Naoki Yoshida, director of Final Fantasy 14 and more commonly referred to as Yoshi-P, has some thoughts on his MMORPG’s “content hierarchy,” as he calls it.
In an interview with JP Games, as spotted by VGC, Yoshida expresses concern that not all players are engaging with all types of content in the game.
“I started to feel recently particularly that the way that things are structured in Final Fantasy 14 no longer matches the players’ preferences, and this is something that I started to feel after we entered this year,” he explains. “And so I felt that now we are at a time where we need to incorporate a major change in the content hierarchy and also the game’s design, and this is limited not just to expansions, but to the overall development of Final Fantasy 14.”
Yoshida confirms one of the unfortunate facts of the genre. There’s a large subset of casual players not engaging with the hardcore content, just as there’s a large subset of hardcore players not engaging with the casual content. “It’s almost the same as being non-existent.”
Final Fantasy 14 Is Shifting Its Design Strategy Starting With Patch 7.35
Yoshida acknowledges that, no matter how much content they make for Final Fantasy 14, there’s a large portion of the playerbase that has already decided some portions of content aren’t for them.
“So, what I want to say is that, of course, for the top tier of players, we know that content tailored towards them is needed, and we will continue to produce that content. And on the other side of the spectrum, for the really casual players, we also understand that that content is also needed, and we will continue to produce that. So, we will continue to tailor content for both ends of the spectrum.”
The goal is to change their design so that they have content enjoyed by everyone. For example, if there are five types of content, then hardcore, casual, and players in between those levels will all see from their perspectives that there are five types of content. It’s a philosophy we’ll see as early as Patch 7.35.
Here’s the problem, though. No matter what you do to certain types of players, they will have no interest in consuming all types of content. I’m the type of MMORPG player that, yes, swiped my credit card to skip the main story and get straight to endgame content in Final Fantasy 14. I don’t care how good the story is. I don’t care about the side missions or quests. I just want to raid.
We’ll see if Yoshida and the team can get people like me to care about other types of content. Honestly, though, I’m not holding my breath.
