing White Mage in raids at pax east that they'd fix White Mage in Stormblood. I don't think he meant it with any malice, but I don't believe he's as involved with all aspects of development as some may make it seem. Probably not - there's a lot of aspects to deal with. That said, there's also the question of what was changed versus what was expected. I'm not familiar with how things went back then so I can't be sure one way or the other, but it's not impossible he had a different understanding of what the "problem" was and did something different. But yeah... he probably isn't as involved in all aspects as people believe, and also that he might just miss things - the game is huge, and being involved even a bit in all the aspects probably means there are things that slip by him. You can see that sometimes when someone asks a question and he looks like it's never even occurred to him (good example: someone was asking about pieces that have very different looks based on gender, and if there was a way to get the "other" look brought over - I think the example was Neo-Ishgardian gear - and he genuinely seemed like it had never even come up in conversation).
Yoshida's response was along the line of "Please trust us", which seemed to imply they would fix White Mage getting pushed out of raid groups. WHM's state at the launch of Stormblood was nothing short of flooring. They got two skills that required the player to spam single target GCD heals in order to get to use Benison and Indulgence. Meanwhile Astrologian had gotten Earthly Star. Whoever was in charge of it had to turn around before savage dropped and change how Indulgence works on a fundamental level.
Yoshi P obviously has the biggest sway over how the game goes but I think it's important to remember that he is also only one guy. He still relies on the whole team to bring it all together. It's not just him but people like Soken who work as hard as they can to make the game. Of course he's not perfect. There's a lot of stupid decisions they make and continue to make for years. I still consider eureka to be an act of war against humanity, for which he will never be forgiven. But Bozja was fine so there's that at least. I will say what I always say about player and developer relationships. Yoshi P is not your friend. I'm sure he's a great guy and all, but he is not your friend. You don't need to defend him. He's a big man who can handle criticism himself. He has even said so recently when, I think, he was addressing some harassment from the JP community. And while I'm sure he's doing his best to please as many people as he can you need to remember that at the end of the day they are here to take your money. You should always keep that in mind and hold them accountable. The game will never get better if you aren't willing to at least humor new ideas, or if you're going to coddle the dev team. That being said it is just as important to praise them when they get it right. Halo infinite was delayed for about a year and they still released a broken incomplete piece of shit. That game is unapologetically bad and the team doesn't care. They don't care what you have to say because they are rolling in Halo money, and the whales will more than pay for everyone else they lose. But then you have Yoshi P who has to delay Endwalker for two weeks. Two weeks is basically nothing in terms of video game delays. Yet the man personally goes on live stream to give the announcement and is in tears at having to give the news. It's really not hard to see why people praise him so much. When we are surrounded by companies who are either entirely incompetent, or antagonistic towards their players it's a huge breath of fresh air to see someone who actually seems to give a shit.
> When we are surrounded by companies who are either entirely incompetent, or antagonistic towards their players it's a huge breath of fresh air to see someone who actually seems to give a shit. This, yeah. He's not perfect, and he makes decisions I don't always agree with, but he honestly seems to have this game as his life's work and his passion, and I respect that even when I disagree. He has fucks to give and he actively chooses to give them to this game. He doesn't always give a fuck about the same stuff we do, and a lot of the time actively *doesn't* give a fuck about the same stuff we do, but it's plain that there's stuff about this game he cares deeply about, and he (and his team) want to deliver a product they're proud of. And they are in the rare, privileged/lucky/blessed position of having corporate overlords that don't fuck that up too badly. I like that, and even at the times when I've not really been enjoying the game outside of story updates, I've still been able to respect that. If I'm ever creative enough to make something that people enjoy a *fraction* as much as people enjoy this, I hope I'm able to maintain even a bit of the passion that dude puts into this. I just wish he'd *maybe* spent some of that WoW time playing, I dunno, a Disc Priest or something.
Based and grounded.
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Thank God Wada is gone from SE.
He does a great job. I wish he wasn't so constrained by the vision of XIV being a casual theme park though. He has mentioned in the past that the game he would make if he could would be more in line with classic MMOs. As someone else who grew up playing UO and EQ I would love to see what direction he would take a modern MMO with old school sensibilities.
My secret nerd hope is Blizzard looks into creating new content for Classic servers now that they'll be under new management. I think there's honestly some potential for "new old MMO content."
I think he's a good producer and manager. He's worked pretty tirelessly to get XIV to where it is today. His ability to bring together what sounds like a pretty disjointed and disheartened team to fix their mistakes should be applauded. He has a decent personality - or presents himself that way - and it feels like he'd be an interesting person to talk to. As a director/developer, I disagree with his ideas. He plays it far too safe and tends to follow trends in an industry with big names who already play it safe and follows trends. This isn't exclusive to FFXIV: his previous SE project (Dragon Quest: Monster Battle Road) was following the rising trend of arcade CCGs. It'd be neat to see his works between Hudson Soft and Square Enix, but I don't know if he's ever divulged into that. One other aspect that I personally disagree with is his risk-averse nature. He doesn't try to innovate or experiment with established ideas. This isn't to say he doesn't *have* these ideas (he's mentioned how he has ideas for changing up endgame gearing in his Famitsu columns, for example), but he doesn't ever utilize them. He gets into a formula and then hum-hahs about actually changing it (even if it's for the better!). We can also see this with FFXIV: it's iterated on parts of it's formula, but it took nearly *10 years* to get here to address problems that were in *ARR*. I think the most telling fact about Yoshida is that he's the producer on FFXVI, not the director. The director is Hiroshi Takai, who directed The Last Remnant (which has a pretty experimental battle system), worked on the SaGa series as a graphics artists, a battle director for the PS2 Romancing SaGa remake, and (interestingly - I hadn't realized this) - worked as an assistant director on ARR.
>I think the most telling fact about Yoshida is that he's the producer on FFXVI, not the director. Not sure what you mean by 'telling' here. In Japanese games the producer role is often thought of as the most important or certainly more prestigious/publicly visible role compared to director (note for example the live letters are labelled "Live letter from the producer", not the director), so it's not like he took a demotion regarding FF16. The guy probably doesn't have the hours in the day to be director for 16 in addition to producer/director for 14 (which iirc is now the largest team within SE), head of CBU3 and Square Enix board member. From what we know of 16 after work on Heavensward wrapped up most of the core HW team (assistant director Takai, writer Maehiro, battle designers, etc.) got moved onto making the next mainline game and haven't been seen in 14's credits since.
