Famitsu released part 1 of their interview with 4 FFXIV battle devs from SE (No indication of when part 2 will be released). A JP blog summarized the important parts and this will be the translation for that summary.
Intervieweebs:
Staff in charge of each savage raid.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr Ozma): Lead battle content designer in charge of E2s. Other fights designed by him: A5s (Gorilla floor), A7s (Balls), A11s (Cruise chaser).
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.
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.
Other content designed by him: (will be added in later).
[The difficulty of creating high-end content]
Interesting conversations from the interview will be added below later.
Famitsu writer: We had the opportunity to interview 4 battle devs who designed each of the Eden's gate savage raids. We'll be discussing deep topics, starting with how they joined the team and how they plan out content, the concept behind each floor and how they differentiate between the savage and normal modes. We will deliver this interview by splitting it in 2 parts.
Before we had this interview, the devs gave us files that listed all the content designed by each of them and those files were interesting enough by themselves. I'm sure FFXIV players will have fun finding the culprit...i mean the answer to question: "Who came up with that mechanic!?" and grin as they read.
[The designers of each floor gathered! One of them with an unexpected career]
Famitsu writer: This time we got all of the designers who created the Eden's gate raids in one spot, but outside of Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma), none of the other 3 have shown up in Media interviews, so we'd like you to introduce yourselves and your backgrounds. Let's start with Nakagawa.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Yes, i joined SE back in December 2011, right when they were developing both FFXIV 1.0 and 2.0. I was helping out with 1.0 for a while and then i joined up with the 2.0 team after a year or 2.
Famitsu: And now you're a veteran.
Masaki Nakagawa: It's already been 8 years (laughs). I've been the monster team lead after patch 4.1, in a position to sum up battle content as a whole.
Famitsu: We have another "Nakagawa" here today and to avoid confusion, may i call you Daisuke? (laughs)
Daisuke Nakagawa: Understood (laughs). I joined the team in January 2015, which was during the latter half of the Heavensward development. Then i designed Nidhogg and i've been in charge of designing the 4th floor of each raid since Omega:Sigmascape.
Famitsu: Hold on...If you joined SE in 2015, were you a player before that?
Daisuke Nakagawa: Exactly so. To be honest, my previous job had nothing to do with games and i was an engineer who made firmware for indrustrial computers. I was a long time FFXIV player and at one point, i wanted to challenge my dream of becoming a game designer, so i applied to the FFXIV development and i somehow passed.
Famitsu writer: There's now way it was "somehow" (laughs). Anyway, looking at what you designed so far, i noticed some hot names like Sigmascape floor 4 (Kefka), Alphascape floor 4 (Omega M and F), Eden's gate floor 4 (Titan) and even The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate).
Daisuke Nakagawa: I had no experience in game designing, so i wasn't expecting to get assigned to a variety of content so early, so i feel like i've been running all this time (laughs).
Famitsu writer: I heard that you're the suspect who said "I'll use Sudo's turn 6 (The Lamia from coil) as a bad example to learn from and work hard" when you were new to the team. (Note: Sudo is the dev who designed Thordan, A3s, A8s, Ucob, etc)
Daisuke Nakagawa: It was supposed to be a small joke when i said that, but it blew up after Yoshida and Sudo brought it up and exaggerated it...Real talk, i learned a lot from Sudo and the current me is made up of a combination of the good parts from Sudo and Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma). Sudo taught me that "You can't give up on coming up with unique mechanics".
Famitsu writer: I'd like Sudo to hear that (laughs). Next i'd like Nabeshima to introduce yourself.
Nabeshima: I joined the company in December 2010. I was originally an event designer for FFXIV 1.0 and i was assigned to the event team, exactly one day before Yoshida took over the world.
Famitsu writer: Can't come up with a better timing.
Nabeshima: I was developing an online game for a different company before that and when i was thinking about finding a new job and applied to Square enix, i passed (laughs).
Famitsu: I think i heard that somewhere a few minutes ago (laughs). Did you choose to join the FFXIV team when you changed jobs?
Nabeshima: After all, i wanted to develop an online game and during the job interview, they told me "Then, you'll be sent to the FFXIV team" and i thought "yes!".
Famitsu writer: FFXIV was in a terrible mess back then right?
