It is becoming increasingly difficult to recommend Final Fantasy 14 to new players as the years go on. Now in its 13th year of service with a sixth expansion due in January, the MMORPG requires hundreds of hours to complete — and that’s if we are just talking about the main story. Despite this Herculean effort, Square Enix has been adamant that players must go through the entire game’s story to access the latest content. That could finally be changing.
During a media Q&A at Final Fantasy Fan Fest in Berlin (as reported by PC Gamer), Final Fantasy 14 producer Naoki Yoshida revealed the development team is working on potential solutions to make the game more accessible to beginners. “I had previously said that I want players to enjoy the story, so I would like them to have a fresh experience right from A Realm Reborn,” Yoshida admitted “But now we are at this point, we’ve begun thinking about accommodating these kinds of requests.”
Yoshida shared that Square Enix is considering two ways to address the issue, though he remained fairly cryptic on both. He said that the first one will be implemented before or at Evercold‘s release. He teased that the second solution involves a system whose feasibility the development team is in the process of reviewing. “There’s a non-zero possibility of us being able to implement it for [patch] 8.0. So there is a possibility that we could make it,” Yoshida said.
While the topic of a streamlined path or skip through Final Fantasy 14‘s story remains controversial among the fanbase, it makes sense for Square Enix to consider it at this point in the MMO’s life. Evercold, the game’s next expansion, marks the start of the Godless Realms Saga. This is something of a new beginning, with the MMO’s initial story wrapping up in 2021’s Endwalker. It has the potential to be the perfect onboarding point for beginners who have, until now, been intimidated by the game’s mountain of quests.
Square Enix has already trimmed the lengthy list of main scenario quests over the years in an attempt to make catching up with Final Fantasy 14 easier, but even this has failed to keep pace with the volume of new story content each expansion adds. There are paid story skips available to players for each expansion, but Square Enix seems ready to consider a free implementation of something similar going forward.
One of the biggest concerns with offering players the ability to jump right in to the latest expansion is how it will affect the rest of the player-base. While the story is important, the hours of playtime it takes to get through it also help players learn just how Final Fantasy 14‘s mechanics work. As content still revolves around teaming up with other players, ‘the community worries that an influx of players without proper tutorials could harm everyone’s experience. Yoshida hinted that more details on potential solutions could come during Tokyo Fan Fest in October.
