Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Improvements to the battle system. What are "Shared role actions?"

Q. The revamped battle system is one of the factors of 4.0 that you mentioned. Can you tell us more specifics? Like any hints on the job specific UI.

A. Information i mentioned during the key notes is all i can talk about at this point.

Q. Factors like maintaining your blood of the dragon or Enochian buffs won't change?

A. Until we actually build up and balance it out, nothing is final and established, so please listen to this as an example that is a portion of all the adjustments. Let's talk about a buff with a duration. There's a possibility we'll make enochian last for ever, but instead allow players to gain a DPS bonus by extending enochian by going through a certain procedure. It's really just an example, but once you activate enochian, a timer starts clicking like how it is right now and once the timer hits 0, it auto activates again and no matter how many times it hits 0, it basically won't disappear. However, if you refresh Enochian by yourself, you gain a bonus and the "gap between a blm who auto refreshes it by letting it run out of time and a blm who refreshes enochian by themselves will spread slowly, which equals the gap between their DPS and player skills.

Here's another example. You activate ley lines and right after, an AoE targets you, so you run out and then again, another AoE targets you...and situations like this where you don't get to stay in your lye lines occur. People might think "I wish i could use aetherial manipulation to move back on my ley lines", so allowing players to do that will be a factor that influences the difference between a blm who walks back on the leylines and a blm who uses aetherial manipulation to get back on it. Both black mages are using fire 4 properly, but "that black mage has the specific buff and is dealing more damage!" is the image we are aiming for. At the moment, if you fail to refresh your enochian, it's fire vs fire 4 and the gap is too large.

Are those UIs going to be different for each job?

A. For the jobs with a duration on their buffs, we are intending to try to make the UI dedicated specifically for those jobs. It's not finalized yet, but an example is where we organized a "dark side gauge (tentative)" only available for dark knights and the UI design is also dark knight-ish. The "dark side gauge management" will be done visually by looking at that UI. An example for monk's greased lightning (疾風迅雷 shippu jinrai in japanese. This term is used in some places, such as Killua's nen ability from hunter x hunter which has the exact same name and a similar effect where there are limited conditions to use it but it's powerful and allows fast movements.) which doesn't have a "gauge" but we will give it 3 round orbs as a monk specific UI and one of them shines with 1 stack of greased lightning and when you have 3 stacks, it will be like a super combo gauge from a fighting game that makes it obvious your maxed out and you can use a specific skill by using it all. It's just an example. If we make it more into a game where you have to stare at your buff icons, it will be tough for new players, so we decided to make it more graphical/visual. It's also so players can have an easier time controlling the jobs by making it easy to understand.

Q. The current players need to put their buffs on their hotbars and place them closer to their character to check the recast.

A. Rather than writing "This ability uses all your greased lightning stacks when used" on the tool tips, "Emptying all the orbs" is visually better and easy to understand. So we want to thoroughly aplly that to each job.

Q. So you don't need to check your buffs anymore with the new Battle system?

A. It won't go that far and it won't be for everything. You'll still need to look at your debuffs and you'll need to continue to manage DoTs.

Q. The representive actions will be touched but the left will stay the same?

A. Thunder for example, will still need to be managed, but Enochian management will be removed from the "buff management" and become easier to understand and so on. Currently you need to stare at thunder, enochian, leylines, and they are all "buff icons" and the content you play also forces you to look at AoEs and it's too bland.

Q. Each job will have 1 or 2 of their buffs changed into this specific UI?

A. The new UIs will be involved in the job design for the "final form" of the current jobs when we reach patch 4.0, so i'm still not sure if every job will have a "job specific UI". Dragoon's main focus will still be blood of the dragon and i don't think we'll make huge changes to it, but to expand on dragoon's job individuality with blood of the dragon, maybe we'll have a "blood of the dragon gauge"...that's our current estimation.

If i say anymore, it may create unwanted misundestandings so please let me end this topic here. Again, nothing is finalized at this moment, so please accept what i explained as an example of the "direction" we are going.

Q. How about being conscious about your GCD and connecting combos?

A. That won't change. The base is FFXIV after all, so it won't become busier than now. Definately.

Q. Now the topic about addtional skills (cross-class actions). Right now we have additional skills for each class and you create your own sort of set up. By unifying them, does it mean warrior's blood bath will become something only warriors you use?

A. You're talking about one of the revamps to the battle system "shared role actions". The answer to your question is, there might be some of the current additional skills that become job specific after we add the "shared role actions".

Q. You brought up "shared role actions", but it's a little complicated to put all the DPS under one category isn't it? Because we have melee and ranged and casters.

A. How far and how many of the roles we'll be unifying as a role is up to the balance so it's still not decided yet. We do feel that putting physical melee and ranged and magical DPS under one role is fine at the moment, but we still haven't made our final decisions yet.

Q. Tanks are going to have shared tank actions?

A. Yes. For the actions with the effects like "Increases your physical resistance (note: he did not say physical defence)", we won't be stubborn to make a different action with the similar effect for each job and instead we'll standardized it into a shared action. With the open space that change creates, we'll make job specific actions "unique" to the job to push forward the job identity and at the same time, make sure the overall number of actions won't be more than we have now. By maintaining the total number of actions we currently control and at the same time, leaving space for players to devise is important to prevent the game from breaking.

You may receive the impression that these shared role actions, job specific UIs and job adjustments are going to make "the game easy", but that is not the case.

We are going out of our way to make it simple by getting rid of unnecessary elements so players can improve the party coordination and provide space to play even better than now. That way, players who have high player skills can probe into it even more. However, the gap between the top and bottom won't be as extreme as the current situation, so the ones who will open a gap with others will be the players higher up at the top.

Q. It's true the gap between a hard core black mage who always maintains his enochian and a black mage who drops it and turns into a "fire man" has become too huge.

A. Yes. With these changes, the gap between the casual players and players at the middle should become closer to zero. On the other hand, the gap between a small portion of the players and the players at the middle will start to widen, so this is the "space" we want to leave for improvement in game play.

That being said, these changes will not be big enough to dethrone the skilled players, so i think they'll continue to reign over at the very top (laughs). When we look at the server logs, you can tell they are few levels higher and it amazes me that humans can co this far.

Q. Is it totally different?

A. The way they handle instant decisions are great. Their thorough investigation for certain routes are perfect and on top of that, when they are targetted by random mechanics or when their party members make a mistake, they cover and support them as if that movement was decided from the beginning. Their game play algorithm is well planned where they even deliberately refresh buffs earlier to counter certain situations.

