DFOArchive: [Korea] Interview with Head Director Yoon

This is a special event livestream on KDnF Twitch channel with their head director Yoon. You can watch the interview in this Youtube video.
This interview was about 3 hours long, and the author would like to express special thanks to u/Yonaka_Kr for the amazing translation. This post is a direct archived version, and all credit go to the user.

Table of Contents

Farming

Opening

They agree last year's scandals are unacceptable, they don't intend to let any of it slip by. We'll announce results, it's currently under (legal) processing. They intend to pursue it as much as it needs to. They're very sorry but holding people accountable is the only way to get the community the justice they demand.
We went through 2300 posts about complaints and sorted it out like this:

457 character relevant complaints: 202 Character balance, 47 Position complaints (B/S/D), 51 Art complaints, 157 other
668 content complaints: 239 Farming, 82 Leveling to max, 95 Items, 118 Dungeon, 134 Other
307 management direction complaints
420 other: 83 Communication, 152 QoL, 188 Economy, 119 Event

They're going to try to address what they can about this, but there's no way they can complete everything, but next two months will see some updates.

Development Direction

They know if they don't release content people will just go play other games, even if the content is quality. They want to focus on DnF being fun #1 above everything else
Director came back to the game to find that characters and bosses are too strong, there's just iframes all the time on both players/enemies, holding immunity is built into the enemy. They don't like that.

Lower farming relevance
Try to improve gameplay
Improving the client again because lag and frame drops are also fun-killers

Big Character Complaints B/S/D and Balance

They want to balance, they're not actually able to figure out proper balance numbers quickly with proper nuance (i.e. should a ranged character do the same dps as a melee? should an easy character do same dps as a hard one?). They're assigning dedicated balance team moving forward (the people responsible used to be part of character design team where they would be used to make 3As/help balance dungeons) to avoid 0 balance patches during heavy content release
Character balance must go hand in hand with dungeon changes.
They think dungeons need to change where status/hold immunity need to be removed, character dps will probably vary a bit more, but they can start to see different characters being more desirable to fill different roles with this.
Back when Anton came out they decided to release 2As and balance at the same time, as it would take more time. They decided at that time it was more important to just swap it to raw skill damage to get everyone into anton and then later they'll rework the classes to be specialized again, but the rework (swapping it to skill damage to specialized) would feel like a nerf. He wanted to make it a long-term plan but directors changed and couldn't achieve this.
Character dps buffs aren't enough, they need reworks to make the characters more fun. Dps increases are short-term fixes, they plan to do proper reworks later on.

Synergy

What to do about synergy classes who people fund a ton into and ultimately it's still weaker than a pure dps? (i.e. class used to be pure dps and syn tacked on down the line)
They intend to reduce the gap between syn and pure dps. Major complaint is when a party is 1 syn 2 dps, the syn is upset with their low damage. So, the syn effect will apply to themselves in that situation, this will solve syn doing low damage in said setup.
However this causes a new issue where 1 syn 1 sader >>> 1 dps 1 sader. Simply put this just makes too much of a headache to do a full system change to fix this to not cause some issue that someone will complain about. They're still letting the 1 syn get their own syn buff for now, but this is a temporary bandaid fix for right now.
They fully intend to change exactly how synergy characters work. This is a plan they're consideringa t the moment (not final): No more synergy/dps split. Instead, the 34% amplification will be moved to synergy gear, and all classes will need to equip it to apply a synergy buff. Otherwise everyone is a pure dps. They're not 100% sure this is how we'll push the fix, can't give a specific time frame, and know this will have to be done very well to minimize complaints, but they're currently aiming for next Season.
Also, they're going to up all syn effects under 30s to 30s duration (debuffs mainly) to reduce complaints in the short term.