Nabeshima: Yoshida wasn't there at first and i was worried about where things were going, but i had some time to charge myself back up after my previous job and i just wanted to work asap and then Yoshida came along and told the tired team to take a proper rest, so i was like "I just got off rest..." (laughs).
Famitsu writer: You were physically and mentally charged up and you still had to hit the brakes (laughs)
Nabeshima: Right (laughs). After planning the "Moonfire faire" in 1.0, i got transferred to the 2.0 team and became the first event designer there.
Famitsu writer: Lastly, we'd like to hear from Kawamoto.
Kawamoto: I joined the battle system team in September 2013, right after "A realm reborn" launched. I was mainly doing job adjustments and planning, while i was assigned to teams that needed help to design content.
Famitsu writer: What got you to join the FFXIV team?
Kawamoto: Yokozawa (Lead battle system designer), who was already in the FFXIV dev team invited me. Him and i played games together back then, but i didn't even imagine working in the game industry and since he invited me, i thought i may as well give it a try.
Famitsu writer: The interview is about to end without even talking about raids (laughs)
Everyone: Haha.
Kawamoto: We have a lot to talk about outside of raids too.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): We have many other staff members who are like this (laughs)
[How Raids are planned and designed]
Famitsu writer: We're done with your brief introductions, so we'd like to talk about the main topic. Please tell us your policy when designing battle content.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): I feel like this will take 2 hours by itself (laughs).
Famitsu writer: 2 hours! I'd prefer if you could shorten it a little...
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Then i'll talk about the 3 main points. The first is "the battle content being interesting", on top of the lore and story behind the boss making proper sense and fitting in naturally. Using Sophia as an example, she is all about equilibrium and harmony and in that case, we thought we should design mechanics and plan along those lines. That's how we came up with the tilting stage as a mechanic to symbolize "a balance".
Famitsu writer: So you're saying lore should be a part of the gameplay and should be expressed with content as a whole?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Yes. The 2nd point (involved in designing content) is "being conscious about using new ideas as mechanics we haven't used before" to provide surprises to the players. Each FFXIV update adds a variety of new content and having new ideas and mechanics for every single one of them is extremely difficult, but we also think it'll be over if players get bored, so i always tell the team how we have to continue challenging something new.
Famitsu writer: You've been running FFXIV for over 6 years now and i'm sure there are many players who are surprised at how you continue to come up with new mechanics and it seems that's a part of your challenge. What's the 3rd point?
Masaki Nakagawa(Mr.Ozma): The 3rd is "creating content that will remain in the players' memory". I've been a game designer for about 8 years now and sometimes i almost fall into the hole of being safe and "creating something that players won't criticize". FFXIV has an update every 3 and a half months or so and we continue to receive an enormous amount of feedback after every patch and we can't avoid witnessing players criticizing what we made and when you're stuck in that situation for a certain period, you tend to shift to wanting to make content that won't be criticized, instead of making interesting/fun content.
When you fall into that way of thinking, your creativity will vanish and there's a risk of only being able to design content that scores around 70/100 points and won't be remembered by anybody. To simply put it, __i personally think that content where 50 out of 100 people rate it 100/100 and the other 50 people rate it 40/100, is better than content where "everybody rates it 70/100". Of course, aiming for content where all 100 people give it a 100/100 is a premise.
Famitsu writer: I think that is a major problem that symbolizes how the modern internet consists of so many anonymous comments.
Masaki Nakagawa: I'm sure the other 3 devs here have gone through that emotion of "trying to be safe" before and also noticing how you won't be able to create interesting content if you give into yourself.
Famitsu writer: Fearing what players say and making safe content... and that content ending up being boring, sounds like a vicious cycle. What do you think Daisuke?
Daisuke Nakagawa: I'm also a player, so my concept is simply trying to design content that i as a player can enjoy. If i imagine an idea in my head and i think it's boring, i wouldn't use that idea, even if it looks suitable and makes things easier for the current plan.
Also, this is something Masaki Nakagawa just said, but MMORPGs are games you continue to play for a long period of time, so it's inevitable for players to get bored if you stick to the same structure. I always try to be conscious about how to surprise players and how to not bore them. These "surprises" have various types and i would need 2 hours to explain it (laughs).
