Famitsu May 13th/20th 2010 Tanaka Komoto Interview

Famitsu released its magazine a day early to get ready for Golden Week, possibly Japan’s biggest holiday week. Apologies for its lateness, but Aya and I have been working at every moment we can to bring you Famitsu’s interview with Hiromichi Tanaka and Nobuaki Komoto. In it, they discuss many things alpha, as well as their plans from here on out.

Enjoy!

Connections beyond expectations
Famitsu (F): Final Fantasy XIV has finally made it past the development floor and onto the consumer test phase with the alpha test. How do you think that’s going so far, and what do you expect to happen after this?
Tanaka (HT): Right now, the alpha tests are taking place during three separate four-hour slots in three regions: Japan, Europe, and North America. Right now, the servers aren’t as stable as we’d like, and a lot of people haven’t been able to play to the fullest. We’re sorry about the burden this has put on the testers, but we’ll be upgrading bit by bit, and we’re sure the situation is going to get better.

F: What’s the problem with the servers?
HT: Each region has the same number of testers, and from our experience with the FFXI beta test, we were expecting around half of those players to log in at the same time. However, the amount of players that logged in exceeded expectations, and we believe this is because the testers were selected from devoted Final Fantasy XI players. The North American and European tests didn’t put as much strain on the servers and bring them down as much as the Japanese tests, though. With the version update on April 15th, we added a mechanism that will show you what number you are in the login queue when the server is crowded, and increased the time you can stay in that queue without retrying your login to 10 minutes. This made it easier for players to know when they’d be able to log in, and we feel it also relieved some of the traffic congestion.
Komoto (NK): We sincerely regret that most players haven’t been able to have a satisfying testing experience. We’re extremely thankful that we’ve been able to receive a lot of feedback despite the current testing situation.

F: How do you feel about the feedback you’ve read so far?
NK: There were a lot of things we didn’t notice since we’re always looking at the game from a developer’s standpoint. There were a lot of things that players focused on that surprised us. On top of that, it was interesting to see some opinions unique to their regions. Since I’ve been away from FFXI for so long to focus on developing FFXIV, I’ve been feeling a bit distant from the players. Now that players are logging in (albeit at an alpha test level) and I’m going back and forth between the management and development floors for the first time in a long time, I really feel like I’ve come home.

”Azagba Tanaka” has logged in.
F: Do the developers log into the tests, too?
NK: We’d like to, but since the servers are still limited, we’re restraining ourselves (he laughs). We’d like to get in as many testers as we can, so we’re keeping developer logins to a minimum.
HT: I was the only one sitting at my PC from the very moment the test began, fervently competing with other players at a game of “Login Online.” (He laughs.) (He doesn’t actually say “Login Online,” but I thought this would be a nice place to introduce the terminology the Japanese were using for alpha test’s login-retry sessions –Manly)

F: Did you? (Interviewer laughs) Players weren’t able to tell it was you just by looking at your character though, were they?
HT: With a name like “Azagba Tanaka,” I’d hope they would! (He laughs) I can read the log of player chat and actions from the developers’ side, but that doesn’t give you a really good feel for how the players are experiencing the game. I logged in as a representative for the developers to see what was going on in the game.

F: So the producer himself was checking the game, then! (Interviewer laughs) Was there any feedback that stood out?
NK: Since the alpha is focused on tweaking movement and controls, there were a lot of responses saying control response was bad, and many responses that confirmed some misgivings we had ourselves. We mentioned on the site before the test, “There’s no tutorial, so let us know if the controls are confusing,” so people told us: “The controls are confusing.” We’re going to try to work that out for the final release.
HT: There was a huge difference in the number of feedback we received from each region. There were about 5000 comments from the Japanese testers, but there were about 19000 from Europe and 25000 from America. Even though each region has the same number of players, for every one comment the Japanese write, the American players write five. It’s probably a difference in culture. A lot of American users wrote comments asking for their ideas to be put in the game, too. They’re all like, “Hey! Listen to my idea! (He laughs)

F: In that sense, I guess Japanese players are just more modest?
NK: Well, a lot of the game isn’t working properly yet, so it’s hard to tell. We expected a lot of angry responses, but we didn’t get that many. Actually, we feel like the players are warmly encouraging us through this process.

F: Doesn’t sound like you have a lot of time to sit back and enjoy that feeling, though.
NK: Things have been really busy and it doesn’t really feel like I’ve gotten much done (He laughs). Now that the game is running, though, I’ve been able to enjoy the nostalgia of managing the game.
HT: There’s still a lot to do (he laughs). We’re only releasing a little bit of the game at the alpha stage, so we’re trying to see what we need to change right now. Even so, after release we’re going to be working on the next content for the game, so we’ll probably never get a sense that we’ve completed it.

F: Well, one of the unique things about MMORPGs is that there’s never really a “completed” version.
NK: At fan events, we feel a sort of sense of accomplishment, but as of right now… (He laughs.)
HT: I usually feel that sense of accomplishment when I can enter the game and play alongside the players and see how they enjoy it. We’re still not quite there in the alpha version, so we’re going to work real hard to get to that point.

We would like to hear users’ opinions
F: You guys have been saying that it would be great to reflect the opinions of users who took parts in the test into the game since FFXIV was announced. Do you still feel this way?
NK: Yes, and that won’t change even after the official service has started. There are so many things we would like to change; however, we will not be able to start the official service if we keep trying to fix every single thing, so we would like to know what is wanted the most at this point. Of course, we’ll not only be fixing the problems, but also strengthening the parts the players like. We’d like to know the users’ opinions and think about what to do.

F: Then, it is better that alpha and beta testers give you honest opinions, however trivial they are.
HT: Of course.
NK: As I said earlier, there are many surprising things we, the developers, may miss if not for the users’ opinions. For instance, we already got some opinions on the manual for the tester’s site before the alpha started. Developers also agreed with some of the opinions about the manual.
HT: Even reading opinions that match our own serve to reassure us.
NK: Yes, there are two purposes for collecting users’ opinions: to alert us to problems or ideas and reassure us about existing problems or ideas we’ve had. Therefore, every single opinion is important.