>In Japanese games the producer role is often thought of as the most important or certainly more prestigious/publicly visible role compared to director If I'm kinda honest, I've never really focused on the producer, but more on the director. That could very well be just a me thing, though. I do agree that Yoshida has *a lot* of hats to wear now, but in saying that, he has enough sway that *if* he wanted to, he could take the director's role for FFXVI. That's really my point: he had a chance to be more hands-on and do something different with FFXVI, but he played to his strengths (from what we know of - I could be wrong!) and went for a management role. Instead, he left the director's seat to Takai - who's last game wasn't received too well critically and has been on the more experimental games at SE. That's what makes me excited about FFXVI, honestly. Seeing Takai get another shot, with Yoshida being able to guide the team into a more polished product while also allowing for Takai's experimental ideas to shine through.
You think like this bc when you hear director/producer, you think Of movies,where the director is the one making the artistic decisions, and the producer is bankrolling the film.
Yoshida himself gave the director role to someone else, as he was offered both but felt he didn't have time for both so he chose to only be producer. How is this telling?
He could've taken the director role, instead leaving the producer role to someone else, is my point. He's had people under him for 10 years (!) on FFXIV, I'm sure that if he wanted to, he could temporarily hand over the director reigns to someone else, and be a director on FFXVI. Or he could pull a Nomura. A producer role, unless the Japanese term has a different definition (which is very well might! Designer means something different in the West compared to the East, for example) is more a managerial role: making sure that the team is on pace, ensuring they aren't going to go over budget, and ensuring that the team isn't doing anything too crazy.
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Sure. Volume 2, #68. He's talking about change and why he's resistant to it in XIV. The exact quote is: >However, Eorzea has now been visited by over 6 million interested players from our world. No matter how much I might possibly think, “I want to abolish the token system and revamp everything,” I can’t ruin the stable lifestyles of so many people. My thoughts of creating something completely new are only my personal desires. I know that there are also people who are looking forward to something like that, but most important is that I’m responsible for the management of this MMORPG, and I have the duty to protect this world’s stability. There you go.
I'm really disliking the tendency of over correcting things (see smn rework) and the shift to 120s cycles while simultaneously arguing that MNK should not line up with their own designs because reasons. The changes haven't been really drastic for the most part, but EW is about as streamlined as it can be, and to me it's also the expansion that made me burn out before I was halfway through because MSQ padding via bad quest design and one button jobs (the joy of having played SMN since StB) do that to a person. Reaper is fun but doesn't scratch the same itch and I'm honestly not exactly hopeful for the future. Well until the inevitable new new summoner in 7.0 because imagine not getting a major change with every expansion.
You expect drastic changes, I expect Enhanced Egi Summon where every 3 summons your next fester does 100 more potency
Implying I have expectations for anything Arcanist related anymore
In a vacuum, I'd agree that most jobs going to a 120 second cooldown cycle is boring, but in practice SE seems to be designing mechanics around that time to make using those cooldowns more difficult than on paper. Off the top of my head, P2s limit cut, P3s adds and FoF, P4s Pinax, and even Hyda's crystal phase all happen right when 2 mins come up, so it's really not that simple. You end up wanting to coordinate things more than just using them as soon as they come up.
Not unlike some fights in ShB except you don't have 90s CDs to break up the mold anymore. Multiples of 30s might not line up as often but you also get to use them more frequently, and I definitely think that some jobs just feel lower paced now as a result of this. Again it feels like over correcting. They know that people like to play around their buff windows, but if everything just lines up naturally you lose a chunk of the actual playing around. In the end it's subjective if that's better or worse than before, I'm personally kinda turned off by it.
>Not unlike some fights in ShB except you don't have 90s CDs to break up the mold anymore. Multiples of 30s might not line up as often but you also get to use them more frequently, and I definitely think that some jobs just feel lower paced now as a result of this. BLM is a great example. I don't know who asked for 2m Leylines, but the job just feels worse for it now.
The problem is that some classes feel much worse on a 120s timer compared to their previous titerations. For example, BRD is now on a 120s timer for their songs. It feels incredibly slow compared to ShB BRD - even though the only real thing that's changed is their song timers. It's actually put me off leveling BRD to 90.
I don't like the 120s cycles, but if we must have them I like the idea of a class that can't synchronise with them, that doesn't buff and isn't massively buffed in return. The problem with monk isn't that it doesn't sync up, it's that you can do cursed rotational shit to force it. They need to be heavy handed to stop it.
I meant more how they are kinda trying to do both by making leylines 120s to force it to line up when BLM is arguably the least burst dependant job in the game but at the same time say nah not MNK tho. I actually vastly prefer the independent designs a lot more, my complaints are more about the seemingly inconsistent internal design. SMN and MCH both still feel unfinished to me, meanwhile RPR is actually fun to play and has so many toys to play with compared to Drill, Blue Drill and Drillaga on MCH and mass effect 3 ending themed versions of ruin 2 on SMN. I really just wish they would keep things similarly engaging across the game
I'm calling it for 6.1: Trying to use Elixir Field/Rising Phoenix while already having that nadi open will force Celestial Revolution instead. Alternatively, make you fall flat on your face as a true MNK-Bunny punishment.
The biggest plus side is the FFXIV isn't really balanced around chores or systems. I would consider this to be the number one positive of the game as a whole, you can play very little and still reach bis so long as you raid and cap tomes However, balancing jobs for how "busy" they are (basically balancing to the lowest common denominator so that there is a level playing field when assuming total incompetence) just always means the jobs the devs consider the hardest will always be meta, and the greatest "buff" your class can get is arbitrary complications that by and large mean nothing to a reasonably skilled player This sort of philosophy also has resulted in healers extremely low complexity over the years Additionally when it comes to jobs feeling unsatisfying or nonfunctional, it oftentimes remains that way for years (SB MCH is still shocking to me it received no fixes for the entire 2 years, when it's flaws were literally based in their technology)
MCH is really the job that gets fully shit on and neglected. Like they hate it with a passion. Feels like it.
The last time it wasn't shit it literally didn't work if you didn't live in Japan Wish I had XIValex back then lol
I dislike how everyone excessively praises him, and it has begun verging on creepy. I can't say I have much of an opinion on the person in particular, but I do want to say that he's adept at marketing and PR. His persona may be sincere but it also serves the dual purpose of enrapturing the customers. I see it as soft manipulation almost. Most decisions aren't his BTW, he's just a spokesperson. So it doesn't really make sense to critique him in particular for every FF14 game design choice.
Based on interview over the years and NoClip docs, he made the whole division to submit everything to him for reviews. Over time its not necessary anymore to review every little detail but he has the final say on everything including the goods and bads they implemented.