Famitsu writer: Another 2 hours here? (laughs)
Daisuke Nakagawa: Jokes aside, i plan content out with the mindset of sticking to the lore and coming up with fun mechanics to provide players a surprise.
Famitsu writer: Thank you for summing it up. Next i'd like to hear from Nabeshima.
Nabeshima: My policy is to deliver a new experience. I've experienced level design for the last 3 years and i think my strength comes from being able to mix the level design and battle content, so i think that helps when it comes to providing new experiences.
Famitsu: I see. I'd like to hear the specifics later. Finally, i'd like to hear Kawamoto's policy.
Kawamoto: I can't help overlapping with the other 3, but being able to enjoy it myself is a must hen it comes to conditions and i think respecting the boss's story is important too. I also made the deeper floors in deep dungeon, so i like content that's challenge worthy.
Famitsu: Delivering a new experience and being able to enjoy it yourself seems to be common. Now i'd like to ask about how you actually designe content and its flow.
Masaki Nakagawa: We start by deciding the direction of the end raid series with Yoshida, Oda (lead scenario writer) from the lore team, Ishikawa (main scenario writer) from the scenario team, Yokozawa (battle system lead) and me.
<spoiler warning
mega raids>
With the Omega raids, the scenario and lore team gave us a simple overview: "Omega is having a tournament to enhance itself by observing the participants and comes to a conclusion that humans are at the pinnacle, and ends up copying humans". Then i give ideas on which bosses to have in the raid and ask the art team for a rough sample. After receiving the sample art, the members i mentioned previously gather and discuss what structure the raids will consist of. After the general direction of the raid has been decided, we split the bosses up and assign battle designers to each of them.
Famitsu: Are you saying all 12 bosses are decided during the first meeting?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Actually, there are more cases where the candidates for the later encounters haven't been decided yet. Deltascape's theme was FFV, but we had a hard time deciding the theme for sigmascape, because of Sudo already using Exdeath and it's surprising 2nd half in O4s, we didn't know what we should do next (bitter smile). We had discussions with the 4 members here today as well and we narrowed the theme down to FFVI or FFIX. We told Yoshida in a presentation; "These enemies if we're going with FFVI. These enemies if we're going with FFIX" and It ended up being FFVI.
Famitsu: How 'bout Eden? Have you already chosen all the bosses?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Of course we have a broad idea of "what we want to do" in our minds, but there are aspects that have and haven't already been decided. FFXIV's policy is to look at the feedback after release and include that feedback to change/fix the structure to provide something even better. We develop the game by having those precise adjustments in between.
Famitsu: After you decide the boss for each floor, are the artists free to design these bosses?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): It's my job to place an order to the art team and based on that design, each content designer start planning out the encounter , but since i'm the leader, sometimes i say "This element is a must in this fight". O12s is an example where i asked them to make Omega melt and change genders during the fight.
Famitsu:I see. The leaders of each division decide the types of enemies and their visuals and you leave the rest to your subordinates. How did you decide who was in charge of each Eden floor?
__
[Currently Adding translations for the conversations on the fly]
JP Summary Source: http://ff14net.2chblog.jp/archives/56364059.html
Interview source (only the first half has been released): https://www.famitsu.com/news/202001/29191551.html
submitted by /u/CarrieRofLlight
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...
Intervieweebs:
Staff in charge of each savage raid.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr Ozma): Lead battle content designer in charge of E2s. Other fights designed by him: A5s (Gorilla floor), A7s (Balls), A11s (Cruise chaser).
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.
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.
Other content designed by him: (will be added in later).
Daisuke Nakagawa (There are 2 Nakagawas and this one is not Mr.Ozma) designed The Epic of Alexander, Nidhogg and since Sigmascape, he has always been the one in charge of designing the final floor in each of the savage raids (O8s, 012s, E4s).
With E1s, none of the battle devs were free and because Kawamoto was familiar with FFVIII, he ended up designing it.
E4s was designed by Daisuke Nakagawa because the first raid is an important introduction to the expansion and he's a stable end content designer.
They haven't changed their policy behind raid designs since "the creator" (A9s~A12s), where they are conscious of deliberately making the 3rd floor the bottleneck of that raid (note:to prevent players from flowing into the final floor).
