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

[Swordsman]

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.

​

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.

[Jeeqbit]

Oh, he realizes that now?

Thank goodness.

[CNitsah]

Oh, he realizes that now?

Thank goodness.

I think the messages got to them a while ago (probably when critics began to rain around 6.2/6.3), but now is the moment to talk about it. One of the biggest problems with FFXIV is their lack of flexibility. They chose a direction for EW, patches, and went with it until the end, despite all the critics. There is no room to slightly change the plan if something go wrong. That we saw with EW, 2 years of drought because how they chose to make anything they added one time only, and did barely nothing to change that situation. Best example is Variant dungeons, the tweaks were minimals, and none of them dealt with the core problems.

If they talked about that a year ago, that would have been even worst, because people would have gone "wait, you admit it, but do nothing? Are you kidding?". Now is the time to talk about it, every EW content is out, so it's the perfect time to say "it will be different". It's PR strategy. They've probably taken that into account since early in the DT planning, and whatever they chose, good or bad, we're stuck with it until the next expansion.

The real question is how much did they understand of the complaints and how it will be tackled.

[Larirawiel]

Oh, he realizes that now?

Thank goodness.

What? There was some content which was not so stress-free. And the people complained about it literary everywhere.




Cheers

[Jeeqbit]

What? There was some content which was not so stress-free. And the people complained about it literary everywhere.

Good, because stress makes you complain. Then you rise to the challenge and overcome it anyway (or get carried, since it's a multiplayer game and people can help you out). Either way, you get through it.

[Larirawiel]

Good, because stress makes you complain. Then you rise to the challenge and overcome it anyway (or get carried, since it's a multiplayer game and people can help you out). Either way, you get through it.

True. But the people mostly complain in forums or on Twitter/X or on Reddit how stressful it is. And then, SQEX nerfes it.



Cheers

[CidHeiral]

True. But the people mostly complain in forums or on Twitter/X or on Reddit how stressful it is. And then, SQEX nerfes it.

That's actually a good point. Even if they do make things more challenging, whether they stick with it or not is a different story.

Something similar happened in World of WarCraft around Wrath/Cata. Blizzard had inadvertently socially engineered their player base to be awful and entitled through a series of poor design decisions during Wrath. When they tried to reverse course and ratchet the challenge back up in Cataclysm the community was so used to the new status quo that they cried and cried how everything was impossible now that they couldn't pull the entire dungeon at once and ignore all the boss mechanics. To their credit the devs didn't budge for a short time, and even wrote a blog post about how to git gud, but eventually they caved and nerfed everything into the ground again.

If the FFXIV devs go a similar route they're going to have a lot of players upset that they actually have to play the game now. The devs will need to have the backbone to stick to their guns and tell those people to deal with it.

[Kaurhz]

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.

[VentVanitas]

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.

[Supersnow845]

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