MMORPG.com: 2.38 brought personal housing, and 2.4 will be bringing many more wards to accommodate demand. Prices have generally been considered high though. Is there anything else being done to improve the housing situation moving forward?
Naoki Yoshida: So in terms of high pricing and the people who voice their opinions on that, I disagree. I feel that people who want to purchase housing work really hard to save their money to purchase the house and it shouldn’t be something you can purchase without putting in the effort. The opinions we’ve heard coming from those people who don’t play to save their money in order to purchase housing, the dev team monitors how much gil each player owns, so they know about how the economy is in how much money people have, so a lot of people who don’t work towards saving for housing or don’t want to spend what money they do have, I disagree that the price of housing is too expensive.
So maybe people tend to look at the starting price of housing, and that’s what gets them hesitant of how pricing is structured. It is on a countdown auction, the price goes down to about half the starting price. People buy the housing even before it even reaches that halfway point, and it sells out really quickly, and people see that pricing so people have enough gil to purchase housing.
MMORPG.com: I know my Free Company has a medium house and one of the officers and myself have small houses in the same ward.
Naoki Yoshida: I feel that a lot of the comments about the pricing may come from people who aren’t intending to save money for housing. Even though I’ve been busy in my schedule, I’ve played enough to accumulate about 3 million gil. Some people who are really hardcore may take a bunch of materials and put it into auction to raise funds that way to get more materials to make items to put up for sale by doing that raise upwards of 6 to 7 million gil. I feel the pricing itself isn’t really that big of an issue.
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MMORPG.com: We’ve been gardening.
Naoki Yoshida: Yeah there are many ways to save money and accumulate your funds. If you stick with it, you will be able to accumulate gil. The pricing will not go any higher than it already is, so if you’re patient and stick with it you’ll be able to achieve it.
MMORPG.com: What is the state of DirectX11 and add-on support for FFXIV? Do you know when we can expect to see either come online?
Naoki Yoshida: So in terms of DirectX11, I have reviewed it, and it’s now in the stage of optimization. Nvidia is cooperating with the optimization as well, so their technical staff has been helping out with that. So if you have a graphics card that supports DirectX11 you will be able to have a higher quality than DirectX9. In terms of timing wise, we need to not only consider the technical aspects but also the overall promotion of it, and our partnership with Nvidia and other chipmakers, and collaborate with them so we need to have an overall plan. That’s where we’re currently at, the planning phases of the promotional elements as well. Hopefully, by the end of the year, we’re hoping to put out a visual reference where you can see how DirectX11 will look.
In terms of addons, we’re still progressing on it but are experiencing a bit of a delay. We are moving along though, so if you could wait for additional information to come.
MMORPG.com: Finally, can you talk about some long-term goals for A Realm Reborn? Where do you want to take the game in the future that would really set it apart from other MMOs on the market? Every successful MMO has one big thing it is remembered for years and years later. What would you like to add to the game that you think players will remember fondly for years to come?
Naoki Yoshida: So with Final Fantasy 14, throughout its existence, we’ve been saying it’s the only RPG where you can experience the Final Fantasy universe online, it’s the ultimate online Final Fantasy experience. I personally like World of Warcraft, and if you look at it, you can’t raise just one element that people remember fondly, I feel that all of Blizzard, all of Warcraft is packed into that one game, so you can’t just raise one element to describe as “This is Warcraft”. So with any MMO, or you ask any developer that works on MMO’s or with FF14, we’re not just making this for just the console. You can look at it like a themepark with many different attractions within the one world, and so it’s very hard to pick just one single element that would be the defining element of FF14. To reiterate this is a Final Fantasy Universe that you can experience online.
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So ultimately, and something we really want to keep as important, for players that first come into the themepark that is Final Fantasy 14 would experience the game, they’d enjoy it so much that they’d tell their friends “Hey this game is great you should come play”, and that continuous chain of friends inviting friends and coming to play would be our ultimate goal.