Q. Will the job specific UIs get implemented after learning actions beyond level 50?

A. Probably yes. It won't change until level 50. The image you should have is, basically the moment you learn an action that is the "basis" of that job, the system will be implemented.

Q. Are the shared role actions going to be the same?

A. We plan to incorporate the shared role actions at an early stage. So there will be less situations where players will say "You don't have thaumaturge's swift cast? when you're playing a white mage.

Q. It seems difficult for new players to learn blood for blood.

A. After all, all melees use blood for blood and if that's the case, we will make blood for blood job specific and add another action that increases your physical attack power and make that a shared role action. That way, we can maintain the job identity and simplify it at the same time, but again, this is just a supposition. We may end up just making blood for blood a shared role action.

Job adjustments to current jobs. White mage's accuracy is getting removed!?

Q. During the Q&A section, there was a question and answer that was interesting. There are plans to change the accuracy requirements for healers in 4.0.

A. 4.0 will be when we change how we handle accuracy.

Q. But the concept of the job isn't going to change is it?

A. Including ideas like "removing accuracy as a whole" is still in the stage of consideration. Are we going to remove accuracy from healers? or are we removing it from everything? or are we going to leave accuracy as a stat and add a high amount of accuracy on healer gear. Which ever way, there will be some sort of changes.

Q. How about parry?

A. The same goes to parry. Parry isn't as effective and the direction it activates is limitted, so just like accuracy, there will be some sort of adjustment.

Q. What's the direction for the new actions?

A. If you're talking about the current jobs, the job concept of dragoon is to be more enjoyable as a "dragoon". Paladin's will become even more harder and be able to protect their allies even further and we want to make that straight. __The theme of 4.0 is to make the jobs share actions that have no problem being shared and have each job have a proper job identity at the same time.

Q. By having more shared actions, is it okay to imagine each of the job identities will be sharper?

A. Close to that. The more we share between the jobs, the more unique the job specific actions will become. Which leads to sharpening the jobs even further.

__Q. Can you tell us a little more about "reassessment of unused/ineffective actions" (note: What he is quoting from the panel at fanfest was actually "reworking actions with less effects and actions used in limitted situations" in the japanese text)

A. I had some trouble deciding how to write it in japanese (laughs)

Q. Is this going to be like when you fixed tri disaster? Where players who are capped can use those fixed abilities or actions the moment they login?

A. If i were to give an example, that's right. This is also just an example, but you don't use feather foot do you? Ofcourse there are going to be players who say "I always used it when i did solo content! Don't take away our identity!" , but i consider it will be better to change it into something that monks can make use of. Even with warrior's wrath stacks, we want to unite it into a "primitive" gauge (note: it's called primitive because the jp version has "primitive or origin(原初)" in 3 of their actions. Primitive soul for inner beast, primitive instinct for raw intuition and primitive land for land waker, which is the warrior's lb3) so you can use these "primitive" stacks to use actions in both defiance and deliverance (note: defender and destroyer in the jp version) and we want to reduce the number of actions you need to switch.

(Note: he doesn't mean he wants to abandon (no pun intended) tank stances. He probably wants to change inner beast and steel cyclone into a skill like equilibrium where it's one skill but has different effects depending on which stance you are in, which helps reduce the amount of skills on your hot bar)

Q. I remember you were talking about how we won't have enough space for keys/buttons. How about the total amount of actions?

A. We will maintain the same amount of actions as what we have currently. Our simulation for the amount of actions for each job at level 70, including the new actions is complete. Even if we end up having more actions for certain jobs, it will be a matter of 1 more or 1 less.

Q. At the moment we have stance changes. One for tanking and one for DPSing. With the addition of shared additional skill system, is there a possibility tank stances in general will be removed?

A. We don't really want to take way much of the fun, so i think we'll make use of the stances as much as possible, but we do want to reduce the annoyance by a little.

Q. Either way, job adjustments are simply fun to look forward for.

A. I have to repeat myself again, but what i talked about today are just examples. I don't mind players debating over what was said in this interview, but i'd like them to avoid discussing it in an assertive manner. From my perspective, i can declare that "I'm explaining it after telling them none of it is final, so even if misunderstandings take place at that moment, it won't affect the final implementations", but the development team really worries and cares about it no matter how hard they try, so please remember none of this is final.

Regarding end raid content and alliance raids

Q. New raid content aimed towards the top players is planned for 4.0, but what do you think the new end content should be shaped like in 2017?

A. At least something where players who want a challenge can say "This raid was also fun and challenging" after the world first race is over. I know there are various opinions on the difficulty, but since it's entertainment, i think it's important for players to be able to feel "it was fun, even though it was hard" or "that was exciting" with their friends when they accomplish their goals. I think we were able to land right on that spot with "the creator".

I also know there are players who felt unsatisfied. Humans are strange creatures where they can sometimes feel happiness when they are given stress. The stronger that stress is, the happiness you gain after surpassing it becomes bigger. Knowing that, i understand the voices where they want it to be more difficult. I honestly think the difficulty of the creator is what suits this day and era,but i do think about trying to deliver something for those extreme masochists who aren't satasfied. Also the motivation after clearing the final floor is a consideration. I'd like to help players who want the "sense of superiority" they feel when "they are the only ones who can challenge it".

Q. During the opening key notes, you asked players if they wanted both the normal and savage mode style for the new raids. What do you personally think about how it should be done.

A. I basically think we should maintain that style. We are still discussing,but it was huge for "players who didn't have much to do during the even patches because even patches are mostly consisted of difficult content". It was extremely meaningful for casual players to be able to experience the scenario through the normal mode and now we have more players who gain confidence there, who challenge extreme primals next. As a player value perspective, we shouldn't break the shape we have now. However, the hardcore players shouldn't get pulled along by that. I think it's okay for players with the elitist mind set "There is content that only we can challenge". By having those players at the top, the players can see that from below and think "I want to go there as well" or look up to them and say "they're so cool". Like i said before, i want to take measures for this "hierarchy".

Q. What's the direction of that challenge?

A. One that only the chosen can challenge. One isolated piece of content might be good (laughs)

Q. You mean content that is above the savage difficulty?

A. Maybe content where it's all about being able to solve or not being able to solve it, but you only have the right to enter if you have cleared the 4th turn of savage.

