Famitsu released the 2nd half of their interview with the FFXIV battle devs, which discusses how each savage floor was designed and E2s having an even crazier difficulty during development. [Spoiler warning: This interview involves the names of bosses in Eden's gate floors 1~4 and some Omega raid bosses]
[Covered topics in the interview]
Interviewees:
Staff in charge of each savage raid.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr Ozma): Lead battle content designer in charge of E2s (Void walker). Other savage raids designed by him: A5s (Gorilla floor), A7s (Balls), A11s (Cruise chaser).
Trials: Dhorme Chimera, Hydra, Ifrit, Garuda, Leviathan, Shiva, Nabriales, Ravana, Sophia.
Daisuke Nakagawa (2nd Nakagawa in the team):
Battle content designer who created E4s.
Other creations: A10s (Goblin), O8s (Kefka), O12s (Omega F and M), The Epic of Alexander.
Trials: Nidhogg, Tsukuyomi, Hades (not EX).
Yoshito Nabeshima (First time showing up in these interviews):
Battle content designer in charge of E3s.
Other fights: O1s (edit:Alte roite) and O11s (Omega).
Takashi Kawamoto (Also a new face in these interviews):
Battle system designer in charge of E1s.
[Summary]
[E1s]
[E2s]
[E3s]
[E4s]
[Regarding the difficulty]
[End of summary]
[Translations for full conversations with in depth context for each floor below]
Famitsu Writer: The previous formula made most players assume that Eden prime would be the final boss of the 3rd season of the raid, but Eden didn't just show up in the first season and he/she was also the first encounter.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): There are two reasons why that came to be. One is that we wanted it to be surprising and i still can't talk about the other reason, but you'll find out the mystery once you play the 5.4 raid which will conclude the scenario. It's still far away, but we'd like you to look forward to it.
Famitsu writer: Was all of that already decided during the first meeting between devs?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Yes.
Famitsu: In the first half of the interview, i asked how you set the difficulty on each floor, but how was it compared to the savage raids you created in the past?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): We've discussed this over and over again, about how "Alexander: the creator" is the answer to the savage difficulty we should aim for and the same applied to the Eden raids.
With that being said, if we talk about more specifics, we intentionally made Eden's gate easier than Omega:Alphascape. The reason for this is, the shadowbringers expansion is a timing where a huge wave of new players rush in and even though raids are supposed to be high-end content, we chose the direction of making it easier to get into. We do want to make the patch 5.2 and 5.4 raids a little harder as the patches move forward.
Famitsu: Was there anything you intentionally changed in comparison to previous raids?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Every 4th encounter in the Omega raids were split into the first and second half. This 2nd half was supposed to be a bonus and a surprise we wanted to provide to the players, but it's not a surprise anymore if players get used to it, is it?
To add on to that, we received feedback on the 4th turn of each raid being too long, so for the meantime, we stopped using that formula. That does not mean we'll never do it and we'd like to hear feedback.
Famitsu: You said "The creator is the answer to our savage difficulty", but is that a common understanding shared by the whole team?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Yes, i frequently tell them about it.
Daisuke Nakagawa: After playing the creator on the public servers, we personally thought that was the most fun too.
Famitsu: It had a moderate challenge and satisfaction, which lead to a great difficulty where a wide range of players could try it and clear it. I think having an ultimate difficulty now also helped?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Indeed. When we were developing the creator raids, we discussed how some players would want a difficulty above it, if we were to go with the direction of the creator. We took that discussion topic over to Yoshida and that was how the ultimate difficulty was born.
Famitsu: Now we'd like to talk about each raid floor. Please tell us your concept for Eden Prime
Kawamoto: We featured "Reanimating FFVIII's Guardian force: Eden's summoning animation in FFXIV". We wanted the first encounter of the Shadowbringers raid to have an impactful scene.
Also, we wanted the difficulty to be rather "mild" while having some challenge to it, because it's the 1st turn. Eden is described as an unknown creature in the game and i also didn't know Eden's lore when i was put in charge (laughs). I went to talk to the FFVIII designers, but i still didn't understand exactly, so i decided not to be bound by the lore and imagined moves that would be natural for Eden to use.
Famitsu: You said (In the first half of the interview) that the 1st and 2nd floors don't require as much resources, but didn't the long cutscene in E1s require a lot?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): I remember watching him being really obsessed with making that.
Daisuke (Nakagawa): It looked like he cut down time on everything else to create that cutscene.
Kawamoto: The designers are the ones who worked hard for me, so it didn't eat up that much of my resources. I was able to spend my time on other parts of the encounter, thanks to the know-how i piled up to this point.
Famitsu: I was expecting that cutscene to be removed in the savage version (laughs).
Kawamoto: That (cutscene) is Eden Prime's identity, so i couldn't back down. If he was a boss in E3 or E4, maybe i would've cut it out because you wipe so often, but it's only the first floor after all. I was conscious of those players who like to raid and thought, they would be able to clear it in one go after 2~3 weeks, so i thought they would be able to bare with it once a week (laughs).
Famitsu: I'd like to talk about the mechanics next. Eden prime uses "paradise regained", which changes the effect of certain mechanics. Where did this idea come from?
Kawamoto: The 1st floor is destined to be cleared right away, so i think most players forget the mechanics on their 2nd or 3rd week. Not wiping so much on your 1st clear means your memories are also easy to get wiped out and when you see a mechanic with the same name with a different effect, players tend to think "wait, which one was this again?" and that reaction was exactly my goal.
Famitsu: So you didn't want to make it routine work, just becaues it was the 1st encounter. The percentage based attacks hurt a lot, but does that have anything to do with it?
Kawamoto: A little, but it's more so because gravity type attacks in the FF series are percentage based. Another example of a gravity based attack in FFXIV is Exdeath's blackholes and that is also percentage based. The same applies to Eden's gravity and dimensional shift, so i made it HP percentage based. The percentage is set a little high because i wanted players to keep focused and not look down on it just becaues it's the 1st turn (laughs).
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): When i play on my personal character on the public servers, there are times when you know your fate before the cast ends and you think to yourself "I'm dead" and you panic and use addle, but it doesn't work because it's percentage based (laughs).
Kawamoto: As a member of the battle system team, i wanted healers to be conscious. We actually held down/nerfed healers' healing capibilities across the board in shadowbringers, so having a percentage based attack that hit hard was on purpose.
