Interviews// Fixing Final Fantasy XIV

How do you solve a problem like Final Fantasy XIV? Square Enix launched the JRPG MMO in earnest for PC users back in 2010, but it was met with instant dissatisfaction from fans and critics alike, riddled as it was with technical problems and design flaws.

So perhaps it’s fitting that A Realm Reborn seeks to undo the damage of the last two years - not by being a title update or expansion pack, but by being a complete rewrite of the original.

If you’re going to give the game a total reset, it’s best to have the right man for the job. As it happens, Square Enix shuffled the lead developers of the Final Fantasy XIV team around a bit, placing Naoki Yoshida as the game’s producer and director.

As a hardcore MMO player himself - and after already proving his credentials in design in the Dragon Quest Monster Battle Road titles - he certainly seems up for the task. But, if A Realm Reborn is a rewrite from the ground up, why not simply release a brand new game?

Yoshida revealed, via an interpreter, that it was both a matter of pride for the legendary franchise, and a statement of intent to fans. “In its 25 years, the Final Fantasy series hasn’t really had a game that failed... or tripped up... as much as XIV did. We felt that we couldn’t let the game end on a bad note.

“By releasing a game that wasn’t up to the standards expected of the Final Fantasy series, we let a lot of fans down. We lost their trust. And so to rebuild that trust, we felt it was important to stick with the project and show that we’re not going to give up on it. We’re going to win that trust back.”

Those bold words seem to be backed up with a lot of recoding. Yoshida explains, while demonstrating the latest build of the game, that he and his design team - who were also fresh additions to the Final Fantasy XIV staff - have rebuilt the basic foundations of the original MMO.

Even the nature of levelling up - the original system (unlocking quests by earning experience points) has been scrapped and replaced with a more modern approach (earning experience points by completing quests).

Square Enix, of course, has another MMO that is still being supported, in the form of Final Fantasy XI. Did the admitted failure of Final Fantasy XIV cause any internal competition between the two game teams? Not really, Yoshida answered.

“There are some players who play both titles. There are some who only play one or the other. But the players might have gone to XI because they didn’t like XIV... well, as a company that’s no problem. They’re still sticking with a product from Square Enix. That’s way better than them moving onto a game from a different company!”

Joking aside, it must be comforting to Yoshida that there are plenty of Final Fantasy fans who are waiting in the wings, ready to give the company another chance. And that fact hasn’t gone unnoticed - one of the things that A Realm Reborn will feature is the integration of gameplay and design elements from every single Final Fantasy game in the series. It also helps that the revamp coincides with the franchise’s 25th anniversary, of course.

“We like to think that Final Fantasy XIV is a compilation of all of the previous games before it,” Yoshida said. “Each game has its own world, complete with many different things that separate it from the others in the series. There are, of course, things like Moogles and Summons that are consistent throughout, but generally each game brings something original to the table. We’ve taken some of these things and put them into XIV.”

Examples such as the devilish Crystal Tower dungeon from Final Fantasy III, and the special armour found in Final Fantasy VI, were mentioned as items and features that will be included in Final Fantasy XIV. “This is Final Fantasy,” Yoshida said in English, with a smile.

Continuing in Japanese, the director added that the compilation approach was taken to allow the MMO to appeal to a broad range of Final Fantasy fans - and to scale the seemingly erratic nature of the franchise’s evolution. “Each Final Fantasy game has had a different team working on them, with different producers. It ended up being like an internal competition within the company. Because of this, the series evolved in lots of different directions, and it lost a sense of consistency.

“But, because the franchise has been going for 25 years, every person has their own favourite moments - their own windows in their lives in which they fell in love with Final Fantasy,” he added. “Everyone has their own favourite game - some may say III, some may say VI, some may say VIII... in order to get all these people to come together and play one game for a long time, it’s important to take aspects from all of them and combine them.”

For all of its revamping, though, Final Fantasy XIV doesn’t stray too far from the standard MMO gameplay and UI mechanics seen in competing products from other companies. This is no accident - Yoshida explained that changing the controls to an MMO would cause a lot of user frustration and audience disruption. “If you play something for so long and you get used to it, it creates a lot of stress if you change it.

“It’s like moving house - if you decide to move to a different city, that’s stressful enough.” But, he continued, making drastic changes such as new control schemes and a refreshed UI would be the equivalent of “moving to a whole other country, or another planet. It’s completely different, so there’s even more stress. Reducing stress is important for us.”

This is partly the reason why Square Enix will not be switching to a free-to-play model for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - despite the fact that the original version allowed users to play the game for free due to a trial extension carried out in response to negative fan reaction. But it’s also about keeping a promise.

“As director and producer, it is my job to basically make the game profitable,” the director said. “But, if you only think of profit, then the best thing to have probably done would have been to scrap Final Fantasy XIV] and concentrate on Final Fantasy XV instead! But, it’s not all about the profit. It’s also about bringing the players what we originally promised.”

“Part of that original promise was to release the game under the subscription model, where you can pay for a monthly subscription where you can play 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. So fulfilling this promise is the first thing we must do.”

Of course, the company is willing to explore the potential benefits of going free-to-play in the future. Be it offering free play periods, offering a free client or other kinds of hybrid business models. It all depends on the direction of the project, Yoshida said. “We just didn’t want to do something just because a lot of other companies are.”

Finally, as the game nears its Beta testing period in the Winter, Yoshida said that he was far from saddened by the feedback handed to him over the original version of Final Fantasy XIV. In fact, he’s kind of glad they complained.

“Over the past few weeks, we’ve been getting a lot of passionate feedback from the community. We like to think that this game is not developed solely by us, but also the fans out there. We develop this game together.

“As for the harsh feedback... if the fans are complaining, it just proves that they are still passionate about the game. If they quit and moved onto another product without saying anything to us, then that would be the point where we’d lost.”