It's hard to say whether Final Fantasy 14's new combat will be a win or a flop, but I'm just happy to see the developer trying something new

Mollie Taylor

I've been playing Final Fantasy 14 since 2014, so at this point I've seen everything from cross-class skills to the two-minute meta. I'm more excited than ever to see what Evercold brings to combat!

When Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki Yoshida took to the stage for his opening keynote at the North American Fan Festival, I knew change was coming. He'd been hinting that the next expansion—which we now know is called Evercold—would mark a new era of Final Fantasy 14.

Despite that, I still thought it was all going to be relatively safe. Creative Studio 3 has been trying little bits here and there throughout Dawntrail, but its core gameplay and patch cadence has remained staunchly the same.

I was wrong.

Yoshida's keynote felt like a recognition of the community's frustrations, one which culminated in the big announcement: Evercold will mark the end of the two-minute meta, and a brand-new combat style intended to return some flexibility to rotations and individuality that has suffered at the hands of homogenisation.

For those who aren't familiar with Final Fantasy 14's current combat, almost every job essentially revolves around one big button that's on a two-minute cooldown. It usually grants either a buff to themselves or to the party. In the vast majority of encounters, making sure everyone is aligning their big button (and pooling any resources to spend during its effect), is incredibly important.

It's a rather rigid choice that's led to Creative Studio 3 designing themselves into a hole. New jobs have to slot into this meta, and designing encounters has to be done with this two-minute synergy in mind.

But when January 2027 rolls around, these big buff abilities are going away and two combat styles are being introduced. Reborn mode, which is what we have now, and Evolved mode. New jobs will only have the latter mode available, which makes me think Reborn only exists because CS3 is too scared to force everyone over to the new style straight away.

I don't blame them either, especially after seeing a huge mix of opinions on Evolved's combat. It's condensing skills down—think putting your 1-2-3 rotation onto a single button or two abilities on one button that'll do different things depending on who you're targeting—which some are construing to mean "easier".

Will it be easier? Who knows. We did get a glimpse of the changes during a developer panel on the first day, with Yoshi-P showing off Bard, White Mage, and Paladin. I'm not completely sold on White Mage's damage ability, Glare, becoming an instant-cast, but the team said it was in the interest of placing greater emphasis on GCD healing, which is something I am sold on.

They've put a little pizzazz into Bard with some sweet aerial dodges and once again giving the job an ability you have to cast—something we haven't had since Heavensward. And while tank is by far my least played role, I was really liking what I saw with Paladin's kit.

I don't think it's going to be perfect, and I think there'll certainly be a lot of teething issues when Evercold first launches. It is not going to have everyone on board from the off. Hell, I don't even know if I'm going to like it. It's hard to say based on a snippet of something that's actively in development.

But honestly? It's so refreshing to see Creative Studio 3 trying. Despite Dawntrail being my absolute favourite expansion for encounter design, the stench of stagnation has been all over it. Relatively little has changed in terms of gameplay since Shadowbringers, and that exhaustion is being felt even harder than usual with increasing waits between major patches and a story that hasn't gripped the masses.

And for a long time, it felt like the developer had no intention of switching things up, either. But the keynote was clear: CS3 is listening, and it's making an earnest attempt at changing things. That alone is huge for a company so accustomed to digging in its heels and sticking to the status quo. And it's going to make me a little more open to whatever the future of Final Fantasy 14's combat looks like—better for the studio to try, fail, and work it out from there than to have never attempted to do things differently in the first place.

It's definitely understandable to be apprehensive about what Evolved combat and a game without a two-minute synergy looks like. While the game's story is what draws a lot of people in, the encounter design and combat is what keeps many of us around. But I'm so excited to see CS3 taking a stab at evolution—it's the very thing we've been asking for, after all.