Buffers

This is a huge problem, no matter what response they give there will be a shitshow.
One big issue is how difficult it is to farm for a buffer. He was super surprised to see how many groups form statics just to make sure saders are covered. Also they just added a shitton of dps so naturally dps population is high. They pretty much just fucked up when synergy and buffers were intended as easy ways to get into raids (9pc vow saint) and that turned into what it is now, they also added the weekly raid limit because people would spend 20+ hours raiding every week but that made more people want to make buffers.
Dps wasn't happy with how easy saint could get into raid, but saders also were sad with how little gearing you could do after the "easy" gear (9pc vow) so they added sader-specific expensive gear to go for after, except now that's become the norm with stuff like 2 setup farming so they're harder to farm than dps. So they're expensive to gear but necessary. They also suck to do solo farming or leveling because they suck at solo'ing, so naturally less people will want to play it. Raid meta has been 7 years long and now buffer has become must-take every dungeon because they're always balanced for buffers. Just nerfing buffers = dps gear requirement goes up, so needs to nerf dungeons alongside buffers. There's also 3/62 characters as buffers and they're low fun so all of this results in low sader population.
So the fix has to be one of two: They need to add options to let people go into dungeons without saders, or they need to make the game have tons of saders.
Bunch of suggested changes: Add an option can be a sader adds 1 person's worth of damage to the team (instead of 10x), and the nerf boss hp by 80 to 90% so whether a dps or a buffer takes the last spot, it's the same damage. The other is making boss hp change depending on party setup (i.e. 3 dps 1 syn = 5b hp, 2 dps 1 syn 1 buffer = 25b hp, etc.). Otherwise we can renewal. Overlapping buffs with syn, maybe you could give up an dps awakening to take Crux, maybe a syn could take Crux, AI buffer character, APC buffer character?
All of these they're looking into, but they don't actually have a solution they have settled on because all of these have their own issues. However they do plan to address the issue of buffers being mandatory.
What they can promise for sure, the next season they will 100% ensure 2-tier farming will never be needed, they can't do anything about it right now because too many people have invested into what they have now. They'll do some events to help saders farming for now, but generally speaking farming should be easier. They'll also intend to up buffer dps 9/16 to help farming now. (Note there is no set date on when the next season is)

Aeterna Fnen?

Infinite Nen Guard nen is being removed, their damage will be buffed. We're going to block other spam 1 skill spam builds because we think it will reduce enjoyment of the game in the long run even if it is fun immediately. You will see this in the game by 9/16.

Character Q&A

Do you think blade is balanced?

Yes, blade does a little bit more damage than standard, but the reality is people need to gear/level a new character who's not fully optimized. They think it's correct to have them be overtuned while people are gearing up so they can do endgame content without needing every optimization everywhere, and then nerf them later down the line when the average gear level has caught up.

Holding meta incoming?

No, that's stupid. Anton infinite holding was not engaging. It also makes holders too valuable. We intend for holds to have value and different characters to be able to shine, based off enemy patterns and design.

Please balanced the characters that didn't get buffed

They were very disappointed with how they pushed out June balance patch, so this patch was to address what they could asap. Next month will cover characters who still need it.

Revival of Tactical/Metal Line?

No, they're still looking at a variety of solutions. They will address this when we have finalized something.

Why no nerfs in balance patches?

They've been pushing primarily buffs, so they understand where it's coming from. Nerfs are going to happen if necessary. Any character who's too strong, they will consider nerfs for. However, it makes more sense when they're buffing most of the roster to not nerf them at the same time, instead they will not get buffed this round.
It can be frustrating to see Vagabond so much stronger than your own character, so imagine they buffed your Skirm by 30% so you could finally match, and then buffed Vagabond by 30% too. What's the fucking point, right? Hence, the upper characters will simply not be buffed this round.

EK's kit is the problem. Are you going to buff her damage?

Chain Rush is a special part of the kit. They do not want to homogenize class's kits more. Hence, since it is difficult to put in damage, they would rather have her damage be very strong to compensate. You can expect similar high risk high return on other characters too.

Farming

Isn't everything farming (raids, drops, gow, sells, etc.)?
When this director first took over KDnF, balance was a shitshow. Uniques that were stronger than epics. chrons balance, etc. So they adjusted it to a more staircase progression system so it's a straightforward next step, also with scenario dungeons.
Director now played the game again and there's too many fucking steps in the staircase. Each step can also feel steep so it's too difficult to go through (mythic + rare ava + emblem + creature + enchant + tali + rune + bp + sirocco + swap setup + +12 + special reinforce + cube contract + tactician's + dps title + battle plat + aura +...)
He wants to reduce the number of steps. He can't just remove stuff willy nilly because it'll upset people who got all of that, but some of it has to go for newcomers and returnees. Events will help catch up, but the important part is adding some ease to farming

Ease to Farming

#1. Duration of farming will be reduced

Especially with bp/sirocco/ozma on getting all the gear, there's continuous additional gear upgrades to farm through. So the entire gear grind from start to finish will be sped up. See below.

#2. Rework to level-indifferent farming content

Rune/Tali, Guild Insignia, Op Hope, aka old content you have to go back to farm to do current content needs revamping
In the future, these additional farms are either not going to be added at all, or will be able to be done quickly to help move onto relevant content.

