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Update #3: Added a photo of the Final Fantasy XIV USB Stick and the Mega Theatre Room
Update #2: As press I was given 43 screenshots from Final Fantasy XIV, most have already been seen before and was posted here. See the 43 screenshots below.
Update #1: Information about their presentation added and a few other tidbits. More info will becoming soon™
Exclusive Final Fantasy XIV Interview with Square Enix
Today I interviewed Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer of Final Fantasy XIV, Nobuaki Komoto the Director of Final Fantasy XIV and Sage Sundi the Global Online Producer.
It was a quite enjoyable interview, thanks to everyone that made it possible, I'm also looking at you Stanley!
Are we going to see tutorials and gametips being added for the new players to assist them better?
We do have a tutorial ingame but we understand that it's not enough, so we will improve it. We hope you're going to find out through the storyline to find out what's going on and how to use things. Also when you reach a certain level we hope you get into towns to talk to other players. Also at the beginning us game developers usually provide the basic information but fansites always make better guides regardless. So it might be difficult for the time of the launch but we're going to try to talk to fansites so they'll post detailed information regarding on how the game works.
Regarding auctionhouses:
Regarding Final Fantasy XIV and the market battle system is something we would like to consider the equilevent to the auction house we had in Final Fantasy XI. Only that you'll also be able to fix your equipment and things like that. It is something we really want people to enjoy. Also after the release of the game we will see how it goes and for example find out what kind of search options players will want and need and improve the situation. We don't really want to introduce the auctionhouse from the beginning because that is going to determine the economy system. So we want to improve it slowly and adjust it accordingly.
When do we get to see the PS3 version and when is the PS3 beta?
Even when we're here at Gamescom in Germany the development team back in Japan is working on the Playstation 3 version. Probably this week or very soon we're having an internal meeting to discuss the revealing of the Playstation 3 version status of Final Fantasy XIV. So as soon we're comfortable with announcing more information about this we will do it.
Will endgame be in the game on release?
Factionleves is something that we're trying to implement at the moment. And you might soon see some part of it in the beta test that is going on at the moment. It is something you can acquire by collecting action points in the game and by doing Levequests. We are going to add more and more of this type of leve in the game to make it quite challenging. As for the launch however we want to make sure that the game is easy and accessable for casual players. Throughout version updates we're going to introduce more hardcore content so even both casual and hardcore players alike will enjoy the game.
Will we get any sort of mana regeneration abilities and/or items?
We're still working on this so we will make some small updates and improvements in the future, but at the same time we think managing mana should be difficult and a challenge to the players.
Concerning the current UI, there is a noticeable lag between changing menu's and interaction between players and NPC's. Can we look forward to a revamp of the UI prior to release?
We're currently in phase three of our beta test and you're going to see several improvements being made to this. we're working on it, please look forward to how it's going to be in the final product. These issues are also because of some bugs we know about which we're going to fix.
Concerning the mouse function. There is an obviously lag currently even with the improvements towards the mouse; in particular it seems that the software mouse speed is tied to the FPS on your computer -- so if you have less FPS, then the mouse is laggier. Can we expect an implementation of hardware mouse prior to release?
We're aware of it and hardware mouse is something we're still looking into currently. At the moment we dont have any plans for the hardware mouse but will continue to improve the situation before the game is out and also after.
Concerning the direction of this game; is Guildleve's the standard to level in regards to FFXIV? It was heavily advertised in several locations and there seems to be an overall disgruntled feeling towards its 48 hour cooldown. Is this part of the limit implemented for the beta, or is this intention for the release? Is straight-mob grinding going to the primary source of experience gains for FFXIV?
One of the reasons for the current design is that it's fine if you're playing solo. If you have more time however, we feel that there's a lot of guildleves to experience with other people in groups, while yourself might not have the guildleve, you can still join other peoples guildleves. Currently though most feel there's not enough benefit to group up and as such do the guildleves solo instead. We are working on adressing that so group play will be more encouraged, so maybe either you get more skillpoints for example. Basically we're trying to adjust it so that people do guildleves with other people.
But the 48 hours cooldown is going to stay?
Yes that is the current plan. In the future we might adjust it but we want to make it in such a way that the 48 hours cooldown makes sense, so currently we're focusing on adjusting it in that way.
There is a mixed feeling in regards to computer requirements on the game. Despite the minimum requirements listed, players are having a hard time running this game even on fairly decent rigs. Is the game expected to go through further optimization prior to release?
For the betaversion it might be because we have several check routines in the game that might be causing some of the performance-related issues. This should be improved when the game is released. It also could be something specific to the persons PC setup. THere's a lot of different graphics cards among other things so we're trying to solve it one by one.
Finally, the Square Enix team would like to say that they really appreciate the support from fans in the western region and want everyone to enjoy Final Fantasy XIV as it's going gold.
Final Fantasy XIV presentation on SE's Mega Theather
I've watched their Final Fantasy XIV presentation on their so-called Mega Theather, which was a room for 50 people, which included a quite sophisticated sound system and a huge display.
The presentation consisted of a CGI movie with several parts of previous shown trailers, but this time it was a lot longer and felt really fleshed out. You got to see how some of the characters we've previously seen in the other FFXIV CGI movies experienced a guildleve and used different types of magic and attacks in different fights, there was also a huge dragon involved and air battles. I could talk about it in pure detail, but all in all it's probably going to be the trailer they're going with, perhaps we'll see it at the official site very soon.
Also part of the presentation was them showing a few "clips" of Square Enix exploring the different cities of the game, also they showed a couple of fights and how the intro scenes looked like for Gridania and Ul'Dah. Also to note that while playing the game at their booth, you were given a Final Fantasy XIV USB stick when leaving. It's pretty slick.
I was not allowed to film it or take photos. More updates will come as soon as possible!
(...)
I arrived at Gamescom a couple of hours ago and at noon CET (in 20 minutes when I'm writing this news) there's going to be a Final Fantasy XIV presentation on their "Mega Theather" as they call it here.
I also had a chance to play the same build of Final Fantasy XIV that was available at the hands-on in San Francisco, we had only 10 minutes on us so I tried out Gridania. More information coming soon, I need to head away to the presentation at the Square Enix booth. Also look forward to an interview later today as well!
