Final Fantasy 14’s battles have become too samey and safe, but that’s about to change, Yoshi-P says 

With Final Fantasy XIV’s Dawntrail expansion drawing near, the MMO’s director and producer Naoki Yoshida recently spoke to 4Gamer about new jobs, areas and other changes that await FF14 players in future updates. In this context, Yoshida also mentions how the development team changed their approach towards the game’s battles. 

While Yoshida had already commented on a previous occasion that he regretted making Final Fantasy XIV too stress-free, he goes into more detail in his new statement. The FF14 team is currently redefining their rules for creating battle content with the goal of making things more challenging and interesting. As to what triggered this change, Yoshida explains that the many years of working on FF14 and receiving feedback from players had been causing the team to make overly safe decisions and be too focused on not upsetting players. “In a positive sense, this made the game stress-free, but in a negative sense, it made it lack novelty and a sense of challenge.” 

Fearing negative reactions from players, the FF14 development team gave up on risky ideas for raid and battle-related gimmicks, which ultimately led to the repetition of similar tried-and-tested mechanics. At the risk of angering players, Yoshida wants to turn things around (starting with Dawntrail) and start surprising FF14’s playerbase with new ideas that will pose a bigger challenge and thus boost the game’s entertainment value. “I think we’re bound to get scolded at times, but the sense of accomplishment you feel when you clear a new gimmick or puzzle is a lot greater than when you solve something you’ve already experienced before,” the producer comments. 

According to Yoshida, players will be able to clearly feel FF14 become more daring and innovative with its battle gimmicks starting from the upcoming 7.1 patch. 

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail launches on July 2 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S. Early Access is tentatively scheduled to begin on June 28.