Final Fantasy XIV director regrets making the game “too stress-free” for players
Naoki Yoshida, the producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV, revealed in a recent interview that there is one thing he regrets about his approach towards making the MMORPG – the level of comfort. He added that he plans to change this in the future.
In an interview with Famitsu published on March 11, Square Enix’s Naoki Yoshida sat down with Another Eden developer Shota Shimoda to reminisce about his past at Square Enix and how he came to lead the new Final Fantasy XIV to success.
The original version of the MMORPG was released in 2010 to commercial and critical failure. Yoshida, with his experience in the genre, stepped up to launch the new Final Fantasy XIV and shape it into what it is today. Commenting on the current success of FFXIV, Yoshida emphasizes the importance of the game’s community, which continues to push the developers forward.
In this context, Yoshida expresses his determination to keep “returning the favor” to the community by continuously surprising players in “ways beyond their imagination.” However, the producer also mentions something that he regrets: “In the course of FFXIV’s development, we have tried to make the game more comfortable and stress-free for players, but looking back over the past 10 years, I think we may have ‘overdone it’ a little bit.”
Yoshida then explains that “stress” is necessary in games, but that it’s quite difficult to manage. To illustrate what he means, he gives the example of a side-scrolling platformer with no holes that would cause the player to fall down. Such a game would be stress-free for the player, but it would also lose its excitement, he comments. “I want to put these kinds of things back into FFXIV,” Yoshida announces. At the same time, he explains that this is a long-term plan that he hopes to implement during the next 10 years, and that he does not intend to “simply increase the game’s difficulty.”
Final Fantasy XIV is available for the PC (Steam), PS4/PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
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I think Yoshida kind of fell into the trap a lot of bigger companies do in Japan when they create a hit game or product, milk it for all that is worth and go all in the audience who gave them money, cater to the Blue Ocean crowd casual crowd who never stays around forever and will leave when the next big thing comes along, than those who are the main audience themselves who will be around for a long time and slowly build up like the Red Ocean does. Nintendo had to learn this early with the WII to WII-U where only the hardcore audience stayed around and the casual audience left Nintendo to fend for itself. Nintendo put their Red Ocean first, and Blue Ocean second, and the strategy has paid off heavily. Many companies are on different timelines like SEGA, Capcom etc, but they are all on the same path and will learn the same lesson Nintendo did.
With Yoshida i think with FFXIV he will begin to surprise players through skill based gameplay and feats rather than just making the game easier, and have more in depth mechanics and to make things more thrilling than to rest on previous games in the past. My one hope though with him is he can make the beginning of FFXIV easier to get through and overhaul it so it’s enjoyable as the rest of the game. Many people including myself have difficulty or patience getting into it enough to complete the first 30 hours of it.
Yeah the game is far too easy. I breezed though every expansion. Great story but the classes and casual content has become brain dead.