Void walker's Renzokuken ("Cycle of~" in EN) had an absurd difficulty back in development.
Famitsu: Let's talk about E2s next and start with the concept.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): When i start planning content, i only write 1 or 2 lines to describe it and my plan had "A Mysterious girl who uses both sword and magic controls darkness at her own will".
Famitsu: How do you feel now, looking back at that corny line?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Well, i think it's good (laughs). The concept allows me to go anywhere from there.
Everyone: HAHA.
Kawamoto: I feel like he's a little too into it...(laughs).
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): I basically don't get to be in charge of content anymore, but the schedule was at risk for E2s and i stepped up to do it. I only had 1 week to plan it, so i started with this simple concept and borrowed the settings for the "oracle of darkness" (note: voidwalker) from the lore team and scenario team and imagined how the battle should go from there and built it up.
Famitsu: The delayed spell (spell-in-waiting in EN) symbolizes the fight.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): The mechanic's structure itself uses something we already had in the game, but we are showing it in a new way. The oracle of darkness will be an important character involved in the story, so i also wanted her mechanics to stand out and that was what lead to the spell-in-waiting.
Famitsu: I like how the mechanics is visualized. If you learn all the timelines, the animations won't trick you anymore, but i'm sure players were confused when it was first released.
Masaki Nakagaw (Ozma): I also have the impression that it went out just like i planned. The plans for E3s and E4s weren't ready yet when i was working on E2s and i had to make a mechanic that was easy to adjust. This spell-in-waiting mechanic allows you to make it extremely difficult if you wanted to and you could also make it easy and that was my intention. I didn't add any random mechanics because it ended up being the 2nd encounter, but if the others couldn't make the 3rd or 4th turn in time and this fight became the 4th fight, i would've made the time tables random.
Famitsu: If the spell-in-waiting mechanic was random, you'd need to rearrange the order of mechanics in your head and the difficulty would sky rocket. Another mechanic that symbolizes E2s is the Renzokuken near the end ("cycle of~" mechanic in EN).
Nakagawa Masaki (Ozma): The girl is a master of both sword and magic, so i made it where she would slice up the dimension and devils/voidsent from the void would come out and say hi. That is her swordplay and she combines her basic moves at the end of the fight to form the "renzokuken" (The same name as Squall's LB in FFVIII) which means "consecutive swords" = "cycle of~" moves in the EN version.
Daisuke Nakagawa: I still get nervous when go into E2s on the public servers (laughs).
Famitsu: It's cramped and hard to dodge.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Those flying heads/voidesent were supposed to deal you 100k damage back when we were still desgining it (laughs).
Kawamoto: They also didn't vanish when they reached the center and they kept moving towards the other side.
Daisuke Nakagawa: There were also way more of those voidsent flying all over the place, which made it look like a "danmaku (bullet hell)" genre shooting game.
Famitsu: Was if nerfed because of your kindness?
Masaki Nakagaw (Ozma): Yes (laughs). Some members said the "cycle of chaos" was harder than the "cycle of retribution", but i went through with the original plan.
Daisuke Nakagawa: In exchange, he added room for recovery before the "cycle of~" phase so you could continue the fight with everyone on their feet (Explains why she just auto attacks for 10 seconds).
Kawamoto: Really, the original E2s was extremely difficult (laughs).
Daisuke Nakagawa: Each phase was much faster and there was no time to raise people (laughs).
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): The omega raids had a lot of encounters where they would repeat the same mechanic after a certain point in the fight and players from overseas gave us feedback and said "i don't want repetitive mechanics. i want you to add new mechanics". That is one of the reasons why the "cycle of~" mechanics were born.
[The secret of the "stormy horizon"]
Famitsu: Next i'd like to hear the concept of E3s.
Nabeshima: The concept was "Designing a dynamic battle involving his huge body" and a side concept: "Use water based attacks to make it leviathan-ish".
Famitsu: When it comes to E3s and E4s, i imagine you had different challanges because Leviathan and Titan had already appeared in the game before.
Nabeshima: Yes, differentiating was a struggle and so was delivering the same impact as the Leviathan in the source was. It ended up with what we have in the game now after trial and error and i tried to have certain mechanics that remind you of the Leviathan in the source too. Like the part where Leviathan dives into the water and disappears before he charges at you. Tsunami is also based on Leviathan's ultimate move in the source and i added in spices to inflict all sorts of water themed debuffs on the players. The leviathan in the source drops water AoEs that follow you when he does his dives and i was going to have that in E3s, but i was told players wouldn't be able to clear it if i did so.
Famitsu: Who told you?
Nabeshima: Yokozawa (UwU designer).
__Daisuke Nakagawa: You're making it seem like Yokozawa should take the blame, but everyone was saying you shouldn't because it was too hard (laughs).
Famitsu: The current E3s only has AoEs that give you the "heavy" debuff.
Kawamoto: That AoE was also supposed to deal you a DoT and it was just overall an evil phase.
Famitsu: It must have been a terrible phase (laughs). How did you decide Leviathan's visuals?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): When we were deciding the direction of the fight, i recommended that they should differentiate between the Leviathan in the source and the first. We ended up having 2 heads and Nabeshima was assigned to design the fight.
Famitsu: So you used that design to base Leviathan's moves on.
Nabeshima: Yes, but there were times when the artists would adjust to the mechanics i wanted to incorporate. If you look carefully, leviathan's body has yellow "eye-looking patterns" on his body and we originally wanted Leviathan to shoot lasers from there. That idea was scrapped, but he still has those yellow eyes on his body.
Famitsu: E3's arena left a huge impression because it collapsed during the fight. Was this planned from the start?
Nabeshima: I actually came up with that idea near the end. I was having trouble coming up with characteristics for Leviathan and went around asking people for ideas and one of them said "How about Leviathan cleaving the arena with his huge mouths?". I combined that idea with my original plan and they were compatible, so i incorporated them.
Famitsu: Having the party divided into the left and right is a distinctive scene.
Nabeshima: I thought observing the members from the other side of the arena fall, would be an interesting situation. I don't think we've had that many fights where the arena changes like that, so i thought it would turn out to be a good picture.
Famitsu: I think "temporary current" also worked well together with the arena changing, depending on which side you were on. By the way, the temporary currents in savage show the AoE indicator for a brief second, but i remember previous raid fights hid them...