Q. So you need to clear savage to challenge it?

A. Yes, but it's just an example. However, we won't compromise at all when we create it, so please don't complain even if it's too hard (laughs)

I really enjoy the alliance raids (24 man content) and it's good how you can have fun with the least responsibilities. I like to have fun while i've got alcahol in my body after work, so the difficulty of the alliance raids fit me. You announced that we will have a new alliance raid for 4.0 and you also said you have "big news" waiting in line, so i'm so excited i can't sleep at night. Any hints on that?

A. I really can't provide any hints. I'm sorry.

Q. It's not like it's going to be a 48 man raid instead is it?

A. It won't be like that. All i can say is, it will be intolerable for final fantasy fans (note: this term is used in a good way in japanese)

Q. Will it still be for 24 players?

A. That won't change. In the world we are in right now, i think it's impossible to have a raid for more than 24 players. You can't gather that many. (Note: Yoshi-p is japanese and japan is famous for making every employee over work) I think the limit of players you can gather and still have fun with everyone is 24.

Q. Will the details be revealed at the remaining 2 fanfests?

A. We will announce it and were are going by that schedule we made. We'll be in trouble if it gets postponed and end up saying "we can't announce this in Japan"(laughs).

New gear, items and item levels.

Q. After seeing the job specific gear you revealed during the announcement today, i noticed that there were small differences between the male and female gear. Are we going to have different designs for each gender in 4.0?

A. We received feed back, especially from those male white mages that said "Aren't the white mage gear designs too girly?", so we were careful with certain jobs and tried to keep the "image of the job", while we made the design explicitly different for each gender.

Q. Is that job specific gear for level 70?

A. Yes, it'll be used after you reach level 70.

Q. When will the rest of the job specific gear be revealed?

A. Maybe in one of the live letters from the producer next year. We have the tokyo fanfest in December, but we have to reveal 3.5 info there as well.

Q. Are the item levels flying up into the sky when 4.0 hits?

A. Yes, they will. However, we did apply arrangements to the item level table. Back in 2.0, we created an item level table up to item level 500, but we found a small failure in the calculations so we fixed it. We'll have minor adjustments applied for 4.0 as well. There's definately the job of seeing the numbers increase, but if the numbers inflate too much you'll be turned off, so we're looking for a common ground.

Q. You said the amount of inventory space will increase in 4.0, but will the retainers also be able to carry more?

A. It's not decided yet, because the inventory for players and retainers are decisively different. In fact, when a player ques up and enters an instance (Duty finder), they actually take everything in their inventory with them. FFXIV is an MMORPG where one character is able to carry a large amount of items, so allowing players to move smoothly from one area to multiple areas is intense and has an extremely high load/burden. With 4.0, we are enhancing the server infrastructure to allow us to expand the inventory as close to the limit of burden it can handle.

On the other hand, the retainers' iventory was created with "1.0 as a bad example" in mind. The retainers in 1.0 were accessable from "anywhere and by anyone" so the data became unstable easily and caused/triggered servers to go down, which ended up becoming a high burden and load on the servers. With the retainers in 2.0, we limitted the access to retainer (summoning bells in the EN client) bells and limitted it to calling one retainer at a time and only one player accessing it (totoro note: This is probably why all the items you put on the market get put down when you summon your retainer). Which is why the security level for the retainers' inventory is high and managed safely. To prevent bugs such as items getting duplicated infitnately, we deliberately made it incovenient to increase the safety. (fun note: the new years event from last year where we had to wipe out allagan bugs was a metaphor of "players are the ones to find the bugs for the devs"). The capacity of retainers are simply up to the "physical storage" we have, but if we expand the inventory for retainers at the same time as we enhance the server infrastructure for players' inventory, there's a risk of something going wrong, so we would like to consider leaving that for a different opportunity.

Q. Does the end of PS3 support, which also means being released from the memory limitations, have anything to do with it?

A. No, not at all (laughs). There seems to be some misunderstanding, so i'd like to explain it technically. For starters, the "memory" of a game is like a "virtual hard disk drive" that is fast at loading data. We put "models" and "textures" that would take too long to load from an HDD or blu-ray inside this "memory" which is like a box, so when the game says "i want that data now!" it can instantly hand it over. That's what the "memory" is about. Ofcourse, it's not just graphical data and there are cases where we place the in-game lists inside the memory to allow "sorting items" as fast as possible. However, all of the inventory and armory chest is managed on the server side, so it doesn't matter if you're on a PS3, PS4, PC or Mac. For example, "i want to open more windows at the same time" is a factor that the memory affects, but that is already designed seperately for the PS3/PS4 and the Windows PC. The loading speed for collision has a minimum requirement for hardware, but it actually doesn't have much of an effect on the number of layers on the surface.

Q. I'm sure the players aren't that familiar with knowlege on memory management.

A. Yeah, i think it also has to do with the young game developers of the new generation not having to manage memory. Minagawa (Lead UI artist), Takai (Assistent director aka no.2 of the devs), and Soken (Sound director) might be the last generation who develop games by "dealing well with the memory". If we are talking about how "artisticly" we use the memory, "FFXIV" might be the best in the world at using the memory as precisely and too the limit. If Minagawa (UI lead) says "But the memory~" regarding anything, i think it won't matter who in the world creates it...

Nevertheless, when we use the magical spell "Memoryga" (note: the jp make fun of the devs when they use the term "but the memory is limited" which is pronounced "memory ga" which is like the FF spells "firaga" or "thunderga" so they refer to it as a spell now), we use that reason when it doesn't matter if you're on the PS3 or Windows PC. Which also means that even if the PS3 support ends, The guys called "memory" will continue to approach us to give us a struggle. For example, when we want to increase the amount of simultaneous display, PS3 is the only device where we can't add any more. Not being able to create content where it's 100v100 is an easy example of PS3 limitations, but if we were asked "Is there a possibility that sort of content will come to life?", we can't just judge based on that alone. The reason why we decided to end the PS3 support is a sum up of debating over precise matters, widening range of debugs, the development kit aging, hardware crashes, the overall playerbase moving foward, so that's why we announced it.

Like i said during the key notes today, PS3 is a great console that created an "era". I don't think we could have accomplished rebuilding FFXIV and make it "reborn" if we didn't have the PS3 version. Showing respect for the hardware isn't a lie and it all comes from the bottom of my heart. With that being said, if SIE (Sony interactive entertainmen) who supported us with devotion are saying "We're putting all our power into the next generation, the PS4", we thought we should use the "know-how and spirit" we gained from the PS3 development to improve the PS4 version even more, and both companies came to an agreement on that.

