Final Fantasy XIV is known for having one of the most friendly communities in the gaming world, signaling a huge departure from a typical MMO. While the game incentivizes people to help new players with bonus items and experience, your typical Warrior of Light simply loves welcoming fresh blood to the title, which currently sits at over 25 million players. As kind as the community can be to one another, a few bad apples are spoiling this squeaky-clean reputation by hurling abuse–not at players, but at the title’s development team. Director and producer Naoki Yoshida addressed this on the latest episode of Radio Mog Station on January 9.
While Final Fantasy XIV has been riding a major high since the release of the Endwalker expansion in December, some players aren’t happy with changes made to the game with patch 6.0. Some are angry at the long queue times, which are out of Square Enix’s control. The global chip shortage is making it impossible to increase the number of servers for the game, no matter how much money the company has to throw around. Others are angry at changes made to the game’s classes, with some abilities being nerfed or removed altogether.
Yoshida spoke candidly on the matter during the broadcast, which was primarily aimed at the Japanese playerbase. “I can take it, even though it doesn’t make it less bad, but staff members will feel really down after getting those words when they gave their absolute best into trying to create something where everyone can enjoy, and this may end up making them no longer create things that are fun from there on. So I have only one request to every player out there – please imagine that you’re speaking face to face with a developer whom you may not know his name nor face and imagine how they’d feel before sending your feedback over, and I’ll be happy if people can do so politely.”
Final Fantasy XIV is available to play on PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. The game has seen a huge influx of new players over the past few months–so much so that sales of the title were suspended as of December 16 to relieve the ongoing server congestion. This week, director and producer Naoki Yoshida announced that a roadmap to the release of 7.0 would be revealed in late February.