Nabeshima: Well, we hid them in the beginning, but when we were adjusting the difficulty, we heard voices such as "i don't know how far i'm supposed to run" and so we decided to add an AoE indicator that popped up for an instant.__ Depending on the fight, you can judge and distinguish the course of these kinds of attacks by looking at the marks on the floor (Other examples: Thordan's arena with triangle marks on the floor and O7s Guardian's missiles), but E3s has multiple unique blocks combining each other to form the arena and it was hard to have those "easy to tell" safe spots to help the players.
Famitsu: "Stormy horizon" is another mechanic where you have to move from one side to the other...
Kawamoto: There we go! Stormy horizon makes me laugh.
Everyone: Haha.
Famitsu: Huh? Does the stormy horizon have some sort of secret?
Nabeshima: The leviathan on the first is the Warrior of light's memory and also our memory. I'm going to change the subject for a second, but when i was lucky enough to design Omega (O11s), i came up with a mechanic called "pantokrator" and leviathan ended up inheriting my memory of that fight... to be honest, the original "stormy horizon" was much more like "pantokrator" (laughs).
Famitsu:By that, you mean players were supposed to move around together the whole time?
Nabeshima: Right, and i got everyone to play it and...
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Everyone lined up and said "this is pantokrator 2!" (laughs).
Kawamoto: Yes yes, and the first version of leviathan had 2 of those phases (laughs).
Nabeshima: Then i got Yoshida to look at it and he said "This is no stormy horizon, it's pantacrator"__(laughs).
Famitsu: So this is the episode you were talking about in the first half of the interview (laughs). How did you end up shaping Leviathan to what it is now?
Nabeshima: The stormy horizon back in development was divided into 2 phases, but we merged the difficult parts of those 2 phases to create the stormy horizon we have now. The "Black smokers" mechanic was a part of the stormy horizon phase, but we split it up so it wouldn't look too much like pantokrator.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): I remember the E3s team spent quite some time trying to move away from the pantakrator feel.
Nabeshima: That is how stormy horizon changed from twice to once in the fight and hence the blacksmokers phase was born.
Famitsu: Never knew there was a whole story behind it (laughs)
Nabeshima: I personally wanted to take this episode to my grave because it's so embarassing (bitter smile).
Famitsu: As a mechanic, i think the tsunami mechanic also causes accidents frequently. How did you turn your ideas into this mechanic?
Nabeshima: I built "Tsunami" with the concept of "Using a variety of water based mechanics to try to drown the players". This mechanic was also originally different.
Famitsu: Let me guess. You made this one easy too?
Nabeshima: No, the correct answer is, we found a loophole where you could cheese the mechanic, so we rebuilt it (laughs).
Daisuke Nakagawa: He's not affraid of exposing himself...Tsunami reminds me of how Nabeshima couldn't pronounce most of the debuffs (laughs).
Kawamoto: yeah, even though he had all the pronouciations written on his notes.
Masaki Nakagawa: As you can tell, Nabeshima is a lovable character (laughs).
Note: The names of debuffs and mechanics are overcomplicated or look similar to the other debuffs in the JP version. Just imagine the "starboard larboard" incident with 4 other patterns.
The 4th turn with the forbidden mechanic "elevation"/high and low.
Famitsu: On to the 4th floor. We'd like to hear how you differentiated the Titan on the first. (the first 3 questions have been removed because they totally overlap with the summary)
Daisuke Nakagawa: Having the exact same game experience as the original titan is the worst thing you could do, so we tried to be conscious avoiding that in the Titan rematch in the first, but this titan was created with the WoL's memory and having an entirely different titan would defeat the purpose, so we kept the balance by having portions of the fight that reminded players of the titan in the source.
Famitsu: Bomb boulders brought back memories.
Famitsu: Titan has unique mechanics such as turning into a car and gigantifying his hands to punch half of the whole platform, but at which stage in development were these mechanics decided?
Daisuke Nakagawa: We already had precise concepts by the time we dispatched the orders for the art work, but that order was vague as "he divides his armor made up of rock clusters to enhance his arms and legs" and the "turning into a car" was nowhere to be found. Then i got the art team to come up with different Titan forms and one of them was in the shape of a car. I asked them to allow the battle team to have the final decision and we chose the car form in the end, but even though i was in charge of E4s, i wasn't the one who decided. Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma) had an innocent smile on his face and said "Titan's other form is going to be the car okay?" (laughs).
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): They came up with many fun ideas and i said "Why don't we go with titank (titan + tank)?"
Famitsu: You just wanted to use that pun (laughs)
Daisuke Nakagawa: I know he didn't choose it just for the joke, but i was tearing out my hair because it ended up being the car and i thought "what do i do now!". It was fine as a result, because it had a huge impact and a surprising look.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): When we got the monster team to test play it, everyone smiled when they saw Titan transforming into a car for the first time. It was all thanks to the artists who brushed him up to look so good.
Famitsu: Titan's visuals aren't the only characteritics that stood out. The "elevating arena" also surprised me. Didn't you have any technical difficulties revolving around the elevation?
Daisuke Nakagawa: We had tons of problems. We still went with that idea because we wanted Titan Maximum to shine and show that he is powerful enough to change the landscape.
Famitsu: My first impression was "Well made..." (laughs).
Daisuke Nakagawa: I really appreciate it if you felt that way. We combined a variety of other mechanics to live up to that scene (The elevation). Using a "high and low" type of mechanic is usually a taboo when it comes to boss designs in FFXIV, because outside of some exceptions, vertical mechanics cause various problems.
Famitsu: I remember Yoshida mentioning that before.
Daisuke Nakagawa: Challenging something risky on a severe and important final floor like E4s wasn't a smart option and there was the other problem of "the mechanic wouldn't be suitable/worthy to be in E4s" and i had a hard time choosing to go with it or not, until the very last deadline. Then Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma) who is my superior, pushed my back and the level designers and programmers also pleasantly set up a back up system for me and in that case, i thought i should decide to try it. As expected, a lot of problems arised during the implementation, but the new system specification and people around me helped me. Without them, E4s wouldn't be in it's current shape, so i can't thank them enough.
Famitsu: The puzzle-like mechanic starts to expand during the elevation, but how did you build this mechanic?
