Final Fantasy XIV has been in operation for a little more than a decade and it’s about time that it gets some much-needed upgrades, director and producer Naoki Yoshida said during the most recent “Letter from the Producer”.
During the livestream, Yoshida enthusiastically revealed that Square-Enix will be supporting the game for another decade to come. Players can be certain that their beloved MMORPG has indeed not seen its Final Fantasy with the most recent expansion Endwalker.
First up, graphical enhancements are underway, which will launch alongside the game’s next expansion. Characters and world environments will be changed to futureproof the game with improved resolutions for textures, materials, shadows, and lighting effects. These will be especially profound for certain non-player characters, some of whom were shown off during the livestream with before and after images.
The goal, as Yoshida pointed out, is not to achieve photorealism, but instead to provide a more subtle effect that stays true to the original art style that players enjoy with FFXIV.
Also starting with patch 6.1, set for release in April, the game will become more solo-friendly. In order to do this, the Trust system that was introduced with Shadowbringers will be extended to all main scenario dungeons from A Realm Reborn. For those who don’t know, Trusts allow solo players to join up with three NPC allies — mainly those characters we meet along the way in the story including Y’Shstola, Thancred, Alphinaud, and Alisaie — to clear 4-player dungeons.
Subsequent patch cycles will add support for dungeons in Heavensward and Stormblood up to patch 6.5. The objective is to keep pressure off the developer staff and allow solo players to follow the game’s story at their own pace.
The Main Story Quests Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum will also be seeing some rework as four-player dungeons. The Ultima Weapon fight will be changed into a four-player trial and Lahabrea will be changed into a solo-player duty. And, for everyone who hates it, the sludge in The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak that makes the “squish-squish” noises and slows everyone down is finally going away.
In the past, the two above MSQ dungeons have always been extremely long endeavors for players aside from being very important for the story they include unskippable cutscenes. As a result, they currently belong to their own special section of the group finder in FFXIV. It’s unknown what exactly will change now that they will be reworked to be more like normal dungeons in the upcoming expansion.
The free trial for FFXIV is also reopening after it was suspended to ease the load on the servers during the launch of Endwalker.
Image: Square-Enix
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