As one of the final events of FFXIV‘s Fan Fest 2026 in Anaheim, lead producer Naoki Yoshida took part in a “/random” Q&A session. Yoshi-P took questions collected from the attendees, divided into three categories in terms of difficulty to answer: normal, hard, and ultimate. Yoshida then rolled a massive novelty dice to randomly select each question.
While some attendees chose to ask about “butt sliders” 🍑 and “Au’Ra dimorphism” 👀 (which certainly got a few chuckles and cheers), other questions provided more insight into Yohsi-P’s history working on the game, how he likes to play, and upcoming features for the game.
To watch the full panel, you can check out the NA Fan Fest Day 2 livestream timestamped over on FFXIV’s official YouTube channel. Many thanks to Aimi Tokutake for translating Yoshi-P’s responses at Fan Fest!
Please note that some responses below may be slightly revised for clarity.
What is your favorite go-to glamour for your character? What would your character wear all the time?
“I play FFXIV outside of work, in private. If I give you my actual honest answer, you’ll find my character in-game. Let’s put it this way: my character’s worn the Minfilia character outfit most of the time.“
Did you know that Magic the Gathering was making a Wandering Minstrel card, and would you sign one?
“We are aware of it (now). Someone on the WotC team is very passionate about Final Fantasy and presented us with the idea. When we were discussing which characters to feature, we didn’t want to give their team too many ideas. We have various artists within our company and on our side, I would ask them ‘we would like them to look at characters to feature from XIV and XVI).
I was watching social media and I saw people say, ‘your character has been featured in the collab.’ Like…what? I didn’t realize they’d go with Wandering Minstrel (laughs).”
(Yoshi-P actually signed a card a fan had in the audience.)
What does Yoshida-San think of Black Mage in the new Evolved Mode?
“So good, so nice. I mentioned this yesterday, we do have the 21 jobs that are moving to Evolved Mode, and I did have the opportunity to look at it for the first time in a preliminary controls check…
…I’ve provided some feedback and Mr. Prime (Hikaru Tamaki), said he knows I frequently play Black Mage. When we go back to Japan, we’ll do some more testing to try and make it even more interesting.“
Could we ever see race-specific battle stances like in FFXI?
Yoshi-P expressed implementing these stances would be difficult, instead offering an alternative: “With the different animations for the individual races, it’s close to what we do for emotes right now. As I mentioned with the upcoming expansion, you will have character animations skins that you can customize with. That may be what you want to do.“
While no promises were made, he did hint that with the new customization features coming to Evercold, it may be easier for requests for certain animations to be fulfilled.
Your fondest memory of working on FFXIV at anytime during development?
“The very first Fanfest in Las Vegas in 2014. The reason why is, with the rocky start of the original launch, we worked so hard together to create A Realm Reborn. Even throughout that process, players around the world provided their support. My goal afterwards was to release a new expansion for FFXIV and to do a festival for the fans, and do so on a global scale. It was a way of saying thanks to the players for sticking by us. That was my goal after the launch of ARR and it came true with the launch of Heavensward.
When we got to Fanfest and we got to play the teaser for Heavensward as our opener, I was waiting on the stage to do my very first keynote. When the trailer finished playing, I heard this loud applause and cheer, and it was so much I suddenly became nervous. I still had to go on stage. Once I’m out there, the cheer I heard after the trailer expanded to three times the loudness and I was blown away. I was there to thank the players, and I was the one being cheered. And so, I cannot forget that even to this day.
There’s a little bit more. I was very nervous and I was doing my best to try and speak during the keynote. As I’m introducing other elements of the new expansion, I was getting through everything I had planned. After the opening ceremony and I went back, I wanted to check the reactions on the social channels. And a lot of the comments said, ‘Wait that’s it? That was so short.’
We had 1.5 hours for the keynote, but it ended up being only 65 minutes. Until then I didn’t really keep time. Since then, I’ve been very mindful of keeping the allotted time.
One last thing, when we revealed the teaser for Evercold, the cheering was the loudest I’ve heard yet.”
