Enter the marvelous mind of Yoshi P, as we spend the evening with the legendary Square Enix director and producer.
As Naoki Yoshida took the stage, the crowd erupted into applause. The MCEC’s Goldfields Theatre isn’t small by any stretch, but it was almost at capacity on the night. It was obvious that fans appreciated Naoki, affectionately known as Yoshi P by fans, coming all the way to Australia.
On the question of which games inspired him to get into the game design, Yoshida pointed to Mario Bros, giving an amusing childhood anecdote to drive the point home. Mario Bros is a simple game that allows one or two players to fight endless enemies. At first Yoshida and his friend split the tasks, with one in charge of punching and the other of disposing of the enemies. After an hour, the two swapped positions. Unbeknownst to Yoshida, if enemies were punched twice, they would turn the right way up. His friend knew this and used it to get him killed. Despite its simple nature, Yoshida and his friend were able to create their own ways to play, something that would be mirrored later in his own game Final Fantasy XIV.
The legend never seems to take himself too seriously.
The second game that inspired him was Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together which he played just before entering the games industry and helped shape the way he created games to come. He felt that the Tactics Ogre had just done their world perfectly. Nothing in the world existed for the sake of existing. It all had a purpose. In Yoshida’s eyes, Tactics Ogre was the best game he’d seen and it was what left him to wanting to work at Square. These experiences showed that Yoshida himself isn’t against giving feedback on games.
With this fairly broad question out of the way, it was time to focus on what Naoki Yoshida knows best: Final Fantasy XIV.
Final Fantasy XIV Juggles With Conflicting Fan Feedback
When asked about how he tackled the immense task of relaunching the failed, original FFXIV, Yoshi P answered that the original game lacked content. There wasn’t much to do, so the FFXIV developer team focused on adding a myriad of content to keep players engaged, particularly battle content.
It was here that Yoshida began to speak about dealing with feedback from fans. What he said ended up being a recurring theme throughout the night. Players requested more content that they could play by themselves. This wasn’t a small ask and it was feedback the team had received for at least the base game as well as two expansions. To facilitate this, the FFXIV dev team worked hard to create a way for players to carry out the dungeons solo, resulting in Duty support debuting in the Shadowbringers expansion. With the success of this, the fans never complained again.
Just kidding, feedback shifted to asking for more large group content.
Rather than being annoyed by this, Yoshida seems to take the feedback shift in his stride and each comment about the contradictory nature of the feedback was told with a joke and a smile.
When he was asked how the team dealt with constant audience feedback, Yoshida took a moment to think about it. He said that feedback is integral to the game and it often dictates what is released and when. The example he used was the large area content, Eureka and Bozja.
Released during the Stormblood and Shadowbringers expansions respectively, players didn’t dislike the content but wanted less of it. The team had already made a third large-scale area but ultimately decided to pause it for the Endwalker expansion. Instead, it’s coming out in patch 7.2 so that players will feel it’s a little fresher.
Amusingly, even his mentioning Eureka and Bozja elicited a large cheer from the audience.
If It’s Too Easy, Then It’s Probably Just Right
It seems that feedback is a kind of double-edged sword for Yoshida and the team. A perfect example is that when they created their first high-end raid (an adventure for players that have reached the end of the main game), the feedback was that it was too easy. Taking this into consideration, the team decided to give Alexander, the Heavensward expansion’s high-end raid, two difficulty levels. Again, the team struck out. Fans considered the Normal difficulty too easy, while the Hard mode was considered too difficult. Yoshida laughed, saying that they often try to err on the easy side when gauging content. What the team has learned is that if the player feedback is that the content is too easy, then it’s probably just about right.
This fed into another comment about trying to create content for everyone. People play FFXIV for different reasons. Some players are there for the hardcore content and want to be truly challenged. Others enjoy the casual content that is on offer. With so many different players wanting so many different things, how does the team keep everyone actively engaged? Yoshida confidently replied that it’s all about making sure there is content for everyone in a timely manner. It can take about 6-8 months for content to come out so the team tries to make sure there is a variety of content being rolled out for casual, mid-level and hardcore players alike. Sometimes, they will release the content in two halves as it’s too big for one patch, but they try to ensure they don’t fall into a pattern of releasing casual content than mid content than hard content. They try to make sure it’s mixed up.
It’s the same for the content itself. When creating it, the team endeavors to make sure there’s some kind of surprise that players wouldn’t be expecting. If the player can figure out where the content is going, it will become boring and the players will drop away. To ensure this doesn’t happen, for any content that falls flat with the players, the team will take time to analyze why exactly the content didn’t hit the mark this time around. Doing this will guarantee that the same mistake doesn’t happen and they may be able to tweak the content into something more exciting and engaging for the player.
When asked if he had any advice for those who want to become a game developer themselves, Yoshida made sure to emphasize that everyone who is human is going to make mistakes. Don’t be afraid to try new things and if they don’t work, you learn from that and move on. You won’t die simply because you’ve made a mistake! It seems that this a philosophy that the entire team takes to heart and it’s how they’re able to deal with such conflicting feedback. Yoshida doesn’t find the feedback disheartening but rather says the contradictory nature of the feedback means that players are aware of the game’s changes and are making requests for what they would like to see in the game. It shows a passion and love for the game that means that the feedback isn’t designed to be negative in nature, because they genuinely want the game to be better.
After a few questions from the audience, in which someone asked for an Australian merchandise store, our time with Naoki Yoshida came to an end. Once again, the hall filled with rapturous applause as he was thanked once again for coming. As the crowd filtered out, I could hear people talking about how great it was, how amazing it was to see him in person and that they couldn’t believe he came all the way to Australia. It was obvious that the Australian fans are very happy to leave the game in Yoshida’s capable hands, not that it will ever stop them complaining.
Couldn’t make it to An Evening With Yoshi P and want to catch the full talk? You can view the entire presentation via the official Final Fantasy XIV Twitch channel! And to chat all things Final Fantasy, be sure to join us on the Qualbert Discord.
