Final Fantasy 14 director explains why a boss was nerfed after it became a meme

News
By published

Turns out there was a lot more to the change than met the eye

Final Fantasy 14
(Image credit: Square Enix)

Final Fantasy 14's developers have explained the rationale behind explaining the rationale behind a Raid boss being too strong.

Yes, you read that correctly. Earlier this week, Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida penned a letter to the game's community, acknowledging that the health for a new Savage-tier Raid boss was a little higher than intended due to the development team playtesting it for longer than usual.

Today, Yoshida has delved into the rationale behind the original explanation. Writing on the Lodestone, Yoshida revealed he'd be seeing a lot of chatter surrounding not only the changes to the Raid boss's health, but also the original explanation from the dev team as to why it was incorrect.

Yoshida's post apologizes (yet again) for the confusion, and reveals that having the health of the boss set too high actually excluded certain Jobs from the new Raid itself. Additionally, Yoshida acknowledges that this type of correction is unprecedented for Final Fantasy 14 in general.

The post then goes on to explain that the dev team regard Final Fantasy 14's top players as being better at their own game than them. Because of this, Yoshida says, boss values are actually increased slightly based off what the development team playtests, so as to not rob high-level players of the satisfaction of beating a difficult foe.

Finally, it turns out Square Enix saw players picking Jobs with higher damage output for the Raid boss, and so felt more inclined to adjust the Raid itself, rather than rebalance Jobs. Yoshida concludes by writing that the rebalance was never considered a "nerf" for the Raid boss, but rather a readjustment to where everything ought to be in the first place.

This is the same Raid where fans discovered a glowing red eye in the background, but no one's been able to decipher what it means. 

Hirun Cryer
Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.