Here’s how items, mounts, and weapons are designed and implemented in Final Fantasy XIV

Every item you see in Final Fantasy XIV – every weapon your character equips, every mount you ride on, every minion you get to follow you around – needs to be added to the game with intent. Lead item designer Yosuke Hayashi is the member of the team responsible for overseeing these additions, and a new post on the official site explains how his role functions within the overall flow of the game via an internal mock-interview.

For example, Hayashi explains that when an expansion is first released, a plan is developed for how many items players will get for rewards over the course of the entire expansion and subsequent patches. Each patch involves somewhere between 700-900 items and a full expansion release has closer to 2500, which means coordinating art teams, balancing teams, and writing teams to make sure that names, stat values, and appearances all hold up. He also explains how many systems added with restrictions have that done simply by necessity; fashion accessories, for example, used the basic scripting and coding for mounts, but players want to do more with these items and so the team is working hard to separate out the coding by a significant margin. Check out the whole piece to see just how much goes into even simple items like an umbrella accessory.