This weekend, Square Enix held its North American Fan Festival for Final Fantasy XIV in Anaheim, California. There, fans of the long-running MMORPG witnessed the reveal of the sixth expansion named Evercold. Players will journey to “The Fourth”, a world that is threatened by encroaching ice and giant arcane beasts that roam it. In our report from the keynote address, you can read over the major additions that were shared by producer/director Naoki Yoshida.
After the keynote, members of the media joined Yoshida for a Q&A session where he answered several questions about the upcoming expansion and the state of the game and its systems.
Note: Edits have been performed for clarity and brevity. Questions from multiple media groups were sent prior to the QA session and were selected by Square Enix uncited for Yoshida to answer in a group setting. Translation support for Yoshida provided by Aimi Tokutake (Square Enix). Media access to the QA session & photos were provided by Square Enix.
How did Final Fantasy XIV Online and Evangelion partnership come about? How long has this been in the works for?
Yoshida: We actually spoke with Khara Inc. about this. I’m afraid the information that we could reveal was what was already shared today at the keynote. That said, we’ve been working with them very closely and at a very rapid pace, just so that we were able to announce this at this Fan Festival.
I’m very relieved that we were able to get the information out. I’ve been looking at the reactions on social media, and it seems that while everybody is surprised, they’re also really excited about it. Again, I’m very relieved.
As mentioned during the keynote, we are working on new designs and artwork and things like that. We are also preparing information to reveal at the Europe and Japan Fan Festivals as well. There wasn’t really much else we can talk about today, but we are preparing to be able to talk about it more. We ask for your patience for just a little bit longer.
Will the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Final Fantasy XIV utilize the built in mouse controls across all areas of the game. Have you used it for a Savage raid yet?
For the first part of the question about the built in mouse controls: yes, it’s possible.
For the second part, I haven’t tried going into a Savage raid with the built-in mouse yet. I believe the QA team is checking and testing it. But, because you can use a controller, I think I would prefer to use that.
I’m sure you’re all aware that the Nintendo Switch 2 is a wonderful console [because] you can choose the way you want to play. If you put it in the [dock], you can play it on the TV and I think people who play the Savage raids might want to sit down for that content. I would imagine they’d hook up their mouse and keyboard and play it on the TV. You can also play it in handheld mode, so if you’re a gatherer or crafter, you can take the unit with you on the go and do some of the more casual things. With [our planned] shift from a daily cycle to a weekly cycle, you can choose what you want to focus on as you’re more free to choose which of the Switch 2’s modes to play in. I hope that players will choose which mode of play that suits them best.
I’ve already noticed some comments on social media questioning the Switch 2’s specs in comparison to more robust systems, and what would happen if you match with other players playing on different platforms in a Duty. To be honest, we’re really working hard on the optimization for the platform and striving to get the best performance on Switch 2. In towns, you may see a lower frame rate only because there’s so many players that are rendered on the screen, but we are still able to reach 30 frames per second and maintain a stable state. Considering Duties, I think the performance is something that you don’t have to be concerned about. I hope [players] don’t have to worry about the specs in comparison to other platforms.
Perhaps it was the way I explained it that may have caused people to misconstrue the situation with what we said about our PlayStation 4 client. While we’re going to fully support Evercold on PS4 we did ask for players to consider upgrading. Some people were mentioning on social media “oh, you’re going to close down the PS4 service, that’s why you’re making a Nintendo Switch 2 version.” That’s not the case.
The reason why we are looking to transition from the PS4 to the PS5, and encouraging players to do so, is because of the hardware limitations of the PS4. It is the size of the game that is a hurdle right now. Sony has been kind to us to continue support, even though we are approaching the limit of the hardware considering how large of a capacity requirement this game has. We’re reaching the point where the game is getting so big that the hardware itself won’t be able to handle it. That’s why we want people to start considering (not right away, but eventually) transitioning to the PS5. Again, we’re not saying that we are going to cease support of the PS4 version.
I’m really thankful to SIE [Sony Interactive Entertainment] for their support, because we’re pushing [the console] to its literal limit so that we can [continue to] deliver the game to our PS4 players.
Can you tell us a bit more about Dancing Mad (Ultimate)? Why was Kefka chosen, and how are you going to make it as interesting as other Ultimate raids that bring in different bosses during different phases to tell a story of sorts?
Regarding why Dancing Mad or Kefka was chosen for an Ultimate raid: because we have a limited number of people who can create Ultimate content, they take turns. Or, somebody raises their hand if they want to create the next raid. The person in charge of this Ultimate approached me with a pitch and I asked them: “What is your theme for the Ultimate?” and they said, “I really want to do Kefka.”
