Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail has arrived to a bit of a mixed reception, thanks to a middling story that has a few glaring flaws and—despite some excellent improvements when it comes to bosses and dungeons—a few persistent issues that, from what I’ve seen from more critical elements of the community, are frustrating because of how long they’ve been going on.
There’s a perception I’ve picked up on that, if we’re taking the long-view, FF14 is mechanically stuck in a rut—while direct competitors like World of Warcraft are heaping on new experimental mechanics like the Warbands system and doing harebrained modes like MoP Remix, not much has changed on Etheirys.
Questing has remained largely the same for years: Go here, click on two objects, fight an enemy that takes half of your opener before it explodes—and while Dawntrail did have a few good solo duties, they were few and far enough between to make things drag. Patch cadence and content has remained largely the same. Open-world FATEs, aside from getting an optional grind in the Shared Fate system, mostly involve melting the same unthreatening monsters down with area of effect spells.
FF14, simply put, innovates pretty slowly. That’s not to say we haven’t had new ideas come into the ecosystem, but they also had their own share of issues—Island Sanctuaries were cute at first, but wound up becoming a largely passive spreadsheet simulator. Variant Dungeons, meanwhile, were a ton of fun to play the first go around, but they suffered due to poor reward structures.
I sat down and spoke with the game’s director, Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) during Gamescom, and while we talked about the story’s overall reception, and what to do with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, something he said towards the tail-end of our interview also surprised me: It looks like Yoshi-P really does want to shake things up.
“Yes, when it came to the previous Hydaelin and Zodiark saga, this was something that started before I took charge of project on Final Fantasy 14, and the saga did finish in Endwalker, but it’s with the new expansion that we’ve reached the level cap of 100 and so in that regard, I view 7.0 as a culmination … we’ve been able to carry out various preparations, and now have a stable state of things in the game.”
He’s not wrong here—Endwalker, for all my complaints, did genuinely do a lot to incrementally improve the new player experience, with tune-ups to dungeons and duties in the game’s introductory content, A Realm Reborn. Dawntrail has gone on to add a major graphics overhaul, which I don’t doubt was a lot of hard work.
“So moving forward with the next expansion, I want to incorporate more changes. I don’t want to take a conservative approach, but rather, I want to provide an experience that contemporary gamers can enjoy. To that end, I would like to incorporate various changes. I will also protect things that need to be protected. But we would very much like to try out new things, and we are discussing various possibilities right now in the team, so I’m really excited about that.”
Some important context: This was at the end of our interview, so while I’m sure Yoshi-P was keeping things vague to avoid making any sweeping promises, we were also running short on time for details and follow-up questions.
His words here do, at the very least, track with what he’s said before about reworking the game’s jobs and leaning away from homogeneity and two-minute meta after Dawntrail. Whether his team will be given the actual resources for that is another matter. As was outright stated in an earnings report, MMOs made up around 68% of Square Enix’s operating profits, and this is a company that has released a lot of other mainstream games. FF14 makes money, but whether that money is going back into it to make it better is unclear.
But just because these are promises further down the line, that doesn’t mean Yoshi-P isn’t excited for what’s coming next: “So of course, in the next expansion, we are planning various changes to the mechanics, but even for the current expansion, from patch 7.1 we have a lot of new content planned.” He brings up the upcoming limited job, Beastmaster, and adds: “I cannot provide any details at this point in time, but it’s shaping up to be very good indeed, so there’s a lot that players can look forward to.”