Bought Stormblood and Now Patching Again
It'southward been most vii years since the release of Final Fantasy xiv: A Realm Reborn, a game whose story has been recounted countless times, after putting Naoki Yoshida in the director'due south chair, who since pulled the game from the brink of disaster with the release of A Realm Reborn. Fast forrard seven years, with a few critically-acclaimed expansions nether their belts, the Final Fantasy fourteen team looks back at older content, and introducing the game to new players with patch 5.3.
"There isn't any time to relax, or chill out at the moment," producer and director Naoki Yoshida tells me over Zoom. Concluding Fantasy xiv has simply hit 20 million registered players, but according to Yoshida it'south still not enough for Square-Enix'southward President and CEO, Yosuke Matsuda. "We accept to continue driving this frontward, so there's really no time to relax, or lower our baby-sit."
The latest patch for Concluding Fantasy 14 was delayed by a few months, due to disruption no cheers to the COVID-nineteen pandemic, as announced via a alive stream from Yoshida in May. "The situation has afflicted u.s. heavily these by months. Information technology'due south really hard for us to become back on track." With schedules out of the window, just what is it similar to run an active MMO with millions of players during a pandemic?
"Even through this state of affairs, the FF14 squad is in a good workflow, at that place's a peachy squad with a loftier sense of responsibility... At the moment, 90 per cent of developers are working from home currently, and they're starting to get familiar with the change in environs. As for the mentality and psychological perspective. I'1000 confident that nosotros're all quite stable, and we can focus on the work. We're getting back to normality."
5.3 is due to be released on the 11th of August, and Foursquare-Enix has since released a mini site for all the new additions to the game. Notwithstanding, just underneath the surface more significant changes are being made to the game in order to accommodate new players, starting with a complete overhaul of the content released in the original game, which was created in just two and a half years, according to Yoshida.
"We needed to create really tight guidelines for creating quests. For example, they have to make each quest nine minutes long, including all the text and all that. Considering we had the concept that we want the players to spend a lot of time on those quests, that'due south why we made that kind of guideline for each quest. With that, every bit a result, it kind of revealed then many quests that may be unnecessary, or lots of backlog steps which you don't really need, so we wanted to revisit and remove all the excess quests and unnecessary bits, because we idea that the focus has to exist for players to savour the storyline."
Yoshida's words ring truthful. The offset hours of A Realm Reborn are rough, and can be a significant turn-off for many newer players of Final Fantasy 14, but this streamlining does not come up without its own challenges. "If we just have out some bits from the existing storyline, then we have to take out the NPCs that may be playing the key role, or really of import office, and information technology could likewise touch on the lore of the world and everything. We listed all the quests that are included in ARR, and then we figured out the priority, and the necessity of the quests existing in the game or non. This removal of the unnecessary quests, took upwardly a third of the unabridged workload."
Only if new players still want to experience all of the content that was in the vanilla release of FF14, Yoshida has words of reassurance. "Those quests that are decommissioned, nosotros didn't really remove them completely," he says. "We moved them to side quests. For anyone who has the time and wants to dig more for lore and stuff like that, then they tin can spend time on it."
Exactly how many quests have been removed or altered? "We didn't really count, because if you do that so it will exist so disheartening, discouraging," says Yoshida with a laugh. "So many quests are there, so we didn't track how many quests we needed to work on."
Regardless of just how many quests have been removed from the game, information technology'll make the game significantly easier for new players to become into. But as a seasoned Final Fantasy 14 player, I had some basic to choice. In the base of operations game, in that location is a location that you need to repeatedly return to, with no fast-travel links nearby named The Waking Sands. What'southward the deal?
"Information technology's a hideout, then it feels so cheap, so easy. (to put a fast-travel location there) We don't take any intentions to implement an Aetheryte (fast travel point) nigh that location. That said, nosotros totally get that this is a actually fourth dimension-consuming journey, where you have to come whatsoever time Minfilia calls you lot to come over. That's why... This is kind of new information that we've not actually revealed to anyone all the same. We actually have a new item, a kind of teleport ticket you can utilize to teleport to Military camp Horizon straight away. Yous might be wondering, even though in that location isn't an Aetheryte 'How come Teleportation is possible here?' Anyway, it'due south a special item for easing the travel burden. Please don't be angry at Minfilia."
But, I wasn't quite done yet with the list of sorely-needed quality of life changes to the base content of the game. In that location are two infamous dungeons in A Realm Reborn, Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium. Both are pretty lengthy, with unskippable cutscenes every time they might come up during a daily dungeon roulette where yous can get extra bonus XP. Information technology'southward not uncommon in these dungeons for some players to be AFK, and just wait for others to complete information technology for them. What's going to be done with these now-archaic dungeons?
