Saturday, March 5, 2011

Naoki Yoshida "Yoshi-P" Part IV + My Opinions on FFXIV Patch 1.16

The amount of passion and dedication this man has towards this game is remarkable. Inspiring, really.


^ Naoki Yoshida (right) with Sage Sundi (left) at an interview with ZAM at the Game Developers' Conference. (GDC) Poor guy looks exhausted though.

See also: Patch 1.16 Details


See also: Letter from the Producer, IV
See also: Letter from the Producer, V

See also: ZAM's interview with Naoki Yoshida at GDC.
See also: ZAM Editorial: "Bringing Hope to the Masses".

See also: Eorzeapedia's interview with Naoki Yoshida
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See also: finalfantasy14.eu interview with Naoki Yoshida.


See also: Naoki Yoshida Part I
See also: Naoki Yoshida Part II
See also: Naoki Yoshida Part III


This man sure knows how to keep people interested in the game. The patch brought forth a few days ago pretty much met my expectations. However, a lot of people seemed to be upset about the notable lack of cut-scenes.

Well, the Viva Eorzea linkshell and I went out to test it for ourselves and here's my opinions on it.



The rank 10, 15, and 20 quests that were introduced are pretty straightforward (go to x dungeon and gather these materials). The rank 30 quests are a little more interactive where you're set to another town to get stuff. (One in particular gave me a pink breastplate to wear T_T)

The quests themselves aren't too phenomenal (I guess that's what the main scenario quests are for), but they're certainly worth doing. There's a completion list to these new sidequests (ala-FFXI) so I'm thinking these are pre-requisites for something much more dangerous in the future, at least that's what Yoshida hints at in these above interviews.

Yoshida also stated that one thing we can be sure to expect was that the monsters in Eorzea won't be so friendly, and the world won't be as peaceful. I see his sense of humor really took effect when I logged in and once-small tiny rats were suddenly HALF MY SIZE. Scary stuff. Some of the new R30 quests too involve killing aggroing bombs and eyes as well.





I don't really like this new "aggro" emblem they have though. Looks out of place. Here's hoping in the future they re-arrange it so it's near the strength-con of the monster. I'm all for threatening monsters, but I kind of want to be surprised. That's the fun in adventure, right? ;)

I gotta hand it to Yoshi-P, though. I think the update as a whole was executed fairly well. There were a lot of features I found to be fairly annoying that were fixed. Most notably, the game no longer crashes when I open up the linkshell list. That was a nice little tidbit they fixed there. And MP regeneration on top of that? Love it!

I'm looking forward to the next patch. I just wish all of this was implemented back in September, and perhaps this game wouldn't have gotten itself in such of a bad shape and reputation it has to dig itself out of during the rest of the year.








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