#3. Additions of Normal Dungeons

They intend to add more basic dungeons which can be done either solo or party, if not there will be a heavier emphasis on guide dungeons to ease entry into content
Director leveled a blade and tried to go do content to farm for his character. He needs to do P War to get some runes and talismans. There's only sell parties. He waits a while longer, joins a normal party, tells them it's his first time. Expelled. He was upset, he wanted to do normal, but at least he could do guide. Thus, other dungeons without guide dungeons, will get guide dungeons, at the minimum. Preferably, he wants more content that is solo friendly but also can be done in parties.

#4. Minimum drops

Lots of content that give random rewards can be stressful so they're going to give a certain minimum drop to help relieve stress, as lots of them don't have a minimum drop at all

#5. 50% Of all drop-based rewards are account-bound by base

Starting from ghent and 5+5 all the way up to Ozma raid mats to assist people who run multiple characters
Instead of 10 characters gradding all at once very late, you can funnel mats into one character to focus graduate certain characters
They wanted each character who runs raids to have some raid rewards, if 100% was account-bound then every character you funnel to starts with nothing, so for now 50% is the amount they decided on

Farming Dungeon Rework

Adding more valuable enchants that aren't BiS but still competitive for endgame
Ghent/5+5 farming to buy beads for weapon/armor and armor/accessory/specials respectively (+21 all ele enchants included)
Crafting epics from epic dictionary will cost half the legendary souls it does now, they will address it again if necessary
Ghent speedup in Korea (they not have dfog ghent)

Increase of mats by 50%; drop chance by 50%, goal is to cut ghent farming into half

Operation Hope

Daily entrance 2-->6 entries, weekly entries 10 --> 30 entries, all dungeon clear rewards are account-bound. This reduces 5 week farm to 1 week farm.
Shop will allow using aiolite to purchase if this is still too annoying to just skip the content entirely.
S weapon recipe chance upped to 100%

Talisman farming

PWar and Exiles both changed so they can be solo played.
Both dungeons have their weekly reward count reduced 2 --> 1.
PWar rewards doubled. PWar quest reduced to 3 clears.
Exiles reward quadrupled. 50% of Exiles mat is dropped account bound.
Selectable unique rune and talisman cost reduced. Planning to remove purchase limit.
Goal is to reduce rune/tali farming by 60%
Talismans still need further fixes, there will be a renewal to talisman system upcoming. Details announced as they are finalized.

Black Shrine / Basement

Doubled drop rate of black crystals, 50% of them will be account bound.
Upgrading 100 legendaries to upgrade epics enabled
Epic pots will cost 50% less aiolite
Epic pots will no longer have a weekly purchase limit

Oculus

2 --> 1 reward count per week, 2x the rewards for same weekly reward
50% rewards are dropped account bound
Aiolite cost for epic pot reduced by 50%

Black Purgatory

2 --> 1 reward count per week, reward doubled for same weekly reward
50% rewards are dropped account bound
Using two Fearsome eyes will let you pick the stat type you want (sounds like it converts current y% x-stat to y% stat of choice)
Free imprint of stat rerolls
Wanted to add more things but didn't have time to say it

Guild insignias

Plan: random unique gem boxes sold at guild shop.
He wanted to straight up purchase unique gems (he is pushing for this)
It will have a proper renewal later down the line, like talismans

Raids

50% rewards are always account bound
Rework to the weekly random purchasable rewards
Guide/Squad upped to limit of 5
Need to watch more since raids are so important, and add more fixes down the line

Most of these will be added next week test server so they can hit 9/2 live server, but all of this will be done by next month. These changes can't wait.
Since it will be disappointing for characters who have piles of mats in their inventory already stored up, he's planning an event to turn mats into account bound mats so people can use up mats they have sitting around and funnel them elsewhere (details not finalized). He plans on non-account bound earned during event period will be usable in the event.

Mythic Farming Rework

"Drop chance is too damn low" - Director
They're upping drop chance by 5 times. It took a lot of communication and discussion but they've settled to up the drop chance of mythics.
Mythic transcendence is 100% being added, not as an event, but as a system. However, they need to consider players who spend a lot of time farming for good mythics, so they can't make it cheap. Currently it's being planned on an item you get diss'ing mythics + other materials.
There will be no Product of Wisdoms and Mythics added in next cap. They want this system to be a 100-cap exclusive thing.
PoW and mythics from current cap will be usable for some time in next cap. They want it to be set at a powerful spot to stay relevant for next cap and not just something to skip a step in farming.

Farming Q&A

Please add more gear like Chrons!

They're actually planning to add gear with a similar concept to Chrons next cap. It won't be like talismans where it's practically a balance patch in and of itself, but they still want it to be a fun addition.

