During Day 2 of the New York Comic Con, I was fortunate enough to sit down with Sage Sundi (Global Online Producer at Square Enix) and Yasu Kurosawa (North American Online Producer at Square Enix). We went through a lot of different topics about various rumors - PVP, summons, airships, XBOX 360 version - and addressed some of the main complaints about the game - UI, anima regen rate, storyline, etc. The most important thing I gather from talking to them was that they listen to a lot of feedback from players and that Final Fantasy 14 should be enjoyed at a well-moderated pace. They want you to stop and smell the roses once in awhile or rather stop and marvel at all the various unique details in the game. Onto the interview:

Can you tell me about what you guys do?

Yasu: Essentially we handle relationships with the community sites and answers questions about the product to the community of players that play them. We act as the liaison between the players and the devs.

The game has been out for about a week, the collector’s edition has been out for about three weeks. So far, how do you think it’s being received by the fans?

Yasu: Lots of good feedback and opinions. Since this is an MMO, all the feedback is very important. We go to just about all the major forums and read comments posted, especially North American sites and European sites as well as Japan. So we just read them and compile all the opinions into a big list and give that feedback into the dev team. People have said great things about the graphics and storyline. They like the ability to change classes on the fly and the armor crafting system a lot. People also mention liking the guildleves system and in general we hear a lot of good opinions on the UI (user interface) and other features. Things like that we compile and take back to the devs.

Sage: Basically, we read everything. People are welcome to post messages and we’ll read it thoroughly. The developers are all Japanese and they cannot read or speak English, so they cannot understand what the players want. Not just English players, but our fans in Germany and all over the world. We have community reps in each region. These reps go to all major forums and compile a report every day.
In running an MMO, we understand it’s very important to listen to our players.

Editor’s note: The US sites that have a premium status with Square Enix are FFXIVCore, Zam, and Eorzeapedia. FinalFantasy14Players will soon be obtaining premium status as well.

Well us players definitely have a lot of questions about the game! I’ve personally been spending a lot of time crafting and understanding the crafting system.

Yasu: We hear a lot of people liking the crafting system. Right now with crafting, you can get a lot of experience points.

With the current game state, you kinda have to craft a lot. The starter weapons and armor doesn’t cut it for higher level levequests.

Yasu: We put a lot of purpose into crafting.

It definitely seems like a lot of focus was put into crafting and is the fastest way to gain physical levels. Perhaps even at the expense of other methods of gaining exp like fighting. With the fatigue system, after awhile, you don’t gain any exp at all.

Sage: Right. You still get a little experience though.

Yasu: The point is to keep switching after awhile so don’t continue doing the same things over and over again.

Ok let’s switch gears a bit. The PS3 version is schedule to come out in March 2010. Is there a definite date yet?

Yasu: The date is not decided yet, but we’re still aiming for March.

Are there any plans for a Mac version?

Yasu: We don’t think so.

I’ve heard rumors about an XBOX version. Any weight to that?

Sage: That was the plan.

Yasu: We talked about developing an XBOX 360 version and are continuing to talk with Microsoft.

Sage: They have a different network policy. They want to have all the networks in a close platform. We are more like an open platform.

Yasu: If we can resolve this, then we’ll start developing an XBOX 360 version. It won’t be anytime soon. It won’t come out at the same time as the PS3 version.

Is it even likely that an XBOX 360 version will happen?

Sage: It’s up to them!

Yasu: At this point we don’t know.

We had a lot of people signed up to write daily journals of their adventures here on FinalFantasy14Players, but the minimal specs on the PC version are quite high. You know, most college students have laptops which can’t have their video card upgraded. What was the reasoning for such a high system requirement?

Yasu: We have a PS3 version coming out and the PC version needed to match the PS3 abilities. When we designed this game, we were looking at what the standard PC abilities were in five years. Each year, PCs will have better and better graphics and processing capabilities. Right now the specs seem high but in 2-3 years it shouldn’t be.

Sage: Yes, we were aiming for the PC environment five years later. We plan to support this title for a long time.

