Combat has been a welcome shot of consistency in Final Fantasy 14's Dawntrail expansion so far. While the story and Job balance land unevenly among Eorzea's many denizens, the challenge found in team-based bouts is often a point of praise.
Dawntrail's initial content launch was our first taste, with dungeons, trials, and combat thrilling throughout. Little has changed regarding layout – dungeons are still running between mini-bads before fighting the big bad – but the mechanics of each encounter demand greater attention for that sweet 'duty complete.' Not to let a good thing slip, the first part of Final Fantasy 14's Arcadion raid series landed offering equal challenge, with some corners of the community ranking the slew of encounters among the MMO's best.
There are still challenges ahead. Most of the content in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail's roadmap offers something to someone, though a longer wait between patches means midcore content for non-raiders could land close to a year after the MMO's latest expansion launched. If you do raid, though, then we've just got another helping of what Dawntrail has done best so far – combat.
Echoes of Vana'diel is this expansion's Alliance raid, sending 24 Warriors of Light into a raid that brings plenty of Final Fantasy's first MMO into its latest. Offered the chance to ask lead battle content designer Masaki Nakagawa some questions before launch, we delved into everything from balancing difficulty to League of Legends.
Duty complete
12DOVE: Why did you decide to crossover with Final Fantasy 11 for this raid series?
Nakagawa: Around the end of 2022, we were deciding what would be the theme of the 7.x alliance raid series. We had various ideas, and one of them was “Return to Vana’diel (name pending),” which was based on FF11. We adopted this idea for the following reasons:
- At the time, FF11 was celebrating its 20th anniversary.
- Many developers in the FF14 team were avid fans of FF11.
- There were also many former FF11 developers in the FF14 team.
- The FF11 team belongs to the same Creative Studio, making it easy to collaborate.
- Many FF14 players are also avid fans of FF11.
In addition to the reasons above, the timing was right, and we had plenty of ingredients to create something enjoyable.
It's lovely to see Prishe again. But, how do you balance crafting something narratively that FF11 fans recognize without leaving those unfamiliar feeling out of the loop? Did you take any learnings from the Nier or FF12 / Tactics Alliance raids?
We were extremely careful to not leave players who are unfamiliar with FF11 out of the loop. Our main goal was not recreating FF11, but the fundamental idea of creating content that all players can enjoy. Many of the team members working on Echoes of Vana'diel have strong feelings for FF11, and I knew they would be keen to recreate the wondrous experiences from back then. As a side note, I’m a big fan of FF11 myself – I got really into the game in my twenties, to the point where I was forgetting to eat and sleep. I've played well over a thousand hours.
Having that overwhelming enthusiasm can be a wonderful thing in content creation. But had that enthusiasm taken a wrong turn, our objective may have focused more on recreating FF11 rather than designing something to be entertaining and fun. With the former, our development would have progressed based on how faithfully we could recreate the world of FF11, in which case the developers who are unfamiliar with FF11 wouldn’t be able to share their input. A situation like that could never result in good content. That's why early on in development, I repeatedly reminded our team members of the direction we were taking with the raid series. I spent a lot of time reminding them and even went as far as writing a lengthy email to make sure we were all on the same page.
"I got really into the game in my twenties, to the point where I was forgetting to eat and sleep."
“Echoes of Vana’diel will respect and cherish the assets and memories of FF11. With that said, recreating FF11 is not our top priority, but rather to make use of FF11’s assets to the fullest to create something in the current world of FF14 that we can be proud of. Please don’t be afraid of making changes to FF11 assets, and boldly change things around.” That’s the gist of what I told them.
We even had developers constantly chiming in with new ideas. One such example came up when we were creating the scenery for Fafnir’s lair, the Boyahda Tree.
The team member’s proposal was something along the lines of “FF11’s Boyahda Tree was masterfully designed within the constraints of over 20 years ago, but may be lacking in detail to fit in the world of FF14. For our depiction of the Boyahda Tree, I’d like to reference this concept artwork that I found from the early days of development. The artwork is quite different from the actual Boyahda Tree in FF11, but I believe we could recreate it with FF14’s current graphical environment."
Another suggestion, having the sword Ridill placed in Fafnir’s lair, was suggested by the scenery staff as fan service to our FF11 players. These sorts of positive enhancements were being improvised left and right; everyone was highly motivated and enjoying their work. I vividly remember there was no doubt in my mind that we were going to have something great. The FF11 team graciously accepted our various suggestions and helped us make them happen, and thus, we were able to create great content together.
A lot of fans put The Arcadion's light heavyweight tier among Final Fantasy 14's best combat content, how does that make you feel going into the new Alliance series?
I was thinking that the Patch 7.1 alliance raid, Echoes of Vana'diel, was more likely to be compared to the 6.x Myths of the Realm alliance raid than to the Arcadion.
Whenever we create content, we aim to go above and beyond our previous efforts. This is an essential part of developing and operating a subscription-based online game, and a natural responsibility for a lead battle content designer. So, whenever I create content, I always try to offer at least a slightly new experience each time.
There were two major new challenges in the first Echoes of Vana’diel alliance raid.
