Interesting talk on FFXV's game design by Takatsugu Nakazawa, who worked as a Battle Planer/Battle Director/Lead Game Designer on FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFX-2, Crisis Core: FFVII, Type-0, and FFXV (he even owns the patents for FFX's Sphere Grid, and FFVIII's Junction System, for example).
Source with the transcript, slides, and video (huge thanks to Reddit's @BlindingAwesomeness and @NudeNoctis69 for this work, and thanks to our @wmlk for pointing out):
https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXV/comments/6f4st2/reference_final_fantasy_xv_facing_traditions/
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAa6cgwpdco
---
On challenged traditions:
The first up, Level Design. This is about the world map design, the enemy placements, everything that you experience. Previous Final Fantasies have generally been story driven in the design nature. This time around, because it was an open world, we changed this drastically.
Anyone who has played previous Final Fantasies should be well aware the level design never got in the way of the story. The story progression and getting the story through to the player was the priority when we designed the games. Side paths were always obvious, and it was always up to the player if they wanted to take that side path, but we never did anything to hinder the main story experience.
Obviously, in an open-world design with FFXV, player can go where they want to at any given point of the game. We kind of changed—we broke down all the barriers and we changed the entire way we designed the world map.
But of course, there still is the main story to tell. We had to make sure the main objectives—the main missions—were clear to the player but offering enough choices and side quests to the player simultaneously. At a pretty early point in the game, you have to get from point A to point B, but on the way there, you have the option of going to get access to the chocobos. We wanted to give players enough choice and enough freedom to do things as they want, but there's still the main story that's always there for the player.
The next feature we really changed up was the battle system.
Previous Final Fantasies have more or less been command-based, where you kind of choose what the moves the characters are going to do. This time around, complete real time action where you're in the middle of the battle at all times and you're making the decisions.
As technology improved, and we're able to realize this open-world game, it only made sense to offer a real-time action battle system where the players really feel immersed into the game world and the game experience. We didn't feel it was right to combine this open-world design with a command-based battle system.
And the last thing we really challenged was the Leveling Balance.
What we mean by ”Leveling Balance" is about the pace at which your party levels up and gets stronger. Previous Final Fantasies, everything has been about what your party level was. So the story was designed in a way where we said, ”Okay, at this point in the story, your party should be about this level, and you should be able to fight this boss or these enemies. And if you're under that level, then you'd have a hard time. If you're over that level, you would have an easier time." And that's how the game was designed previously.
Because this time around it was an open-world game, people can kind of play the game at their own pace and progress at their own pace, and we couldn't tie the game design and balance to your party level because people play differently.
We changed the balance to be more playtime based, which means we lowered the experience you get from monsters. So you can't spend hours grinding and getting an unfair advantage over other players; but on the other hand, what we did was we made the experience you get from completing quests—side quests, main quests—to be a lot more. So it was a more natural flow for the players. They could spend their hours in the game the way they want to. But at the end of the game—at the end of the day, everyone will have a very similar experience in terms of difficulty level.
These were the three areas where we made the most changes against the Final Fantasy tradition.
On traditions kept:
The first would be the System Features.
This includes everything you see in a typical Final Fantasy: the leveling up, the equipment, items, magic, transportation. These are features that we feel are important to, and kind of the identity for, Final Fantasy. We decided to make sure the elements were in FINAL FANASY XV, as well.
For transportation, specifically, a lot of Final Fantasies have different means of transportation: chocobos, ships, airships. This time around, we featured the car—the Regalia—as the main means of transportation, and ultimately, if you customize it enough, you can fly with the Regalia. While we did things new, we kept the traditions in line in terms of the way you experience the game.
While we did make certain, specific changes, overall, the System Design—the System Features for an FF RPG are more or less intact for FFXV, as well.
The next feature which we kept in place was the Ability System.
From a game designer's perspective, we look at the abilities as something entirely different from your party level. Your party level, if you consider it on a vertical axis, the higher you are, the more powerful you are. But on the other hand, the ability, the way we look at it, is more of a horizontal axis. It gives you more variety and more versatility in your gameplay, but isn't directly tied to how strong your party level is.
