As FF14 Dawntrail takes us to level 100, Yoshida is musing on what’s next

Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail has some of the best dungeons and jobs the MMORPG has ever seen. Learning Viper is challenging, and the new dungeon mechanics can leave you scratching your head at first, but once you master the mechanics, Tural’s offerings are top-tier. Now that we’re at level 100, though, where do we go from here? How will FF14 remain challenging with a solid sense of progression? Well, developer Square Enix and director Naoki ‘Yoshi-P’ Yoshida are certainly thinking about it.

Now that Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail is here, Square Enix is musing on what comes next. Does the MMORPG’s next expansion take us to level 110, are the next two jobs even more complex, and do we follow the same item level structure that we have for a decade? Yoshida is unsure, but he does want to maintain one thing: the feeling that our Warrior of Light is evolving.

“Increasing a level cap number is one thing, but what interests people and what somehow brings them closer to their characters is the feeling that they’re evolving, that their character is growing, becoming more and more powerful,” Yoshida explains in an interview over on Jeux Online. “So how do we make people feel that their character is getting stronger? With numbers, it’s a bit difficult. Do we keep this level cap idea? Is there also the use of material to strengthen the character?”

Yoshida also talks about job complexity, pondering how Square Enix might keep improving them. While the new Viper and Pictomancer jobs are some of the best to play, they do start overly complicated. The Final Fantasy 14 Viper is a mess of alternating combos and stacked abilities, but as soon as the melee DPS clicks there’s nothing like it. You’re in a flow state of combos and positional attacks, even if there are a lot of hotkeys to organize when you start out.

“So what do we do?” Yoshida muses. “Do we continue in this direction of increasing complexity, with ever more new actions, ever more new keys, making them even more complex for some players to use? Or on the contrary, are we thinking about a new way of playing jobs, another system of complexity that’s not just an accumulation of more skills, but another way of using them, another way of playing?”

Yoshida goes on to say that Final Fantasy 14 is an MMO that’s intended to be “fairly universal,” appealing to both the occasional, casual player and daily players going through high-level content. This balancing act doesn’t negate how Square Enix wants to keep content fresh, though, and this is the mindset Yoshida is taking into decisions around progression after Dawntrail.

“You always have to change things up a bit, bring in something new, otherwise you run the risk of stagnating,” Yoshida adds. “So our aim as creators is always to challenge ourselves, always to question ourselves, and we hope that the various decisions we’ll be making and the changes we’ll be making will be to your liking, and that you’ll be able to take advantage of these new features to discover the game in a new light, as we do, I think.”

Getting around Tural can be daunting, so we’ve brought together all the Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail Aether Current locations to make getting them while doing FATEs even easier. Make sure you keep an eye on the Final Fantasy 14 server status as well, because Square Enix is periodically bringing the MMO offline to make adjustments.

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