Please elaborate on PoWs being superior than even full amps.

PoWs were, to his knowledge, designed to be powerful because they have to be standalones. He believes this was a pretty big mistake in balancing/design. There will be no PoWs next cap. Hence, they will be phased out eventually and the mistake will be rectified. However, some people have invested a lot into PoWs, so they do not want to nerf them now to affect those people. Still this mistake will not repeat next cap.

Will reset happen? Will reset happen? Will reset happen? Will reset happen? Will reset happen? Will re...

There is no gear reset. He's pretty certain many players struggled a lot to get to this point. He does not intend to delete that. They don't want that to happen at all.
However, they're also looking at the nature of seasons. Is upping the gear massively every cap really that fun to play with? They're looking at what might be relevant, details will come later down the line.

If reward counts are reduced to 1, what about card flips? Buying legendary cards are already so expensive!

Gold flip chance like cards are doubled as well.

Faster oculus mats are nice, but many people run oculus for the epics or mythic chance. How is this addressed?

When he says that "rewards are doubled" he means all rewards are doubled. Epic, mythic, etc. chance is doubled so it will be equivalent to what two runs used to be.

Speedup on content like this also means content life duration goes down... is content development speeding up to match?

He thinks dfo is most fun when people play a ton of characters not just one, so the investment cost on each character needs to go down for that to happen. Lots of people are reducing the number of characters they play, they want that not to happen. The goal of the speedup is to reduce the stress of gearing each individual character so people can enjoy other characters, and that was necessary. They are still working on developing content!

Communication

tl;dr Is lacking, will be improved

Economy

Plat Emblems aren't actually dominated by a few people (they have a graph of how few is dominated by flippers), knows people who flip in the office, one of them lost a little, another lost a ton, a third is keeping his plat for massive loss on the Trace plat for Blade, prices skyrocketing/dropping is not because of flippers but mainly just supply/demand shift
There are pictures of people with like 30x of a title or 40x of a pet, but when they researched and found the account, they got them all legitimately (bought them off AH or purchased packages or etc.) and just uploaded it to fuck with other people/show off
Then some people like fucking around and tuning PoWs to sell because they enjoy it
There's also stuff like people buy plats ahead of time and they come out, they have everything ready, and the new class is no fun and they don't want to play it. Well it's time to sell.
There's a lot of examples of why purchase limits don't necessarily improve the game because it limits what people can do beyond just "limiting flipping" and flippers are not that big of an issue based off the evidence. So they want to not block things that don't need to be blocked to keep that down to a minimum, but they're watching things all the time.
The best fix to economy is matching supply and demand at all times. A flipper who hoards 10x of an item and then tries to sell it can't, if the incoming supply from other sources meets the demand, resulting in a price drop. Thus, fixing supply and demand will be a good way to fix these kind of issues by setting up programs, plus having some items that are pricy is fine (i.e. expensive aiolite) if there are ways to go farm it. The main thing is items that are hard to get and pricy, they just need to ensure the supply and demand are maintained well enough.
They're planning on helping fix the economy by adjusting Red-Tail Jonathan's shop as necessary to add in items that are necessary**.** He wants to go through with this for 6 months. If there are items that continue to cause issues after 6 months he will go restrict the trade amount on those items to force fix them at that point.
Also looking into package items and crap rates to see what he can do.
What about expensive enchant cards?

They're aware of the issue. It's a burden when you're gearing up and need to buy it. However, it's a blessing when you don't need it and can sell it. If you go do a dungeon and you get a legendary card that sells for 5m? (Strength sirocco card) You would be upset and wouldn't want to really run there again.
Because buying it is pretty hard, the short-term solution is those mid-tier enchants like the 21 all ele accessory enchants, they will see as necessary moving forward.

Title Creature Plat Emblem please sell all the time

Since these are all must-need, they're looking into what they can do to minimize high cost burden on players. It is a complicated subject. Since packages are rotational for seasonal avatars or pets or etc. having the titles/auras/etc. tied to it is difficult on players.
They know it is difficult but there is nothing set in stone, all in discussion phase right now. These other fixes above and data collection comes first. If the situation sucks, he can just add in events to give out budget titles and stuff to help, but can't say much as everything is in discussion phase.

What do you think about 0.125

(Apostle title rng%)He was director before, he knows they set the % low to make those items' cost high. However, when he actually heard 0.125% he went "What the fuck?" He doesn't like when it's this low. Reality is if the rng% is too high the titles or auras or etc. end up just going for too low, and they want premium items to be able to be sold by players at good gold points. Reality is the title being seperated to 8 level ranges, it's not like they could say "okay 45 is good, let's lower 45 %" so they just did an even split. Since a specific person wants one specific title only, it's still shit % for them.
So is this fine? No. He will try to adjust what he can to not be this bad.

