Thread: Translation Japanese to English

Work was slow this morning so I was able to finish my translation for the Game Watch article interviewing YoshiP at GDC.

-------------FFXIV 2014-03-19 Game Watch Interview Translation


Source: http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs...19_640445.html

GW: Can you please let us know why you participated in GDC this time.


Y: I have participated in GDC workshops as a developer from about 8 years ago and been going for 4 years straight, after taking in charge of FFXIV I was busy and couldn’t attend. From Square Enix I have attended the most.


GW: 4 years straight from 8 years back is around the time when the previous FFXIV members and Komoto-san was participating.

Y: Yes. Not only Komoto, but Minagawa, Takai, Suzuki, all the core members have been coming.


GW: How does it feel participating once again?

Y: The main part of GDC is from tomorrow, yesterday and today is just tutorials and workshops, so I don’t feel like I have participated yet. I have been telling developers every time to go check it out so they can learn how many people are out in the world seriously developing games. There are this many people developing games, and they openly talk about their success and failures so they can feel and want to develop a even better game. I was surprised when I first came as well, as a developer I think it’s good to participate once.


GW: How many FFXIV ARR dev staff is participating this year?

Y: Just myself (laugh). Really, I would like to fill up next years GDC with FFXIV. FFXIV went through many experiences for management, producing, graphics, programming, sound, graphics engine, task management, we can go over a whole day with FFXIV’s sessions. This year we’re launching for China and we were going to wait until we get the results from the launch before doing this. MMO launch is just a start, so I was thinking it was too early, then I received a request from GDC, so I talked to the president and the chairman explaining that I’m going to turn down the request, but instead they asked me to go, and as a result the schedule got all messed up, but I am honored to be here.

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GW: How are the players responding to the PS4 versions beta test?

Y: I cannot say the amount of downloads as we don’t have the numbers, but it’s a lot. When looking at how much PS4’s are out in the world there is pretty good ratio of players playing the beta phase. This goes for Minagawa as well but what was odd was many were happy that it was full HD now but there was an issue where it was too small and hard to see (laugh). We received feedbacks to make that part same as the PS3, it was pretty unusual that we can’t just simply increase the resolution. It’s a matter of getting used to, but when we open the next phase of the beta test planned for 4/4 we’ll make it possible to have near PS3 size as well as make it possible to make it smaller if needed.
As for the phase 2, we pretty much completed on working on majority of players UI feedbacks, so we want you to check those out. We recalculated the distance assuming the players environment, both Minagawa and I have bad eyesight so we were testing ourselves as well (laugh). If we simply enlarge the UI, unless we separate the source it becomes blurry, so are trying to see what’s the acceptable border line while making adjustments. We also have to separately release cross hot bar for the gamepad mode so that’ll change as well.


GW: For the PS4 versions UI, you didn’t make individual changes but changed it as a whole?

Y: If you set the overall setting so it’s easier to see, you can do that. You’ll also be able to make individual adjustments. I would like for players to try beta phase 2 and leave feedbacks on this. We got the mastering up so, this will be addressed in the patch.


GW: For the PS4 version players, does it seem like most are from the PS3 version players?

Y: Not really. Not only PS3 players but we have lots of new players as well. We have the sharing feature this time, with that Minagawa and I were viewing the broadcasted video’s on our large screen monitors in the development room. It was fun watching how the new players moved, like “You’re going that way for quest?” (laugh). There is one quest in Limsa where you pick up items while heading to the Aetheryte, while going through that quest, there is the next quest available right in front of the player but instead the player went the other direction (laugh). I guess when they see quests in their ToDo list they feel that they should do it in that order instead of taking on the next quests along the way. Once they finish quest they take the next one. I thought that was something new, at same time if we put numbers on the quests that’ll also make it feel like we’re forcing them to do the quests, we also don’t want to show guide lines to the quests as well. We discussed that this sharing feature will help us decide how to structure the next opening. Watching players enjoy playing was fresh feeling as well as gave us motivation.


GW: Will gaming device such as Logitech G13 and G600 be supported for the PS4 version?

Y: There is a limit on what we can do on our end, so it’ll depend on SCE. We were told those that require special drivers are not good. It depends on SCE or the individual makers, once it’s released as PS4 recommended hardware then we can address it. As long as it recognizes the buttons, we believe we can assign key assignments, we can’t guarantee everything so it’s a hard issue. Since the PS4 just launched, I believe these parts will be addressed along the way.