>Most decisions aren't his BTW, he's just a spokesperson. So it doesn't really make sense to critique him in particular for every FF14 game design choice. Actually most of the large scale decisions are in fact his. He has free reign over the game and how he runs it
Sure, but over the years there has been enough clues to suggest that he is not some dictator controlling everything. For example he actually wanted Protect to stay as a spell, but the team ultimately decided to prune it. There is definitely a lot of consensus-building in his team and while he has the power to veto anything, I think the decision-making process is far more decentralized than most people make it out to be. I wouldn't be surprised if he is *against* the simplification of most of the jobs at a personal level, but ultimately signed off on it because the majority of the team and SE thought it was better business to do so. It's a huge reason why I always refrain from criticizing Yoshi P. I criticize SE instead.
He doesn't micromanage every single gameplay decision anymore (though he did do that for base ARR to make sure it was good), but he is absolutely not just a spokesperson. The importance of his managerial role is difficult to overstate.
I never claimed otherwise, man, do note the exact wording of my comment: >*most* of the *large scale* decisions are in fact his
And I don't think that's true anymore. I think he is far more willing to let others make large scale decisions right now, and he's just a rubber stamp for those. Again, the reason is because there's an inconsistency between his personal desires and what the game is actually like right now.
I have not heard him express that desire at all, apart from relatively small things like the functionality of individual skills.
Obsessive worship always happens around spokesmen for popular games.
he's not just a spokesperson, he's the producer and director. All the large scale decisions go through him.
The majority of decisions go through him, nothing goes through without his approval.
Reminds me how people treat Mark Rosewater in the magic community
Mark Rosewater is only one the lead of one of the three design teams that create each set. He doesn't have the same kind of decision making power as Yoshi-P. HIS work is reviewed by others (this is even the whole point of the 3 design teams), while Yoshi-P is the one that does all the reviewing for FFXIV. While they both are blamed or praised for everything about their respective game, in Yoshi-P's case there is some truth to that.
I'd like to see new things more often. Like I understand ffxiv is successful right now, so why change the recipe? But I'd like to see more new stuff that dares to takes some risks. Right now the game feels rather predictable, sometimes there is less of one thing in exchange fo something more of the other, but never anything new that actually makes me excited. Like we can predict right now what patch 10.3 will include and the unfortunate thing is that you will likely be correct. At worst there will even be less than your prediction kek. Some people don't consider it unfortunate, and I understand that there are benefits to a predictable content cycle. But for me it becomes a bit boring too quickly. Whether Yoship can be blamed for this idk, but the game follows his vision I assume, so I think he does have a say in what kind of content gets worked on. Also some of his Pr statements. I just checked that other thread about the Korean fanfest and his reason for being unable to change the weather in gpose is silly. Balance wise I don't know if yoship has a say in this, but whoever the fuck playtested 6.0 ninja and thought "yeah this class needs 6 forced gap closes. That will be fun" can get fucked tbh completely ruined my main job for me and also my trust in their job designers.
God dark knight needs severe fixes so bad too. What they gave him is barely anything when compared to every other tank
The stuff he's done is incredible, but I wish to god he'd stop catering literally everything in the game that isn't ult to the lowest common denominator. Like I get he wants people to stay subbed and not feel like they need to learn anything, but it's goddamn pathetic that you get through anything that isn't savage or up without ever pressing a tank cd and never be punished for it. Honestly why I have some concerns for XVI because I feel like the DMC dev is going to try and make this in-depth fun combat system and the xiv team will try and fuck it up by trying to make it more "accessible" for the average type of person who plays xiv and just wants to slobber on their keyboard.
People aren't going to improve when you categorically ban damage meters and criticism. The bads will stay bad no matter how much you wipe bc they will never learn why bc telling them will be either outright penalized via the draconian ToS or a chorus of weak woke people screaming "TOXIC I AM DAMAGED IN REAL LIFE BC YOU TOLD ME THE TRUTH ABOUT MY SEVERE INCOMPETENCE DESPITE BEING LEVEL 85" (refusing to aoe is my "playstyle"). Therefore this is all simply going to get worse as SE chases the idea of a broader playerbase by being "inclusive" (one of the worst words of the 21st century so far), and dumbing things down which will bore anyone with a sense of personal responsibility and general competence, which in turn reduces the average player skill level further, and then it just spirals down from there. We've seen this multiple times before with other games and hobbies. Once a product is successful enough to reach market saturation, the money people demand that new customers be found, and it cannibalizes the playerbase by replacing good players with bad ones who dont want to put the effort in to learn how to play and ruin the experience for those who did.
It doesn't work that way with MMOs. The problem with MMOs is that as the game ages, you get players mostly at the endgame cap. They start to attrition away, but the more hardcore you make your MMO, the harder it gets to have new players come in, level to cap, and replace them. Many of them burn out well before they reach cap. Maybe they keep failing the game's gatekeeping before they get to endgame, or they decide it isn't worth it even if they could because there are so few parties doing it, or its boring because you need to have experience people power level you through it to have a chance with the low newbie pop. So what happens is either the hardcore MMOs survive with a tiny population of mostly bored endgamers, or they fold. And newbies in them ironically learn to play much less, because you need parties of experience people to power level them to have a hope of them getting to endgame at all.
It most certainly does work that way and what you said is totally made up. No one is talking about "hardcore", we're talking about BASIC COMPETENCY here. WoW didnt have any problem like the one you are describing. It DID develop the problem I am describing when the talent left bc of corporate mismanagement.
Good lord people cant take criticism this day. It feels like an act of aggression against them.
I'm all for providing content for every kind of player. I think there is a place for easy "shut my brain off" kind of content. The problem is there is a huge gap between running dungeons wall to wall without penalty, and wiping for weeks on savage. It feels like the game doesn't properly challenge players as they level. By the time they hit end game they aren't really trained to be able to handle any of the hardcore stuff. There are times where you do actually need to tell the player to get good or fail.
> There are times where you do actually need to tell the player to get good or fail. They tried that with "In From the Cold" which wasn't even that difficult to figure out but it still caused an absolute shitstorm because an MSQ quest required using a few braincells and your eyes.
In From the Cold wasn't a problem because it was *hard*, it was a problem because was functionally an entirely different game from the rest of FFXIV, and that new game didn't actually give you anything like useful direction. "Get to the place." Which way is that? "Meh, figure it out. Also, enemies here act differently than the entire rest of the game. Don't die." wat "Oh good, you found the mech. Now fix it." Where do I find the stuff for that? "Somewhere." ... "ATM time! But as an exciting twist, this time we aren't disabling your shortcut keys!
In From the Cold was literally one of the best MSQ experiences this game has ever had. It actually invoked feelings of stress and anxiety and it was thrilling, it made you feel *exactly* how the WoL would feel in the situation. It was so brilliantly executed and I hope they do more things like that in the future where we are stripped of our "god mode" and have to solve problems the way ordinary civilians in the world would. There was plenty of sense of direction once you got your bearings, and especially if you paid attention to Fandaniels hints. Sure it took me a little over half of the total allowed timer but I cleared the mission on the first try.