Obviously, though, the more abilities you get as you progress through the game, some of those newer abilities will be stronger than the ones you had before, but those don't break the balance at all. What they do, or what they're meant to do, is give you more means of planning out your strategy. And that's kind of how we look at the ability system.
For FFXV, as you gathered abilities, you have more options for your party commands, you can have more efficient magic synthesis. We've given you guys more tools for you to play the game in a certain style and the way that you like, but those aren't directly tied to giving you clear advantage in battle.
We did make some very minor changes to the ability system, but overall, the main mindset for the Ability System is just to give you more options to use and more ways to enjoy the game.
And the last feature we kept in place, we call it Game Over Prevention. It's not a term you always hear often, but this is something we actually do for every Final Fantasy.
For previous Final Fantasies, the story being the most important thing, we made efforts to prevent Game Overs so that we're not taking you out of the story. We want to make sure you're continuing your story and your experience. So we made a bunch of efforts and things you probably can't see to make sure you don't run into Game Overs that often.
For FFXV, as well, we made certain efforts to prevent players from seeing the Game Over screen, but the rationale and the reasoning why was different.
In an open-world design, you're able to go where you want, and you might run into an area where you're not supposed to go yet, or the enemies are way too strong and you might die right away, but we didn't want that experience to really hinder your overall game—the feeling you get from the game.
For FINAL FANTASY XV, let's say you do go explore the beaten path and you run into an enemy that's too strong. We made sure you're able to escape. You know, there's plenty of opportunity to escape so that you don't see the Game Over screen. The screenshot you see here on the slide is Carbuncle. If you play the game on Easy mode, every time you're in Danger, he'll come out and keep Noctis alive. We almost made a game that's almost impossible to see the Game Over screen.
Some of the stronger mob hunts, obviously we made sure that Carbuncle doesn't come out. But in those situations, you can just carry on with 99 Hi-Potions or Ex-Potions, and you should be able to make it through. And it's probably an experience you've had in previous Final Fantasies where you're like, ”You know what? I have this many potions, I should be alright." And that's kind of the same mentality we had when designing this Game Over Prevention for FFXV.
These were kind of the features where we kept the traditions in line.
In summary, things we did challenge this time around was revolving around this new open-world design. Everything we made the changes so that it fits in place. Things that we kept in line were things that we felt were FF traditions should remain and should carry on, even with our newest title.
In terms of FFXV game design, that's about the extent that I can talk to about. But since I'm here and since we have this wonderful opportunity, we have a little bonus topic.
On what he would keep from FFXV if he was to make next FF:
We learned a lot of things as we endeavored on from FFXV, and things that—three features that I'd like to carry over and continue in the next Final Fantasy would be the System Features, the Action Battle System, and the Open World design.
System Features is a repetition from the traditions that we kept for FFXV, but the identity of Final Fantasy is that all those RPG elements are in place. No matter what, we want to make sure everything is included for every numbered Final Fantasy title.
The second feature we'd like to carry over is the Action Battle System from FFXV.
What we learned from our experience in designing the Action Battle System for FFXV is that players have two ways of winning in battle. One is the traditional RPG style where they're just strong enough to beat certain enemies. But on the other hand, you could kind of encounter enemies that are much stronger, but if you're god at the Action, you could actually win. So after we designed FFXV, we thought there's a lot of room and a lot of potential for this kind of system.
In keeping, obviously, RPG at the baseline, we want to make sure that the next—I want to make sure that my next game would have an Action Battle System that really does take advantage of the RPG aspect.
And lastly, what we did with FFXV, the open-world design, that's something I'd like to explore once again.
We broke a lot of traditions in designing an open-world game with FFXV, and we saw a lot of things—we saw a lot of the potential that an open-world design has, and we don't want to go backwards. We want to continue moving forward in this direction and it's something I'd like to definitely put in place for my next FF.