Daisuke Nakagawa: My basic routine for planning starts by thinking about each individual mechanic and i don't mix them together with other mechanics at that point. If i use Titan as an example, The blue marker that explodes and hits the surrounding 3 panels, and the other colored mechanics were invented during totally different timings. The final phase has a mechanic where certain panels on the floor rotate and explode, but that was also a mechanic that had no other mechanic attached to it at first. After i come up with these individual mechanics, i start working on combining them together.
Famitsu: I had an impression that the mechanics were all calculated to go along with other mechanics from the start, but it seems i was wrong.
Daisuke Nakagawa: After i merge certain mechanics with other elements, there are times where you are lacking something or have something unneccesary. My projects progress by coming up with mechanics, mixing them and going back to inventing new ideas. It might end up and look like everything was planned to be one whole complicated mechanic from the start, but because of how i work, i don't spend that much time building up the logic behind mechanics.
That doesn't neccessarily mean i'm quick at designing my content either. With Titan, it took me approximately a total of 30 days to finish up both the normal and savage mode. The majority of that time is spent on coming up with ideas for mechanics and i always have a rough time.
[What comes first? Normal mode or Savage mode?]
Famitsu: Which difficulty do you work on first? Normal or savage?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): It depends on the person.
Daisuke Nakagawa: In my case, i start with the normal difficulty because you have to guarantee that the normal version is interesting enough on its own and it's easier for me to base it on the normal mode and build on top of that.
Famitsu:Oh my. I always thought everyone created the savage mode first and shaved off mechanics to make the normal mode.
Daisuke Nakagawa: Don't get me wrong, there are people who do what you just said, but it really depends on the person. Majority of the time, i start working on the normal mode first, but depending on the theme, i start by designing the savage version first. Alphascape turn 4 (O12s) is an example where i designed the first half of the savage raid first.
Famitsu: How about the others?
Kawamoto: I start from the savage mode, but design the normal mode alongside as well. Excluding certain mechanics from the savage mode sounds easy on paper, but then it'll end up being lackluster. On the other hand, if you have too much in the normal version, you run out of ideas for the savage version, so to avoid that, i work on both difficulties simultaneously. I write my proposal for the savage difficulty first, but i just do the normal mode while i'm at it.
Famitsu: How about you Nabeshima?
Nabeshima: I used to start by planning the savage mode first, but i started on the normal mode first for Eden's gate. While i work on the normal version, i can come up with new ideas and i would write them down. Like Daisuke said, i need to secure the normal mode to be interesting, so i changed my design philosophy and start on the normal mode and add to it for the savage mode.
Famitsu: And you, Nakagawa?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): I also work on the normal mode first and like the others all stated, even if you create an attractive savage content and shave off of that, there's a risk of cutting out "the core" of that content which made it interesting in the first place. I always tell them it's better off if you come up with a plan for normal mode and add even more interesting ideas to reduce the risk.
Daisuke Nakagawa: I actually recently started working on the normal mode first thanks to Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma) and using his methods as an example. It made me think "you've got a good point", so i started doing the same.
Famitsu: Sounds like your logic is spreading. I guess Kawamoto is the only rebel walking his own path.
Kawamoto: No, it just infected me as well! When it comes to E1s, reanimating Eden's ultimate move was the common core for both normal and savage, so i didn't really need to be that thorough with differentiating between the 2 difficulties. Maybe that's why i was able to work on the savage mode first.
Famitsu: Does that logic apply to trials as well?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Yes.
Famitsu: Thank you very much for revealing such an interesting story in front of me. Do you have any messages for the players?
Kawamoto: I'd like to keep in mind that i need to deliver something new and continue challenging to create content so players don't get bored.
Famitsu: Next i'd like to hear Nabeshima's message.
Nabeshima: I think i enfused too much of my own memories when i created content in Eden's gate (laughs), so please look forward to see what sort of memory will be used for the next raid boss.
Famitsu: Daisuke, please follow up.
Daisuke Nakagawa: I've tried to come up with surprises for the players up to this point, but the following patches will also have mechanics that will shock you, so please stay excited!
Famitsu: Lastly, Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma).
__Masaki Nakagawa(Ozma): Until today, the ones who showed up in these media outlets were limited to Sudo (Ucob creator), Yokozawa (UwU creator) and I, so the the other battle content designers didn't have the opportunity to talk in public, so i'm glad you gave these 3 a place to talk. Even outside of these 3, there are many other battle designers working on all sorts of content. I believe those people will gradually grow and be able to provide fun content in the future.
We will continue to work hard past patch 5.2 so players can have a fun time, so please cheer for those other members. It would be appreciated if you could send us feedback after playing the new content, because each of us really observe each of those words on the forums and the SNS (note:twitter and etc), so we'd like to hear both the positive and negative opinions. The FFXIV team focuses on listening and tyring to react to that feedback as soon as possible, so please keep sending your opinions and look forward to future content.
[The end]
1st half of the interview:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/evlv36/translation_famitsu_interview_with_4_battle_devs/
Source to the 2nd half of the interview:
https://www.famitsu.com/news/202001/31191596.html
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[Covered topics in the interview]
Facing Eden prime right off the bat.
The concept of having Squall's limit break:Renzokuken ("Cycle of~" mechanic in the EN version) in E2s and its original absurd difficulty during development.
Stormy horizon's (E3s) secret.
The forbidden elevation mechanic in E4s.
Which difficulty do they create first? Normal or Savage.
Interviewees:
Staff in charge of each savage raid.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr Ozma): Lead battle content designer in charge of E2s (Void walker). Other savage raids designed by him: A5s (Gorilla floor), A7s (Balls), A11s (Cruise chaser).
Trials: Dhorme Chimera, Hydra, Ifrit, Garuda, Leviathan, Shiva, Nabriales, Ravana, Sophia.
Daisuke Nakagawa (2nd Nakagawa in the team):
Battle content designer who created E4s.
Other creations: A10s (Goblin), O8s (Kefka), O12s (Omega F and M), The Epic of Alexander.
Trials: Nidhogg, Tsukuyomi, Hades (not EX).
Yoshito Nabeshima (First time showing up in these interviews):
Battle content designer in charge of E3s.
Other fights: O1s (edit:Alte roite) and O11s (Omega).
Takashi Kawamoto (Also a new face in these interviews):
Battle system designer in charge of E1s.
[Summary]
[E1s]
They wanted Eden prime in E1s to surprise players and the other reason will be revealed in patch 5.4.
The resources required to build that long cutscene wasn't as over the top as people expect.