The first challenge was the battle against the Ark Angels, the third boss battle in the raid. It’s a unique battle consisting of five different bosses, and in conventional FF14 multi-boss battles, different bosses appear one after the other and deliver attacks in turn, like in the Singularity Reactor. This time, we instead had all five bosses challenge the alliance immediately, so that players can take part in a hectic battle right away. We did this as an homage to the original version of this battle in FF11, known as Divine Might, and because we thought we could surprise those who were unfamiliar with FF11 and excite them with this new experience. However, creating such a unique battle was a daunting task and therefore assigned to one of our veteran battle content designers. He is a talented member of the team who previously worked on Alphascape V3.0 and the Arachne Eve battle in the Weeping City of Mhach, and I believe he lived up to expectations placed on him and made a splendid boss fight.
"Whenever we create content, we aim to go above and beyond"
The second challenge was the areas. While most alliance raids consist of three different areas or “phases,” for Echoes of Vana’diel we split the phases into four with a completely unique area for each. Our thinking was, as this is a story based on FF11 then we should work to ensure that bosses appear in their appropriate places. Naturally, this would result in expending more resources compared to a typical alliance raid. However, by using Jeuno as both the setting of the first phase and the explorable area after completing the alliance raid, we were able to split the workload evenly between the Event and Content teams. This allowed us to achieve consistency as one large piece of content, including the flow of associated quests, and to make the raid extravagant while keeping our development resources in check.
Dawntrail has seen fans talking about the difficulty and challenge of the expansion's battle content, with most really enjoying what they've seen so far. How does Echoes of Vana'diel compare to what we've seen so far in that regard?
Before we started working on Echoes of Vana’diel, we looked into the clear/failure rates of previous alliance raids. Based on that data, we discussed our goals for its battle difficulty among the core members of the battle team, including Producer & Director Yoshida. As many players had noted in their feedback, the statistics showed that Myths of the Realm was easier and less engaging than previous alliance raids. After much discussion, we concluded that Echoes of Vana’diel would be harder than the Myths series, and more similar to the Shadow of Mhach or Return to Ivalice series. Our expectations were that Echoes would feel quite challenging in the early days of its release, but as time goes on, players would gradually get used to the mechanics and feel comfortable enough to farm it. More specifically, we decided that the first Echoes raid would feature a difficulty similar to the Ridorana Lighthouse. With Jeuno: The First Walk now in the game, we feel that we successfully nailed the target difficulty and were glad to see many players praise it as well.
However, we also understand, of course, that every player has a different perception of difficulty. To avoid any misunderstandings, I would like to mention that there were many players who normally challenge Extreme trials and harder content who felt Echoes of Vana’diel was too easy. I’m aware of, and even understand, the requests for difficult alliance raids such as the notorious Weeping City of Mhach and the Orbonne Monastery. But compared to when those alliance raids were released, players have tremendously improved in terms of their understanding of battle mechanics and the speed at which they adapt to new mechanics. The same mechanics that wiped parties in Ozma or the Thunder God would no longer cause the same level of chaos as they did back in the day. Providing the same hectic experience nowadays would involve considerably more complex mechanics, as well as more boss attacks being dealt at a much faster pace. Implementing such a battle would result in an alliance raid that is too difficult for casual players to enjoy.
So for those seeking a harder challenge, we are looking to answer their requests in the Chaotic alliance raid. We hope you’ll give it a try and let us know what you think. All in all, I believe that we achieved an exquisite difficulty for the first alliance raid of Echoes of Vana’diel. But even so, we certainly aren’t 100% satisfied and will aim even higher in the second part and beyond, so we hope you will continue to look forward to what we have in store.
What would your dream Final Fantasy 14 collaboration be for a raid?
I personally would love to do a crossover with the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, though it’s being developed by a separate team in our company. Even if it were to happen, I imagine it would have to be after the FF7 Remake trilogy is complete, but it is very exciting to think about designing crossover content with various FF7 characters and bosses. That being said, I absolutely do not want to interfere with the FF7 team's development right now, so I’d like to perhaps bring it up with them when an appropriate opportunity arises.
"If a Riot Games representative is reading this, it would be an honor if I could speak with you!"
As for other companies’ titles, I personally love League of Legends and have been playing the game for a long time, so a crossover with them would be a dream come true. It would be great fun if Aatrox and Aurelion Sol were featured as raid bosses in FF14. It might also be quite interesting to have FF14 characters implemented as crossover champions in League of Legends! If a Riot Games representative is reading this, it would be an honor if I could speak with you!
I enjoyed Yoshida-san recently finding out that fans have been recreating him in Monster Hunter Wilds. Given FF14's previous collaboration with MH: Worlds, would you like to see FF14 team up with MH: Wilds on a raid or something else?
There are many fans of the Monster Hunter series within the FF14 team, and I am one of them. If we were given the opportunity to do a crossover, we would love to do it, but with the release date for Monster Hunter Wilds almost upon us, we will do our best to enjoy the game first. The game designer who handled the battle content for our crossover with Monster Hunter: World has been really motivated even after they finished working on the crossover, saying that if there is a next time, they want to do this and that. So if we can do a crossover, I’m sure we could create something amazing with our overwhelming enthusiasm!
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