These are the three things I would probably carry over from FFXV, but obviously, if we just did this, it would just be another FFXV. So there are certain things that I'd like to change next time around.
On what he would change if he was to make the next FF:
The three things would be Story Placement, Ability and Leveling System, and Leveling Balance.
For Story Placement, when you really think about it, FFXV had a very similar design with previous FF where the main story was clear to the player, and the optional side quests were also very obvious to the player.
What I'm thinking is to really take advantage of the open-world design, maybe the main story shouldn't always be so obvious to the player. Maybe the player should have to explore and kind of find out where they need to go next. And maybe it's just the line between the main story and the side quests are a little blurred where it's more of a gradation and more of a blend, so the side quests are more of an extension of the main story. And so it's more about the players seeing the adventure through on their own.
Ability and Leveling System, when we look at FFXV, it was actually pretty orthodox. I mean, the design was different, but what was intended to do was the same as any other FF.
With FFVII, there was the Materia System. FFX, there was the Sphere Grid. FFs always have something new in their back pocket, and next time around, I would like to make a brand new system.
One idea I have is for every player character that becomes part of your party, they have a different means of leveling up.
Maybe one character would have a very traditional means of leveling up where it's really just about gaining experience and leveling up. Maybe a second character, their leveling up is purely based on how many times they actually attack enemies and how many times they get hit by enemies. Maybe a third character is a blue mage, and they level up only when they learn a new spell from an enemy. Maybe if we want to make a true open-world design, maybe the characters all should have different features, different attributes, and design a leveling system that revolves around those unique characters.
If we take it to a far extreme, maybe there's one character who doesn't level up at all, but their strength is completely dictated by the amount of accessories and the amount of equipment that they equip.
Maybe it's about building off the uniqueness of each of the characters. Maybe where they're from in that open world dictates what kind of character they are, how they level up. But a game that's that open, I think, has a lot of potential to be fun.
Again, going back to the earlier point, ability is more on a horizontal axis, so what we plan to do is just make sure that it gives you more options and more variety in your gameplay style. The leveling system is dictated to how strong your party is, but it's this blend of these two systems that we think that we could take a new approach next time around.
And the last feature that we'd want to change up is the Leveling Balance.
For FFXV, this is an area where we change up. It used to be your character level-based, but now it's more playtime based. The reason we did that for FFXV was we wanted to make sure, because it's an open world you could explore how you want to, we want to make sure everyone has a good experience in and they don't encounter anything that hinders their overall game experience.
But one thing I learned from designing a playtime-based Leveling Balance for FFXV is that while you can explore everywhere in the world, the entire world felt a little flat in terms of there weren't that many areas that were drastically different than one another. So that was definitely one takeaway that I feel I got from FFXV.
Maybe next time around the main story should still be clear to the player, but maybe the side quests offer up a lot more color. Maybe some are extremely difficult, some are extremely easy, some are very serious, some are very fun. But just giving a lot more variety to this open-world design and really making it feel cohesive is my goal for the next time I come around to making an FF.
As you explore an open world where there's a broad scope of places and locations, maybe if you encounter a really bizarre mission, you get a really bizarre reward. Or if you are able to conquer a really really difficult mission, you get a really powerful weapon as a reward. It's putting all those things in mind where what's around the next corner is unpredictable is what I'd like to explore.
These are kind of the ideas I have in my head about what I want to do differently next time I make an FF—the Story Placement, the Ability and Leveling System, and Leveling Balance—all revolving around this open world is something I'd like to see and realize.
As I said earlier before this section, I'm not a producer or a director, so I don't know what the next FF is going to be like. But if it were up to me, this is the kind of things I'd like to try.
On BD2's next project:
But with that being said, our team—Business Division 2—after we finish FINAL FANTASY XV, we're constantly working on something new, and so we hope that you guys look forward to our next project.
"Below is the transcript for Final Fantasy: Facing Traditions, a keynote given at MomoCon on Saturday, May 27, 2017, from 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm, at the Georgia World Congress Center, Georgia, U.S.A.