Since they expected players to clear E1s easily and forget the mechanics by the 2nd week when they famr it, they deliberately made "paradise regained" a mechanic that switches the effect of certain mechanics to poke that open space in players' hearts.
[E2s]
The concept of E2s is "An unknown girl who uses both sword and magic, has full control over the power of darkness".
The "oracle of darkness" is an important character who will be involved in the future scenario, so they wanted to give her a unique mechanic: "the delayed spell" (spell-in-waiting in EN) so players would remember her.
Since E2s is only the 2nd encounter, they didn't involve any random elements, but they would have if this boss was the 3rd or 4th encounter.
Back in the development stages, each phase had a much faster/rapid tempo and touching the adds (floating faces) dealt 100k damage to the players and they wouldn't disappear after reaching the center and they would continue heading towards the other side of the arena.
[E3s]
It was quite a hassle differentiating between the leviathan in the source and the first.
After trial and error, they ended up with the current leviathan that has several aspects that remind players of leviathan from the source.
During development, the leviathan dives had ground aoes following and falling on top of the players at the same time, but Yokozawa (Battle system lead who made UwU) told him that players wouldn't be able to clear it, so he removed it.
The current ground AoEs that inflict the "heavy effect" during the dives, originally had a terrible DoT as well and it was a punishing phase back in development.
They came up with the "collapsing arena" mechanic near the end of their planning stages. The pre-nerf "stormy horizon" mechanic was slightly more similar to the "pantokrator" (edit:from a11s) and everyone in the battle team said "this is just pantokrator 2".
The concept of the "tsunami" mechanic was having a water themed mechanic that tries to drown players, but the original mechanic had a loophole to the solution, so they had to rebuilt it from scratch.
[E4s]
The concept of E4s is simple and that is "He's good at controlling the land". He also has a powerful look, so they wanted to avoid mechanics that rely on cheap tricks.
There is no official lore behind this, but Daisuke imagines that wherever Titan goes, he turns any landscape around him into his armor so he can fight and live happily in any situation.
They devised a plan so the old and new titan could coexist. Titan wasn't supposed to become a car at first, but as they came up and tossed funny ideas around, he said "How about a Titank? (titan+tank)"
They implemented elevating mechanics so the giant Titan could shine.
Elevating/(high and low) mechanics are actually a taboo systemwise, because it's easy to cause multiple errors and they weren't sure if it was worth it and the devs were troubled until the last minute.
[Regarding the difficulty]
They aimed for "the creator" difficulty with Eden's Gate. They made it easier than Alphascape because it's the first raid in the expansion.
They would like to make the 5.2 and 5.4 raids a little harder.
They removed the "first and second half" types of encounters, but that doesn't mean they will never do it again, so they would like to hear feedback.
[End of summary]
[Translations for full conversations with in depth context for each floor below]
Famitsu Writer: The previous formula made most players assume that Eden prime would be the final boss of the 3rd season of the raid, but Eden didn't just show up in the first season and he/she was also the first encounter.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): There are two reasons why that came to be. One is that we wanted it to be surprising and i still can't talk about the other reason, but you'll find out the mystery once you play the 5.4 raid which will conclude the scenario. It's still far away, but we'd like you to look forward to it.
Famitsu writer: Was all of that already decided during the first meeting between devs?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Yes.
Famitsu: In the first half of the interview, i asked how you set the difficulty on each floor, but how was it compared to the savage raids you created in the past?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): We've discussed this over and over again, about how "Alexander: the creator" is the answer to the savage difficulty we should aim for and the same applied to the Eden raids.
With that being said, if we talk about more specifics, we intentionally made Eden's gate easier than Omega:Alphascape. The reason for this is, the shadowbringers expansion is a timing where a huge wave of new players rush in and even though raids are supposed to be high-end content, we chose the direction of making it easier to get into. We do want to make the patch 5.2 and 5.4 raids a little harder as the patches move forward.
Famitsu: Was there anything you intentionally changed in comparison to previous raids?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Every 4th encounter in the Omega raids were split into the first and second half. This 2nd half was supposed to be a bonus and a surprise we wanted to provide to the players, but it's not a surprise anymore if players get used to it, is it?
To add on to that, we received feedback on the 4th turn of each raid being too long, so for the meantime, we stopped using that formula. That does not mean we'll never do it and we'd like to hear feedback.
Famitsu: You said "The creator is the answer to our savage difficulty", but is that a common understanding shared by the whole team?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Yes, i frequently tell them about it.
Daisuke Nakagawa: After playing the creator on the public servers, we personally thought that was the most fun too.
Famitsu: It had a moderate challenge and satisfaction, which lead to a great difficulty where a wide range of players could try it and clear it. I think having an ultimate difficulty now also helped?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Indeed. When we were developing the creator raids, we discussed how some players would want a difficulty above it, if we were to go with the direction of the creator. We took that discussion topic over to Yoshida and that was how the ultimate difficulty was born.
Famitsu: Now we'd like to talk about each raid floor. Please tell us your concept for Eden Prime
Kawamoto: We featured "Reanimating FFVIII's Guardian force: Eden's summoning animation in FFXIV". We wanted the first encounter of the Shadowbringers raid to have an impactful scene.
Also, we wanted the difficulty to be rather "mild" while having some challenge to it, because it's the 1st turn. Eden is described as an unknown creature in the game and i also didn't know Eden's lore when i was put in charge (laughs). I went to talk to the FFVIII designers, but i still didn't understand exactly, so i decided not to be bound by the lore and imagined moves that would be natural for Eden to use.
Famitsu: You said (In the first half of the interview) that the 1st and 2nd floors don't require as much resources, but didn't the long cutscene in E1s require a lot?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): I remember watching him being really obsessed with making that.
Daisuke (Nakagawa): It looked like he cut down time on everything else to create that cutscene.
Kawamoto: The designers are the ones who worked hard for me, so it didn't eat up that much of my resources. I was able to spend my time on other parts of the encounter, thanks to the know-how i piled up to this point.
Famitsu: I was expecting that cutscene to be removed in the savage version (laughs).
Kawamoto: That (cutscene) is Eden Prime's identity, so i couldn't back down. If he was a boss in E3 or E4, maybe i would've cut it out because you wipe so often, but it's only the first floor after all. I was conscious of those players who like to raid and thought, they would be able to clear it in one go after 2~3 weeks, so i thought they would be able to bare with it once a week (laughs).
