We set that as a policy in the beginning - the communication was really important. And so Yoshida set about getting in front of the fans, setting up streams and starting the Letter from the Producer series.
It was a stark contrast to the more measured, often steely approach taken by previous developers in the director's chair for a Final Fantasy. I took a different attitude - I'm not like the corporation at the time, quite secretive and trying to protect themselves.
I'm not like that. That's why the other team's didn't like my approach. Not everyone was on the same page. We wanted to protect ourselves.
But if you take that approach, the players think you're not open to them. With Final Fantasy 14, we had to include all the players to recreate it together, so that everyone could be happy. That outlook has had a knock-on effect - it's hard not to see the influence of Yoshida's approach in the development of Final Fantasy 15, and in director Hajime Tabata's embrace of the community throughout the project.
There was never an explicit exchange of ideas - "Giving advice in development is difficult," says Yoshida, "There's no one way to make a game!
The mindset has changed, and there's definitely been some impact. Yoshida himself is now some seven years into the project - a long time on any one game, though as he jokes some Final Fantasy games have been in development for even longer - so it's perhaps time to start wondering what's next. I'm just a staff member at Square Enix, and this is their game. If they ask me to take on a different game, I'll put per cent into it. It's not just corporate - it's feedback from the players and the community.
There's massive pressures. Working on Final Fantasy 14, that's something I realised. It's not easy for anyone to make - it has to be someone special.
But if the company asked me to make a standalone Final Fantasy, for example, I'd do that. For now, Yoshida's firmly focussed on the future of Final Fantasy itself, and seems set to see out the ten year mission. It's like a TV drama series - when's the next season coming? We've got that planned internally. Why not be the first to post one? Sign in to contribute Email address Password Sign in Need an account? Register now. Fortunately, Yoshida and his team have taken this into account when preparing for the flood of newcomers Stormblood proved to draw in.
We haven't peaked". For example, you can gain three times as many experience points on the older quests so that you can level up quicker by going through the main scenario quests. There's no need to deviate to the various side quests - you can just plug through with the main story and strengthen your character that way.
The best gear is distributed throughout those main quests so that it's smoother to move forward. Stormblood, our season three, has only just come out, but if someone starts the main quest of season one, they should be able to catch up to Stormblood at a fairly rapid pace.
The last expansion also introduced a new item called Tales of Adventure that, when activated, marks all pre-Stormblood content as completed, enabling players to simply press on with the new quests.
This works hand-in-hand with a previously established system called Unending Journey: when players retire at an inn, they can watch previous cutscenes from A Realm Reborn and Heavensward in order to get a recap of the story so far. There are, of course, bosses and giant monsters to fight but these are tied into the main quest, where players receive the most XP. It's a smart system that makes a new expansion as accessible as possible for anyone that has yet to dip into Final Fantasy XIV - although one that has not proved to be as essential as Yoshida initially thought.
Just as a showrunner needs to think about the future of his TV series, so too does Yoshida need to consider how long he can stretch out this narrative - particularly as continuing to play eventually requires a subscription. So how many 'seasons' does the director have planned?
Now that we've passed our fourth year, we're aiming for that year mark. In terms of how many expansions we'd like to release, it's not clearly determined just yet but if the title is successful, it would be nice to release an expansion every two years or so.
We're gradually making preparations to plan for future expansions. He concludes: "With the release of Stormblood, we thought we would reach this sort of plateau period as an online service but we were surprised to see so many new players coming in as well as returning players coming back.
Our active subscriber base has become the largest it has ever been, so we haven't reached that plateau yet, we haven't peaked, so until we reach that we just need to focus on continuing to push forward.
Outriders and Nier Replicant fail to drive similar sales, Japanese publisher contemplating entry into NFT and blockchain games. But Yosuke Matsuda believes games-as-a-service will become more important to publisher in service-oriented industry. It's designed that way" "The free trial ends right about there, where your big adventure is just about to start, so it makes the players want to see the rest.
But we'd also need to change our game design" Instead, it's the cumulative goodwill towards the Final Fantasy franchise and the expectations past titles have created that have driven the team to build an MMO worthy of the name.
Subscribing is the only way to fully explore this new progression path The manner in which that story continues is also instrumental in not only retaining players but selling each expansion. We haven't peaked" "With Final Fantasy XIV, we want to make sure you're not left behind, even if you stop for a while," he says.
There are, of course, bosses and giant monsters to fight but these are tied into the main quest, where players receive the most XP It's a smart system that makes a new expansion as accessible as possible for anyone that has yet to dip into Final Fantasy XIV - although one that has not proved to be as essential as Yoshida initially thought. Enter your email address.
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