In this keynote, RPG Design Lead Takatsugu Nakazawa discusses the Final Fantasy aspects Business Division 2 kept and challenged during the development of FINAL FANTASY XV. He also discusses what he would want to keep and change in the next Final Fantasy."
In this keynote, RPG Design Lead Takatsugu Nakazawa discusses the Final Fantasy aspects Business Division 2 kept and challenged during the development of FINAL FANTASY XV. He also discusses what he would want to keep and change in the next Final Fantasy."
Source with the transcript, slides, and video (huge thanks to Reddit's @BlindingAwesomeness and @NudeNoctis69 for this work, and thanks to our @wmlk for pointing out):
https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXV/comments/6f4st2/reference_final_fantasy_xv_facing_traditions/
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAa6cgwpdco
---
On challenged traditions:
We'll start off with the areas where we challenged the traditions.
The first up, Level Design. This is about the world map design, the enemy placements, everything that you experience. Previous Final Fantasies have generally been story driven in the design nature. This time around, because it was an open world, we changed this drastically.
Anyone who has played previous Final Fantasies should be well aware the level design never got in the way of the story. The story progression and getting the story through to the player was the priority when we designed the games. Side paths were always obvious, and it was always up to the player if they wanted to take that side path, but we never did anything to hinder the main story experience.
Obviously, in an open-world design with FFXV, player can go where they want to at any given point of the game. We kind of changed—we broke down all the barriers and we changed the entire way we designed the world map.
But of course, there still is the main story to tell. We had to make sure the main objectives—the main missions—were clear to the player but offering enough choices and side quests to the player simultaneously. At a pretty early point in the game, you have to get from point A to point B, but on the way there, you have the option of going to get access to the chocobos. We wanted to give players enough choice and enough freedom to do things as they want, but there's still the main story that's always there for the player.
The next feature we really changed up was the battle system.
Previous Final Fantasies have more or less been command-based, where you kind of choose what the moves the characters are going to do. This time around, complete real time action where you're in the middle of the battle at all times and you're making the decisions.
As technology improved, and we're able to realize this open-world game, it only made sense to offer a real-time action battle system where the players really feel immersed into the game world and the game experience. We didn't feel it was right to combine this open-world design with a command-based battle system.
And the last thing we really challenged was the Leveling Balance.
What we mean by ”Leveling Balance" is about the pace at which your party levels up and gets stronger. Previous Final Fantasies, everything has been about what your party level was. So the story was designed in a way where we said, ”Okay, at this point in the story, your party should be about this level, and you should be able to fight this boss or these enemies. And if you're under that level, then you'd have a hard time. If you're over that level, you would have an easier time." And that's how the game was designed previously.
Because this time around it was an open-world game, people can kind of play the game at their own pace and progress at their own pace, and we couldn't tie the game design and balance to your party level because people play differently.
We changed the balance to be more playtime based, which means we lowered the experience you get from monsters. So you can't spend hours grinding and getting an unfair advantage over other players; but on the other hand, what we did was we made the experience you get from completing quests—side quests, main quests—to be a lot more. So it was a more natural flow for the players. They could spend their hours in the game the way they want to. But at the end of the game—at the end of the day, everyone will have a very similar experience in terms of difficulty level.
These were the three areas where we made the most changes against the Final Fantasy tradition.
On traditions kept:
The next three things are areas where we kept the Final Fantasy tradition in line.
The first would be the System Features.
This includes everything you see in a typical Final Fantasy: the leveling up, the equipment, items, magic, transportation. These are features that we feel are important to, and kind of the identity for, Final Fantasy. We decided to make sure the elements were in FINAL FANASY XV, as well.
For transportation, specifically, a lot of Final Fantasies have different means of transportation: chocobos, ships, airships. This time around, we featured the car—the Regalia—as the main means of transportation, and ultimately, if you customize it enough, you can fly with the Regalia. While we did things new, we kept the traditions in line in terms of the way you experience the game.
While we did make certain, specific changes, overall, the System Design—the System Features for an FF RPG are more or less intact for FFXV, as well.
