WE DISCUSS VANA'DIEL
Season 2, Episode 12
The Voracious Resurgence — Masaru Taniguchi & Iori Watanabe

Basically, we had a core group of team members remain, but both the overall team and the game service itself were scaled back considerably. Mr. Matsui* also stated that we'd be focusing on monthly updates to Ambuscade* going forward, so we didn't really have anything else to work on and simply focused on running the game with the smallest possible team.

Ultimately, there ended up being various other content added to the game, but what was the mood like when you learned you'd need to downsize the team to the absolute bare minimum?

Ultimately, there ended up being various other content added to the game, but what was the mood like when you learned you'd need to downsize the team to the absolute bare minimum?

The team was small, but everyone that remained was multitalented, meaning they could work on everything from the battle content to creating items. They really were the "best of the best." As such, I don't think the mood was all that negative really, we simply took it as a challenge and said to ourselves, "Okay, this is our team, so what can we do with the people and resources we have?" Although, I imagine that the players at the time probably saw the team getting downsized and felt that the end was near for FFXI.

What were the two of you working on at the time, Mr. Taniguchi and Mr. Watanabe?

I was creating the foundation for the Ambuscade system. Aside from that, I don't think we had an annual plan for the game in place at that point, so we were just trying to decide what kinds of things FFXI would need going forward.

I'm a game planner, but in terms of my actual workload at the time, it was heavily focused on the programming side. My job basically entailed finding ways we could implement the things people wanted to do within the game. And that's pretty much still my job today.

Actually, there's an internal structure within Ambuscade for aggregating data, but that system was created by Mr. Watanabe. Parts of the quiz given by Gorpa-Masorpa, the NPC that handles Ambuscade, are based on some of that data.

That system is also used for Vana'Bout* as well, right?

Correct. We used it as reference material.

We also considered doing online rankings at one time.

Yes, that's right. We never implemented it into the game, but we discussed the possibility of creating a ranking of which players had earned the most hallmarks in each World. The system lets us aggregate that kind of data for each World, and we can also see things like how many times the players have completed a particular piece of game content on a specific difficulty level.

Ambuscade was added to the game in April 2016 and although the plan was to only work on updates for it, the very next month saw the addition of Master Trials, and Omen was released at the end of the year. That is rather large-scale content released in a pretty short time span, so how did they come about?

After we finished making Ambuscade, we started talking about what kind of content the current team could make for those dedicated players that were eager to play whatever we came up with. That's how we started work on the Master Trials*. We thought that even if it was something they couldn't complete right away, it would be kind of a goal for them to aspire to.

It came around soon after you finished work on Ambuscade, so I imagine it must have been quite difficult.

Actually, a single Master Trial battle didn't take all that long to create. As for choosing the enemies, there aren't a lot of viable candidates for something like a Master Trial, so that made it a bit easier too.

I feel like the initial difficulty level of the Master Trial was quite hard.

I figured I'd purposely make it hard and that if players had trouble, I could always make adjustments in the future. Therefore, the rewards were mostly cosmetic in nature (weapons with low stats but unique appearances, or titles).

After that came Omen*, which was added to the game so quickly that it was hard to believe you were working with such a small team, given all of the content and artifact armor upgrades that were included with it. What kind of planning went into this particular inclusion to the game?

Basically, we felt that Ambuscade alone wasn't enough content. Although the contents of the Ambuscade battle change every month, the location remains the same and the rewards you can earn each month are also quite similar. Therefore, we started thinking about creating a different kind of content, so I talked with the team about what kinds of things we could make within one of the game's unused layer areas. Timing-wise, I think it was probably between the spring and summer of 2016. It was then that Mr. Yamazaki* volunteered and said he'd come up with something, so I assigned the job to him.

Mr. Yamazaki came up with the overall structure and the notorious monsters, while Mr. Watanabe made the framework for the entrance. I handled tasks such as the monster placement and teleportation system.

While you were creating the content, was it decided to include artifact armor upgrades from the beginning?