Gold farming is just from stormy. Can you add better gold farm?

Gold farming is slow this cap. He's aware. It's very difficult on players. Adding another dungeon that just adds more gold isn't that difficult, but right now the QoL is his priority.
Plus, botters are an issue, and they had to lower the gold drop rates because of them. This affected normal players, so he's looking into a huge revamp on how people will gain gold. However, he can't say more until details are finalized. He definitely wants gold gain to be improved for players though.

AH ran out of aiolite AH ran out of aiolite ; w; AH ran out of aiolite AH ran out of aiolite

Go watch what Jonathan will sell for aiolite next week and it'll be worse

Miscellaneous

Changes to Conversion Spell, can swap to another stat +0 without needing the item to be +0 beforehand.
Rarity of cards will be visible as a letter on the card itself to make it easier to see rarity
Avatars are getting too fancy, having simple avatars is important to having a good outfit. Setting up your look is an important part of having fun in DFO.
Blocklist is increased from 200 to 300. Every time you log in on a character, every character in the blacklist has to load which causes server stress. They're also looking to improve server stability as well, but also look for other solutions that will reduce stress in the first place.
No more seeing megaphone in dungeons. Because it's a premium item, it's hard to block it (they made it able to be less visible in town), but it'll be invisible in dungeon, unless you hover over the megaphone ui area, to reduce bothering players in dungeon.

Story Rework

Needs more choices in story that are meaningful
Otherwise improve the quality of the story in general

Especially improving the Power Station / Anton scenario quest storyline area, with Jakter
Characters who died have more weight and not just "oh they died"
Erje's sudden personality change
Lots of weird pesonality changes or unexplained stuff, fixing all of it

Ozma Raid

Sanity teleport to counter room, counter mechanic is a problem

There's characters who can struggle with counter while others are fine, lag, etc. so they're removing the counter gimmick and replacing it with something else to escape the sanity room

3A Quality Rework

Because this is such an expensive investment (money and time wise), this is a big deal
It looks really cool, but the 3A doesn't really feel like you're playing the game. Still in discussion whether they plan to rework all the 3A 100 skills at once to make them fit the game better.
No matter what, the quality has to be good. They want people to be satisfied.
There's also a crapton of balance/content that takes priority, so while they have submitted certain 3As to be improved, they could not address every underwhelming 3A. However, Neople knows a few were rushed, so they have identified those and huge player complaints and have decided to submit those for fixes.
It feels bad to just say "we're working on this" and not be able to give full details, so we are showing a reworked sketch for Ghostblade: https://imgur.com/a/iIQMKXR
Current Illustration reworks:

Ghostblade
Asura
Shaman
FLauncher
Skirmisher
Kuno

Current Cut-in Reworks

Fnen
FBrawler
Ghostblade

3A 100 skill rework (new spritework entirely)

FStriker
Inquisitor

These will take some time, please do not expect it soon because it will take a lot of work and other content needs priority as well. That is why they are stopping the list at here for now, especially because they might rework all the 100 active skills (just in discussion atm).

Misc Q&A

Director, do you play DNF?

Yes, I couldn't play everything because of work, but at the very start of the game I used to have like 50 alts.

Conversion Spells are all gone off the AH, please help

I will see what I can do (laughing)

Please sell old avatars again

If we just resell old avatars again it will affect current economy, we will see what we can do. I will check and try to sell a few of what I can.

Let us move the chatting chat UI... Let us move the chatting chat UI... Let us move the chatting chat UI...

Sure. I'll get it done. I didn't think about this before.

Are you touching PVP? Are you touching PVP?

Honestly, unless tons of people join PVP all at once, PVP is dominated by a few people who are super good. We are currently planning on having a huge investment into improving the client all at once, and we think we want to improve PVP when we do that.

How are you fixing lag, Ozma raid has a lot of lag

We are doing huge investments towards client and lag fixing to improve this. This won't be fixed immediately, but we are putting this at super high priority since this negatively inflicts player's enjoyment.

You only get to breath outside of work!

There's also a LOT of work listed here. Are they able to go home?

We need to work harder for players to have fun. That's the important part.
There's questions about Direct Kang Jung Ho.
He stepped down on 8/1/21. There is another director in charge of content development. There is also a live service director. I will be discussing things with them as we move forward.
Director: "I am working my hardest!" and "I have more to say"

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Friday, August 20, 2021

[Korea] Interview with Head Director Yoon

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