There’s been a lot of chatter that in a couple of weeks or so we are going to see a big update. Could one of the updates be something to the marketplace?

Yasu: There’s nothing we can confirm. It’s also possible that some of our players know more than us. (laughs)

Sage: We can’t make any future promises.

Another question on the minds of many is the storyline of Final Fantasy 14. When you pick a starting city, you get to follow that city’s storyline and currently cannot initiate the storyline for the other cities.

Yasu: Unless you create a new character. I don’t know if there’s a plan to allow for you to play the starting quest for all the cities or change your starting cities.

Are there plans to add more quests to the main storyline or just to add more to the storyline in general?

Yasu: We can’t say more than what’s already announced.

Do you have any sort of numbers, like sales figures? How many accounts have been made?

Sage: At the moment we don’t have any numbers in yet.

Yasu: So far we haven’t really experienced congestions problems. The launch has gone pretty smoothly overall.

Sage: At some points if the servers get full we will close registration so as to limit the number of players at one time.

I’ve read somewhere that there’s each server can handle about 6000 active players. Does that sound right?

Sage: We actually don’t know. You can see server load when you create new characters. We added some new servers last week. Now there are 18 in total.

Can you tell me about the FFXIV merchandise? A lot of people have interest especially in the muggle dolls.

Yasu: We announced them a few weeks ago and plan to offer them in North America. But at the moment they are sold out. We’re working on getting more available for sale later.

Would we be able to buy these merchandise on Amazon or other major retailers?

Yasu: At this point we only plan to offer them on the Square Enix site.

One of the questions that every has regards Chocobos. We see them everywhere in the game but can’t interact with them. Is that something that will be available to us soon?

Sage: (laughs) I don’t know honestly.

What about airships? We see those around too and while in game I can see a handful of them in the sky at any given time.

Sage: It’s a big secret!

Yasu: I know you can see it around the game.

Sage: We don’t want you to experience everything right away and take in the entire game in a couple of weeks. We want you to be around for several years. There’s a lot of things that are still secret.

One of the reasons why this is such a big question is because right now, you have to do a lot of walking to get around from place to place. Also the anima regen is so slow.

Sage: We hear this a lot in our feedback.

Yasu: That is one of the things we hear about in the forums. That’s one of the things that we’ve sent back to the developers.

On the subject of things sent back to the developers, the targeting system is currently difficult to use right now. With level 20 leves you can sometime have a 15 person party, and 10 mobs on screen.

Yasu: We also hear a lot about this.

Sage: UI is definitely one of the top priorities.

Another popular rumor is about PVP. Is there something you can update us on regarding this?

Sage: This is a lot of discussion about PVP among the dev team right now. Still thinking about how we want to implement it. We need a lot of feedback on this too.

There’s a handful of high level monsters in the game that at the moment are impossible to kill. Like the Marboro for example. He one-hit killed one of my linkshell members the other day during a level 20 levequests. Are they there just to taunt us? What level do we need to be to kill them?

Yasu: (laughs) I don’t know. The current cap is level 50. You will be able to kill them with the right strategy.

What’s the reasoning behind only 8 regional and 8 local levequests in a 36 hour period?

Yasu: This was a topic of big discussion for us. The levequests is one of the best ways to gain experience. It’s meant as a bonus and not as a way to power through the game.

My last questions is about summons. Summons are trademarks of the Final Fantasy series. Shiva, Bahamut, etc. Are there plans to have summons, perhaps even a summoner class?

Sage: We here that a lot in our feedback. That and the samurai class. If someone says there will be new classes, it’s just a rumor right now.

Has the development team given any thoughts to potential new classes?

Sage: A lot of ideas comes from our forum feedbacks. We collect it and give it to them. So if you let us know, we’ll let them know. There’s definitely a lot of different possibilities.

Hoc is a player of Final Fantasy 14. He is on the Fabul server using the name “Saito Uchiha.” You will find him primarily playing Pugilist but most of his time is spent crafting or gathering.