GW: In tomorrows speech, you’re going to talk about your three year experience in one hour, what did you take great care in this three years?

Y: The most important thing that I have kept, was to honestly explain the situation, and promise what’s going to be done, and do them one at a time. We said the PS3 version will be released at the same time as the PC version, we promised it will use as much of the PS3’s performance. After I took charge of FFXIV, we can’t make promises we can’t keep, so although we pushed back the release once we tried to keep the promise.
Also I’m relieved that FFXIV ARR was able to go through the phase where other subscription based MMO’s were having a hard time. There are more MMO’s out there on top so we’ll continue to put in our best efforts and spread the share throughout the world. We want to make it so we can address where we don’t have enough contents, make it where it will keep the player motivation.


GW: You have been saying that you want to take not only Japanese market but the NA market then the world. Can we now say that FFXIV ARR was able to get the US market? What’s the difference between the responses from NA and Japanese players?

Y: I think we were able to get NA. There isn’t much difference in the feedbacks we get compared to Japan, in that sense I feel Japanese players are not used to yet. For NA, there is WOW and what can be done in WOW can pretty much be done in FFXIV.


GW: Well in other words, for NA players, do they compare many things to WOW?

Y: Yes, definitely. For NA players there is WOW so there is a system in FFXIV ARR which they are familiar with, for many Japanese players this is their first time experience, so they may have felt on some parts “Why is it like this?” That’s probably the major difference. So in that sense NA launch was much more smoother. As for game difficulty, there were those that welcomed it and those that said it’s too hard. WOW’s difficulty recently has been coming down, and those that loved the time when WOWs difficulty was really hard, really like the FFXIV’s difficulty (laugh).
Other than that, when it comes to subscription models I believe the NA players have more realistic understanding. We now have the F2P models, where you pay for something you use or want to use. However for a subscription model, you have to pay to play every month. When it was a time when subscription model was the only option, people accepted it but I do believe and it’s a fact that there are more people voicing that they only want to pay to play for this month, or want to pay after playing. Also we get straight comments from NA players , such as “Hey sell this item, I’ll buy it” (laugh).


GW: Will it be possible to make payment afterwards?

Y: That is hard, it’s possible that they may not pay (laugh). We already have a risk with credit cards, if the situation of no payment increases there is penalties. Therefore we cannot do that, and for that reason we have addressed this through game cards, steam, and many other payment methods.


GW: There is more NA users for the PS4 so it’s highly possible that there will be more NA players on the PS4 version. If later the players needs between JP and NA players differ, will there be difference in resource?

Y: Game updates are not simple, and so far there isn’t much difference in players needs. Can you think of something?


GW: As an easy example there are seasonal events. Since there is princess day, there may be some that want to see St. Patricks day event, difference in something like this.

Y: Just because the game is developed in Japan we don’t say “This has nothing to do with our country” for in-game events. We have Easter and Halloween events, it’s globally operated game so we would like to share as much as possible. There are some things such as US Independence day is not good in France, so for things like these we change the date or span of event to address it. Also the Chinese New Year is on a different schedule so for the Chinese version it’s possible that we may have it’s own original events.
Contents being too hard or easy goes for Japanese players, and for this we have the “Echo” system which is applied globally. Actually there is no point in comparing overseas or Japan, it’s based on if the gamer is a hardcore gamer, core MMO gamer, or casual gamer, that’s the only difference. That’s why there shouldn’t be any change due to amount of shares. Even if things in this patch which is focused as casual contents, it is still applied globally.


GW: Have you decided on the time frame for the Chinese version?

Y: We’re just about to start the alpha test. We made everyone wait through the hard times we had with previous FFXIV until this FFXIV ARR. Shanda started doing large scale PR, Chinese version twitter is also up and I think it’s turning out good.


GW: How much simultaneous connections are you estimating? A million?

Y: It’s operated by Shanda so I can’t give out too much numbers, but when you compare it to Japan, the numbers will big. As for simultaneous connections, the business scheme is different and in China and Korea there are lots of F2P games, there will be lots of concentration during the free play period, they play as much as they can during that time and then move on. So we can’t be too particular with the numbers of simultaneous connections. We need to carefully discuss and look into if we’re going to open up for F2P. I am telling them that what matters most is the games quality and not the increase in numbers, it’s not good to just simply get the numbers. We have staffs that plays different F2P and through that we are carefully looking into this. It’s much more important to keep a specific amount of players in the year. We’ve seen situations like “Blade & Soul” where there was big increase in number of players then sudden drop from players leaving. I have been talking with the team that we can’t follow through with the that method.