Famitsu: I'd like to talk about the mechanics next. Eden prime uses "paradise regained", which changes the effect of certain mechanics. Where did this idea come from?
Kawamoto: The 1st floor is destined to be cleared right away, so i think most players forget the mechanics on their 2nd or 3rd week. Not wiping so much on your 1st clear means your memories are also easy to get wiped out and when you see a mechanic with the same name with a different effect, players tend to think "wait, which one was this again?" and that reaction was exactly my goal.
Famitsu: So you didn't want to make it routine work, just becaues it was the 1st encounter. The percentage based attacks hurt a lot, but does that have anything to do with it?
Kawamoto: A little, but it's more so because gravity type attacks in the FF series are percentage based. Another example of a gravity based attack in FFXIV is Exdeath's blackholes and that is also percentage based. The same applies to Eden's gravity and dimensional shift, so i made it HP percentage based. The percentage is set a little high because i wanted players to keep focused and not look down on it just becaues it's the 1st turn (laughs).
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): When i play on my personal character on the public servers, there are times when you know your fate before the cast ends and you think to yourself "I'm dead" and you panic and use addle, but it doesn't work because it's percentage based (laughs).
Kawamoto: As a member of the battle system team, i wanted healers to be conscious. We actually held down/nerfed healers' healing capibilities across the board in shadowbringers, so having a percentage based attack that hit hard was on purpose.
Void walker's Renzokuken ("Cycle of~" in EN) had an absurd difficulty back in development.
Famitsu: Let's talk about E2s next and start with the concept.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): When i start planning content, i only write 1 or 2 lines to describe it and my plan had "A Mysterious girl who uses both sword and magic controls darkness at her own will".
Famitsu: How do you feel now, looking back at that corny line?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Well, i think it's good (laughs). The concept allows me to go anywhere from there.
Everyone: HAHA.
Kawamoto: I feel like he's a little too into it...(laughs).
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): I basically don't get to be in charge of content anymore, but the schedule was at risk for E2s and i stepped up to do it. I only had 1 week to plan it, so i started with this simple concept and borrowed the settings for the "oracle of darkness" (note: voidwalker) from the lore team and scenario team and imagined how the battle should go from there and built it up.
Famitsu: The delayed spell (spell-in-waiting in EN) symbolizes the fight.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): The mechanic's structure itself uses something we already had in the game, but we are showing it in a new way. The oracle of darkness will be an important character involved in the story, so i also wanted her mechanics to stand out and that was what lead to the spell-in-waiting.
Famitsu: I like how the mechanics is visualized. If you learn all the timelines, the animations won't trick you anymore, but i'm sure players were confused when it was first released.
Masaki Nakagaw (Ozma): I also have the impression that it went out just like i planned. The plans for E3s and E4s weren't ready yet when i was working on E2s and i had to make a mechanic that was easy to adjust. This spell-in-waiting mechanic allows you to make it extremely difficult if you wanted to and you could also make it easy and that was my intention. I didn't add any random mechanics because it ended up being the 2nd encounter, but if the others couldn't make the 3rd or 4th turn in time and this fight became the 4th fight, i would've made the time tables random.
Famitsu: If the spell-in-waiting mechanic was random, you'd need to rearrange the order of mechanics in your head and the difficulty would sky rocket. Another mechanic that symbolizes E2s is the Renzokuken near the end ("cycle of~" mechanic in EN).
Nakagawa Masaki (Ozma): The girl is a master of both sword and magic, so i made it where she would slice up the dimension and devils/voidsent from the void would come out and say hi. That is her swordplay and she combines her basic moves at the end of the fight to form the "renzokuken" (The same name as Squall's LB in FFVIII) which means "consecutive swords" = "cycle of~" moves in the EN version.
Daisuke Nakagawa: I still get nervous when go into E2s on the public servers (laughs).
Famitsu: It's cramped and hard to dodge.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Those flying heads/voidesent were supposed to deal you 100k damage back when we were still desgining it (laughs).
Kawamoto: They also didn't vanish when they reached the center and they kept moving towards the other side.
Daisuke Nakagawa: There were also way more of those voidsent flying all over the place, which made it look like a "danmaku (bullet hell)" genre shooting game.
Famitsu: Was if nerfed because of your kindness?
Masaki Nakagaw (Ozma): Yes (laughs). Some members said the "cycle of chaos" was harder than the "cycle of retribution", but i went through with the original plan.
Daisuke Nakagawa: In exchange, he added room for recovery before the "cycle of~" phase so you could continue the fight with everyone on their feet (Explains why she just auto attacks for 10 seconds).
Kawamoto: Really, the original E2s was extremely difficult (laughs).
Daisuke Nakagawa: Each phase was much faster and there was no time to raise people (laughs).
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): The omega raids had a lot of encounters where they would repeat the same mechanic after a certain point in the fight and players from overseas gave us feedback and said "i don't want repetitive mechanics. i want you to add new mechanics". That is one of the reasons why the "cycle of~" mechanics were born.
[The secret of the "stormy horizon"]
Famitsu: Next i'd like to hear the concept of E3s.
Nabeshima: The concept was "Designing a dynamic battle involving his huge body" and a side concept: "Use water based attacks to make it leviathan-ish".
Famitsu: When it comes to E3s and E4s, i imagine you had different challanges because Leviathan and Titan had already appeared in the game before.
Nabeshima: Yes, differentiating was a struggle and so was delivering the same impact as the Leviathan in the source was. It ended up with what we have in the game now after trial and error and i tried to have certain mechanics that remind you of the Leviathan in the source too. Like the part where Leviathan dives into the water and disappears before he charges at you. Tsunami is also based on Leviathan's ultimate move in the source and i added in spices to inflict all sorts of water themed debuffs on the players. The leviathan in the source drops water AoEs that follow you when he does his dives and i was going to have that in E3s, but i was told players wouldn't be able to clear it if i did so.
Famitsu: Who told you?
Nabeshima: Yokozawa (UwU designer).
__Daisuke Nakagawa: You're making it seem like Yokozawa should take the blame, but everyone was saying you shouldn't because it was too hard (laughs).
Famitsu: The current E3s only has AoEs that give you the "heavy" debuff.
Kawamoto: That AoE was also supposed to deal you a DoT and it was just overall an evil phase.