Q. It seemed like you spent a lot of time on explaning that. While the players at fanfest having an atmosphere where "the nuisance is finally gone", you showed respect(to the PS3) by asking them politetly to listen quietly.

A. I do respect the PS3 and even though there aren't as many anymore, there are lost of players who enjoy the game on their PS3. Today, i sent my message to those players and said "I'm sorry. Even though it's to make the game even more and more fun, i have to tell you that when 4.0 launches, you won't be able to play on the PS3 anymore. We will be putting in as much effort to support you by having campaigns, but we need you to ask you to use your own money to buy a PS4 to continue playing and even if i were able to say "Let's all go play on the PS4!", i was not on the same page as the people at fanfest who were saying "yeah finally!!!". However, it's not about who's good or bad. It's just a matter of one era coming to a close and that's why i wanted to address it properly.

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The forbidden land of Eureaka is not a place "everyone" will go to.

Q. Please tell us a little about the forbidden land of Eureka. It's still vague, but i would like to know the visual concept and the role this area will be taking. During the keynotes, you said we'll be able to enhance our weapons, but are there any other roles?

A. Basically, if we explain FFXIV as a themepark as usual, i think Eureka will not be a place everyone will go to. Just like a "haunted house" in a real life theme park, some people never enter those places (laughs). We hear opinions like "Why would you go out of your way to get scared?". In real life, those confident men immoderately ask women to enter the haunted house when they are at a theme park, but from a woman's perspective, there are definately people who are like "Huh? why should i?" or "Are you stupid? you want to act tough? i don't want to" (note: this is actually what he said. it is not made up). Eureka is content like the example i gave you. "Those who want to go are free to go, but be warned it won't be fitting for some people". I'm sure people in FCs (free company) have different likes and dislikes and even those who are eternal bond partners need to be careful. Everybody doesn't go to haunted houses, but those who love that thrill will continue to attend.. and that's the type of content we would like Eureka to be.

Q. We don't have places like that in the current FFXIV do we.

A. Not up to this point. The Zodiac and Anima weapon quest was a little like that, where we had lines connecting each of the content inside "FFXIV land (note: he describes it like D***** land)", but we're sure everyone is bored going to old areas. We as devs were also coming to a limit with ideas for those quests and if that's the case, "we might as well make an area dedicated for that" which was our first vague reason to start making it.

There are also staff members who want to implement content from the 1st generation of MMORPGs where players will say "The mob still hasn't popped yet..stop screwing with us!" or " We finally beat it, but it didn't drop again danmit" and we matched them up with the content. It's a "play ground for level 70 and beyond", so it's still an idea floating in the air, but the lore behind Eureka (in the original FFIII) is a land where powerful weapons, armor and magic is sealed, so we want to make it where your hard work and time invested might end up being a waste, but instead have the chance to get a great reward.

Q. Will the monsters that only pop once every 72 hours show up there?

__A. That was one of the examples i gave today, but i still don't know how it will turn out. If we think about the current era we are in, i think 72 hours is going a little too far (laughs).

Q. The "72 hour respawn" has a nostalgic ring to it. We had a lot of those in FFXI didn't we? (laughs)

A. Yes, we'd like to bring back some of those, but we have no intentions of bringing them all back. If we did bring it all back, then it'll be like "Why not just play FFXI?" and there are lots of players who are playing FFXIV because this game isn't like that.

Q. Is that visual image of Eureka the final fix?

A. Not at all. It's still way back in the provisional stages and the works has just started. We'll most probably involve and cover the "unsolved questions" in the FFXIV scenario, so there's a high chance the art will change entirely.

__Q. As a FFIII fan, it reminds me of the feels i had back then.

A. Maybe not as much as what the "crystal tower" provided. This time we're trying to make the FFXIV equivalent of Eureka.

Q. Is "Eureka" an extension of the "Diadem" and "Diadem 2" planned for 3.5?

A. It's extremely different. Ofcouse we are going to balance Eureka based on the feed back we got for Diadem, but the starting point itself is very different from the planning stages. The 2nd exploratory missions planned for patch 3.5 will include a raid that can only be cleared by a team of 4 parties, so it'll provide a totally different type of game play.

Q.Are the rewards going to be aetherial gear like last time?

A. We're right in the middle of the final adjustments. The content is a little different to what we have in FFXIV now, so we're having a hard time deciding the rewards. By looking at the reactions to this content (note:diadem 2), Eureka will be even more buffed up. We'd like to continue providing new values and challenges.

Q. In a previous interview, you mentoned how you wanted to make changes to content such as the anima weapon quest, which is for players who aren't really into end game content.

A. That is exactly what we want you to expect Eureka to be like. I think we'll have armor this time, but you'll probably die if you do it all (laughs).

Q. You're going to change the game play entirely by providing a dedicated area for that content?

A. Well yes, but like i've said before, we aren't going to change the core game design of FFXIV. Since we have a game design that matches with the current era, there are cases where we changed to shape into what follows the flow/trend, but we definately won't go back to how it was like in the old days._ There are times when, what was nice in the past becomes a trend again, but it's never in the form of what it was like in the past. We have to admit "our age" exists thanks to the fun experience we had in past and i'm not denying the past in any way. So we are thinking about trying to bring back that "essence" in some way shape or form into our game play.

For the armor, we have a rough idea and plan in our heads like "Maybe it's better for players to register a certain design they like onto the armor and enhance that". We'll have some players who buff up the reindeer looking armor and some who register the gear they start the game in. There will be opinions like "just put glamour over it...", but there will also be those who care about "that specific armor" being strong, so it's not an easy decision.

Q. There are groups out there who wear the same outfit as a uniform for their static. There's a trend (probably talking about japan) where they all wear pink gear to clear the savage raid (laughs).

A. Last time Nakamura (fun note: aka "Ridill Nakamura" , aka "voice actor of Thancred for JP", aka "FFXIV player with the royal authority (he mains PLD) to ask any and multiple questions to Yoshi-p at events, aka the man who is famous for attracting a crowd of women as an audience for those "FFXIV interviews at events", but all those women who most likely don't play FFXIV leave as soon as his part is done every year and the front row becomes empty) interviewed me, the phrase i used is spammed a lot on the internet nowadays, but i'd like to use that here again. "They are truly playing the game the best way it should be played". Which basically means, i'm really glad there are players out there who have fun like that (laughs).

Q.You said you're adding housing wards in 4.0, but may you tell us the reason why you're adding housing areas, after you added "close to infinite" numbers of appartments in patch 3.4?

