FFXIV director teases more “stressful” content on the way to restore game’s challenge

The Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida has expressed regret over making the game “more comfortable” in a recent interview with Japanese Video Game magazine Famitsu.

Final Fantasy XIV is for an MMO a relatively open experience. There aren’t too many convoluted systems that hold the player back, the combat is somewhat simple and the game doesn’t require the player to complete difficult tasks in order to progress.

On top of that, the game offers plenty of casual content for the less experienced and laid-back gamers. Lifestyle content like Island Sanctuary, gathering and crafting jobs and player housing lets players spend time in FFXIV without stressing too much.

However, it seems that this may be changing sometime soon, as the director of FFXIV Naoki Yoshida has revealed regrets that the game is too “comfortable”.

In a recent interview with Japanese outlet Famitsu, Yoshi-P expressed regrets over making FFXIV “less stressful”.

“That reminds me of something I regret… as we’ve continued to operate FF14, we’ve made the game more comfortable, a game you can play without stress. But looking back on the last 10 years, I’m thinking we’ve overdone that a bit,” the director explained.

When asked to explain, Yoshi-P spoke about how stress in video games can make the experience more enjoyable, using side-scrolling platformers as an example.

“In a side-scrolling game, if there aren’t any holes you can drop down into if you miss a jump, of course, the game would lose its stress, but it would also lose its fun.

“Speaking of FF14, I would like to restore that part a little bit. If we do that, we can give everyone a better challenge, in a good way, than ever before.”

What exactly this may mean isn’t yet certain, but it could potentially lead to the general difficulty of FFXIV’s quests going up, meaning harder combat encounters in trials and dungeons in Dawntrail.