―FFXIV had a clean slate starting with A Realm Reborn, but what kind of game did you want it to become?
Gondai: While drawing on our experience creating
FFXI, we also took inspiration from
World of Warcraft (*1), which was incredibly popular at the time. Rather than focus on forming parties to go kill monsters for experience, we wanted players to accomplish this through completing quests, so they could enjoy themselves even when playing solo. Of course, we also wanted to put an emphasis on story and scenarios where players join forces to overcome powerful enemies. Another important aspect of the game was time. As working adults, we thought it would be more appealing if people could play without having to devote significant amounts of time to it.
Yoshida: Games in the FF series were originally standalone RPGs, so it was important to let players enjoy the game even when they’re alone, and for any content that required help from others, we created the Duty Finder. In hindsight, there are several things I wish we could have done differently or gone back to fix, but we simply didn’t have the time.
Gondai: As I said before, our intention was a system where players could level up through quests, but as we only had two years of development time, there weren’t enough quests. This resulted in players playing through dungeons over and over again, which we never intended for them to do, and we certainly hadn’t planned to implement a level syncing system.
Yoshida: Knowing players would have a need to repeat dungeons, we took various steps to simplify their design, but the ones in A Realm Reborn still bear remnants of their original designs. For example, the Sunken Temple of Qarn contained bees with a Final Sting attack that can kill you in one shot. Because of their placement in the original dungeon, players were ecstatic to clear it even once.
Takai: The design of Tam-Tara Deepcroft was so complex, even if you had 90 minutes you couldn’t clear it.
Soken: Yeah. I thought, “There’s no way anyone’s finishing this.” [
laughs]
Yoshida: We reduced the number of levels by about half, right?
Gondai: Originally there were a lot of paths you didn’t have to take, and you’d often find bosses waiting for you. But since these dungeons needed to be repeatable, we made changes so that even a random party formed in the Duty Finder could work their way through without getting lost.
Takai: There also used to be several places where, if you fell, you’d have no way of getting back to your original route.
Yoshida: Ah, I remember that. You had to wander about to find a switch to unlock a path back, or something like that. FF dungeons always have mazes and puzzles, so we thought we’d try it in Tam-Tara.
Gondai: We designed it expecting players to run out of time on their first try and clear it on their second attempt.
Yoshida: But when you did manage to complete them, you would see a lot of progress in terms of the story. It wasn’t simply content you passed through on the way to something else, it was a climactic struggle like a primal battle
Soken: And because they were so much bigger back then, it was a nightmare rigging the sound. When I had to work on places like the Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak I was like, “Whoa...this is huge...”
Yoshida: That one was brought straight over from the original
FFXIV, so it was a different type of dungeon to those that debuted in A Realm Reborn. We made a lot of changes, but I wish we had removed the floors that give you the Leaden debuff [
laughs]. That “peeew!” sound really gets on my nerves! [
wry laugh] There was originally something like a time bomb up ahead, and you had to get to it as quickly as possible, which is why we introduced the debuff that slows you down. But later, when we were adjusting the dungeon for repeated playthroughs, we got rid of the bomb. We ran out of time to change anything else, though, and the sticky floors got left in there.
Soken: That “peeew” thing you mention was just one of the problems Takai and I had to solve together. There are so many sound effects, we had a lot of trouble keeping within the PS3 memory limitations.
Takai: I tried to keep things in check, like, “You can’t have separate sound effects for every single thing. Some of them have got to share the same sound,” and so on.
*1
World of Warcraft: MMORPG produced by Blizzard Entertainment in which each character belongs to one of two warring factions. The total number of users has exceeded 100 million, and the title is listed several times in the Guinness World Records.
―The “Duty Ready” notification has such a distinct sound effect that FFXIV players in Japan have taken to using the word “shakeeen!” as part of their slang.
Soken: It originally played when you filled the third limit break gauge. I was asked to come up with something you can clearly make out, even in the heat of battle above, like, four hundred other sound effects. You know when you’re in a really noisy place like an arcade or a train station, but there are certain sounds that you can hear above everything else? That was what I had in mind when I made it, but then the UI team said that because it catches people’s attention, they wanted to use it for the “Duty Ready” pop-up.
Yoshida: The dev team didn’t take too well to the “shakeeen” sound at first. They said it was too loud and felt out of place. That was kind of the point, since it was designed for the limit break gauge, and it was obviously going to stand out. They would say things like, “Why does it go ‘shakeeen’? I swear you got that idea from somewhere else!” [
laughs]
Gondai: We were told it was just a placeholder effect, but we eventually got used to it.
Soken: I actually made another sound just for the Duty Finder. Problem was, when I put it in, everyone was all like “Why did you change it?” [
laughs] When it comes to sound effects, you can’t tell how things are gonna work out until they are actually released to the public. There are tons of cases of that, like the effect that played when you make a new character and start the game for the first time. It originally sounded like breaking glass and was meant to represent going inside the crystal, but it also played when you log in. If too many people were trying to access the server, you’d get kicked back to that screen and the same sound would play every time. It got annoying real quick, so we switched it out for something easier on the ears.
Gondai: We had the same kind of thing with the graphical effects used in battles. They’d be too flashy or too bright, so we’d ask the team making the visuals to tone them down.
Yoshida: And they hated having to change any of the “perfect” effects they’d made! [
laughs]
Takai: We also had trouble getting the timing for attacks right.
Yoshida: Even now, that’s a thorn in our sides.
Gondai: Ideally, we want the attack animations to be in sync with when the damage is actually dealt. But if it’s a three-hit action, it doesn’t do any damage until the third hit. We originally planned it so that the HP goes down even when you’re still only on the first or second.
Yoshida: A recent example of this problem would be the black mage’s Aetherial Manipulation, where we had to adjust the delay from inputting the command to the action triggering. Players found that split second between holding up the rod and the movement occurring really frustrating, so they asked us to tweak it.
Gondai: It’s the same with the dragoon’s jump attacks. People want us to change the amount of time it takes for you to be able to move again.
Soken: Yeah, that’s why they asked us to adjust the animations too.
Yoshida: It’s because it looks weird if they trigger too late. It can also mess with the timing for processing damage and so on.
Takai: The designers tend to prioritize the graphics and animations, but once they start playing the game properly, they learn how to see it from the battle team’s perspective. “Oh, that’s what they mean about the jumps being too slow. If you get stuck in one spot for too long, you won’t be able to dodge that attack and end up dead.” [
laughs] That’s why I’m always telling the designers to play the game. If they do, they’ll be able to figure out potential pitfalls.