A. In a stand alone RPG, even if you have multiple regions show up in the game, the game concludes with a certain "cultural trait" shared by those areas. FFXIV is unlike that because it's an MMO, so i'd like players to get in touch with a new culture when they enter a new region. Depending on the religion and monsters that live in that area, the houses and furniture will obviously be different. It's true you can put furniture from all regions in one house, but by arranging them to share a certain culture changes the "feel" of living inside the game. I think adding a housing area with a totally different look will greatly influence the motivation of players to continue playing.

I know there are a lot of player who aren't satisfied with an appartment and want a personal housing plot with a garden and a basement for their workshop and by adding a new area to the housing zones, Free companies can have a new objective again, like "We'll save up and move to a different house!". That way, your bond will be stronger and i consider that to be very important. Even it if means spending our costs on it, i think we need a totally new housing area for those reasons.

Q. The delusion i had was, since we're joining the Ala mhigo resistance, i thought we were going to live together with them in barracks and have a tough experience first and gradually work our way up to improve our environment. I was imagining that sort of "live content", but it doesn't seem anything like that.

A. If the new housing area was consisted of barracks, nobody would think about buying a new house (laughs). It's normal to try to get the most ideal house inside a game. I don't think there are players who think "I'm going to throw away my resort in Limsa and live in a barrack!"...Whichever way, even if the new housing area is located in Ishgard or Ala mhigo, i want players to feel the achievement of "We're able to build houses here because of me".

Q. Moving to Ala mhigo reminded me of the lore including "a regiment of griffin-back soldiers". This is just my imagination, but are you going to challenge creating content where we ride griffins and fight in the air?

A. Like i've said in the past, if we're going to have dogfights in the sky, we would make a particular content dedicated for that. For example, fighting against a huge boss like Alexander and carry bombs on our flying mounts and dropping them. If we don't have content and stage effects specifically for that, it will definately not be fun to play. If we can do it, it'll be fun..but we don't have plans at the moment.

PS4 pro contapability

Q. During the Q&A, You joked about "We'd need Playstation 5 for that" a few times, but is that because you consider PS4 is having trouble to keep up as well?

A.No, that is not what i meant. There are really many FFXIV players from the new generation who touched MMOs for the first time around the world. It doesn't matter if they are from America or Japan and questions we receive from them are realy natural. It's simply "I wish it was like this". They aren't familiar with how games work and the MMORPG genre is fresh to them, so those "i want it to be this way!" types of questions are like strong fast balls(from baseball).

Q. I see. In other words, these young players from the young and new geneartion have no idea what you can and can't do in an MMO, so they keep sending rapid requests?

A. Yes. That's what scares me the most at these events (laughs). I do understand demands like "i wish i could have seperate colors on the t-shirt and jacket", because you can and you do that in real life, but to allow that in a game, you need to make precise and individual material that is dyable for each of the border lines and adjust the colors so they properly match the connecting parts and also specify which part to apply that dye. Even if it's a simple adjustment to color schemes where you have 2 parts you can dye for one equipment, if we have 15 jobs (fun note: this may actually be a leak that we're having 2 new jobs, because we only have 13 now, but it might be just an example) that means we need to organize 15 x 2 x number of colors. With real time computing, it's...not something we can't do, but it's an extraordinary amount of work and it'll be either "we can't release patches" or "even we can, the amount of patches will be dramatically fewer". To simply put it, It's not impossible, but it's extremely difficult and that's why i said " If we had a PS5, we might be able to do it", which was a key word i used here and there (laughs).

If we spend an outrageous amount of costs on it, it's possible on a PS4, but it's no where near realistic. Although i said that, when a person with pure eyes and full of hope asks you "Why can't we change the color of each part of our gear?", it makes you want to answer politely and make it easy to undertand as possible by saying "We can't do that unless we have a PS5". That way, they will be satsified with the answer and say "So that's why! but i'd like to look foward for that day to come!" and they'll still have those pure and shiny eyes. We had a lot of conversations like that today. I think i got too cocky and used the "PS5" too much. After using that as an answer 4 times, i said to myself "Just because everyone liked that answer, stop overusing it!" laughs.

Q. Realistically speaking, we don't have a PS5 but the PS4 pro is coming out in November. Last time you said you're still watching how it does, but will "stormblood" be compatible with the PS4 pro?

A. By the time we release "Storm blood", i think we'll have some sort of "4k compatibility". We'll announce it after it's officially deterimined.

Q. In that case, is there are possibility the visual expressions (graphic quality) differ for the PS4 and PS4 pro after 4.0?

A. Ofcourse that is a possibility. The monitor resolutions are changing and shifting depending on the demands of each individual. For the 4k resolution, which is the best resolution available at home, i think it's vital for Square enix to make Final fantasy move about with those pretty graphics. The conditions are totally different for a stand alone final fantasy and final fantasy xiv which has so many characters displayed at the same time, but i assume we should have it ready for both types of final fantasy games. When i looked at Square games (before it turned into Square enix) back in the old days from outside the company, i always thought "How dare they make titles with this quality! What are we supposed to do with our small company!" and that's what Final fantasy let me feel.

As a person who was influenced by Square in that way, i think it doesn't stand well as a Final fantasy title if other companies don't feel " 4K resolution for an MMO!? Don't over do it! Think about companies like us who'll get compared with it!".

(note: Yoshi-p has a column on the "physical Famitsu magazine" twice a month and he reveals a lot of stories revolving around FFXIV and his own experiences. It's an interesting read and he talked about how he used to work for Hudson, which is the inventor of the "bomber man" series, and if you go to Brayflox hard mode, you'll notice the 1st boss uses "bomber man" like moves)

Q. You mentioned the minimum requirements for the windows PC version is getting lifted, but are there any plans on a DirectX12 version or adding advantages for those who use a high-end gaming PC?

A. We already have the DX11 version so i don't think we'll have a DX12 version. If we were going to add something in the future, it would be a native 4k compatibility. The new monitors are going to have better precisions, so we will probably provide compability for players who want to play with high pixel rates, high resolutions and high saturation.

Q. In that case, what are you going to do with the assets?

A. FFXIV already has high resolutions, so i don't think we'll have replacements for a while. Even if we were to do it, we wouldn't split our resources until we end up changing the whole drawing engine and shaders for, let's say 5.0 or 6.0. Considering we have players who turn off all the effects when they play end content, it's a pretty difficult topic.