The 3rd and 4th floors of each raid aren't essentially the hardest to design when it comes to difficult content and the 1st and 2nd floors have different kinds of problems they have to deal with.
The workflow of high-end raids: The designer has a presentation in front of Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma/lead battle designer)> then they do the same in front of the battle team > in front of the artists and programmers > lastly in front of Yoshida. Yoshida trusts the battle team, so it's extremely rare for a plan to get flipped over and go back to square one after the final Yoshida check.
Addition of new jobs doesn't hugely affect the difficulty of battle content design.
[The difficulty of creating high-end content]
A small portion of how Alexander (Ultimate) was solved was unexpected by the battle team, but they were fine with it because it's impossible to have 100% control over players' solutions. (Note:This part of the interview was interesting, so i'll add a translation to that conversation later)
Their way of thinking is, they are fine as long as there aren't noticeable bugs or solutions found by players that totally break the game balance.
The battle team always observes FFXIV streams right after a savage or ultimate raid is released and see how they are doing.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma) himself has no plans on creating ultimate content, because he's the lead designer and the team will collapse and won't operate if he doesn't manage the team.
[Bad news] They are thinking about letting the new staff design the savage raids in the future and leaving it to them. The day Daisuke Nakagawa won't be designing the 4th floor anymore is closing in.
Interesting conversations from the interview will be added below later.
Famitsu writer: We had the opportunity to interview 4 battle devs who designed each of the Eden's gate savage raids. We'll be discussing deep topics, starting with how they joined the team and how they plan out content, the concept behind each floor and how they differentiate between the savage and normal modes. We will deliver this interview by splitting it in 2 parts.
Before we had this interview, the devs gave us files that listed all the content designed by each of them and those files were interesting enough by themselves. I'm sure FFXIV players will have fun finding the culprit...i mean the answer to question: "Who came up with that mechanic!?" and grin as they read.
[The designers of each floor gathered! One of them with an unexpected career]
Famitsu writer: This time we got all of the designers who created the Eden's gate raids in one spot, but outside of Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma), none of the other 3 have shown up in Media interviews, so we'd like you to introduce yourselves and your backgrounds. Let's start with Nakagawa.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Yes, i joined SE back in December 2011, right when they were developing both FFXIV 1.0 and 2.0. I was helping out with 1.0 for a while and then i joined up with the 2.0 team after a year or 2.
Famitsu: And now you're a veteran.
Masaki Nakagawa: It's already been 8 years (laughs). I've been the monster team lead after patch 4.1, in a position to sum up battle content as a whole.
Famitsu: We have another "Nakagawa" here today and to avoid confusion, may i call you Daisuke? (laughs)
Daisuke Nakagawa: Understood (laughs). I joined the team in January 2015, which was during the latter half of the Heavensward development. Then i designed Nidhogg and i've been in charge of designing the 4th floor of each raid since Omega:Sigmascape.
Famitsu: Hold on...If you joined SE in 2015, were you a player before that?
Daisuke Nakagawa: Exactly so. To be honest, my previous job had nothing to do with games and i was an engineer who made firmware for indrustrial computers. I was a long time FFXIV player and at one point, i wanted to challenge my dream of becoming a game designer, so i applied to the FFXIV development and i somehow passed.
Famitsu writer: There's now way it was "somehow" (laughs). Anyway, looking at what you designed so far, i noticed some hot names like Sigmascape floor 4 (Kefka), Alphascape floor 4 (Omega M and F), Eden's gate floor 4 (Titan) and even The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate).
Daisuke Nakagawa: I had no experience in game designing, so i wasn't expecting to get assigned to a variety of content so early, so i feel like i've been running all this time (laughs).
Famitsu writer: I heard that you're the suspect who said "I'll use Sudo's turn 6 (The Lamia from coil) as a bad example to learn from and work hard" when you were new to the team. (Note: Sudo is the dev who designed Thordan, A3s, A8s, Ucob, etc)
Daisuke Nakagawa: It was supposed to be a small joke when i said that, but it blew up after Yoshida and Sudo brought it up and exaggerated it...Real talk, i learned a lot from Sudo and the current me is made up of a combination of the good parts from Sudo and Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma). Sudo taught me that "You can't give up on coming up with unique mechanics".