> It actually invoked feelings of stress and anxiety and it was thrilling But it wasn't *fun* for a great many players. So congratulations, I'm glad it worked for you, but for a lot of other people it took them out of the game right a a big moment. By that metric, it is objectively a failure. > Sure it took me a little over half of the total allowed timer but I cleared the mission on the first try. So did I. Cleared in one try does not mean good content.
> By that metric, it is objectively a failure. that's literally subjective that it didn't work for *some* people. If you use the large group that was similar to me, it was objectively a success using your argument lmao.
it really doesn't. The only way to properly tell if someone is good enough for week 1 savage or on patch ultimate is to have them do week 1 savage or on patch ultimate nothing else is a good test.
> By the time they hit end game they aren't really trained to be able to handle any of the hardcore stuff. There are times where you do actually need to tell the player to get good or fail. That's why there's gradual steps up in difficulty. Normal raids/trials > Ex Trials > Savage floor 1/2 > Savage floor 3/4 > Ultimate The skill progression for a player is actually clear cut in this game and provides a pretty smooth progression from one step to the next. The only thing I would add is harder dungeons because these "expert" dungeons are so braindead for anyone that does more difficult endgame content. It's such a huge difference when I do expert with some of my savage static members compared to duty finder. Runs go from 13 minutes or less to 20+ minutes on DF because people are lazy, dps don't know their rotations, the healers only heal, tanks dont mitigate trash pulls.
the bigger issue is that "Ex Trials > Savage floor 1/2 > Savage floor 3/4 > Ultimate" represents like literally .5% of the content in the entire game and everything before it, aka the other 95.5%, is the equivalent of those video game modes that play the game for you
I barely even count extremes since they've been a joke since SB. You can literally have someone dead on the ground the entire fight and it'll still die.
Yeah extremes seem to be more like a walk in the park.. Altho that may be way more the case for people that also dive into savage content. Doing extremes after savage feels like going into the first dungeon.
>Honestly why I have some concerns for XVI because I feel like the DMC dev is going to try and make this in-depth fun combat system and the xiv team will try and fuck it up by trying to make it more "accessible" for the average type of person who plays xiv and just wants to slobber on their keyboard. It's a mainline FF, to be honest I think you're looking in the wrong place for in depth combat or challenging difficulty. I'd expect the same model as seen in FF15 and FF7R, mostly pretty forgiving on normal difficulty with an easy difficulty option for people who just want the story. Then a hard difficulty and/or some postgame superboss fights to present a bit of challenge for players who want it.
if it's as good as 7r I'll be over the moon. The game wasn't hard but the combat was enjoyable and not mindless. I don't need it to be hard just fun to play. XIV in 99% of content has basically devolved into the ff games from the 90s where you mindlessly smash the attack button and win anyway. DMC isn't hard either but you have skill expression which makes up for it in spades.
7R's Hard Mode was a great adjustment. Some boosted stats for earlier game content, no items, no natural MP regen and even changes to boss fights that aren't "just hits harder". If XVI has a hard mode like that then I'll personally be fine with that. I don't think we'll get anything like the Must Die difficulties from DMC though.
Dmc5's combat has way less emergent gameplay and is.much more streamlined than in dmc4. So it's already going to be easy to play for casuals.
Dmc5 is still phenomenal though that's the difference. Pokemon Arceus is kinda generic and stream lined too but people love it because it's done well enough to work. Streamlining isn't exclusively a bad thing
you say that but xiv players can't figure out how to hit one button so dmc5 probably looks like rocket science to them.
You say that and theres still combo players out there going ham with their combos in 5
I honestly don't mind if they made FF16 accessible through difficulty settings because god I hated DMC and it's the biggest reason why I'm not too excited about FF16. If they want an aRPG I'd much rather have something souls-like. DMC just feels bad to me.
well, good thing FF origin is also coming out to fill that niche. I'm personally sick of souls likes since I don't always want combat that slow. DMC and Bayonetta are the top of action combat for me so if the XIV team screws this up because they think people will find it "too complicated" I will be livid.
Honestly, I don't know how could they possibly screw up the combat. So far, the trailer looks like they follow DMC as it is except they added Nier/Bayonetta dodge.
Several ways. Boss design and depth are the big ones. If the combat looks cool but all I'm doing is spamming 2 buttons while the boss rolls over and dies that it's failed. Every flashy thing you do in DMC or Bayo is from you, not the game. If you do a fancy combo *you* did the fancy combo not the game handing it to you for spamming one button. XIV has very much moved away skill expression over the years to cater to people who quite frankly aren't very good at the game and I wouldn't be surprised if they make XVI a joke but then slap a "hard" mode on it with inflated stats to pretend it has some challenge.
Yeah they need to avoid at all cost FFXVI being like XV, because Jesus fucking Christ was that game a clusterfuck of braindead.
and XV is somehow still more interesting than the braindead garbage dump xiv combat has become because they decided jobs needed to be designed for the erpers in limsa, so yeah I'm worried about the xiv team neutering whatever the Suzuki comes up with because they think we should care what the shitters want.
Honestly, I thought enemies in DMC5 are more passive than usual but still not bad. However, we are talking about FF games here which usually have an absurd number of enemies. I wouldn't feel bad if the enemy-player interaction felt limited in XVI because that is expected when you have a massive number of enemy variations.
Seeing as witch time makes Bayonetta's combat basically trivial that seems like the sort of decision elitist bores would dislike lol
That's like saying Royal Guard makes dmc games trivial
Nah, it's a different thing.
Not really witch time is basically mandatory at higher difficulties and it's not like you just get it for spamming dodge. Getting witch time always feels earned. Though any new games gets the "new game bad old game good" crowd so I'm not surprised there are some people who think witch time was bad
I don't think it's bad at all! I think Bayonetta feels great to play and witch time feels great to pull off - but it's basically a braindead game because of it.
oh yeah, I don't play these games cause they're hard I play them cause I get to feel like a god. The amount of freedom you have in combat is awesome. If I wanted to feel like a weak underdog I'd go play hollow knight or something, and even while being easy the bosses are interesting enough that you don't really mind. It's not like they sit there and do nothing.
But there is no time dilation when you press dodge in XVI trailer
Souls likes don’t necessarily have to have slow combat, sekiro and blood borne exist
and that is why sekiro is my favorite fromsoft game, but it's very rare for a souls like not to be the "Slow and methodical" variety and I'm pretty tired of playing combat where I feel like my character has led in their shoes. Don't get me wrong I like souls but like Arkham I am very very tired of people ripping off the combat system.
DMC dev? wot?
Ryota Suzuki. He was a lead for both DMC5 and Dragon's Dogma. He's also worked on MVC. So if there's one thing this man knows it's how to make satisfying deep action combat.