GW: Once the PS4 versions starts, there will probably be lots of people that don’t know what happened before A Realm Reborn, are there any difference between new/legacy players?

Y: For legacy players that have all their classes and jobs capped they feel that they want some more contents. For FFXIV ARR the leveling is bit harder, in the previous FFXIV once you get in a spirit bond party, it was easy to get PL. For those that started from ARR they have leveling to do before collecting tomestones, on the way they get other gears, then get darklight gear, then Crystal Tower, Relic, so there is a lot of things to do, but for legacy players, some already had full relic already the start of ARR (laugh). Content which takes more time to do is being added in patch 2.2.


GW: This may overlap with what you’re going to talk about in your session, but for long time there is a issue as to where MMO should be F2P or subscription model. You have been saying from before that it should be subscription model based and that F2P isn’t good, do you feel the same now, or do you have any new ideas?

Y: I’m not saying F2P is not good, I’m more sided with “you choose”. MMO rush continued from around 2005, and as you know, lots of large MMORPGs started with subscription models. This is same for Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings, Age of Conan, Rift, Star Wars Old Republic. Only one that was different was Guild Wars 2. The reason why they wanted to go with subscription model is because we all want a stable development team.
With subscription model we can see how much players are playing every month. For F2P you can’t see the numbers for up coming month, and it’ll become unstable for employment, as well as make the development team worried, also this will make it harder to get the roadmaps out. In order for players to enjoy playing the MMO for long term, we need to keep on making solid content updates, in order to do that we need a solid development team, in order to do that we need a stable income. I think all the MMORPG’s producers are all nice (laugh), instead of how much earnings they make, there are more of those that wants a stable operation.


The reason to continue online game is about if the content added in the update being fun or not, if you make that into F2P, since the basic fee is free and there will be a time where you can’t make enough money from game contents, so even if you wanted to make new contents you have to make new items, and end up working on the shops to sell those items. I don’t think that leads to what makes the game fun. Normally you would want to put in your 100% effort to making new contents but in order to earn income you have to spread out the cost and end up saying “Why are we making this?”
MMORPG’s out there in the world is created by the same people going in circles, MMO development costs a lot to build, so in most cases we receive the money from investors to develop. Even though they explained to the investors and started with the subscription model, if the numbers don’t meet up with the numbers you explained to the investors, the investors will feel danger and start asking for their money back. Once that happens you can’t keep on going with subscription model. Once the money stops you can’t even do updates, so you switch to F2P to increase sales temporarily, pay back the investors...... I believe this is the hard truth about MMO development.


Although this isn’t MMO, and this goes for League of Legends or World of Tanks, the current players don’t want to be bound on time, they want to freely get into the game, get excited, get the gaming experience and quit whenever they want. And when you look at the actual total play time they are playing for a really long time. I personally believe the current main stream is this method. These are better for F2P models. So that’s why I think everything depends on the choice, it’s not about which one is better or not, I’m planning to talk about this tomorrow (laugh).
In the slides I’m showing tomorrow, I have something that’s titled F2P vs Subscription, but in the next page I have a big X explaining this (laugh). It’s not vs, both sides have their merits and demerits. What’s important is the gaming experience and if the game is fun or not. If the game is fun lots of players will pay, if it’s not no matter which business model you go with they won’t pay. It’s obvious.
I went through interviews with NA media’s asking how did FFXIV ARR was successful through subscription base? I explained that subscription base doesn’t mean it’s inferior, you just need to choose on which one depending on the game. If the requirements change we just need to change it, that’s all there is to it. However if you make the switch just because it’s not making enough income, we’re not talking something negative like that, we have to think on what’s positive, how to increase the amount of players, I personally isn’t really particular on just subscription based model.


GW: Okay, how would you answer to those NA players that are asking to sell the items?

Y: If that’s not going to mess up the game balance, and not increase the ARPU, if it meets the requirement then sure, I think it’s possible.


GW: How about the Phial of Fantasia which is in high demand, this doesn’t affect the game balance right? When will you start selling this?