Famitsu writer: I'd like Sudo to hear that (laughs). Next i'd like Nabeshima to introduce yourself.
Nabeshima: I joined the company in December 2010. I was originally an event designer for FFXIV 1.0 and i was assigned to the event team, exactly one day before Yoshida took over the world.
Famitsu writer: Can't come up with a better timing.
Nabeshima: I was developing an online game for a different company before that and when i was thinking about finding a new job and applied to Square enix, i passed (laughs).
Famitsu: I think i heard that somewhere a few minutes ago (laughs). Did you choose to join the FFXIV team when you changed jobs?
Nabeshima: After all, i wanted to develop an online game and during the job interview, they told me "Then, you'll be sent to the FFXIV team" and i thought "yes!".
Famitsu writer: FFXIV was in a terrible mess back then right?
Nabeshima: Yoshida wasn't there at first and i was worried about where things were going, but i had some time to charge myself back up after my previous job and i just wanted to work asap and then Yoshida came along and told the tired team to take a proper rest, so i was like "I just got off rest..." (laughs).
Famitsu writer: You were physically and mentally charged up and you still had to hit the brakes (laughs)
Nabeshima: Right (laughs). After planning the "Moonfire faire" in 1.0, i got transferred to the 2.0 team and became the first event designer there.
Famitsu writer: Lastly, we'd like to hear from Kawamoto.
Kawamoto: I joined the battle system team in September 2013, right after "A realm reborn" launched. I was mainly doing job adjustments and planning, while i was assigned to teams that needed help to design content.
Famitsu writer: What got you to join the FFXIV team?
Kawamoto: Yokozawa (Lead battle system designer), who was already in the FFXIV dev team invited me. Him and i played games together back then, but i didn't even imagine working in the game industry and since he invited me, i thought i may as well give it a try.
Famitsu writer: The interview is about to end without even talking about raids (laughs)
Everyone: Haha.
Kawamoto: We have a lot to talk about outside of raids too.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): We have many other staff members who are like this (laughs)
[How Raids are planned and designed]
Famitsu writer: We're done with your brief introductions, so we'd like to talk about the main topic. Please tell us your policy when designing battle content.
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): I feel like this will take 2 hours by itself (laughs).
Famitsu writer: 2 hours! I'd prefer if you could shorten it a little...
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Then i'll talk about the 3 main points. The first is "the battle content being interesting", on top of the lore and story behind the boss making proper sense and fitting in naturally. Using Sophia as an example, she is all about equilibrium and harmony and in that case, we thought we should design mechanics and plan along those lines. That's how we came up with the tilting stage as a mechanic to symbolize "a balance".
Famitsu writer: So you're saying lore should be a part of the gameplay and should be expressed with content as a whole?
Masaki Nakagawa (Mr.Ozma): Yes. The 2nd point (involved in designing content) is "being conscious about using new ideas as mechanics we haven't used before" to provide surprises to the players. Each FFXIV update adds a variety of new content and having new ideas and mechanics for every single one of them is extremely difficult, but we also think it'll be over if players get bored, so i always tell the team how we have to continue challenging something new.
Famitsu writer: You've been running FFXIV for over 6 years now and i'm sure there are many players who are surprised at how you continue to come up with new mechanics and it seems that's a part of your challenge. What's the 3rd point?
Masaki Nakagawa(Mr.Ozma): The 3rd is "creating content that will remain in the players' memory". I've been a game designer for about 8 years now and sometimes i almost fall into the hole of being safe and "creating something that players won't criticize". FFXIV has an update every 3 and a half months or so and we continue to receive an enormous amount of feedback after every patch and we can't avoid witnessing players criticizing what we made and when you're stuck in that situation for a certain period, you tend to shift to wanting to make content that won't be criticized, instead of making interesting/fun content.
When you fall into that way of thinking, your creativity will vanish and there's a risk of only being able to design content that scores around 70/100 points and won't be remembered by anybody. To simply put it, __i personally think that content where 50 out of 100 people rate it 100/100 and the other 50 people rate it 40/100, is better than content where "everybody rates it 70/100". Of course, aiming for content where all 100 people give it a 100/100 is a premise.