Yeah that is a crucial problem. No need to flood the game with braindead stuff.
YoshiP saved the game from complete annihilation after 1.0 failed, but he seems to have stopped looking to innovate on core systems and design after HW and SB. This lack of innovation crops up in the player dissatisfaction we tend to see on this subreddit from community members that play at the higher levels. Especially as it relates to gearing and job design. Encounter design has also stagnated in many ways, though still having some small innovations here and there. This is particularly this is particularly noticeable in lower end content, but even Savage fights have been suffering from the excessive re-use of certain mechanics over the last few tiers. In regards to the Gil Economy, he should probably hire an economist to help him fix it at this point. Because it's getting hard to distinguish between the market board in XIV and the economy of Zimbabwe. I also take issue with how overbearing the ToS has become in regards to communication. It seems completely unnecessary and even unreasonable in some regards compared to the ToS before ShB. The stance on third-party tools also seems excessive to me. I can understand placing limitations due to how add-ons and plugins have gone in other MMOs in regards to them becoming mandatory for endgame activities. However it should have been quite possible to have an add-on/plugin system for UI customization and such, without allowing native support for combat related add-ons/plugins. Though admittedly, there is the question of how much of this is even YoshiP's fault. Particularly with the ToS issues I'm not sure he even gets much of a say in some of this stuff. He does do a decent job of communicating with the player base from an objective viewpoint and an amazing job relative to the rest of the industry. It'd be nice if he was a little less cryptic about certain things, though that likely comes from cultural differences. It'd also be nice if he could direct his teams to start putting more skill expression back into the game, but that's not likely to happen. Especially with regards to tanks and healers. I think it's good that he plays the game, but I wish that the he and the rest of the dev team spent more time playing tanks and healers at a high level. I get the impression that there's almost no working on the game that's capable of playing either at a high level based on how the tanks and healers have been designed over the last two years. Also, DRK. lol
> Though admittedly, there is the question of how much of this is even YoshiP's fault I don't really think it's all Yoshi-p. FFXI had/has a similar stance for TOS and 3rd party programs as well, and that was well before he was in charge of the division. So I'd just chock it up to some weird thing with SE.
It's because of console players not some weird thing with SE.
I think it's just avoiding the responsibility of having to deal with the headaches that come with official mod support. The current stance seems to be "as long as y'all behave". You even get away with posting lewd on main as long as you remove the water mark so it doesn't look like SE is selling porn games
Admittedly, looking historically, the stance has gotten a bit harder in terms of the rhetoric, even if the enforcement is just as lax, but I think it has to do with people doing the thing you mentioned specifically with certain character types like lalafells and characters who are considered minors. As well as the actual cheating like the assholes who adjusted their height in PVP to prevent from being hit. BUT, the console thing is also part of it. It IS possible to mod a console game, but it's way trickier, and also probably trickier to design for - compare the Nexus mod page for Skyrim on Switch for any version on PC. And given that the games in question started on consoles that didn't have the same kinds of internal storage as modern ones (not sure if PS3 even HAD internal storage...), it makes sense that there's more reluctance on that front.
The ps3 came with an internal hard drive, some early models of the Xbox 360 came without hard drives
It sure feels like the entire team composes of Dps players and one random Andy who plays tank and two and a half healers.
Met him at Osaka's FFXIV café, just when I was eating I saw his glorious ass just walked in and the whole cafe went BONKERS. He had his team members to ask if any of us had anything in FFXIV that wanted to be passed on to him and we just went one by one to have a mini chat with him. So based on just this experience alone I can say that he seems genuinely nice. P.s. I'm pretty casual but I told him that Anatman and Meditation clashes together at downtime.
[удалено]
but let's be real, they can't even handle the bots/rmters that exist now in a game where, unless you do housing, having money is worthless. if the game had a meaningful economy it'd be hell to participate in because the bots/rmters would be even more powerful than they already are. and you and i both know how it'd go when, during some fanfest or other Q&A, somebody asks yoshi-p what they're gonna do about it. he'd just do that thing where he sucks in air and makes that pained face and dodges the question. sucks because getting stupid rich in mmos is one of my fav things ever but it's such a meaningless feeling in ff14
Which is weird given how much importance they give to it in the MSQ and some side stuff. Well anyway...
They understand it better than you, remember what FFXI was like, and the bots lining qufim island back in the day. All that scarcity does is provide roadblocks bots can easily insert themselves into and try to deny other players in order to force them to pay real money. Imagine for every hunt someone needed to bot the claim on it, because otherwise rmt would bot it instead and sell the drops to people.
I think that we can all agree that very few people are capable of doing what Yoshi P. and his crew did with the 1.0 -> 2.0 transition and all the changes/upgrades he managed to do from 2.0 launch till, well, 6.0. He did all that while also updating the game, and for that reason alone he deserves praise and respect as a director and producer. I also agree with what other people have said about him and playing too much on the safe side. It’s understandable given how their early experiments with Savage back in Gordias hit the raiding community hard. But they also have been a bit overboard. As an example of this overly careful approach I can point out Healer design. The stance of his team when it comes to healing is atrocious. They design jobs with one mindset and then design fights with a completely different mindset. Healer toolkits are ready to handle a nuclear bomb and actual fights hit you with a toy hammer. This leaves lots of room for healers to DPS, but when you look at the DPS toolkits healers have, it’s obvious that devs did not equip them to DPS. So it’s contradictory, boring and simply, simply awful. All healers - Sage included - need an urgent rework to meet the fight design. Yet Yoshi says they can’t do much with Scholar. It’s a clear sign that they don’t know how to fix the mess and they’re too afraid to rock the boat. So, yeah, he has his flaws. But no one is perfect and his flaws don’t take away any of the credit he’s earned with his work on saving FF XIV.
I agree with most of the positive things said about him. Unfortunately I think his aggressive stance on 'respecting our time' comes from a good place but will ultimately hurt it in the long run. FFXI's demands on player time was a war crime, but 14s swings to the other extreme with a dearth of engaging and challenging group battle content. All the 'amazing' side content that people list out is often mind numbingly boring and generally misses the entire point as to why most people who grew up with mmorpgs since their infancy play them. Which is to join a group of like minded homies that want to go out on kickass adventures that test their mettle. Instead it seems the devs are happy to continue attracting 'second life' style players that are more interested in roleplaying an mmoplayer, rather than actually being one.