Yes. I had devised a kind of roadmap for additional upgrades to the equipment for each job class, and started with the artifact armor. As part of that, I designed it so "+2" could be achieved by playing the game for a bit, and then made it a little harder to get to the "+3" level, but ensured that the end result was worth it. I also came up with the stats for the other items that you can earn as well.

In addition to Mr. Taniguchi's work, we asked the rest of the team for their opinions about the item balance, and also conducted a survey of the quality assurance department in order to come up with the final specs.

Outside of the battle content, escutcheons* were added to the game in February 2017. Can you please tell us the story behind them?

The best equipment for crafting items at the time was the Kupo Shield*, which could be won via the Mog Bonanza. However, since it was a random prize, it was very difficult to get unless you got extremely lucky. Therefore, I wanted to include a piece of equipment specifically for synthesizing items that you could earn if you worked hard enough, kind of like a crafting version of a Relic Weapon.

Although the escutcheon is one of the most difficult items to create in FFXI, they are basically the ultimate piece of synthesis equipment in the game.

I felt that having the best piece of synthesis equipment as a Mog Bonanza prize could be a demotivating factor for people who like to craft. Also, I thought that making the synthesis system more fun would have a positive effect on FFXI going forward, so even though it takes time to complete the escutcheon, I wanted to have something that could rival the Kupo Shield.

Next, I'd like to talk about Dynamis – Divergence*, which was added to the game in November 2017.

I created the Dynamis – Divergence content on my own.

What was the intent behind its creation?

The purpose of Omen was to upgrade artifact armor, so I wanted to add the ability to upgrade relic armor as well. And given that it's relic armor, I felt that Dynamis was the ideal setting. I also wanted to recreate the atmosphere of Dynamis's early days. The part where monsters appear after the player is detected by one of the statues is from the original Dynamis, and I also added a new feature: the eye color of the statue determines the monsters' resistances.

If you ever feel like some of the details are different from the previous Dynamis, it was mostly likely Mr. Taniguchi's doing. (laughs)

Yeah, probably so. (laughs) I implemented Dynamis - San d'Oria [D] first, but Dynamis – Divergence features a total of four different areas, with up to three waves in each one, so I think it took me about a year to make everything.

You mentioned that you created it on your own, but did you experience any difficulties in doing so?

No, not really. I was able to simply sit there and quietly work on it, so it might've been easier than many other areas of the game. (laughs) Working at my own pace meant that I didn't have to wait on anybody else's work, and they didn't have to wait on mine either.

On top of that, the FFXI team was much more compact, so all Mr. Taniguchi had to do was turn around and Mr. Watanabe's desk was right there. That meant he could easily ask questions like whether a particular piece of equipment could be given such and such stats.

Although, I imagine that if Mr. Taniguchi were to fall ill, for example, it would basically grind production of the feature to a halt.

Yes, of course. That is why I made sure to tell the team every year not to overwork themselves to the point of exhaustion, since we had the luxury of being able to make adjustments to the schedule as needed. With such a small team, it can be disastrous if you lose even a single person.

The game experienced some changes in 2018 and then 2019, with the inclusion of the A.M.A.N. Trove* and then adding weapons to the Ambuscade rewards. As part of that, the Malignance attire set, which was obtained as spoils from the "★Maiden of the Dusk" high-tier mission battlefield, featured incredible stats and made quite the impact when it was added. Can you tell us about the decision to include it in the game?

Firstly, I came up with the idea of making the armor worn by the Spitewarden available as a reward for completing in-game content. Then I decided what to do about the armor's stats, and figured that people wouldn't be interested if they were simply the same as what you received from previous high-tier mission battlefields. Therefore, to compensate for the power level boost, I lowered the drop rate accordingly. At first, the plan was to simply make it a "little stronger" than the job-specific equipment...

It ended up being more than just a "little." (laughs)

I gave the set strong defense, but didn't really give it much of a boost to offense in order to help balance things out. As such, I wasn't expecting it to become as popular as it did. In the end, however, it acted as something of a guide when I was making the Odyssey equipment, so I think I made the right choice with the specifications in the end.