Page 5

Patch 3.4 reactions and Yoshi-p's opinions on raids

Q. Are the clear rates for the creator what you expected beforehand?

A. The world first race was relatively close to what we expected. We assumed the first floor (A9s) would take 2 hours and 2 hours and a half for the 2nd floor (A10s). As a result, it took them a little longer than we expected for the 2nd floor, but the dev team had split opinions on the 3rd floor (A11s). "Will it last for 6 more hours" was where the team was split by an inch, but for the final floor, it was a matter of lasting one more night or not and i'd say it was an acceptable difference to what we presumed and as a whole, it got closer to what we expected. __We knew the DPS and player skills of the top teams by checking the data logs, so it was rather easy to build up an estimation. It's like math.

Q. High end content you spent months developing got cleared in just 2 days huh? I have a strong memory of nobody being able to beat the 5th floor of the binding coil of Bahamut for a while after it was released and that left a strong impression, but it seems we're in a different era now.

A. That was when the tournament involving the competition for "FFXIV raids" was born in this world. After that, the warriors of light went through training and buffed up before every match and jumped over traps and mechanics. I think the difference between now and then is simply "experience".

You might consider it being "only 2 days", but 2 days is 48 hours. If you play 3 hours everyday and all you do is challenge the raids with that play time, it's a total of 16 days. If players like Nakamura (Thancred's VA) and myself assume it's 48 hours and spend 2 hours per day will say "There's no way this is 2 days". The top teams have everything ready beforehand. The top teams lower their item levels and challenge Midas as a method of training before entering patch 3.4. They have a team of members that collected materials, members who collected tier 5 materia and members who created and provided the new craftable gear right after the patch was released. Those players split and assign their roles and do their best to make their free company the no.1 in the world. It's not just the raid team who are great and those 48 hours are a concentration of everyone who put in their work.

Q. Sounds just like pro gamers.

A. It's a world with first teams, second teams and third teams. So "2 days" may sound easy on paper, but i totally think that's not the case. Members from the dev team were thinking, if it's "those players", it'll take around 2 days.

Q. Changing the topic, The item level 255 restriction for entering the raid through the raid finder is quite tough

A. If we lower it even further, you'll have a much harder time clearing it in the raid finder...

Q. I think that's why there are many players who haven't reached the 3rd floor.

A. I think there are many players like that. I do hear voices telling us "We just want to practice", but everyone in the group has to have the same motivation and it'll just instantly turn into a vote abandon type situation. Using the party finder is the best option. The why some players can clear the content under the required item level is because they are top players, so if we loosen the restictions, there will be more confusion in the raid finder.

Q. Isn't the normal version of Floor 3 rather difficult as well?

A. Yes, you're right about that being hard.

Q. I frequently witness accidents on that floor. (note: the 3 consecutive missiles on the DPS with no heals or the clockwise lazers) I imagined you deliberately made the savage mode easier so they can get out of there earlier and gave the normal mode a little bit more of a challenge instead.

A. That's not the case. The devs from the battle system team and the monster team are skilled as players as well, so when they balance and adjust the content with me, we sometimes forget about the average player. When we test AoEs that targets everyone, we test it without any discussions on where to move to avoid them. We do have occasions where there are accidents, but it's not a level of not being able clear the content, but on the third floor you gave as an example, there are those players who don't like the "spread" type of mechanic. Especially AoEs that have a wide range and easy to overlap each other.

Q. They run towards the same direction.

A. We tend to think "If you see the AoE, there should be no trouble dodging it" and we categorized it as an easy mechanic, but floor 3 taught us a lesson and we understood that was a wrong way to interpret it. We are sorry about floor 3 (A11 normal). It was our mistake for tuning it. Floor 3 is a little difficult.

Q. This demand will move away from the topic on raids, but i think the current FFXIV community has 3 layers of players. Beginners, hardcore players and those midcore players in between. I, a player who loves 24 man raids would like to represent the midcore layer and ask for a "hall of the intermediate".

A. It's troublesome. Up to level 50 wasn't bad, but from there on we have each job sharpening their individual characteristics, so it's true we lack support for the middle tier...

Q. My opinion as a player who participates in raids, the game is more fun if you research it properly by yourself.

A. I have a feeling this age isn't like that anymore. Those who reseach themselves will keep advancing forward and create a community based on there.

Q. But those players don't teach other players do they? Because they did research themselves.

A. No. Players who are insanely good will be serious about it and give you precise information and point out certain mistakes if you ask for advice. They won't be extra nice and beat around the bush or anything, but instead they will go all out and tell you everything you need to know. Why? because if those players are planning on playing as team mates, they prefer spending time practicing with them to help them improve, rather than using time complaining about them behind their backs and that's faster when you want to clear the content. Players at that level don't compare themselves with people with lower skills and they won't "glow with self-satasifaction" either (note:"glow with self-satisfaction=悦に浸る" is a jp term for someone who reaches a certain point and stops there because they are satisfied with their current state and don't aim for anywhere higher). Those players will find someone better than them and aim to be like that player, but it's also true they won't go out of their way to teach anyone unless you say "Teach me! you can point anything out". This is because they know they might hurt their feelings if they don't distinguish how serious that person is about learning.

So those who stop and say "Go research that by yourself" have the mindset of a midcore player. I think expecting others to do something like that is losing your time. The top players don't expect anything from others, but because they don't expect anything, they can assume where players might make mistakes and are ready for it. This usually leads to a steady and/or instant cover up. As long as they clear the content as a team, they don't care which member of the team is on top.

I occasionally see/hear people saying "I'm doing this much hard work and why can't you other players do something that's so easy", but i personally think "Well they aren't you and they are different people, so it can't be helped. That's why i think the mind set of "All right! We only have this much time, but let's practice together!" will end up being better to be friends and to make "others" improve.

Q. You consider there's a difference between having "a joint recognition" as the legion or not?

A. (thinks) As long as it exists, i think the level of "being on the same page" as a group doesn't have to be that high. It's natural for the motivation of each member being different when you reach your limit. There should be no problem as long as the most motivated player takes care of everyone else.

I think the japanese players are really good at games and when you look at their videos or strategy guides, the average level is probably the highest. If E-sports become a part of the olympics, if you only look at personal skill, they might be able to aim for a gold medal. However, they suddenly start to scatter when it comes to team play or a competition and i think it's natural because they aren't used to the genre. The same goes to romance, where you shouldn't expect too much from your partner and i think what's important is if you're doing your best or not.