Y: I also think it’s okay to sell it. Since we have high demand from the players, I’ll answer this one in the next Producer Letter Live. I believe the time has changed, we are also starting the additional options for the retainers. This time we have a fun feature called Retainer Venture where you dispatch the retainers to go obtain items. Not only for storage but it’ll increase the usability of the retainers. We have 2 retainers for free, and from the third we’ll receive some money. For the fee please wait for the official announcement.


GW: Which part of patch 2.2 are the users liking so far.

Y: Glamour system, there is some rumour going around saying why can’t you use it on blue name, not sure where this false information came out from and been troubled by it (laugh). On the forum it says that I mentioned this, but that’s not true, and no one can actually show the source and prove it (laugh). So in the previous producer letter I showed how it’s going to be done, people were like it’s complete (positive) answer, so I’m not sure what started this. I think everyone is worried too much (laugh). Why would we make it harder to use when it’s just for fashion. There was a question asking if you lose the item which you use for the glamour system, but you won’t lose it (laugh). It’ll get binded to the character to prevent people from buying the gear from the market, apply it on glamour system and sell back to the market, we did that to prevent this. Crafter items is pretty popular but we haven’t shown all yet so please look forward to it. Other than that we have the Zodiac Weapon system which I mentioned briefly.


GW: What is Zodiac Weapon System?

Y: It’s relic upgrade, it’s pretty hard. But it’s not hard as in content being hard, it requires rare drops, and it’s the type that takes some time to complete. There isn’t any restrictions on obtaining but I believe it’ll be hard. It’s harder than the current relic, but there are different stages so I believe it’ll be easy to set up a goal for them. It’s not something that ends in patch 2.2, we will continue to do this in 2.25 and 2.3. It will take couple patches to complete, in the end the looks will also change. In the past I have been calling this the “Excalibur” system. In the end you’ll be able to modify the parameters as well. Currently, for weapons you have weapons you can obtain from hard difficulty content such as Bahamut’s Coil and those weapons where you can get from Alagan Tomestone, it was these two methods till now, but now we have the 3rd option which will take a long time to complete. Players can choose from these three types.


GW: In patch 2.2 the items level will be increased, but do you have any worries that this will cause inflation to the item level, or wouldn’t the current Tomestone of Philosophy go to waste?

Y: Since it’s right before the Producer Letter Live it’s hard to answer this, but we’re getting rid of the Tomestone of Philosophy. The left over tomestone can be traded to Mythology. Since we’re adding a new currency the lower one becomes wasted so you can trade those to Mythology. You won’t be able to obtain them post patch 2.2, and Darklight gear will become dungeon drops.


GW: So does that mean Darklight gear will drop from dungeons which currently drops Hoplite gear?

Y: It’ll drop from one level higher dungeon. The gear level cap on dungeons will be 70, 80 is for Crystal Tower, 90 is Mythology, or Bahamut’s Coil (Turn 1-5), above that will be from the new tomestone so this shouldn’t cause any inflation.
Right now Japanese users are thinking that the level cap is increasing, but that’s inflation in level. For us we think this item level increase is the next step to main jobs growth, if we unlock level caps wrongfully it’ll break the balance. For level cap increase timing we are thinking about doing it with expansion when new large fields are introduced, and when about 8 new dungeons are added, and when we have growth features, I think it’s more fun that way. So until then we’re going to keep it with item level increase, and everytime that happens they have a goal to reach. Once you’re done with that you can choose to start a second character too. As I mentioned before, we are going to add more growth features, so I am hoping we can fulfill players needs.


GW: Okay so what’s the item level from the Soldiery?

Y: (smile) If I say too much I won’t have anything to say on the 21st letter live. (laugh)


GW: How far out are you scoping for this development?

Y: I am looking up till the expansion which I’m calling 3.0. The name of dungeons, amount of dungeons, and the end contents that’s coming after Great Labyrinth of Bahamut, the theme is already decided and we started the level designing. I’m thinking about 2 years. Right now the overall development has accomplished as planned for 2.0’s completion, so I’m telling them that they need to put in what they can. Instead of making everything for 2.3, decide on their own if they can release it earlier. Frontline is also being worked on a lot, I’m planning to talk about the progress on the 21st’s Letter Live. Might feel like “when did they have time to make this?” (laugh). for 3.0 we already have the new towns mockup done, we’re working into the details, we already decided on the amount of fields and the theme as well, some of the arts are already done and ready to go into building mockups.


