Final Fantasy 14's gonna be shaking up how it handles difficulty come patch 7.35, after a mini-disaster with patch 7.25's Occult Crescent back in May. To put a long story short, Creative Studio 3's somewhat fumbled approach to content difficulty came to a head; the Forked Tower somehow managed to thread the needle, becoming a raid made for no-one.
Hardcore players weren't keen because it was almost impossible to get an organised group of players into; meanwhile, the casual, midcore, and solo crowd were turned off thanks to stringent preparation requirements and "body-checks", where one misplaced step could wipe the raid.
That's changing with 7.35's Pilgrim's Traverse, which'll have all sorts of variable difficulty content—you'll be able to tackle all 100 floors of the deep dungeon with a matchmade group, but you'll then be able to challenge a "quantum" difficulty boss via offerings. Give more offerings, get a harder butt-kicking.
Per a new PCGamesN interview with Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P), this is going to be "the general direction that we've set for Final Fantasy 14 moving forward".
As he explains, "With the changes that we are implementing in Pilgrim's Traverse, we will also be implementing similar changes based on feedback in the new variant dungeon." Said variant dungeon will be dropping in Patch 7.4, and it's not the only thing Yoshi-P says might get the Quantum treatment.
"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.
"This is the general direction that we've set for Final Fantasy 14 moving forward," he re-affirms, then follows that shot with the chaser: "And because of this new direction, it could be that the overall [amount] of content that we implement in the game goes down. But in doing so, we hope that many more players will be able to enjoy the content that we implement."
Uh oh. If you're out of the loop, Final Fantasy 14's patch cadence has been, one might say, not very good. A three-month schedule has turned into a four-month schedule, which is more often than not a five-month schedule. And with the latest fanfest dates announced, some players are worried we might get a grand total of two patches next year.
This might be a problem with the live translation—language barriers are a nightmare—but I cannot imagine a less reassuring thing to hear as a player. However, to play optimist's advocate for a moment, less volume doesn't necessarily mean less to do.
A huge thorn in FF14's side has been its one-and-done content: Whereas most MMOs give you gradual grinds and reward incentives to repeat dungeons or raids, Final Fantasy 14 has a habit of putting out some great stuff and then giving you jack-all reason to do it again.
Take Endwalker's variant dungeons: I enjoyed all three of them tremendously. I also beat each route once for the mount and never touched them again—because I've not been given a reason to do so. Like it or not, MMORPGs (and arguably games in general) are about progression. Without a carrot on the end of the stick, the horse simply does not gallop.
In theory, I'd be happy to take less overall dungeons, raids, etc. for things that're designed for, y'know, an actual MMORPG game loop. In practice, we've already been waiting longer and longer for FF14 patches to drop—and that's despite the game being one of Square Enix's biggest earners. I hope 7.35 knocks my socks off, but I've been burnt before.
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