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The Final Fantasy 14 community has long found its members at odds over difficulty, and this discourse hasn't slowed down after Dawntrail or the expansion's subsequent patches - but as the MMO's lead battle designer himself puts it, the game's difficulty will likely remain a hot topic forever.
Speaking in a recent interview with PC Gamer, Masaki 'Mr. Ozma' Nakagawa explains why he doesn't see Square Enix ever designing the "perfect" difficulty for all of Final Fantasy 14's players. "I believe it's simply impossible to design a difficulty level that's 'just right' for all players," he says. "Each [piece of] content should be designed with a specific demographic in mind, with a difficulty that's just right for that target audience."
Nakagawa continues, detailing how diverse he believes content should be and how different types of duties fit different kinds of players best. "At the same time, I also believe the content should still have something in store for players outside the primary target audience," says the lead. "For example, alliance raids are primarily designed for those who don't participate in high-end duties such as extreme trials or savage raids."
Alliance raids aren't necessarily fun for everyone, however. "On the other hand, those who enjoy savage raids and other high-end duties may find that alliance raids are neither satisfying nor engaging; to them, alliance raids would just be boring content. So although we adjust difficulty levels based on a primary target audience, we still try to make the content as enjoyable as possible for all players, and we apply that philosophy to all content."
The lead then looks back at some of Dawntrail's content and describes how difficulty played a part in its development. "For example, Patch 7.0 added Worqor Lar Dor (Extreme), which was designed with the target audience of 'players who are trying extreme trials for the first time.'" As a result, Nakagawa admits that "many players probably felt the encounter was easier than the extreme trials in the Patch 6.x series."
That doesn't mean it wasn't rewarding for longtime fans: "I believe many veteran players still found the battle against Valigarmanda to be a refreshing and enjoyable one, thanks to flashy attacks and mechanics like Mountain Fire." When it comes to Dawntrail's difficulty, it also wasn't all down to Nakagawa. In fact, MMO director Naoki "Yoshi P" Yoshida himself helped with the development of the battle content in patch 7.0 and on.
"The difficulty of battle content in Patch 7.0 onward was discussed with core members of the battle team, including producer and director Yoshida, and certain aspects of our direction were changed compared to pre-7.0." Before Dawntrail, the team's "policy of reducing gameplay-related frustrations was sometimes taken too far," resulting in the gameplay being "less fun" without some of its necessary "hurdles and frustrations."
Considering all of this, Nakagawa says developers "shifted to a design policy of placing greater emphasis on enjoyability." This "was a bold decision for us with a lot of unknown factors, but we're relieved to hear that people enjoyed it!" As for what's to come, he states that "the impact of this policy change will be more evident in future patches" - and I, for one, cannot wait to see how it all ends up playing out come later updates.