Will we ever get crabs in aquariums? 🦀
“Easy, easy. So easy.
Well…what if I go back to my team and they say it’s not easy. Aren’t Jellyfish translucent? Maybe it’s easy.”
How does the team decide what new jobs should be added to the game?
“Before we select which jobs are added to an expansion, we look at the roles. Of course, when we look at the player information and data we have on hand, we do see the DPS role typically has the most players. Recently, when we’ve been thinking about the new expansions and introducing two new jobs, we would like one to be well received by as many players as possible. And so recently we’ve always made sure one job is going to be a DPS. Of course that might change down the line.
Looking at the other job and whether it will be tank, healer, or DPS, we take a look at what’s out there, what people are playing in terms of tanks and healers, and seeing if we need to add one of them or whether we can add another DPS.
Once we have the roles decided, we look to the battle system team, and we hold a bit of a competition or contest where they can pitch ideas for a new job. And so the team looks at the ideas that were pitched during that time and then decide which ones have the most potential to be the most fun or most interesting.
For example, when we introduced Pictomancer, even though that was an established Final Fantasy job, the designer who pitched it also gave us ways he thought the job would be interesting. And with Evercold, we had five ideas for the tank role and three for a ranged DPS. And then I joined the discussion to refine the ideas even further. Looking at the gameplay of the job, in terms of how it feels to control and gameplay, it felt different from what we’ve done in Final Fantasy so far, so we decided the jobs would be XIV originals.
I guess the process of selecting jobs depends on what kind of experience we want to deliver. How do we make it fun and interesting? But if I keep talking I might spill something about the new jobs so I’m going to stop there.”
Yoshi-P then solicited the audience for what kind of weapons should be used for future jobs. Suggestions yelled out included crossbow, hammer, morningstar, and yo-yo. Yoshida then hinted one of the shouted suggestions included a weapon pertaining to the new job. Whether it included the called-out weapons is anyone’s guess.
With the new glamour updates announced, are there any plans to add more glamour plates?
“Of course, you would ask that… You now have an even wider variety to glamour into. Of course everybody would want more plates. I understand.
…With the new changes you’ll be able to take your character across data centers… And I really don’t want to increase that (data) load.
I hear your encouragement, but the people who will be working on that is the server team. And of course, the head of that team is a passionate XIV player. So maybe once he’s done with this work, and he’s in a good mood, maybe we can approach him… Please…”
Which Scion of the Seventh Dawn do you have the greatest personal affinity towards?
“With the Scions, we put a lot of thought into writing them and trying to grow them through the narrative. In that aspect, I love them all. If I had to pick just one… Urianger.
The reason why is, when I was going to take on FFXIV as my project… I believe it was December 10th of 2010. At the end of the year, we were going to have a giant meteor drop and have the calamity hit, and I wrote that part of the project. And so, when we were thinking about the plot, I needed a character who would randomly appear in the towns and give a prophecy or have a mysterious air to them.
We didn’t have the bandwidth to create a brand-new character model. So, we had an Elezen with a hood, a beard, and goggles. And he’d look shady right? This is Urianger. But because of that, through that harsh past he had to go through in the story, he was able to sort of win that character development for himself.
So, we started out with this weird looking guy who’d say weird things in a very hard to understand language. But as you go through the story and see more and more of what he goes through, he actually admits ‘I have a hard time expressing what I’m feeling inside…’ and you see he matures as an adult. And by going through these different things through the narrative, and being able to finally verbalize that, seeing that growth is very fulfilling.
As someone who was responsible for bringing Urianger to life, I’m very glad to see that. So when he talks with Ryne in Shadowbringers or he meets Moenbryda’s parents and has to face what happened, and I would check over the cutscene, I ended up crying. Just talking about is getting me a little teary. Urianger’s story will continue… You will continue to see him grow and I hope everyone will continue to watch over him.”
Those were the highlights from the Q&A panel. Be sure to check back with Icy Veins for more news about Evercold!