GW: Have you been looking into few years ahead since you took charge of FFXIV development?

Y: Yes. You have been through this the whole time and you probably know this but I did everything I mentions since we changed the structure, we have been developing the game with few years ahead in mind from the beginning. As long as we’re not told to cut our development cost, we’re going to stick with this structure (laugh).


GW: For us media people who is here today, it’s happy to hear that you’re looking into few years ahead but on the other hand the president of SOE mentioned that it’s impossible to continue with content driven MMORPG which got some attention. On Facebook Wada responded to that mentioning at current point it’s hard to leave it up to the users, and it was interesting. How do you feel about this “It’s not impossible to continue with content driven MMORPG” comment?

Y: It’s fun watching those two are going at it, I want to say a lot to both of them (laugh), but firstly development isn’t making something that simple, it’s not right to be too extreme. Everything isn’t content driven, and we’re not leaving everything up to the users, I think it’s ok to have both. That exactly goes back to the F2P vs Subscription talk, I think it’s ok to have both.
If you take in the comment positively I believe it’s a comment supporting EQ Next, but for those that know MMO that shows that their isn’t much confidence in the amount of content. I believe it’s really hard to balance the game when you have that much physics put into it. KNACK is a good example, KNACK is new in game design, but if you put that much physics inside the balancing gets all messed up. So as a action games level design is really orthodox. If you don’t do that it won’t stay as a game, that’s why I think EQ Next is going to be really hard. To make a battle system that’s well balanced with that system, I would give up. But because of that I can understand why you would want to say “It’s not content driven” (laugh).


As for content driven, there is a successful example. I believe the reason why World of Warcraft succeeded was because they never gave up in the middle. WoW that went through 9 years turned out to become a huge monster like MMO. There are tons of contents, there are lots of things you don’t need to clear, once you decide on a goal there is tons of volume to play. When they started it wasn’t like that, at first WOW had a level 30 cap, and once you capped your level you went through PvP, and PvP balancing was crazy. It was to a point where I said “Blizzard, you guys ok?” I cancelled my account in two month (laugh).
But they didn’t quit. Their staff that took pride and stood up as the worlds top gamers when developing said they have to listen to users voice and that really surprised me. They set up a forum, placed a test server, and once they were ready, they started the TV commercials to increase regions, in England they attached disks in magazines to distribute, they really put in their effort to get up.


In tomorrow's speech I have a Roegadyn named WOW and Lalafell named Realm Reborn as sarcasm, but in actual when media’s see something they compare it. There was a time when WOW also was compared with EQ but they kept on developing contents without giving up, and I believe that approach is what is needed to keep the MMORPG alive and also being the final point.
We failed with the previous FFXIV and we started building FFXIV ARR, the amount of players since subscription tripled, so I believe if we can keep updating contents and deliver fun contents the players will continue to stay. There is a experience from previous XIV, and there is good successful example WOW, since that example is there I believe we can also do it.


GW: For you the ultimate role model is WOW.

Y: I don’t think I’m developing a NextGen MMO. I think it’s ok to have this as the last for this era, to develop a next gen MMO we don’t feel a sense of danger, we went through the process to flip the tables from what happened with previous FFXIV. So even if we wanted to make a MMO that no one has ever seen, we can’t (laugh). What I decided on was a game where Japanese players can feel at ease to play, while it being the last MMORPG for this era, there isn’t much players in Japan playing Wow, so first I wanted goal is to reach WOW. I want to continue without giving up. We can work on NextGen once we catch up, it’s not too late then, or it could be that when we’re working on FFXIV ARR it became NetGen. We have plans for stuff that WOW didn’t even challenge, and by going after the FF style it will become something different. We have lots of stuff put into 3.0, and we’re working towards the last of 2.x series so please look forward to it.


GW: Thank you very much.

Thanks Rein.

Originally Posted by Reinheart

You guys reaady for some 2.2 craziness tonight?

Here's the google doc link for tonights live translations.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

Curious did they do a Live Letter Test yet?

Originally Posted by Reinheart

You guys reaady for some 2.2 craziness tonight?

Here's the google doc link for tonights live translations.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

Thank the Twelve for your Translations Rein! (^_^ )/ I’m currently at work, so i can’t go and watch the Live Letter, but i will keep your translation document open at all time. (^_~ )

We need to meet up in-game sometime soon. It’s been way too long! (^_~ )-b

Thanks for the translations Rein.