A developer of Final Fantasy XIV openly admitted in an interview that in the past they went too far in trying to make boss fights less frustrating.
Which developer is being referred to? This is the lead battle designer Masaki Nakagawa. In an interview with PC Gamer, he acknowledges what players of the last expansions in FFXIV have already noticed: The boss fights have gradually become less and less challenging.
Simple bosses lead to less frustration but also less fun
How have the developers gone too far? Recently, the bosses have become increasingly predictable. According to Nakagawa, the reason for this was that they did not want to subject players to overly complex mechanics. However, the developers are now realizing that they have indeed gone too far:
Before [Dawntrail], we sometimes took our strategy of reducing gameplay-related frustrations too far.
Masaki Nakagawa, Lead Battle Designer of Final Fantasy XIV
Avoiding potentially frustrating mechanics also had the consequence that many boss fights and raids felt very similar – because they offered very few special mechanics.
In some cases, elements were removed from the game that, while presenting a hurdle and potentially being frustrating, ultimately made the gameplay more exciting. This trend reached its peak in the 2021 expansion Endwalker.
Regarding Endwalker, Nakagawa says his team discarded some interesting ideas for the bosses too early – for instance, because a downtime when players could not attack the boss might overly frustrate melee players.
A shift in boss design thinking
In retrospect, the designer says they should have at least further developed some of the ideas that arose for the boss fights before discarding them. This was not possible due to the prevailing work environment at the time. It made it easy to dismiss such ideas early on.
The shift towards more innovation does not, however, mean that the developers plan to introduce new, unique mechanics for every fight. According to Nakagawa, some fights should remain “orthodox,” while others are allowed to try something new.
Having learned from the criticism of the boss design in Endwalker, they have improved. This is also evident in the latest expansion: The combat design in Dawntrail is received much better by players than that of Endwalker. Nevertheless, Dawntrail has not been received overwhelmingly positively – to find out why, read here: The new expansion for Final Fantasy XIV has received only moderate reviews on Steam – Many compare Dawntrail to the weakest DLC