Famitsu: It must have been a terrible phase (laughs). How did you decide Leviathan's visuals?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): When we were deciding the direction of the fight, i recommended that they should differentiate between the Leviathan in the source and the first. We ended up having 2 heads and Nabeshima was assigned to design the fight.
Famitsu: So you used that design to base Leviathan's moves on.
Nabeshima: Yes, but there were times when the artists would adjust to the mechanics i wanted to incorporate. If you look carefully, leviathan's body has yellow "eye-looking patterns" on his body and we originally wanted Leviathan to shoot lasers from there. That idea was scrapped, but he still has those yellow eyes on his body.
Famitsu: E3's arena left a huge impression because it collapsed during the fight. Was this planned from the start?
Nabeshima: I actually came up with that idea near the end. I was having trouble coming up with characteristics for Leviathan and went around asking people for ideas and one of them said "How about Leviathan cleaving the arena with his huge mouths?". I combined that idea with my original plan and they were compatible, so i incorporated them.
Famitsu: Having the party divided into the left and right is a distinctive scene.
Nabeshima: I thought observing the members from the other side of the arena fall, would be an interesting situation. I don't think we've had that many fights where the arena changes like that, so i thought it would turn out to be a good picture.
Famitsu: I think "temporary current" also worked well together with the arena changing, depending on which side you were on. By the way, the temporary currents in savage show the AoE indicator for a brief second, but i remember previous raid fights hid them...
Nabeshima: Well, we hid them in the beginning, but when we were adjusting the difficulty, we heard voices such as "i don't know how far i'm supposed to run" and so we decided to add an AoE indicator that popped up for an instant.__ Depending on the fight, you can judge and distinguish the course of these kinds of attacks by looking at the marks on the floor (Other examples: Thordan's arena with triangle marks on the floor and O7s Guardian's missiles), but E3s has multiple unique blocks combining each other to form the arena and it was hard to have those "easy to tell" safe spots to help the players.
Famitsu: "Stormy horizon" is another mechanic where you have to move from one side to the other...
Kawamoto: There we go! Stormy horizon makes me laugh.
Everyone: Haha.
Famitsu: Huh? Does the stormy horizon have some sort of secret?
Nabeshima: The leviathan on the first is the Warrior of light's memory and also our memory. I'm going to change the subject for a second, but when i was lucky enough to design Omega (O11s), i came up with a mechanic called "pantokrator" and leviathan ended up inheriting my memory of that fight... to be honest, the original "stormy horizon" was much more like "pantokrator" (laughs).
Famitsu:By that, you mean players were supposed to move around together the whole time?
Nabeshima: Right, and i got everyone to play it and...
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Everyone lined up and said "this is pantokrator 2!" (laughs).
Kawamoto: Yes yes, and the first version of leviathan had 2 of those phases (laughs).
Nabeshima: Then i got Yoshida to look at it and he said "This is no stormy horizon, it's pantacrator"__(laughs).
Famitsu: So this is the episode you were talking about in the first half of the interview (laughs). How did you end up shaping Leviathan to what it is now?
Nabeshima: The stormy horizon back in development was divided into 2 phases, but we merged the difficult parts of those 2 phases to create the stormy horizon we have now. The "Black smokers" mechanic was a part of the stormy horizon phase, but we split it up so it wouldn't look too much like pantokrator.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): I remember the E3s team spent quite some time trying to move away from the pantakrator feel.
Nabeshima: That is how stormy horizon changed from twice to once in the fight and hence the blacksmokers phase was born.
Famitsu: Never knew there was a whole story behind it (laughs)
Nabeshima: I personally wanted to take this episode to my grave because it's so embarassing (bitter smile).
Famitsu: As a mechanic, i think the tsunami mechanic also causes accidents frequently. How did you turn your ideas into this mechanic?
Nabeshima: I built "Tsunami" with the concept of "Using a variety of water based mechanics to try to drown the players". This mechanic was also originally different.
Famitsu: Let me guess. You made this one easy too?
Nabeshima: No, the correct answer is, we found a loophole where you could cheese the mechanic, so we rebuilt it (laughs).
Daisuke Nakagawa: He's not affraid of exposing himself...Tsunami reminds me of how Nabeshima couldn't pronounce most of the debuffs (laughs).
Kawamoto: yeah, even though he had all the pronouciations written on his notes.
Masaki Nakagawa: As you can tell, Nabeshima is a lovable character (laughs).
Note: The names of debuffs and mechanics are overcomplicated or look similar to the other debuffs in the JP version. Just imagine the "starboard larboard" incident with 4 other patterns.
The 4th turn with the forbidden mechanic "elevation"/high and low.
Famitsu: On to the 4th floor. We'd like to hear how you differentiated the Titan on the first. (the first 3 questions have been removed because they totally overlap with the summary)
Daisuke Nakagawa: Having the exact same game experience as the original titan is the worst thing you could do, so we tried to be conscious avoiding that in the Titan rematch in the first, but this titan was created with the WoL's memory and having an entirely different titan would defeat the purpose, so we kept the balance by having portions of the fight that reminded players of the titan in the source.
Famitsu: Bomb boulders brought back memories.
Famitsu: Titan has unique mechanics such as turning into a car and gigantifying his hands to punch half of the whole platform, but at which stage in development were these mechanics decided?
Daisuke Nakagawa: We already had precise concepts by the time we dispatched the orders for the art work, but that order was vague as "he divides his armor made up of rock clusters to enhance his arms and legs" and the "turning into a car" was nowhere to be found. Then i got the art team to come up with different Titan forms and one of them was in the shape of a car. I asked them to allow the battle team to have the final decision and we chose the car form in the end, but even though i was in charge of E4s, i wasn't the one who decided. Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma) had an innocent smile on his face and said "Titan's other form is going to be the car okay?" (laughs).
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): They came up with many fun ideas and i said "Why don't we go with titank (titan + tank)?"
Famitsu: You just wanted to use that pun (laughs)
Daisuke Nakagawa: I know he didn't choose it just for the joke, but i was tearing out my hair because it ended up being the car and i thought "what do i do now!". It was fine as a result, because it had a huge impact and a surprising look.
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): When we got the monster team to test play it, everyone smiled when they saw Titan transforming into a car for the first time. It was all thanks to the artists who brushed him up to look so good.
