With promises of another FFXI team interview to come, this month Famitsu Xbox 360 magazine carried the last part of a three part interview with game producer Hiromichi Tanaka as part of their “Behind the Scenes of Vana’diel” series.

This time the two main topics are the servers that people play on and the level system in-game. I have to admit, I was less than impressed with the first part of the interview with producer Tanaka. It was boring compared to the other team interviews and I felt disappointed that I’d have to wait a whole three months before another team interview would be published. However, part 2 of the interview (here) was more interesting and part 3 has some interesting tidbits to share as well.

Let’s see what Tanaka had to say this time!

Population Issues

People on Odin rejoice! Tanaka says that thanks to people moving during the server immigration periods, the population of Odin is now at ok levels. Bahamut continues to be crowded though. From a game balance standpoint, crowded servers means it’s harder to find a camp, go after NMs, or even enter zones like Whitegate. I wouldn’t be surprised if they offered free server immigration to people on Bahamut again sometime in the future.

Most people have assumed that the servers that are available for people to transfer to are the ones that have lower populations and Tanaka confirms that in this interview. He says playing on worlds with lower populations means less competition for things and there are lots of benefits to playing on a server that isn’t crowded. However, some people like more active vibrant servers so it can be a hard call to make on what kind of server is better to play on.

So just how many people is a lot or a little when it comes to servers? 1000 seems to be the magic number for Tanaka. Less than 1000 people on at any one time is “too lonely” and it becomes harder to form parties. If there are servers will extremely low populations like this, it is likely we’ll see server mergers down the line. Tanaka says he predicts they will merge servers if the user population declines to the point where it’s needed. Servers with a large population have between 40,000 to 50,000 accounts (in Tanaka’s words “unique users”) while smaller servers have between 20,000 and 30,000 accounts. It would be interesting to know how many of those are active accounts where people log in at least once a week or so or are logged in for over an hour or two each week.

The 14-day Free Trial

Tanaka says you can measure the number of people who have signed up using the 14-day free trial in the 10s of thousands. The largest portion of those come from Japan. He remarks that a lot of people in North America sign up for the 14 day free trial but don’t stay around after that.

Most off-the-shelf MMORPGs, including FFXI, come with a month of free service to get you started. Perhaps 2 weeks isn’t enough to really get a feel of what FFXI is like. If you play a lot each day, you could probably reach Jeuno in 2 weeks but for very casual players, 2 weeks might not be enough. There are countless other possibilities as well. Why do you think people don’t stay around?

Level Caps

During the first couple years of service, the level cap was slowly raised with players having to complete various quests to unlock the next set of levels. Some of them took a lot of luck and time, others were much easier with the help of a guide. The final cap was placed at level 75 and in more recent years we’ve seen an expansion on that through the merit point system. In the second half of this interview, Tanaka talks about level caps.

At the beginning, they made it possible system-wise to go up to level 250. Dummy data was added for spells and equipment up to about level 130. It was when they released the final battle with the Shadow Lord that they began to think about setting the limit at 75 and they made the final decision to do so with the release of the last limit break quest. Without a fixed cap, NMs would become weaker and weaker as the player levels got higher and higher and Tanaka couldn’t bear to see that happen. Already, with the cap at 75, most players think of the Shadow Lord as being pretty weak. Even within my LS, we’ve had times where the person we are helping barely gets done with their cut scenes by the time the Shadow Lord has been defeated by the rest of the party.

The final part of the discussion on level caps focuses on merit points and limiting those as well. Without limits, it wouldn’t be much different from a world without level caps. Without some kind of limits, he also says it is impossible to create monsters like Absolute Virtue.

Speaking of Absolute Virtue, there was an interesting behind the scenes tidbit Tanaka mentioned. Back before the adjustments, Absolute Virtue did not pop every time Jailer of Love was defeated. This was because Absolute Virtue really wasn’t intended as a final target! Tanaka quotes one of the developers as saying something like you were supposed to feel unlucky if AV appeared. However, over time, AV became more of a target to the players than Jailer of Love itself.

That also brings up an interesting topic. As part of the story lore or world setting, it makes sense to have things that the players cannot defeat. However, from just a game standpoint, it seems silly to spend time creating monsters that players have no chance of defeating. Are monsters like Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden worth the time and effect the developers put into them? Or should they be focusing on other things?

The World To Come

Back in the beginning planning stages, they thought it would be good to put out an expansion disc once a year or once every year and a half. However, there was no solid plan as to how long FFXI would last. The stuff for Rise of the Zilart was planned for at the very beginning and was actually originally scheduled to be part of version 1.0 but there was too much to include it.

They continue to work on the development of FFXI, with version updates and trying to add new things to the game like Level Sync or MMM. However, it can take a long time to go from idea to final product. Tanaka says it took over a year for MMM. He also says it is possible ideas they have now for new things could take a year or two before they are implemented in game. Part of that has to do with game balance and seeing how new ideas would affect that.

As for people who think there is too much in the game and that is impossible to do it all, that’s ok too. He says people should focus on the parts of the game they like and think of the different parts of the game as options.

The next update will see the release of A Moogle Kupo d’Etat. He thinks the version update after that will have A Shantotto Ascension.

Finally, Tanaka urges players to continue with FFXI even after FFXIV is released.

The Famitsu Vanatsu blog said there is another team interview in our future next month. I wonder what team it will be. What team that works behind the scenes of Vana’diel would you like to see an interview with?