/r/ffxivdiscussion: YoshiP comments on regrets over making FF14 too stress-free

Original post:

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Thought this sub might be interested in this new interview I translated over on main:


Yoshida (reflecting on the fan festival): So from now on, we’ll keep working to surprise players and go beyond what they imagine. But that reminds me of something I regret… as we’ve continued to operate FF14, we’ve made the game more comfortable, a game you can play without stress. But looking back on the last 10 years, I’m thinking we’ve overdone that a bit.

Shimoda: What do you mean?

Yoshida: A video game should ofcourse have an element of stress, but how to handle that properly, is extremely difficult…

Shimoda: I can agree with that.

Yoshida: For example, in a side scrolling game, if there aren’t any holes you can drop down into if you miss a jump, ofcourse the game would lose its stress, but it would also lose its fun.

Yoshida: Speaking of FF14, I would like to restore that part a little bit. If we do that, we can give everyone a better challenge, in a good way, than ever before.

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Not saying I'm expecting a sudden course correction, but from several things YoshiP has been saying recently (this, his recent comments on Relics, his comments a few months back about Endwalker not having enough coop content and wanting to bring this back for Dawntrail) it does feel like there's a bit of a shift in how he and the team are approaching some of the trends that culminated in Endwalker. As always, the proof will be in the pudding when we actually get into DT's patch content.
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I thought this was an interesting read, and I sincerely hope Yoshi P follows through with what he says.

r/ffxivdiscussion link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...king_ff14_too/

r/ffxiv link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ake_ff14_less/

Famitsu link: https://www.famitsu.com/news/202403/11336660.html

Feel free to discuss below. Cheers.

Oh, he realizes that now?

Thank goodness.

I think just the acknowledgement of an exaggeration alone is a good start, frankly, as it assumes he does see a problem in the game being too care-free, and half of the work is seeing the problem in the first place.

Personally, I would love to see a direction akin closer to Stormblood than any other past expansion... Just in terms of the level they had it at. I can't speak on behalf of raiding or anything, but at that time it just felt like... If you wanted to achieve something, then there would be an element of stress, which would only make it more satisfying. Like, in terms of crafting, for me, which was arguably my main activity outlet at the time... Stormblood gave me the greatest degree of overall satisfaction.

I think people just need to realize there's going to be an element of failure, and they need to accept that. I also think the dev team and Yoshida just need to realize that trying too hard to eliminate this factor is just as bad or unhealthy as going in the opposite direction, for me personally my perception is just that they had that, and they veered too far into 1 direction and started to blur the line between removing stress and overcompensating for players that just are lazy, or just don't want to learn.

it is intriguing to see Yoshida discuss this openly, it makes me wonder if he's showing awareness that XIV can be too easy at times? perhaps he saw the feedback for the Myths of the Realm raids or something, just my speculation. I don't doubt him when he says that it is difficult to handle challenge, though, but I am very interested to see how he plans to make the game "less stress-free."

I still have rock-bottom expectations for Dawntrail, but seeing Yoshida be more receptive as of recent is very welcome to me. I'm willing to put up with more of the game's nonsense so long as they keep communicating.

As I’ve said DT is honestly the most hope I’ve had since I saw the ShB SCH job action trailer (which still isn’t much). Acknowledgment of this problem is the first step to fixing it

While it's nice that he acknowledged that he went too far with tuning the game downwards, I have to wonder why he's speaking up about it now? And how much will DT actually change?

I think if we just take alliance raids for example...

They are mechanically well-constructured, but they have over-telegraphed them to a point where you know exactly what the mechanic is doing on your first time, so there is no real threat if you don't tunnel on your rotation.

Whereas you would have this many mechanics in Weeping City, but the difference is they weren't telegraphed much, so if you didn't know them then you simply just died and occasionally the whole alliance wiped to various of the first 3 bosses. The spider boss was rarest but I did see wipes to it. And the last boss didn't really wipe everyone, but half the alliance almost always died and had to get resurrected frequently after having their hair cut.

The difference? Everyone still cleared and farmed these alliances raids. The difference is it was more fun because there was deaths and wipes.

The other thing is just the removal of responsibility for placing things correctly or tanking correctly. If someone has decided to be a tank, learning how to separate adds is surely a basic thing they should have to learn. If they wipe the alliance, so what, they went into a raid not knowing how to tank and they will know for the future.

The whole point of the purple barrier was so you could wipe, return to the purple barrier, discuss strategy (ie. how to split adds, where to place certain mechs, place waymarks), then pull again. That's what they have effectively got rid of by over-telegraphing everything.

It's reassuring that he finally realizes that. It's just not satisfying seeing enemies stuck at the same difficulty or even get easier as you level up. What felt right to me was around 70 with Ivalice as peak difficulty in game-balance: enough to challenge you and keep a sense of danger but not overly impossible to overcome and make you give up.

I mean he probably seen how people are getting away by triple stacking in Syrcus Tower or completely skipping entire highlight attacks like the Scales in Aglaia. Myths in particular feel like a glorified tutorial with bosses taking like 30seconds to even attack you. Had a run where the boss was already at 60% and he pulled of like 2-3 attacks? We're friggin lvl 90 - we ain't novice adventurers at that level yet the game really does make you feel like one.

IMO they should skip those "tutorial attacks" or at least make them happen way faster so you get into the interesting stuff earlier. If Attacks just going to hit like wet noodles all the time, at least make them more frequent to compensate (which I actually prefer over constant 1-shot mechanics tbh)

I knew this would be copied over to forum,lol. If they make relic like bozja. They just need to make sure they future proof it.

So is it reasonable to assume he is talking about difficulty levels of normal mode content here? This part of the interview isnt very specific.