The next feature which we kept in place was the Ability System.
From a game designer's perspective, we look at the abilities as something entirely different from your party level. Your party level, if you consider it on a vertical axis, the higher you are, the more powerful you are. But on the other hand, the ability, the way we look at it, is more of a horizontal axis. It gives you more variety and more versatility in your gameplay, but isn't directly tied to how strong your party level is.
Obviously, though, the more abilities you get as you progress through the game, some of those newer abilities will be stronger than the ones you had before, but those don't break the balance at all. What they do, or what they're meant to do, is give you more means of planning out your strategy. And that's kind of how we look at the ability system.
For FFXV, as you gathered abilities, you have more options for your party commands, you can have more efficient magic synthesis. We've given you guys more tools for you to play the game in a certain style and the way that you like, but those aren't directly tied to giving you clear advantage in battle.
We did make some very minor changes to the ability system, but overall, the main mindset for the Ability System is just to give you more options to use and more ways to enjoy the game.
And the last feature we kept in place, we call it Game Over Prevention. It's not a term you always hear often, but this is something we actually do for every Final Fantasy.
For previous Final Fantasies, the story being the most important thing, we made efforts to prevent Game Overs so that we're not taking you out of the story. We want to make sure you're continuing your story and your experience. So we made a bunch of efforts and things you probably can't see to make sure you don't run into Game Overs that often.
For FFXV, as well, we made certain efforts to prevent players from seeing the Game Over screen, but the rationale and the reasoning why was different.
In an open-world design, you're able to go where you want, and you might run into an area where you're not supposed to go yet, or the enemies are way too strong and you might die right away, but we didn't want that experience to really hinder your overall game—the feeling you get from the game.
For FINAL FANTASY XV, let's say you do go explore the beaten path and you run into an enemy that's too strong. We made sure you're able to escape. You know, there's plenty of opportunity to escape so that you don't see the Game Over screen. The screenshot you see here on the slide is Carbuncle. If you play the game on Easy mode, every time you're in Danger, he'll come out and keep Noctis alive. We almost made a game that's almost impossible to see the Game Over screen.
Some of the stronger mob hunts, obviously we made sure that Carbuncle doesn't come out. But in those situations, you can just carry on with 99 Hi-Potions or Ex-Potions, and you should be able to make it through. And it's probably an experience you've had in previous Final Fantasies where you're like, ”You know what? I have this many potions, I should be alright." And that's kind of the same mentality we had when designing this Game Over Prevention for FFXV.
These were kind of the features where we kept the traditions in line.
In summary, things we did challenge this time around was revolving around this new open-world design. Everything we made the changes so that it fits in place. Things that we kept in line were things that we felt were FF traditions should remain and should carry on, even with our newest title.
In terms of FFXV game design, that's about the extent that I can talk to about. But since I'm here and since we have this wonderful opportunity, we have a little bonus topic.
On what he would keep from FFXV if he was to make next FF:
We learned a lot of things as we endeavored on from FFXV, and things that—three features that I'd like to carry over and continue in the next Final Fantasy would be the System Features, the Action Battle System, and the Open World design.
System Features is a repetition from the traditions that we kept for FFXV, but the identity of Final Fantasy is that all those RPG elements are in place. No matter what, we want to make sure everything is included for every numbered Final Fantasy title.
The second feature we'd like to carry over is the Action Battle System from FFXV.
What we learned from our experience in designing the Action Battle System for FFXV is that players have two ways of winning in battle. One is the traditional RPG style where they're just strong enough to beat certain enemies. But on the other hand, you could kind of encounter enemies that are much stronger, but if you're god at the Action, you could actually win. So after we designed FFXV, we thought there's a lot of room and a lot of potential for this kind of system.
In keeping, obviously, RPG at the baseline, we want to make sure that the next—I want to make sure that my next game would have an Action Battle System that really does take advantage of the RPG aspect.
And lastly, what we did with FFXV, the open-world design, that's something I'd like to explore once again.