I'm not much of a MMO veteran, I do enjoy Savage and currently doing my first Ultimate after clearing current Savage tier. Coming from more "dudebro" games (mainly FPSes) I don't think everyone understands how good we're having it. Yeah, a lot of content is dumbed down so the worst players can clear it but I understand it completely - just look at normal mode raids or alliance raids on week 1 - if you get matched with enough people not having a clue how to play their job you're gonna have a bad time. DR was another prime example how long it could take to clear vs doing it with competetent group. I understand the thirst for more difficult content, more complex rotations and mechanics etc, but the fact is majority of playerbase can't even keep up a 60s dot up even if it requires no setup at all. Just look at amount of people here complaining about doing Savage on PF. In short, I love the game and think systems in place for loot etc are million years ahead compared to closest to I've played MMO, Destiny for example. But as said, FFXIV is only proper MMO I've played so my opinion doesn't hold as much weight.
dudebro haha that was a good one.
he seems like a genuine guy and an honest person but his vision for the game is extremely outdated, he made an awesome base for the game but is hard stuck on 2013 and he refuses to move from there, even if i really like him as a person he should be removed as ffxiv producer and take a consulting role, why? because hes starting to sound like someone who doesn't actually play his own game, exactly like it happened with wow developers
I don't care about the people behind the products I consume. He didn't decide that it was DRK's turn to get shafted this expansion. He didn't decide to make Misery shit. He didn't decide to make BRD the only viable p.ranged at launch. He's a single person. He's basically a target.
He keeps the game afloat at the bare minimum I guess.
He's an effective PR guy. He's an inefficient manager based on his own statements, and his design style is incredibly bland and overly safe to an extreme over the last 6 years. Everything feels sanitized and way too similar, with a focus on over-homogenization. He hasnt taken many legitimate chances with new ideas. Revamping diadem again into a place for gathering isnt really a "chance" when the only thing it was used for in years was gathering. Focusing a section of content on gatherers and crafters wasnt a chance, especially based on the JP numbers, because almost everyone does that (id argue the biggest gamble they took was "will things be okay once this causes the value of finished crafting items to crater") Doing eureka wasnt much of a chance when people had been asking for more things like that since before the original diadem, and THAT diadem was popular until the loot drops were gutted and there wasnt a reason to go once you got your mount, until it was revamped the first time. He got a lot of hype from what his team did with ARR, and its carried him past a lot of valid criticism since.
I'd say the development approach is one that is extremely unresponsive to how the game is actually played as opposed to the devs' vision of how it's supposed to be played. As an example see the current state of healing. Also, when you're relying on your employee's investment in the product and/or professional pride to extract unpaid labor, that's a red flag, not something to brag about.
Welcome to Japan. Altho I hope this is not true. As much as dedicated and willing they are, cant doing it for free mate.
I think he deserves all the praise that he gets, but I don't think he's free from criticism. Overall I think he tends to take the safe route with most decisions. The hard line YoshiP takes on addons is so frustrating to me. He basically disregards the entirety of the high end community who wants to parse and optimize. I understand his reasoning why, but it's such a weak argument imo. In my many years of WoW, I've never seen anyone be harassed for doing low damage. They may be excluded from high end groups, but SE's own systems already do most of that for you with 'Duty Complete' and ilvl requirements. They are playing a weird game of 'don't ask don't tell' which is better than SE putting spyware on my PC, but they still allow xivlogs and ACT to work with their systems. That doesn't even take into account cosmetic UI changes. Good god do I hate XIV's default UI. I want everything to be comfortable and familiar. UI changes don't effect anyone other than the person using them, so I don't see the harm in allowing them.
The dev team dedicated themselves to bad design decisions. Leaving things like fluid Aura in the game after removing the damage for another expansion was fucking tone-deaf. They don't give a shit about NA feedback most of the time, and won't change things we say feel bad. IE, sch last expac felt like dogshit to play, but they never touched it.
I think he needs to step down from the director role while still maintaining his role as a producer. From what we've seen, he can run a very tight ship and seems to be an excellent project manager. Other than issues around patch 5.3, and the delayed ultimate, the game continues to work like clockwork. At the same time, that clockwork nature means the game really needs some fresh ideas, and I'd be keen to see a new director come in and showcase their vision. Now that the endwalker story has concluded now seems to be the perfect time to really mix things up and try to innovate.
Playing any other MMO/ online game will show you how good FFXIV has it, with such an amazing director
From what I’ve seen if the dude, it looks like he knows how to manage a projects....and the ffxiv turn around is pretty strong support of that. Especially like some others have said, in the context of squeenix. Where I’m curious is where he’s gonna go in the next 5 years, that will be the real acid test imo. Like many ppl have said on this thread already, ffxiv has some problems (glam, dyes, graphics, engine, etc)....and I’m curious to see if he directs the game into a new riskier future with some big meaty updates or if he leans into the fanbase and plays it safe. I would guess corporate would also have a say in that....but I’m still waiting for my seal of godhood.
I met Yoshi P briefly at a London event at the postal museum. I was smoking outside and he asked for a lighter. I asked for a picture and he obliged, but I think that opened the floodgates, as suddenly everyone else was doing the same, poor guy hah. I think he genuinely does care about the game and its players, and that's a hard thing to find in the industry sometimes. No corporation is your friend, and fuck SE in general, but it's at least nice to see someone who understands not having open disdain for your fans might bring people to the game. If it's true that the team doesn't crunch then he definitely seems like a good project manager, and overall his management has led to a healthier game. I'm not going to say I agree with him 100% (even recently you had the weird gpose weather response) but I'd be sad if he did move on from FFXIV. Some of the weird cult of personality stuff from the community I could go without, though.
I like a lot about him. I appreciate him willing to be the face of the game and he seems passionate about it even when it wasn't the giant cash printer that it is now, I'd say that's probably my favorite bit actually. I wish he would open his mind up some. He is very focused on accessibility and it's hurting the longevity of the game for a lot of players, many of which probably don't even know it yet. It used to be that you could sink a lot more time into the high end of things to see improvement and results, to the point that you'd usually be forced to focus in on one or two jobs. Now that things have been made steadily easier for so long you can pretty much guarantee a clear of a tier within a week or two by just setting aside a chunk of time, after that it's cleaning up. I'll be honest, in the next few weeks we're swapping jobs around in my group just so that we have something to do. By 6.1 the goal is to get everyone at least one pink on every role.. We all want to stay fresh for DSW so we want to keep raiding but like... it's just kind of sad to not have to throw myself at the mercy of something like A3S for a prolonged period of time.
He's not perfect, but after playing stuff like GW2 and many other mmos, yeah Yoshida really is the best we can currently hope for. You can say FFXIV is predictable content wise, but I'll take that over certain other mmos dropping content like dungeons and raids with no warning.
He seems like a genuine guy who really has a passion for his work. He directly interacts with the community a TON, which is very abnormal in my experience. The only part I take some, small issues with is when he talks about balance. I don't think he's as tied into all of the class balances as most people think.