He’s a very big fan of Final Fantasy VI, and he also worked on the Kefka fight in the Interdimensional Rift Omega raid series—the normal and Savage mode. He came to me and said: “I can make something better. Let me do Kefka again.” It’s his almost unnatural love for Kefka that brought this about. [laughs]
As for your second question: I worry it’s going to be a spoiler. I’m sure those who have either watched or played Ultimate content will know this. But, with Final Fantasy XIV, Ultimates are not just a simple encounter. They also incorporate a sort of puzzle-solving element that you have overcome and solve. Due to so many intertwining elements in this fight, the puzzle solving element and Kefka as a character, it all closely ties together. It would make more sense for me to answer this question once we’ve seen the World First… Second… Third clear of the raid.
I mean, as a game producer, I should be promoting this fight, and I should be telling you what’s good about this fight, but I really want the players to experience it as a surprise. I want to prioritize their experience.
Why did you choose two completely original jobs for Evercold rather than pick from legacy jobs? How is that related to your plans to evolve the game?
Allow me to address the latter half of this question first, as I think it’s kind of irrelevant [to how we choose jobs]. I may have explained this a few times before, but whenever we release a new expansion and we introduce new jobs, there’s a process of how we select those jobs. To briefly explain:
The first reason is, simply put, a good chunk of the player population seems to prefer the DPS role over tank and healer, so we make it a point to always include or introduce one new DPS job based on our data.
Then the remaining decision is something of an orderly process where other roles like tanks or healers take turns. We determined which roles we’re going to implement with Evercold this way. In Dawntrail we had a melee DPS (viper) and a ranged magic DPS (pictomancer). For Evercold we looked at the ranged DPS role, as it’s that role’s turn in line. So, the two jobs or the roles that they would fall under were decided rather smoothly in that way.
Once the roles are decided, the battle system planners including Hikaru “Mr. Prime” Tamaki, enter into a “pitching” phase of the process.
For example: with a tank, we would think about what kind of weapon they would wield. What kind of gameplay experience will our players have, and things like that, while gathering ideas and submissions from our developers. And so, for the tank, I think we had five ideas pitched amongst the team. Out of those ideas, we look at what would be the most interesting or fun gameplay experience, and pick from there. The same process was done for the ranged DPS in Evercold as well.
After that, and once we have our basic mechanics down for these different jobs, then we think about what to name it, and if an idea was pitched along with an existing Final Fantasy series job, then we would associate it with that. But this time, the ideas that were pitched were very unique. They were not based on any legacy Final Fantasy job. We wanted to prioritize that sort of unique feeling based on the interesting ideas that they had pitched. That’s why we decided that the Evercold jobs are going to be original and not legacy jobs.
This process has been going on, and we’ve been doing it for many years and every time we create a new expansion. I think you can see it’s different from just simply this whole theme of evolution that we’ve been talking about throughout the keynote. Again, we continue to pursue what players would enjoy and to have fun with and so yes, I think it is important that we constantly think about evolving Final Fantasy XIV. But, the decision to add original jobs wasn’t necessarily because of the theme for Evercold to tie into the theme of evolving the game.
Evolved Mode jobs seem to be a substantial overhaul. Can you roughly estimate when you started working on them?
When I was considering what we now call the “Evolved Mode” battle system, I wanted to talk to assistant director Tsuyoshi Yokozawa and battle director Kei Sato. That was about one and a half years ago. When I talked with them, they both suggested Tamaki would be the best person to handle this system. I mentioned this during the development panel earlier, but that’s when I invited Mr. Prime to dinner. “Hey, let’s go get some grilled meats.” That was about a year and four months ago.
I think the biggest challenge that faced us was time, and we really want to be thoughtful and thorough in building this system, but in order to do so, it would require time. I think we started work on that next step, shortly after 7.0 was released.
I touched upon this in the different discussions about Tamaki. He was designing the different jobs, the individual jobs that would be in Evolved Mode. But, at the same time he had to work on different encounter team tasks, such as: performing adjustments and checking them for balance and difficulty tuning, and making sure that mechanics and gimmicks are being designed properly. He was doing his full role of tasks assigned to him and he also works on PvP tasks. Everything was happening parallel to each other. Again, time was definitely a large challenge.