Famitsu: Titan's visuals aren't the only characteritics that stood out. The "elevating arena" also surprised me. Didn't you have any technical difficulties revolving around the elevation?
Daisuke Nakagawa: We had tons of problems. We still went with that idea because we wanted Titan Maximum to shine and show that he is powerful enough to change the landscape.
Famitsu: My first impression was "Well made..." (laughs).
Daisuke Nakagawa: I really appreciate it if you felt that way. We combined a variety of other mechanics to live up to that scene (The elevation). Using a "high and low" type of mechanic is usually a taboo when it comes to boss designs in FFXIV, because outside of some exceptions, vertical mechanics cause various problems.
Famitsu: I remember Yoshida mentioning that before.
Daisuke Nakagawa: Challenging something risky on a severe and important final floor like E4s wasn't a smart option and there was the other problem of "the mechanic wouldn't be suitable/worthy to be in E4s" and i had a hard time choosing to go with it or not, until the very last deadline. Then Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma) who is my superior, pushed my back and the level designers and programmers also pleasantly set up a back up system for me and in that case, i thought i should decide to try it. As expected, a lot of problems arised during the implementation, but the new system specification and people around me helped me. Without them, E4s wouldn't be in it's current shape, so i can't thank them enough.
Famitsu: The puzzle-like mechanic starts to expand during the elevation, but how did you build this mechanic?
Daisuke Nakagawa: My basic routine for planning starts by thinking about each individual mechanic and i don't mix them together with other mechanics at that point. If i use Titan as an example, The blue marker that explodes and hits the surrounding 3 panels, and the other colored mechanics were invented during totally different timings. The final phase has a mechanic where certain panels on the floor rotate and explode, but that was also a mechanic that had no other mechanic attached to it at first. After i come up with these individual mechanics, i start working on combining them together.
Famitsu: I had an impression that the mechanics were all calculated to go along with other mechanics from the start, but it seems i was wrong.
Daisuke Nakagawa: After i merge certain mechanics with other elements, there are times where you are lacking something or have something unneccesary. My projects progress by coming up with mechanics, mixing them and going back to inventing new ideas. It might end up and look like everything was planned to be one whole complicated mechanic from the start, but because of how i work, i don't spend that much time building up the logic behind mechanics.
That doesn't neccessarily mean i'm quick at designing my content either. With Titan, it took me approximately a total of 30 days to finish up both the normal and savage mode. The majority of that time is spent on coming up with ideas for mechanics and i always have a rough time.
[What comes first? Normal mode or Savage mode?]
Famitsu: Which difficulty do you work on first? Normal or savage?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): It depends on the person.
Daisuke Nakagawa: In my case, i start with the normal difficulty because you have to guarantee that the normal version is interesting enough on its own and it's easier for me to base it on the normal mode and build on top of that.
Famitsu:Oh my. I always thought everyone created the savage mode first and shaved off mechanics to make the normal mode.
Daisuke Nakagawa: Don't get me wrong, there are people who do what you just said, but it really depends on the person. Majority of the time, i start working on the normal mode first, but depending on the theme, i start by designing the savage version first. Alphascape turn 4 (O12s) is an example where i designed the first half of the savage raid first.
Famitsu: How about the others?
Kawamoto: I start from the savage mode, but design the normal mode alongside as well. Excluding certain mechanics from the savage mode sounds easy on paper, but then it'll end up being lackluster. On the other hand, if you have too much in the normal version, you run out of ideas for the savage version, so to avoid that, i work on both difficulties simultaneously. I write my proposal for the savage difficulty first, but i just do the normal mode while i'm at it.
Famitsu: How about you Nabeshima?
Nabeshima: I used to start by planning the savage mode first, but i started on the normal mode first for Eden's gate. While i work on the normal version, i can come up with new ideas and i would write them down. Like Daisuke said, i need to secure the normal mode to be interesting, so i changed my design philosophy and start on the normal mode and add to it for the savage mode.
Famitsu: And you, Nakagawa?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): I also work on the normal mode first and like the others all stated, even if you create an attractive savage content and shave off of that, there's a risk of cutting out "the core" of that content which made it interesting in the first place. I always tell them it's better off if you come up with a plan for normal mode and add even more interesting ideas to reduce the risk.
Daisuke Nakagawa: I actually recently started working on the normal mode first thanks to Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma) and using his methods as an example. It made me think "you've got a good point", so i started doing the same.
Famitsu: Sounds like your logic is spreading. I guess Kawamoto is the only rebel walking his own path.
Kawamoto: No, it just infected me as well! When it comes to E1s, reanimating Eden's ultimate move was the common core for both normal and savage, so i didn't really need to be that thorough with differentiating between the 2 difficulties. Maybe that's why i was able to work on the savage mode first.
Famitsu: Does that logic apply to trials as well?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Yes.
Famitsu: Thank you very much for revealing such an interesting story in front of me. Do you have any messages for the players?
Kawamoto: I'd like to keep in mind that i need to deliver something new and continue challenging to create content so players don't get bored.
Famitsu: Next i'd like to hear Nabeshima's message.
Nabeshima: I think i enfused too much of my own memories when i created content in Eden's gate (laughs), so please look forward to see what sort of memory will be used for the next raid boss.
Famitsu: Daisuke, please follow up.
Daisuke Nakagawa: I've tried to come up with surprises for the players up to this point, but the following patches will also have mechanics that will shock you, so please stay excited!
Famitsu: Lastly, Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma).
__Masaki Nakagawa(Ozma): Until today, the ones who showed up in these media outlets were limited to Sudo (Ucob creator), Yokozawa (UwU creator) and I, so the the other battle content designers didn't have the opportunity to talk in public, so i'm glad you gave these 3 a place to talk. Even outside of these 3, there are many other battle designers working on all sorts of content. I believe those people will gradually grow and be able to provide fun content in the future.
We will continue to work hard past patch 5.2 so players can have a fun time, so please cheer for those other members. It would be appreciated if you could send us feedback after playing the new content, because each of us really observe each of those words on the forums and the SNS (note:twitter and etc), so we'd like to hear both the positive and negative opinions. The FFXIV team focuses on listening and tyring to react to that feedback as soon as possible, so please keep sending your opinions and look forward to future content.
[The end]
1st half of the interview:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/evlv36/translation_famitsu_interview_with_4_battle_devs/
Source to the 2nd half of the interview:
https://www.famitsu.com/news/202001/31191596.html
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