Final Fantasy 14 director doesn't have any plans to change 'the structure' of Dawntrail's patches, but its Bozja-like field exploration zone 'will be larger in scale than the content we've had in the past'

GamesRPGFinal FantasyFinal Fantasy 14Final Fantasy 14 director doesn’t have any plans to change ‘the structure’ of Dawntrail’s patches, but its Bozja-like field exploration zone ‘will be larger in scale than the content we’ve had in the past’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Square Enix)

The Hero of Light slashes with paired daggers.

The reception to the post-Endwalker patch cycle in Final Fantasy 14 has been decidedly tepid. Aside from a mixed reaction to the main story, the community has been split in opinion over new additions like Island Sanctuary and Variant Dungeons, with complaints around a lack of midcore content and meaningful rewards permeating discussion.I offered my own feelingson where things were at last year, and fellow Eorzea dweller Harvey Randall dove intothe state of Final Fantasy 14earlier this year.

It’s drummed up thoughts around whether the current post-expansion patch structure—which has largely remained the same across the last decade—needs to change. Some are pretty down with the comfort of knowing what’s coming and when, while I’ve seen murmurings over the last couple of years from folk who want to see the team breaking the mould a little.

Personally, I’m not too sure what camp I fall into. While I am a creature of habit and enjoy knowing exactly when I can lose myself in the next batch of Savage raids or spend far too long fawning over the Alliance Raid armour, I’ve found myself repeatedly dropping off the game since patch 6.2. I was curious to know director and producer Naoki Yoshida’s thoughts on how patches are structured, and whether he intends to shake things up.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

FF14 Dawntrail

Thankfully, I had a chance to sit down and chat with him during the Dawntrail media tour last month, so I was able to put the question forward to him. The short answer? The team has no intention of making any drastic changes any time soon, but don’t be disheartened just yet. “With regards to feedback that players might grow tired of this cadence, this was something that we factored in when we were planning the fundamental basis right back at the time of A Realm Reborn,” Yoshida tells me.

Ultimately, according to Yoshida, the benefits of having a set schedule for each expansion’s major content outweigh the risks. He also claims that it not only benefits the players—so they know what’s coming and when—but it makes things a lot easier on the developers too, making things more efficient for the team and therefore easier to push out all the raids and whatnot.

It’s a fair assessment to make, and I can imagine having a pretty clear-cut path from the get-go makes it a lot easier for the team to pump content out at a reasonable pace. But while we can continue to expect the base foundation many have familiarised themselves with, that doesn’t mean Yoshida and the team are getting too comfy with it.

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(Image credit: Square Enix)

Screenshots taken of a preview build during the Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail media tour.

As someone who was a big Bozja enjoyer and sorely missed having something like it during Endwalker, the prospect of a new large-scale field operation has me very excited. It’s entirely too easy to sink several hundred hours into a zone like that, as I’ve done across both Bozja and Stormblood’s Eureka, and should be a good way to keep the droughtier patches chugging along. But that’s not all Yoshida has up his sleeve: There’s some stuff we haven’t even been told about yet.

“Also, we are working on new content which we haven’t announced yet. And so I would not be able to share any details about that here,” Yoshida tells me. “But in addition to that, we are also working on adding more rewards. Previously, we received feedback that the Variant Dungeons, the rewards for those were not so good. And so then they weren’t so much of an incentive for people to go and participate in the rewards. But we are working on adding more rewards so that there would be more of an incentive to play the content and we are intending to build [on it] so that the structure is more enhanced.”

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