Q. In Japan, i see that inclination (where they scatter as a group) from the rather skilled players as well. Only a small percentage of players have that positive mind set

A. The same goes to loot distribution. You see quite a lot of people fighting/arguiing over loot in Japan. To clear the content with ease next week, it's better off giving it to the best player. That way, you'll be able to clear it more and more smoothly and eventually the gear will come to you. Or if you just decide the order of who gets the loot from the first place.

Q. I think Japanese players are scared of "maybe the guy who obtained his item might leave and never come back"

A. Even if they do leave, you just have to treat them as "that kind of person" and let it pass by.

Q. The world first race ended early again. Both the first and second team were from overseas.

A. The players from Europe were aiming right for it. They did pretty well in the previous raid race and the EU players finally got world first. It was close, but as a result they were first in floors 1, 3 and 4.

Q. Why are the players from EU so strong?

A. When it comes to raiding, a minor level of lag can get you punished, so having the EU data centers must have been a huge factor. Even without considering that, they showed extremely good results in the past and they had a firm support system this time, which tells me they were prepared to aim for it.

Q. They were polished.

A. People thought Elysium was unrivaled and had a monopoly, so having several rivals popping up made it more interesting. Players from Japan like Tekku and his team were close as well. It seems like they didn't have any flash announcements or activities going on, but i think they were getting ready behind the scenes.

(Totoro note: てっく=pronounced as "Tech" (like tech-nology) is his twitter name and he is from Lucrezia. I didn't know they were still playing but apparently, Yoshi-p knew they were hiding)

Q. I don't know. Are the total number of players putting all their time and effort into challenging raids decreasing?

A. Maybe it's because there are less opportunities to experience the fun of raiding. In Japan, the raiding culture only began with FFXIV and there aren't many titles where it's possible (to experience end raids. note: WoW and Rift are not localized in Japan) so it's uneasy.

Q. Did lowering the difficulty of "the creator" change the number of players entering savage dramatically?

A. The incease is obvious. People participate because they can clear the content and also when they might be able to clear it, so the current difficulty might be where it should be. In our current world, i think it's normal for people to want results for the amount of time and work they invested. "Not gaining anything after spending 12 weeks, but our practice won't betray us" might be good for those with a fighting spirit, but the majority of people cannot accept that. The first 2 floors of the creator are especially easy this time, so i think we're back to the routine from the old binding coil days, where you clear the first and second floor on Tuesday (jp time) and you go to practice the last 2 floors. It told us devs a lesson as well.

One of the concerns i have is the very top of the player hierarchy. The part where you are done after getting your weapon by doing 8 laps of the 4th floor, is something where we need to improve and think of something new. We had a lot of feed back demanding a different scenario for the normal and hard mode, but after all these people clearing the creator, we don't hear that opinion as much anymore. We did hear the story for Alexander was a little plain compared to the binding coil of Bahamut, but we also heard voices from players that they were satisfied with the raid scenario after we released the creator, so rather than changing the story for the two difficulties, we hope to provide a treat/reward for those who cleared the hard mode in a different shape (note:he doesn't say "savage" or "type-0" for some reason. type-0 is the JP name for savage).

Q. The story for Bahamut took a while until it reached its climax too.

A. Yes. The story didn't really move forward until N*** showed up and the final coil was where the climax started.

Q. By the way, we had proto ultima as 24 man content we could only play today at fanfest, but is this limitted to fanfest or will it show up in-game?

A. We do plan to add it into the game in one of the patches for those players who couldn't come to fanfest, just like Odin. Look forward to when and where you'll see it. What we learned from Odin was, it was a single piece of isolated content and there was a problem where it became harder and harder to get matched up with other players as time went by. We'll work around it and add it to somewhere new (speculation:maybe the final 24 man raid?).

Q. Are you prioritizing the people who attend the fanfest to play it first?

A. I'm not sure if we'll add it into the game with the same difficulty as what you can play at fanfest. If it seems too easy, we'll make adjustments.

Q. I watched a few challenges from the back today, but it looked rather easy.

A. We did intend to make it extremely easy, so the difficulty is very low.

Q. I remember players were debating over the difficulty of Mhach (the weeping city) and people were saying it was difficult right after the patch dropped. If the creator's difficulty was one level higher, i can imagine people saying "Hey it's still difficult".

A. Adjusting difficulty is truly delicate. I try to hold myself back so i don't get carried away by the "we want it to be more difficult" type of voices from the players (laughs). Maybe i should ask Maehiro to make a "I won't fall for that this time" t-shirt...

(note: Maehiro is the main scenario writer. He has the talent of making t-shirts, an 8bit titan video and a FFXIV combat game when he has free time. He's also good at wiping out characters)

Q. It does seem like people are having more fun raiding.

A. There is definately an atmosphere where players can say "let's go! we can clear it" and i'm glad. I understand the important feeling of being able to try hard again because you have a chance of beating it.

Q. So this difficulty we had this time wasn't just a one time bonus?

A. After all we don't intend to promise that and the question "is the difficulty of the savage raid we had this time going to be the basis of future raids?" is a different matter. After the changes to the difficulty of controlling each job, we might be able to make the content slightly harder instead, so we'll always be looking for the best balance.

About Mr ozma

Q. Why did you bring Nakagawa (Mr Ozma from the monster team) with you this time?

A. Both the Square Enix marketing team of America and the PR team there told us to make sure we had a session for battle content and it was a strong request from them.

Q. When you hear "battle", we usually refers to Mr Gondai (Lead battle designer for FFXIV and former battle designer for FFXI)

A. Gondai (Mr G) attended the last fanfest and he's the overall supervisor of the battle system, so we decided to focus on "content" itself this year.

Nakagawa's career when he joined us is interesting and i knew he could speak a certain level of english, so when i asked "Do you want to go to NA?" he said "That means i can go to Vegas right?" and i said "yes you can" and he came, but he was so nervous for the past 3 weeks and he couldn't sleep for a single second yesterday (laughs).

Q. He suddenly started speaking english out of nowhere so i thought he had a pretty strong heart.

A. He couldn't sleep last night because he was so nervous and he said he was talking to the wall to practice his lines. Even today, he was talking to the wall in the waiting room called the "green room" until it was time to go. He was extremely nervous, but i'm sure he's releaved he lived through it.

Q. Glad it ended well.

A. Indeed. He had a facial impression proving he moved up a step.

Q. The game developer's panel is always fun to watch, but this one was especially interesting.

A. He'll be really happy you told him that.

Q. I'm lucky i was able to hear Mr Ozma's story. Ozma is abnormal content in a good way. I was always wondering who on earth came up with content like that, so finding out that "who" made me happy as a fan.