It got quite crowded immediately after we added the content, so we raced to split up the layer area within the game.

By the way, why was the entrance placed in Selbina?

When I first started working on Ambuscade, I decided to use a town where there wasn't too many people. I narrowed it down to Mhaura and Selbina, and I ended up choosing Mhaura. Then I went with Selbina after that. Later, with Odyssey, it was hard to set content in Kazham due to the terrain, so I selected Rabao instead.

In 2019, various improvements and other changes were made to areas outside of the game, such as the installer and the FINAL FANTASY XI Config app. Were you in charge of those efforts as well, Mr. Watanabe?

Yes, I was. At the time, the installation process was rather complicated, and was compounded further by all of the update data that was also required. So I looked to address these issues since I figured it'd be more convenient if everything could be installed together.

Oftentimes, people that are trying to play FFXI for the first time, or even those that are returning to the game after a long absence, end up giving up due to the long wait times or not being able to understand the different settings. Therefore, in an effort to lower those barriers to entry, we talked about how it'd be better if you could just press a button and the game would install itself all at once. Mr. Watanabe decided on the particulars of the new system.

The improvements to the FINAL FANTASY XI Config app didn't stop there, as the ability to adjust the gamepad settings from within the game itself was added in 2023. Was that something you proposed, Mr. Watanabe?

Yes, that was also me. I thought it would be nice to be able to adjust the gamepad settings while playing the game, so I asked an engineer how it could be done. Upon doing so, I learned that improvements could be made and then set out to make them.

When considering changes like these, you often ask yourself if we should really be doing such things at this point in the game's lifespan, but conversely, there is also the fact that we're finally able to do them because of where we are currently at with the game. Previously, there would be other things that needed to be addressed and were a better use of our limited resources, so many convenience-based features or other quality-of-life improvements needed to be put on hold. However, now that The Voracious Resurgence is finished and we're entering a phase of "stable operation" for FFXI, this was our chance to finally get around to these kinds of improvements. The switch to virtual servers* was also a part of that.

In switching over to virtual servers, we managed to cut down considerably the number of times areas would be dropped due to hardware problems.

Previously, we prepared backup servers, and if a server ever broke down, we switched over to a backup as needed. Now, simply rebooting the server will restore the game processes, so we basically have unlimited backups.

This was also on the system side, but I was surprised by the inclusion of four additional Mog Wardrobes in 2022. It was mentioned before that it was difficult to add more item storage to the game, so how did you end up achieving this?

There were issues with the storage space and UI, but the biggest problem was that storing more items increased the load times for them when changing areas. I felt that the load times exceeded what the players would be willing to put up with. So even though they were able to hold more items in their inventory, the longer load times would just lead to frustration, thereby defeating the purpose somewhat. Therefore it was decided that it was better to keep the limit in place unless we could resolve the related issues first. Of course, we had known about the issues regarding not having enough storage space for a long time, so we started looking into the topic by letting the players decide for themselves whether they wanted to expand their item storage or not.

In conjunction with this expanded storage, you were also given the ability to move items between locations.

Yes, that's right. Originally, FFXI required that players utilize their inventory when attempting to transfer items between storage locations such as their Mog Safe or Mog Satchel. Therefore, I asked Mr. Watanabe to design a system where items could simply be moved between storage locations instead.

I came up with the design, but I needed an engineer to actually implement it into the game. The game's storage system is quite robust in order to prevent players from engaging in activities such as duping* items, so it's not an area you want to be fooling around with unless you really know what you're doing.

Still, it was a massive increase to players' overall storage space.

Whenever we add items to the game, we're always told by players that they want more space to store them, so we just decided to go all-out, especially given the timing. From the UI side as well, I think we've really reached the limit. The same goes for the equipment sets. Mr. Watanabe designed the system for them as well.

So basically, if there were any technical discussions to be had, you approached Mr. Watanabe first.

