Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida has apologized for the current state of the MMO, and has shared some changes coming to some of Dawntrail's latest misses, Occult Crescent and Cosmic Exploration, to remedy fans' disappointment.
As per tradition, the Final Fantasy 14 team has held a Letter from the Producer stream to show off what's coming next. While a fair amount of patch 7.3 was on show, a large part of the broadcast was dedicated to Yoshida addressing some fan concerns about the latest Field Operations and lifestyle content and what's been done about it.
While the stream is predominantly in Japanese, the broad strokes are posted in English across Final Fantasy 14's socials, and you can find more in-depth translation efforts over on Nova Crystallis and the Final Fantasy 14 fan Discord. As per those sources, Yoshida begins by apologizing for the lower quality of service fans have been experiencing lately, such as the increasingly frequent need for hotfixes to flatten bugs.
To remedy that, Yoshida says he has spoken to the relevant teams and expressed concern that everyone might be too comfortable with allowing these sorts of things to become more common. Yoshida also apparently notes that the team has grown substantially and that implementing major new content has been difficult, but is determined to remedy that as well.
Speaking of major new content, Yoshida then addresses some pain points with Occult Crescent. One of the bigger questions is why the Forked Tower raid doesn't offer both a 'Normal' and 'Savage' version, to which Yoshida answers that it was down to cost. Thankfully, he also notes that future instances of Occult Crescent will implement both difficulty versions.
Additionally, if you're keen to enter the raid with a pre-formed 48-player alliance, then the option will arrive as part of Patch 7.3 – just in a rough and ready state. Currently, your best hope of doing the Forked Tower is by jumping into Occult Crescent and hoping enough people show up in your instance to join and complete the encounter.
Considering that the new Alliance-style raid has apparently only been cleared 400 times in 23 days, it sounds like the tweaks are needed.
As for Cosmic Exploration, the highlights include mount availability for ease of movement, adjusted time limits for some stellar missions, and better visibility for sequential missions. Other tweaks are being considered, though Square Enix is gathering more data first.
Final Fantasy 14 has had a tough time of it over the past year or so. The Dawntrail expansion didn't get things off to the best of starts, though the roadmap leading to the MMO's next expansion had fans hoping for a Stormblood-style comeback.
While the raid and battle content on offer has been consistently superb, Occult Crescent and Cosmic Exploration gave fans hope that the MMO would have something for everyone. Casuals could come and go to catch up with the story, hardcore players could smash the raids to bits, and everyone else looking for the midcore content between could hang out while engaging with Occult Crescent and Cosmic Exploration.
Now, Patch 7.2 did get things off to a good start, as reflected in the Steam reviews. However, the subsequent patch that introduced Cosmic Exploration kicked off a community debate on FOMO and time-gating, whereas the patch after that, which introduced Occult Crescent, saw the recent Steam reviews for FF14's Dawntrail expansion sink to "Mostly Negative." You see how we got here, hm?
Moving forward, Final Fantasy 14 has patch 7.3 to look forward to, which'll introduce even more new content to the mix. That, alongside some fixes for Occult Crescent and Cosmic Exploration, should hopefully return the MMO to surer footing.
