How do you feel about the number of content drops happening in each patch of Final Fantasy XIV? If you’ve felt locked out of content like the Forked Tower because of its stringent difficulty curve or have been waiting for more ladders to climb, you appear to be getting your wish, but in the future, it may mean fewer content bits actually being added in each update. That’s the Cliff’s Notes version of a PCGamesN interview at Gamescom with producer and director Naoki Yoshida, who talks about how upcoming patches will see the devs attempting to let a wider swath of players get into new content additions.
“Moving forward, for content that we produce in Final Fantasy 14, it could be that we incorporate a scheme where there is a variable difficulty. Or it could be that we prepare a selection of difficulties in advance, and the players can choose which difficulty they want to challenge,” Yoshida notes.
This includes a gentle grade upward in difficulty for the new variant dungeon in patch 7.4 along with feedback taken in and applied when the patch 7.35 deep dungeon arrives, and what sounds like some added challenge options when the second Forked Tower raid opens in patch 7.5. He also confirms another raid for 7.4, followed by the arrival of a new ultimate difficulty raid and the Beastmaster limited job in 7.5.
However, he is also quick to point out that this plan does carry a rather large asterisk. “This is the general direction that we’ve set for Final Fantasy 14 moving forward. And because of this new direction, it could be that the overall [amount] of content that we implement in the game goes down,” he notes. “But in doing so, we hope that many more players will be able to enjoy the content that we implement.”
Unsurprisingly, that possibility has gotten some fans a bit rankled, with players needling Yoshida and referencing quotes from the interview in a recent tweet from the game that highlights his upcoming PAX West panels. Of course, time will tell how this plan shakes down, but it looks as if changes are on the horizon.
