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Future Final Fantasy XIV Updates Detailed
Continuing a trend of transparency in regards to the massive Final Fantasy XIV overhaul currently underway, project Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida recently updated The Lodestone with a slew of new information.
Yoshida went to great detail about pending updates, using results from the recent Final Fantasy XIV Player’s Poll to explain how feedback will dictate the game's future. The poll was made available to users with a Square Enix account, and results came in from Japan, North America, and Europe.
According to Yoshida, information gleamed from the poll was quite useful in providing direction. Per the results, 56.8 percent of participants spend their time in Eorzea battling, while only 4.6 percent use their sessions for social behavior. This concerned Yoshida and the team, causing them to draw the conclusion that they haven’t provided enough group-oriented goals or systems to facilitate communication between players.
Another set of data showed that 77 percent of respondents marked their biggest desire of future updates as being “an overhaul to fundamental gameplay aspects.” Slightly more than 35 percent want the focus to address the “lack of in-game content” first, followed by 24.2 percent who would like to see the combat system addressed.
“The issue that players would first like to see addressed is a general lack of game content, followed by changes to the battle system,” detailed Yoshida. “Looking further, it seems that the type of content most strongly desired is quests and miniquests, accounting for about 40% of the responses. The auction house has also made a solid showing among the responses, no doubt due in part to the fact that, as previously mentioned, many of the pollees are or were FFXI players. My initial reaction was to interpret this as players stating that they want more adventures in Eorzea! More gil and loot!
“In line with this, I believe that significant changes to the battle system are necessary to create a style of combat that lends itself to the enjoyment of quests and miniquests. Following that logic one step further, it is equally necessary to bring about significant changes to the user interface to create a UI that lends itself to the enjoyment of the battle system. After all, there is no point in making thorough improvements to battle if the response and usability of the interface isn't capable of conveying those improvements to players.
“In line with the above results, we will be bringing quests and miniquests to Eorzea sometime after the beginning of February. Along with this, all of the changes being worked on during the end of last year and the beginning of this year to improve the games playability and user-friendliness will also be released around the same time.
The post continues in length and is a must read for fans concerned about the future of the game.
[Thanks to Torn Pr1nc3 for the tip!]
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