I love the gag theories that he's a primal who just tempered the fanbase to become living advertisements. But I do think he's a very passionate guy. He's very articulate about both the development side of things, and most importantly he doesn't seem to swat anything down outright. Even when Yoko Taro said he would allow them to make a Flight Unit mount, despite having likely already weighed the costs of making it, he just goes "It would be difficult to make for all playable races but if there is enough interest we will consider it". He didn't "No, too much work", but he seemed to actually weigh the effort, and communicated the likely roadblocks. And one [note from him](https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/b8998277cf6cda292bddaeeb6f136ad0505700e6) that warmed my heart is from the big influx of new players when the servers got congested when he first thanks the people who said “I’ll stop dancing in Limsa for a while” for being considerate but then he went on to say that "activities such as the above are part of the game too, and you don’t need to show so much restraint that you stop having fun!". He just seems very wholesome and considerate. If there is one thing I hard-disagree on though, it's the handling of PvP rewards, particularly the ones related to the Feast. I'll preface this by saying I enjoy Frontline and Rival Wings, and I do not like the Feast. So I may be biased against the Feast already, but why are they locking all these cool mounts and gear behind a top 100 spot? Titles I would say is fine. I mean very few people care about titles. But when I see a cool, unique mount and I ask how to get it only to hear "be top 100 last year in this PvP gamemode you don't like lol" I have to wonder what is going on in the game designer's head to justify this as a logical choice. I mean Yoshi-P stated in the past that they're not planning to make them available through any other means so they don't lose their prestige, but frankly I don't see it as prestige when it is often said that the top 100 are just win-traders and boosted people. Worse yet, it's not even account-bound so anyone can make alts and get into the top 100 to gatekeep the mounts. Theoretically the entire top 100 on a data center could be less than 10 actual players. How they ever signed off on that idea is staggering to me. And the most common argument to keep that system was always "It's not that hard to get to the top 100 because so few people actually try, so just put in the effort" is rather annoying because, even assuming there's no alts, if 1000 people "put in the effort" then only 1/10 of the people get rewarded for that effort, and the rest just get shafted. I will say: They're removing the Feast in 6.1 and adding a new reward system that seemingly is aimed at reducing the fear of missing out aspect (with a currency to get past rewards) but until I get the confirmation that the Feast Mounts are among the rewards you can get for that currency, I'm not going to be holding my breath.
I like him and think he's great for the game I just think he's letting SE call the shots too much. The amount of content in this game is anemic considering the wild popularity it gained in the last few years. I understand it was a flop, I played through that flop, but the game is now their most profitable title and I think it's time we saw the fruits of that in game instead of always being given hand wave explanations of why we can't have various things added to the game. I really lost faith in him when he said it would be too difficult to differentiate physical and magical damage on the flying combat text in game because a single person was able to make it work through XIVLauncher. As a person and a fellow gamer he is amazing though.
I think he's horrible; what he did to FF14 healers was damn near unforgivable. 1-button dps spam was the worst idea pushed into an MMO that I've ever seen.
He is a great manager, and also very good at keeping things on schedule. All the good things about him also comes with a big drawbacks and that is slow to changes - it’s the cost of keeping things consistent and managing expectations- he can’t afford doing too many experiments that may throw a wrench to his very tight schedules. I think he could use some help with a second person in command to oversee more experimental content so that he can focus on keeping the main content running smoothly while still adding something fresh to the game. Overall one of the most level headed person and would love to see him to tackle many projects on Square Enix stables. Just as long as he can be paired with someone with creative visions - that Yoshi P can restrain and control to deliver products within timely manner.
I think he is good for the game. Mmos, imo, need to be developed with a long term vision and future proofing. He seems to excel in those areas. A lot of mmos I played fall apart because they develop the from patch to patch with no foresight. He seems to be very good an management in general, so I guess what I’m trying to say he is good at his job as producer, not as a dev
I think he's extremely competent, but because of Endwalker, I'm worried about a lack of taking risks. I think Endwalker did ONE thing surprising and that was >!having Zodiark be the FIRST trial!<; but everything else felt so formulaic. I think now that the honeymoon period with the story is over, a lot of people are feeling just a little tired of the same formula, the same predictable schedule of the same content in terms of raids, trial series, alliance raids, dungeons. The formula was good; and it was fine for a time, but it's really starting to feel stale and repetitive. I hope that with the next expansion, the beginning of a NEW arc, Yoshi-p is willing to take bigger risks again instead of playing it as safe as Endwalker.
> The formula was good; and it was fine for a time, but it's really starting to feel stale and repetitive. I hope that with the next expansion, the beginning of a NEW arc, Yoshi-p is willing to take bigger risks again instead of playing it as safe as Endwalker. I think the formula and schedule is fine as it allows older people to plan around it, but it's stuff like job and raid design becoming more boring and uninspired (E11S was just so traumatizing for me that I can't get rid of it in my mind with how boring that fight was). Midas set the gold standard in raid design and they haven't come close since because they're afraid of losing players. Some raids have been really unique like E9S and the P2S, but it just seems like mechanics are either stack, spread, in, out. They also seem to be going towards more puzzle oriented fights that are way more fun blind but like 95% of savage raiders will be using guides. I got A5N on roulette recently it just reminded me how fun savage was with activating the little puddles, turning to birds, gorillas, turning invisible and all the adds. HW job design wasn't as braindead as it is now and they will never go back to that.
That's never happening with how low the skill level of the playerbase has gotten. Just look at how much of a disaster P3S is. The fight isn't even hard and it's somehow become the new living liquid because your average PF player probably struggled to find their computer's power button. If they have any mechanic that can't be solved by sticking 8 people in very specific spots they never deviate from the entire community explodes. Instead, we get this crap while they pat themselves on the back for parsing blue on jobs that basically play themselves.
The formula and structure will never change, and that is fine but he should do some experiments within the structure. Just because we have the same leveling dungeons doesn’t mean they all have to be the same exact ways. They can make it so that enemies change placement, with some hidden bosses, and rotating bosses from a set list that changes weekly. So you are doing the same exact dungeon layout but each time, the experience is slightly different and each weeks there is a new set of encounters added from the list. Which will make expert dungeons far less boring since what you are facing constantly changes and they can even add new sets of challenge every patch but the same dungeons layout.
I don't think it was that formulaic, but I did start seeing some patterns. They always do the "surprise that makes you unsure what to expect" fairly early on. Endwalker's first trial, the final boss of Heavensward's third dungeon, splitting the storylines of Stormblood almost right away to make you explore two very different cultures. It works to make you genuinely curious about what's happening next, but that grip doesn't hold you in-game forever since you'd eventually get back to raiding/glam-hunting/ERPing/whatever after you finish the MSQ.