We broke a lot of traditions in designing an open-world game with FFXV, and we saw a lot of things—we saw a lot of the potential that an open-world design has, and we don't want to go backwards. We want to continue moving forward in this direction and it's something I'd like to definitely put in place for my next FF.
These are the three things I would probably carry over from FFXV, but obviously, if we just did this, it would just be another FFXV. So there are certain things that I'd like to change next time around.
On what he would change if he was to make the next FF:
The three things would be Story Placement, Ability and Leveling System, and Leveling Balance.
For Story Placement, when you really think about it, FFXV had a very similar design with previous FF where the main story was clear to the player, and the optional side quests were also very obvious to the player.
What I'm thinking is to really take advantage of the open-world design, maybe the main story shouldn't always be so obvious to the player. Maybe the player should have to explore and kind of find out where they need to go next. And maybe it's just the line between the main story and the side quests are a little blurred where it's more of a gradation and more of a blend, so the side quests are more of an extension of the main story. And so it's more about the players seeing the adventure through on their own.
Ability and Leveling System, when we look at FFXV, it was actually pretty orthodox. I mean, the design was different, but what was intended to do was the same as any other FF.
With FFVII, there was the Materia System. FFX, there was the Sphere Grid. FFs always have something new in their back pocket, and next time around, I would like to make a brand new system.
One idea I have is for every player character that becomes part of your party, they have a different means of leveling up.
Maybe one character would have a very traditional means of leveling up where it's really just about gaining experience and leveling up. Maybe a second character, their leveling up is purely based on how many times they actually attack enemies and how many times they get hit by enemies. Maybe a third character is a blue mage, and they level up only when they learn a new spell from an enemy. Maybe if we want to make a true open-world design, maybe the characters all should have different features, different attributes, and design a leveling system that revolves around those unique characters.
If we take it to a far extreme, maybe there's one character who doesn't level up at all, but their strength is completely dictated by the amount of accessories and the amount of equipment that they equip.
Maybe it's about building off the uniqueness of each of the characters. Maybe where they're from in that open world dictates what kind of character they are, how they level up. But a game that's that open, I think, has a lot of potential to be fun.
Again, going back to the earlier point, ability is more on a horizontal axis, so what we plan to do is just make sure that it gives you more options and more variety in your gameplay style. The leveling system is dictated to how strong your party is, but it's this blend of these two systems that we think that we could take a new approach next time around.
And the last feature that we'd want to change up is the Leveling Balance.
For FFXV, this is an area where we change up. It used to be your character level-based, but now it's more playtime based. The reason we did that for FFXV was we wanted to make sure, because it's an open world you could explore how you want to, we want to make sure everyone has a good experience in and they don't encounter anything that hinders their overall game experience.
But one thing I learned from designing a playtime-based Leveling Balance for FFXV is that while you can explore everywhere in the world, the entire world felt a little flat in terms of there weren't that many areas that were drastically different than one another. So that was definitely one takeaway that I feel I got from FFXV.
Maybe next time around the main story should still be clear to the player, but maybe the side quests offer up a lot more color. Maybe some are extremely difficult, some are extremely easy, some are very serious, some are very fun. But just giving a lot more variety to this open-world design and really making it feel cohesive is my goal for the next time I come around to making an FF.
As you explore an open world where there's a broad scope of places and locations, maybe if you encounter a really bizarre mission, you get a really bizarre reward. Or if you are able to conquer a really really difficult mission, you get a really powerful weapon as a reward. It's putting all those things in mind where what's around the next corner is unpredictable is what I'd like to explore.
These are kind of the ideas I have in my head about what I want to do differently next time I make an FF—the Story Placement, the Ability and Leveling System, and Leveling Balance—all revolving around this open world is something I'd like to see and realize.
As I said earlier before this section, I'm not a producer or a director, so I don't know what the next FF is going to be like. But if it were up to me, this is the kind of things I'd like to try.
On BD2's next project:
But with that being said, our team—Business Division 2—after we finish FINAL FANTASY XV, we're constantly working on something new, and so we hope that you guys look forward to our next project.