Famitsu writer: I think that is a major problem that symbolizes how the modern internet consists of so many anonymous comments.
Masaki Nakagawa: I'm sure the other 3 devs here have gone through that emotion of "trying to be safe" before and also noticing how you won't be able to create interesting content if you give into yourself.
Famitsu writer: Fearing what players say and making safe content... and that content ending up being boring, sounds like a vicious cycle. What do you think Daisuke?
Daisuke Nakagawa: I'm also a player, so my concept is simply trying to design content that i as a player can enjoy. If i imagine an idea in my head and i think it's boring, i wouldn't use that idea, even if it looks suitable and makes things easier for the current plan.
Also, this is something Masaki Nakagawa just said, but MMORPGs are games you continue to play for a long period of time, so it's inevitable for players to get bored if you stick to the same structure. I always try to be conscious about how to surprise players and how to not bore them. These "surprises" have various types and i would need 2 hours to explain it (laughs).
Famitsu writer: Another 2 hours here? (laughs)
Daisuke Nakagawa: Jokes aside, i plan content out with the mindset of sticking to the lore and coming up with fun mechanics to provide players a surprise.
Famitsu writer: Thank you for summing it up. Next i'd like to hear from Nabeshima.
Nabeshima: My policy is to deliver a new experience. I've experienced level design for the last 3 years and i think my strength comes from being able to mix the level design and battle content, so i think that helps when it comes to providing new experiences.
Famitsu: I see. I'd like to hear the specifics later. Finally, i'd like to hear Kawamoto's policy.
Kawamoto: I can't help overlapping with the other 3, but being able to enjoy it myself is a must hen it comes to conditions and i think respecting the boss's story is important too. I also made the deeper floors in deep dungeon, so i like content that's challenge worthy.
Famitsu: Delivering a new experience and being able to enjoy it yourself seems to be common. Now i'd like to ask about how you actually designe content and its flow.
Masaki Nakagawa: We start by deciding the direction of the end raid series with Yoshida, Oda (lead scenario writer) from the lore team, Ishikawa (main scenario writer) from the scenario team, Yokozawa (battle system lead) and me.
<spoiler warning
mega raids>With the Omega raids, the scenario and lore team gave us a simple overview: "Omega is having a tournament to enhance itself by observing the participants and comes to a conclusion that humans are at the pinnacle, and ends up copying humans". Then i give ideas on which bosses to have in the raid and ask the art team for a rough sample. After receiving the sample art, the members i mentioned previously gather and discuss what structure the raids will consist of. After the general direction of the raid has been decided, we split the bosses up and assign battle designers to each of them.
Famitsu: Are you saying all 12 bosses are decided during the first meeting?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Actually, there are more cases where the candidates for the later encounters haven't been decided yet. Deltascape's theme was FFV, but we had a hard time deciding the theme for sigmascape, because of Sudo already using Exdeath and it's surprising 2nd half in O4s, we didn't know what we should do next (bitter smile). We had discussions with the 4 members here today as well and we narrowed the theme down to FFVI or FFIX. We told Yoshida in a presentation; "These enemies if we're going with FFVI. These enemies if we're going with FFIX" and It ended up being FFVI.
Famitsu: How 'bout Eden? Have you already chosen all the bosses?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): Of course we have a broad idea of "what we want to do" in our minds, but there are aspects that have and haven't already been decided. FFXIV's policy is to look at the feedback after release and include that feedback to change/fix the structure to provide something even better. We develop the game by having those precise adjustments in between.
Famitsu: After you decide the boss for each floor, are the artists free to design these bosses?
Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): It's my job to place an order to the art team and based on that design, each content designer start planning out the encounter , but since i'm the leader, sometimes i say "This element is a must in this fight". O12s is an example where i asked them to make Omega melt and change genders during the fight.
Famitsu:I see. The leaders of each division decide the types of enemies and their visuals and you leave the rest to your subordinates. How did you decide who was in charge of each Eden floor?
__
[Currently Adding translations for the conversations on the fly]
JP Summary Source: http://ff14net.2chblog.jp/archives/56364059.html
Interview source (only the first half has been released): https://www.famitsu.com/news/202001/29191551.html
submitted by /u/CarrieRofLlight
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...