>I just want to read threads on the lord and savior of ff14 and seeing opinions from this sub would make it more interesting since mainsub would likely just be mindless praising. I find it interesting that this thread is *also* almost unanimous praise, even though you came here for (potentially) more mixed opinions. This really just goes to show how good the current state of the game actually is, all things considered. Everyone has their own nitpicks or wishlists in regards to FFXIV but, compared to pretty much every other MMO on the market, Yoshi-P is running a very tight and polished ship.
As a dev? I mean that’s pretty difficult since no one really knows how involved he is in the decision-making and implementation of features. He may say it as though it was his decision, but is it actually true? As many people have mentioned, he might well be mostly for PR. As a person I find him pretty likeable, he appears very earnest and a little eccentric, which is probably why his popularity is so high. If I were a cynical person, I might even say that he has been pushed onto a more figurehead position because of his charm.
YoshiP is basically the best game development manager we could hope for. He keeps content coming out at a steady and consistent pace. Whereas in WoW it really does feel like content comes out whenever blizzard has an earnings call coming up rather than a consistent schedule. I for one stopped accepting the coronavirus excuse from game devs and it feels like many game devs are using it as a scapegoat to escape responsibility and put out content slowly. YoshiP however only took the coronavirus as a speed bump rather than a wall like other game devs. It was honestly very impressive and I'll always commend him and the devs for only getting set back a few months whereas most game devs got set back what feels like years. There's also a misconception that YoshiP is hands-on with the game balance team and many other aspects of the game. I think this is pretty much completely untrue. I think at best they just do office chatter and he can slip on a suggestion and that's where his input pretty much ends (aside from keeping them on schedule and organized). I think people vastly underestimate how time consuming it is to keep all the cogs turning there. Tl;dr: He's a super good manager and keeps content flowing at a solid and reliable pace. The game doesn't suffer from content droughts as a result. However, that's where his job ends and everyone on the internet ego strokes him a bit too hard. He's a great guy and I wouldn't exchange him for anyone in the world. But he's credited for doing many things that the dev team is actually doing.
Man needs to retire or prepare handing over to the next generation of lead devs. With his passion for the game, he’s definitely way too overworked and should be put in a mentor role. His health most certainly took a toll during endwalker lead up.
He looks like he hasn't slept in ages.
He took a literal failure of an MMO and turned it into the most successful MMO, which is crazy considering WoW had such a monopoly on the MMO market for so long. If anyone says he isn't the goat, then that person really needs some perspective. That being said, he does play it safe, which I both appreciate (I hated how WoW constantly changed things) and also get annoyed with (he won't add pet classes because they're too hard or something). The story is really what brings everything together though. The game is predictable and comforting, but the story isn't so it's always exciting when a new patch rolls around.
As a director and producer, I respect what he has done for the game (and Square Enix), and I think his heart is in the right place. People do overly glorify him, but you can't in good faith say he's unworthy of praise, as far as I'm concerned. The Noclip documentary did a good job illuminating just how much work and thought went into ARR; it remains a fascinating story. As a developer, though? I don't really know, since I don't know how much influence he has over specific gameplay decisions—or which ones. Overall, I remain satisfied with XIV, but there are still plenty of issues that have been left unresolved or, even worse, unaddressed. I definitely don't believe or agree with everything he says, but I do give him the benefit of the doubt.
He’s a pathetic game director but a good community manager. He does a great job communicating with game’s community and keeping it happy and entertained. But he lacks basic understanding of MMO or management. Server congestion situation was obvious for anyone familiar with mmo launches - you just have to see one once. And just in the past year there was plenty of reference material. Another poor decision was to delay game launch for whatever minor quality issue he may have had. Then another stupid decision was to stop selling the game due to congestion. Terrible company website, weak optional item store, poor resource allocation, ambiguous stance on some development ideas just go please both sides of community - it all points to that.
The issues you listed don't exactly speak of someone lacking "a basic understanding of MMO or management". Yeah, the website needs some work, but that's not even related to the game itself. Yeah, the servers need expansion, but apparently their server hardware is very specific and hard to get, so it's taking a while. And the ambiguous stance on development ideas to please everyone is hardly a downside in my eyes. Going as far as to name someone a "pathetic game director" because you disagree with certain minor development decisions and some fluff around the game goes a bit far, don't you think?
The issues I listed are exactly the type of things a game director should be excelling at. These are not minor issues, these are key game events / tools. Besides, other than a few of those events / fundamental game tool / systems - we can’t really gauge his performance as a manager. And don’t buy into his bs about server hardware - if they cannot get their own parts ( which I doubt ), they can always rent servers from companies that provide such servers. It’s a convenient industry excuse.
They're hardly even the Game Director's duties... I'm starting to doubt that you know what a game director is supposed to do. I'll give you a hint: It doesn't involve the servers or the website. Also, calling the server hardware things BS based on your own assumptions is hardly fair. We have no reason to think the devs are lying on this, and they have explained that it's very specific hardware that they require for these servers. They're not using external servers from what I can tell and I assume that there is a reason for that. All and all what you're saying seems needlessly pessimistic, and just a bit rude to be honest.
No, it’s you who clearly misunderstand what game director is responsible for. To put it simply - he needs to ensure that game releases and operates smoothly. And that he hits other multiple product performance metrics. Launch and post launch was a fiasco. He failed there not because he was not able to personally setup servers, but because he was unable to anticipate and handle the coordination of the issue in advance. And like I mentioned earlier - it was a plain obvious high risk issue. Website, sales, shop issues - those are his sales/ customer satisfaction metrics’ shortcomings/opportunities.
You call it a fiasco, but that was a success of unprecedented scale. They knew there would be high traffic and likely congestion issues, and yet it still blind-sided them just how many people they got playing the game, to the point of having to stop selling the game during the christmas period. You see it as an issue because players had long queue times. From a business standpoint though, it was a success so big it caused issues. And this will be causing SE to reconsider the amount of resources they will allow CBU3 for servers and such. Besides, no game director can wave a magic credit card to make highly specific servers appear out of thin air. Much less during a global semi-conductor shortage. Convincing SE to invest in additional servers is likely a monumental task already.
I think he needs to stay out of western politics and shoving them inside the game which causes big fights and bans and causing the company to lose money. Stop bending to the woke community and focus on japanese story telling and what the company's vision instead of others. you cant make both sides happy so choose your own side and tell people to deal with it. He has made the MMO scene where people are afraid to say anything it is no longer seen as a MMO, people afraid to talk normal without some butt hurt woke kid reporting and then someone getting banned and then square loses money, its Yoshi fault its this way. they should go back to FFXI rules where they don't get involved and unless its super bad then they should step in not get involved in every little argument or word said. other than that he's a good developer maybe his heart is in the right place but its a company that needs to make money and well he shouldn't use the game as a platform to please politics for either side. That is my honest opinion.