The director and producer of Final Fantasy XIV Naoki Yoshida has announced that there will be no super-epic raids until the next expansion. The Western raider community has no understanding of this.
The fatal content in FFXIV is characterized by its brutal difficulty, which only a few players can overcome.
After the difficulty of the epic raid was reduced to win over casual and mid-core raiders, the fatal content remains the only real challenge for the hardcore community. The development of this content is now to be put on hold indefinitely.
Over a year of waiting
Bad news for hardcore raiders: In an interview with the Japanese magazine Dengeki, director Naoki Yoshida announced that the fatal Ultima raid released at the beginning of June will temporarily be the last of its kind.
According to Yoshida, the development team gathered from the reaction of the FFXIV community that two fatal raids per expansion would be enough. For the players, it would otherwise be too exhausting to participate in the world races for the first kill.
When will the next raid come? It is expected that the next expansion of Final Fantasy XIV will be announced during the fan festivals at the end of 2018 – beginning of 2019.
This would roughly place the actual release in mid-2019. This means that raiders will have to wait over a year for the new fatal content. Originally, this type of raid was supposed to be released with every second content patch, meaning approximately every six months.
Although the opponent of the next fatal raid has not yet been determined, Yoshida hinted that it could be King Thordan and his knights.
Fatal raids are extremely popular
The decision to drastically reduce the number of fatal raids came unexpectedly and was met with incomprehension from the Western raider community. The ultimate battles are considered by many to be the best in the whole game, and their developers have already received much praise for the design.
But the success of these raids is also strongly reflected in the viewer numbers on Twitch. The launches of the two fatal versions of Bahamut and Ultima temporarily catapulted Final Fantasy XIV into the top 10 of the most-watched games, surpassing titles like Destiny 2, Overwatch, and CS:GO.
In the official forums, raiders have already created several threads on the topic, in which they are asking the developers to reconsider this decision. And on social media channels, especially Twitter, voices are being raised asking for more fatal content.
A reaction from Yoshida is still awaited.
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