Today we showed four jobs [at the development panel], but as of February, when I checked the Evolved Mode system, 21 jobs were available for me to test. There are still some mechanics for those jobs that Tamaki is still experimenting with. Maybe there are some items that he may want to include or change and tweak. He is continuing to work on it, and we are on track to release the Evolved Mode battle system at the release of Evercold. We’ll continue to adjust it.
As for why we kept the current battle system as Reborn Mode, I actually want to ask the members of the media who here feel they are an “old school MMO player”? Do you remember Star Wars Galaxies? I think if you know about the game, I’m sure you know what happened to it, when, when it did it’s thing.
[Yoshida is referring to a “New Game Enhancements” or “NGE” update for Star Wars Galaxies that fundamentally changed core gameplay systems that were implemented quite suddenly and with little warning. Players reacted harshly to the update.]
I actually really like Star Wars Galaxies and its game design, but, for the betterment of the gameplay experience (and they were doing it for the players) they took an existing system and they changed it to something entirely new. Players did not take that very well and I know people have been referring to that situation as a very tragic incident.
I mentioned this at today’s keynote as well, but, counting from the original version of Final Fantasy XIV, we’ve been around for 15 years, 13 if we count from A Realm Reborn. We’ve been building this game together with players worldwide and we’ve been on this journey together. People have gotten so familiar and used to the system that we have established, and I knew that I didn’t want to just suddenly remove what we’ve been used to. That was my decision from the start.
When we were developing Evolved Mode, I mentioned to Yokozawa and Sato that I really wanted to keep the current battle system and that we’re going to continue adjusting and updating for Evercold. We need to make sure that we develop the Evolved Mode, but also, properly address what we currently have as well. That was the direction that I had for them from the start.
With the game being around for this many years, and comparing designs to those introduced in Dawntrail (the Viper and Pictomancer jobs), I feel that we’re already kind of stepping into that Evolved Mode. Recent job designs feel a lot more streamlined, and I feel very good about them. With that knowledge, experience and insight that we’ve built, I think we can start applying that to the existing jobs that people have been accustomed to and had for these many years.
Regional player matching is a huge improvement for Final Fantasy XIV. What made this change possible now?
[Yoshida polled the room on who has been playing since A Realm Reborn.]
Remember when we didn’t have Party Finder?
First we had to build Party Finder, then we had to build World Visit, etc. We’ve had to build each of these systems and I think you’ve all seen how we’ve progressed one step at a time. With these “building blocks” stacking on top of each other, and our growing confidence in maintaining stability as players travel between Worlds, we felt comfortable that if we continued through this “tunnel”, we’d be able to break down further barriers. We felt this around two years ago.
From that perspective, I think what made this possible was the fact that we were able to continue developing these features, gleaning knowledge and gaining the insight necessary to continue. We could finally see a light at the end [of the tunnel] and how far we’ve come.
In approaching this: it starts with the player’s character information and the server that manages that. Next, the World server that the character is in. Then, the group of the World servers and then the “frontier” server, and then the group server. While we’re doing that, we would replace the old equipment so that it would allow for us to continue to be stable. Changing out the equipment started two years ago, then the actual coding started a year and four or five months ago.
The server infrastructure team worked really hard on trying to work on the foundation so that we could build upon it. I really want to express my thanks to those teams and I’m really happy that we were able to get to this point. I’ve wanted to get here since A Realm Reborn where we can have player matching across the region, and now I’m comfortable enough to make it happen with Evercold. I’m really glad that is happening. Thank you for your support and your patience after all these years.
What’s the inspiration behind the expansion name “Evercold”? How long ago was that name locked in?
First and foremost, before we settled on Evercold there was another name candidate that we had. This has happened many times in the past. For example, when we were trying to come up with a name for the Stormblood expansion, one of the names we had was “Rebellion”. Unfortunately, for various reasons (including legal reasons), we couldn’t choose that one. For Shadowbringers we thought of “Darkbringer” but that was rejected as well. Endwalker was “World’s End” but that wasn’t possible either.
Back to Evercold, I really wanted to go with “Absolute Zero” and I was thinking about what the logo would look like. But, that was rejected as well. That name was all about conveying that “everything was frozen.”. There was also scientific evidence that was found that the Earth was once completely frozen. [Yoshida is referencing “Snowball Earth” theory.] That was the kind of theme I wanted to go with. We can imagine things are physically freezing, literally or metaphorically, like how a person’s heart could grow cold and icy. There are many different interpretations of what “icing over” would mean.
In Evercold, players, in their role as the “Warrior of Light”, will encounter many instances where various different [interpretations] of “ice” that they will need to melt or destroy to move forward and explore and become a sort of “wanderer.” I hope that the players will experience and enjoy that journey. As for when I started thinking about the concept of this next expansion: it was about two months after Dawntrail released.
