Square Enix is bringing some much-needed Final Fantasy 14 changes forward to make a Dawntrail raid that has only been cleared 400 times in 23 days less of an obstacle to topple.
Around the end of June, producer and director Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida took part in a Live Letter stream to tease what's to come in Patch 7.3. Fairly standard, but what made the broadcast stand out is that a portion of it was dedicated to addressing the MMO's community's gripes with Dawntrail's latest misses, Occult Crescent and Cosmic Exploration, and what's being done about it.
One of the major issues addressed was the Forked Tower, which is essentially a 48-person raid that forms part of the Occult Crescent – the latest Field Operation released as part of the Dawntrail content run. Yoshida shared that the new raid had only been cleared 400 times in 23 days, which is partially down to how much of a pain it is to access.
At the time of writing, your only shot is loading into an instance and hoping there are enough people around to do the encounter when it pops up 30 minutes later. As with other typical raids, previous Field Operation-related raid-like encounters could be queued into from the Duty Finder, so you can see why it's annoying to so many that you can't do that here.
Thankfully, some of the changes Yoshi-P proposed to remedy the situation are being brought forward from Patch 7.3 to tomorrow, July 3. After some emergency maintenance, you'll have the ability to enter the Occult Crescent instance with a preformed alliance of up to 48 players. Additionally, Auroral mirages will generate sooner when loading into an Occult Crescent instance, so you won't have to wait as long to try the Forked Tower either.
Discussing the decision to implement these changes quicker, Yoshi-P explains in a blog post that the team is currently reviewing QA for patch 7.3 and has realized they can bring those proposed changes forward. You'll still have to wait for other changes, such as "improvements to the cipher offering UI," but the hope is that the changes being brought forward will significantly improve the player experience relatively quickly.
Of course, there is some risk involved, but Yoshi-P is willing to take the bet.
"It should be noted that the planned emergency maintenance update may introduce some technical issues," he says. "However, we determined that the benefits of implementing these changes in a timely manner outweigh the minor risks involved and will do our utmost to ensure the update is released in a stable state."
The update is due to go live tomorrow, though Yoshi-P notes that it could change "should additional testing be required to ensure stability." At the time of writing, however, it appears that we're good to proceed.
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