A. The next Fanfest in Japan will also have a session for battle content. That person made content that made everyone "despair", but he's really funny so make sure to look out for that. I think Nakagawa has a high motivation creating new content now, because a lot of people approached him at fanfest and said "Mr Ozma!" asking for his autograph.

Q. Will he continue to make a variety of content for 4.0?

A. Ofcourse.

Q. What sort of content?

A. He still hasn't started working on his 4.0 tasks. He's working on 3.5. He usually tunes the 24 man raids, so he's finishing off the the last tier of the Mhach raid and people from other sections of the team are booing at him(laughs).

Q. Is it going to be on the same level as Ozma?

A. I don't know how it will turn out...Including the stage effects, he's challenging something new again. Even though that means forcing the staff from the graphics team and progammer team to go through the struggle, it's really thankful.

Q. I'm amazed you permitted the Ozma battle. Moving to a different area during the battle is an incredible idea. How did you feel when you first heard it?

A. No, i wasn't against it at all! The only thing i pointed out was to make sure the HP gets carried over. If the HP bar fills up every time you travel to a different area, people will think "You're just swapping bosses" and get put off, so i told him to be careful with those parts.

Q. The HP does get carried over, but the enmity/threat is reset isn't it?

A. That's more along the line of consideration for the players. Let's say the tank died after you get swalloed into that other world. Depending on each players' loading times, the timing you return to Ozma is pretty random so it has a meaning to prevent chaos. The devs are always concerned about being careful with each content and each boss. Watching them take care of high level content and raids makes me admire them.

Talking about other elements. "Attribute points will be abolished"

(finally something the famitsu interview didn't have..or did it?)

Q. What i really liked about patch 3.4 was the facial expressions the warriors of darkness had and i was interested in each of the cutscenes. The warriors of darkness had some negative expressions, but can't you apply them to the player characters and also add positive expressions to evolve the emotes?

A. By that, do you mean allowing the player to control and use them in the game?

Q. That too, but by making our characters use possitive expressions in the main scenario quests so i feel like i'm there and there should be all sorts of applications. Like for example, hateful emotes or emotes that show you are getting mad, so we can feel more empathy for our characters.

A. For patch 3.4, there was a certain character who said something along the lines of "You get what i mean right? if you don't, then get it!" and i think players were able to sympathize with them, but if we make the warrior of light's reaction into something where they act more than they do now, the gap between you and your character (your image of the character) will start splitting. Like "Huh!? I don't think of it that way" or "i wouldn't act that way..." The same goes to the Dragon quest series (note: you basically only have "yes" and "no" as an answer in that game, so you can expand your imaginations as much as possible).

In a typical "Final fantasy game", if Cloud is the main character, you follow Cloud and his story. You could say the player isn't Cloud and you are enjoying the story as a reader, but for FFXIV, the player is the main protagonist which means you are the warrior of light, so it becomes a different story and it's difficult to adjust the amount of sugar on the spoon. However, we have started to make the warrior of light show more emotions in the recent patches.

Q. I considered FFXIV to be a game where the main character shows quite a lot of expressions, but from what you told us it seems they are still held back.

A. Maybe because we've gradually added them in little by little. It's like we're always exploring. With a scene involving Haurchefant, we added in a "smile with a sad expression" and even with that, some people will think "there's no way i'd smile there" so it was a tight decision. After deciding to go through with it, we thought we may as well put a lot of work into it and had so many retakes for that single scene and i think it was well organized at the end. (He's talking about the scene where a magical power took away your head piece, which made it awkward for people with certain glamour)

Q. I assume the new jobs won't include any classes like 3.0, but are you ever going to combine the class and job system?

A. Even if we do, it would be after patch 5.0 and beyond.

Q. The class system is basically like a name with no meaning to it now.

A. I can't deny that.

Q It's a "legacy" taken over from "the old FFXIV" (aka 1.0). Will unifying the classes and jobs take a lot of time?

A. Including the data carry over from 1.0, the class system is stuck in the roots, so it's extremely difficult. When we think about the problems we have counting back from 1.0, it might even be the biggest.

Q. Aren't you going to get rid of the "bonus attribute points" either?

A. I think we'll abolish the system where you use attribute points on certain parameters. Especially the new players tend to never use those points on anything and we thought "As expected, this is bad..."

Q. None of them use the bonus attribute points?

A. You're level goes up quickly nowadays and it's hard to notice the difference.

Q. That means they are playing with all those 30 points piled up for nothing?

A. Yes. Most of the recent games don't make you design your parameters as you please, unless there's a "huge system" dedicated for that (note:like dark souls). That's the reason why new players don't have the habit of using their attribute points.

Q. So it's no good unless you force the game to show a dialogue right in the middle of your screen when you level up and make sure they can't close it until they use their points?

A. _Yes._It's not like a certain build changes anything huge and if that's the case, i think we should give a different system that role and get rid of the bonus attribute points.

Q. "3.0" introduced the hall of the novice as new content for beginners. Will 4.0 have a similar type of rather big content?

A. We briefly talked about that in this interview, but the "hall of the intermediate" does get brought up quite often...

Q. Yes, i want it (laughs).

A. There are some members in the dev team who are all for it to have an NPC that teaches you the rotation for those aiming to challenge extreme primals or similar to that level.

Q. To conclude, we'd like you to send a message to those who can't wait for the future fanfests.

A. The announcements we had for today's NA fanfest is just the prologue. I intended to spread mysteries inside the announcments here and there. By looking at the teaser trailer, it starts from "why are they having a carefree sham fight on Rhalgar's statue?" and "Who is the blonde lady in red". If you look carefully, there are people getting ready for battle and the camera draws back so you can see a portion of the lore and we also intended to include what may become hints for later on. We even have hints in today's keynotes, so I'll be glad if people have various debates over it.

We still have patch 3.5 waiting for us and after the information on patch 3.5 is revealed, you can speculate even more by mixing the info from today's keynotes with that. We also have the European fanfest at Frankfurt where you'll be able to connect all the dots and see the whole picture of "Stormblood", so please enjoy each patch and incoming events.

Q. Is it okay to guess "early summer" to be around the same timing as 3.0's "spring"?

A. I was trying to be positive when i announced "spring" for 3.0, but as a result, it was postponed to early summer. To avoid sitting on my knees to apologize this time, i'd like you to acknowledge "early summer" as "early summer" (laughs). We are working hard to deliver it right when people expect it to come out, so we wish players to enjoy the game positively.