I have a general idea of what direction I want to take regarding the overall saga, so it’s more pinpointing what the next theme would be.
The keynote address showed off imagery that seemed heavily influenced by Norse mythology, including a man who appeared to have one eye [a potential reference to Odin]. There were Norse references in the Heavensward expansion as well, so is there a reasoning behind this?
Actually, we tried to obscure that it was Norse inspired.
I’m really impressed that you were able to catch that. It’s one of the reasons why we did not list any sort of names or proper nouns in the keynote presentation. I think you’ll start to realize that as we reveal more information. If you want to research some of the cultures and the mythologies surrounding what we’ve shown you might get a better understanding or find deeper enjoyment in doing so.
Regarding the question: it’s a sharp observation but that’s all I can say at this point.
How will the team manage creating stronger job identities without sacrificing balance?
When we talk about “balance”, it can be a bit vague or broad. It might refer to comparing jobs within the same role and how much damage they can deal, or it might mean all DPS jobs regardless of role. We look at balance within a role, but even then, there are different roles within a role.
For example we showed the Dragoon’s “Evolved Mode” gameplay during a panel earlier today. There was an action called “Sky High” where the character jumps into the air for three seconds—he went off the screen and didn’t come back down for a while. During which he was able to reduce 90% of damage taken. In our minds, the image of Final Fantasy dragoons are their jump attacks, so it was a characteristic we wanted to bring out in Evolved Mode. Also, samurai in Evolved Mode have a big move or an attack. We create something unique for a particular job before we think about balance.
Back to my earlier example about Sky High. That’s three seconds that the character is off screen. If you’re looking at global cooldown skills, you can execute them twice. So, to offset that, when the character comes back on screen, you’re dealing about twice the damage. That’s how we balance it based on the mechanics of a particular job and in terms of gameplay feel. Of course, we in the development team would look at different feedback that was provided and adjust from there as well. I think the process doesn’t really change for us.
Have you ever considered making a Final Fantasy XIV spinoff or a single player game set in a different time period? Maybe one that explores side characters?
Yes, I’ve thought about it.
Considering how long I’ve been working on Final Fantasy XIV, I still want to bring new players into this world, even if it’s just one person, so that they can experience this game. That said, there are a lot of people out there that look at an “online Final Fantasy” and don’t consider it part of the single player series. While I’d love to consider making a standalone offline version of Final Fantasy XIV, the team best suited to making it is the one that is currently working on the current online version.
If we stop making an online Final Fantasy XIV, maybe we can take on that project then. On the flip side, if there are people or companies interested in creating a standalone version of Final Fantasy XIV and want to take on the challenge of doing so… I mean, I’m half-joking half-serious when I say this but if somebody is patient and you want to helm such a project then we want to hear from you.
Like my earlier comments about finally attaining regional matchmaking, we’ve always had a motto of “never give up.” If we have an obstacle we need to overcome we’ll take it one step at a time and move what we can move. If anybody is passionate enough, an individual or a company, we’d like to hear your pitch.
Regarding a spinoff, of course, I’d love to take on that challenge. Maybe build a smaller team within Creative Studio III. But, if that happens, I’m sure some players would look at that project and say “you should be focusing on the main Final Fantasy XIV!”
Between Endwalker and Dawntrail, you said you would continue the game for another ten years. Where do you see the game then? What goals do you want to achieve?
“Goal”, to my mind, sounds like an endpoint. I can’t really imagine Final Fantasy XIV coming to an end. It’s my job or goal to keep the game going. Even if I die or retire, the game will continue on without me – maybe that’s my goal. I need to create the state that will allow for the game to accomplish that.
Regarding “the next ten years”, I feel the game is at a sort of “midway point” or something that’s on a path, perpetually going on. Through Shadowbringers and Endwalker, we saw a climax to the [Hydaelyn/Zodiark] story arc. I’m hoping that in the next ten years, we’ll bring another climax that’s comparable, if not something that can surpass what we experienced in the previous ten years. Something for the players to get a taste of and to experience that climax ten years later. Right now, we’re starting to build that story, taking one step at a time.
With Evercold, (and this applies to all of Final Fantasy XIV and not just this expansion) you’ll see the end of the journey [by completing] the path that the Warrior of Light walks. If you continue to play, I think you will understand this meaning and that which is ahead of you.
Final Fantasy XIV is now available on Windows PC, Steam, PS4|PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Mac.