"Nosotros came to the conclusion that it would be easier simply to create those two viii-man dungeons from scratch, rather than tweaking the existing content," says Yoshida. "Nosotros totally understand that those two dungeons are very time-consuming, so we have discussed information technology, merely we let go of the idea. We were looking into it, and we thought that information technology would be all-time to create new dungeons, just kind of separate out the battle against Ultima Weapon as kind of standalone content outside of those two dungeons. When we do that we volition make sure that it will be trust system compatible."
The trust system has been introduced in the latest expansion, Shadowbringers. This allows you to go through dungeons with a political party of capable NPCs, instead of other players, for those looking for a more than single-player feel."We cannot say when it's going to be happening, only it's something in our listen, and nosotros desire to do information technology at some indicate in futurity."
From Yoshida's responses, it's clear the team is dedicated to a significant rehaul of content to brand the game more than friendly to new players. This is assisted by a hugely expanded gratis trial, which at present includes the base of operations game in addition to its outset expansion, Heavensward. However, this gratis trial does exclude some key customs features such equally being unable to trade using Final Fantasy fourteen'southward market boards in add-on to restricting chat and the ability to party up with friends. "Nosotros're not because changing the current business model of subscriptions, it helps us maintain the quality of the game," says Yoshida. "There's a risk of RMT, existent money trading, and stuff similar that, so in one case they tin can use those tools, they'll but employ information technology and it'll rise to uncontrollable levels."
Yoshida too gave a lengthy explanation as to how subscriptions essentially protect Final Fantasy 14 against a higher influx of RMT in the game, which is an incredibly costly endeavour, only it remains to exist seen how many players of the new expanded free-trial volition exist turned off by the lack of community functionality.
However, there is notwithstanding new content to look forward to in 5.3 for existing players in the form of a new raid, in addition to other side content. But, there's still one fundamental beloved Final Fantasy fourteen character seemingly missing in action. Fan-favourite Hildebrand is a rubbish detective, with an incredibly fun quest line that players experienced five years ago. Simply, since so he'southward been missing in action.
"I don't currently know the whereabouts of Hildebrand. I don't know where he is. I can't go into more details hither, but in 5.3 y'all may or may not find him, not every bit himself, but more than like a tip or a clue every bit to where he might be. I would similar yous and all players to bring together together and search for clues that'll be dotted around in-game."
With a slew of crossover content in Final Fantasy 14, such as the Nier raid series that'due south due to be expanded, or the Ivalice raid series, which contains winks and nods to Final Fantasy 12 and Final Fantasy Tactics, or even the FF15 content released several years ago, we wondered about the absenteeism of some loftier-profile games that the team could have collaborated on.
"We've had lots of feedback and lots of hopes that with the FF7 Remake that we'll do some crossover with them. Information technology's just part one of the journeying, so we need to kind of nail down all the details and flesh it out, so it may take a while, information technology will take fourth dimension to really make something great. That said, we are positively looking into it, and we have hope that we desire to do something with this at some indicate in the future. As for a Kingdom Hearts crossover, for this thought, one of the troubles is that we have to coordinate with Disney, and so I experience that there would be and so many hurdles and challenges around working with them, so I try not to think about a crossover with Kingdom Hearts."
Patch 5.3 of Final Fantasy 14 signifies the cease of the current bigger patch cycle for their latest expansion, Shadowbringers. Since information technology's been about ten years since the original release of Last Fantasy 14, just how long does the game have left.
"Nosotros haven't set any goal for how long the game will proceed. As long as players enjoy playing the game, then I think we will continue delivering the great content. We don't really have whatever sense of time set yet. FF14 is the game that we've created, with not only the people on the evolution team, simply with the players around the earth. Even though my life may end at some indicate, I hope that the game will keep after that, that someone will succeed me and continue. That's my hope."
Before our time with Yoshida was up, we asked Yoshida if there was any event where he would personally stop working on Terminal Fantasy 14. With swirling rumours around some other project in the works at Square-Enix's Artistic Business Unit of measurement 3 and Yoshida himself having to actively deny that he'll exist the managing director of Final Fantasy 16, could he potentially be taken out of the directors chair anytime soon.
"The possibility would exist that either I savage ill, died, or if the CEO fires me. It's okay, you don't need to worry about it."
With Final Fantasy 14'due south role player base continuing to grow, allowances for new players, and a charismatic manager at the helm at that place seems to be no cease in sight for Final Fantasy fourteen. Patch 5.three drops on Baronial 11th - and it should contribute to what continues to exist one of the strongest MMORPGs in recent memory.
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