You don't know how much I depend on him. (laughs) Whatever we're doing, we always check with Mr. Watanabe first.

Going back to the in-game content, Odyssey* was released in March 2020, and then The Voracious Resurgence started that August.

In the beginning, I was thinking to create Odyssey as content that ran in parallel with Sortie*, which is used to upgrade empyrean armor. However, if I added the ability to upgrade empyrean armor, I felt people would just focus exclusively on that feature, so I decided to lead with Odyssey first. By the way, when I first implemented Odyssey, the equipment could be upgraded to Rank 15, but the data was initially created to go up to Rank 30, so it was just a matter of unlocking additional levels as needed. Meanwhile, I was also working on data for the empyrean armor, planning other game content, and also developing the battles for The Voracious Resurgence.

There were difficulties deciding on what kind of stories to include along the way during The Voracious Resurgence and how to structure them, but the battles were relatively free from restrictions. I felt that as long as we were depicting what we wanted to convey to the players, Mr. Watanabe was free to create the battles as he saw fit. Meanwhile, we worked with the events team to decide which items were necessary for the story or should be given as rewards.

The use of Prime Weapons* in the story was decided from the beginning, so we talked about what they should be like. We decided upon requiring the weapons be upgraded to Stage 2 as part of the story, but the stages beyond that would be left up to the player's discretion.

Aside from empyrean armor upgrades and Prime Weapons, how do you approach the question of stats when creating new equipment in general, and are there any guidelines for determining its performance?

When creating the more powerful equipment, I always need to include various trade-offs, such as "this piece's Attack and Defense are high, but its Accuracy is low," so that players don't simply use it exclusively. It's easy enough to just create god-tier equipment, but you never want it to be the only option that players choose.

Did you have any difficulties when assigning stats to the Prime Weapons?

The Prime Weapon is intended to be a legendary weapon and positioned as one of the strongest weapons in the game, so I just had to make it more powerful than what had come before in each weapon class, so it wasn't too difficult. The biggest concern I had was the equipment obtained from the Sheol: Gaol in Odyssey. In the case of job-specific equipment, it's easy to assign stats because you can just focus on the job's attributes, but when the equipment is designed for multiple jobs, it's pretty much inevitable that it'll work well for one job, but not another. That required a lot of care when designing the items.

Over the course of The Voracious Resurgence, Master Levels* were added in November 2021. I was quite surprised as I figured there wouldn't be any more character development aspects added to the game, so can you talk about the feature for a bit?

It all started when I felt that job points alone would not be enough of a character development aspect for the game going forward. Furthermore, job point upgrades didn't boost stats such as a character's STR or DEX, so I figured I'd approach it as a way to increase stats much like the traditional leveling system did. As for the actual stat increases, there was clearly a boost, but it sometimes felt underwhelming. Therefore, I wanted something that helped players feel like they'd grown stronger. So I discussed the issue with Mr. Matsui and we decided to increase the level cap for the character's support job as well.

It was a fairly big change, since although you only lifted the level cap for support jobs, it was the first time since Abyssea that the number of job abilities and spells had increased.

One thing we had to restrict was job abilities such as Afflatus Solace, Afflatus Misery, and Composure. Since those abilities are unique to the character's main job, we didn't want to have them be usable as part of a support job.

Despite such restrictions, you still receive a considerable boost of +50 to all of your stats if you raise your Master Level to the maximum level of 50.

As your stats increase, they link directly to enhanced attributes such as damage, accuracy, and defense. It also increases your battle and magic skills. I liked the process of leveling up from earlier in the game, where you really felt more powerful each time your character gained a level. I also wanted to avoid the situation where if you got the particular bit of loot you were looking for, you pretty much gave up on acquiring anything else. So I decided to implement the system of exemplar points* that could be earned by playing the game and then be used in a positive way.

Speaking of experience points, the new "Peach Power*" battlefield that was released in November 2023 allowed you to acquire large quantities of job points and exemplar points. How was this particular decision made?

Once I finished creating Sortie and had some additional free time, I spoke with Mr. Watanabe to come up with the plan, and then I took it to Mr. Fujito.

When he first came to me with the idea, I told him to think more about the reason for this battlefield, as well as its release timing, and asked him to come back when he had a more solid plan for those elements in place.

I took his feedback and adjusted the plan accordingly. I figured since November is the eleventh month of the year and also near Halloween, it would tie in well with FFXI. With those changes in mind, I resubmitted the proposal.

I felt the link to Halloween was a natural fit and also quite interesting. It was also something that we could continue doing on a yearly basis, so that's how the idea came about.

By the way, the content is based on the Flan Princess*, which is a rare monster that appeared in FFIV. I took the idea of the monster and simply brought it into FFXI. As such, I used the Impish Box to serve the role of the "Siren" item from FFIV. Also, I had some trouble deciding how to best represent the "Berserk" status that the Flan Princesses can inflict you with in FFIV, but Mr. Watanabe suggested that I try using FFXI's "Charm" status as a substitute. I renamed it "Animated" and had it implemented as a unique enemy behavior for just that area.

The Adamant Armor is a nice piece of loot from the battle, but it was also rewarding to get so many exemplar points.

I felt it would be a waste if players simply gave up after they obtained the Adamant Armor, so I wanted to give them an incentive to keep playing. However, the Ashu Talif is an area that was created a long time ago, so the steps we took to alleviate congestion in other areas don't really work on it. Therefore, we had to institute a limit of one attempt per day, while also setting a low drop rate for the battle's trigger item.

We have covered the game content from the conclusion of Rhapsodies of Vana'diel up until the present, but looking back at it now, Ambuscade was released approximately eight years ago. Can you please tell us your feelings about what has transpired with the game since then?

I feel like I was really limited in what I was able to create due to the circumstances at the time, but now that I think about it, I realize that I actually made quite a few different things. (laughs)

Personally, I feel that these eight years were simply a natural progression of what we had started. That being said, Seekers of Adoulin was especially difficult. Not only had we lost Mr. Matsui and most of the other main team members, we also had to deal with creating a considerable amount of new content, including areas, story content, jobs, and equipment. Also, the mounts were especially memorable for me. The planning for the mount feature was actually done by another staff member, but I took over for the person in charge and was somehow able to grow it into what it has become today.

I don't think things were particularly difficult over these past eight years. (laughs)

Compared to Seekers of Adoulin, definitely not! (laughs)

I suppose it all depends on your point of view. (laughs) From your perspective, Mr. Fujito, I think Mr. Watanabe is one of the key members who helped keep FFXI thriving over the years.

It is definitely thanks to team members like Mr. Watanabe and Mr. Taniguchi that we have been able to maintain this pace of releasing "one big piece of content per year" for the past eight years. I think it has been a blessing to have them work on the project.

Lastly, I'd like to ask if you have any messages for the players about the future of FFXI.

I feel like Mr. Fujito has mentioned this before, but one of the most important things about FFXI is how it "feels like home." As we come up on the game's 22nd anniversary, it gives not only the people who continue playing today, but those who come back after a long absence, that familiar feeling of coming home, no matter where they've been or how long they were away.

I think a large number of the players today have been playing the game for a long time, so whenever we welcome new players to the world, I hope that these veterans will take the time to support the newcomers and also actively participate in areas such as the linkshells.

Like Mr. Taniguchi said, I want to see FFXI continue operating in a way that "feels like home" for players and focus on that as one of its key concepts going forward. We are currently in the process of replacing the game's servers, but to put it another way, you could say it means we've ensured at least another few years of service for the game. Therefore, it's up to us whether we can provide the players with content that keeps them entertained or not. Any future updates to FFXI will be minimal and naturally there are limits to what we are able to do, but we remain committed to working on improvements to the areas of the game that the players can appreciate. It is our goal to continue generating excitement for the game, including endeavors outside of the game itself, so I hope that all of our players will join us on this continuing journey.