At gamescom 2025, MeinMMO editor Jasmin Beverungen spoke with the chief developer of Final Fantasy XIV. The discussion revolved around the collaboration with Monster Hunter Wilds, the mobile spin-off, and the evolution of MMORPGs in general.

Final Fantasy XIV did not have any new playable content at gamescom 2025. However, there was a fantastic announcement for fans of Monster Hunter Wilds during the Opening Night Live. There will be new content related to the other game in both the action RPG and the MMORPG.

Monster Hunter Wilds was released earlier in 2025 and threw many players back into a wild grind spiral to farm the best gear. There was already a collaboration between Monster Hunter World and Final Fantasy XIV, which featured exclusive items and foes.

Appropriately, I was able to ask Naoki Yoshida, the chief developer of Final Fantasy XIV, about the collaboration. Additionally, there were other topics we were eager to discuss. Here is the complete transcript of the interview.

The collaboration between FF14 and Monster Hunter Wilds originated from a long friendship

MeinMMO: On Tuesday, you introduced the collaboration between Monster Hunter Wilds and Final Fantasy XIV. How did this collaboration come about? And why did you specifically choose Arkveld, the monster from Final Fantasy XIV? Why this monster?

Naoki Yoshida: Firstly, thank you very much for following the news. We will be announcing more details next month, specifically about what sort of gear the players can get, what sort of battle they can experience and also what sort of difficulty there is involved. So all of these details will be announced next month. But first I will I, I will answer now your questions which were, how did this collaboration come about? And also why did we choose Arkveld?

So I have a strong connection with the Monster Hunter team. So that’s not just the team involved in Monster Hunter Wilds, but specifically with producer Mr. Tsujimoto. I’ve known him, I’ve had a close relationship with him for 20 years now and even before I was assigned to work on Final Fantasy 14, we would meet up personally, and we would go out to Izakaya, a Japanese style bar, and we would be playing PSP together and also talking about how things are in the games industry.

And then when I became in charge of Final Fantasy 14, we kept that close relationship, and they told me that it would be great if we could have some sort of opportunity to have some big collaboration with Final Fantasy 14. And eventually that resulted in the previous crossover collaboration that we had, which was with Monster Hunter World.

But after that first crossover collaboration finished, we found that both for the Monster Hunter team and also for us in the Final Fantasy 14 team, it was extremely stimulating, and we really were interested in doing something similar again. It just so happens that last year it was a coincidence, but it was at Gamescom last year. I think it was probably the second day or the third day of Gamescom. After the event finished, I went out drinking with the Monster Hunter team in the evening here in Cologne. At that time, of course, Monster Hunter Wilds had not yet been released, but they were approaching the end of the development, and we had discussed how much fun it would be to do another crossover, and that was eventually the starting point of this new crossover.

And so after Monster Hunter Wilds was released, we were discussing which monsters we would exchange across of the collaboration. And in the Monster Hunter team, there are a lot of Warriors of Light, and they were very interested in using Omega because they thought if they can use Omega in Monster Hunter, they could create a very interesting battle. And so we also played Monster Hunter Wilds in the Final Fantasy 14 team. And we thought to ourselves that if they’re going to be using Omega, then how about we take the main monster from Monster Hunter Wilds, which is Arkveld, and we think we can use that to create an interesting battle in Final Fantasy 14. And so we made our request based on that. But pretty much we were in a situation where we were both like, oh, OK, OK. And it was just done.

With our previous collaboration with Monster Hunter World, we took the representative monster of Monster Hunter, which was Rathalos, which is the dragon, and we incorporated that in Final Fantasy 14 as an attempt to kind of recreate the sense of a Monster Hunter battle. However, when we look at Final Fantasy 14, it is a target based MMO and on the other hand Monster Hunter is a full real time action game. So when we try to recreate the sensation of that battle from Monster Hunter in our game, there are some limits to what we can do. And looking back at it, I reflected that it didn’t completely pan out the way we wanted. It was a little bit halfhearted.

On the other hand, when it came to introducing Arkveld into a Final Fantasy 14 as a battle, we did not want to force ourselves to recreate the Monster Hunter experience, but rather we wanted to incorporate Arkveld as a boss battle in Final Fantasy 14 and utilize those motions of Arkveld to create an exciting battle for the players. So in that sense we have changed the concept that we are taking this time and in this new battle. It will be a really heated fight, so I hope players will look forward to it.

There are 2 big wrestling fans on the Final Fantasy XIV team

MeinMMO: In our editorial team, we have many wrestling fans. Some of them wanted to know where the idea for wrestling as a raid came from and whether there were certain wrestlers who might have served as inspiration or role models for this fight?

Naoki Yoshida: Yes, when we were deciding on what to do for the raids in the Seven Point X series. I wonder when it was when we decided on that. It was several years ago, and it was back at the time when we were deciding on the content for 7.0. And there were several candidates that we had in mind for what we were going to do with the raid. And the first idea that we had was to create this kind of aerial arena where you’re going up fighting with enemies one by one and climbing up the floors. And the inspirational, the original material that was as a reference for that, was something similar to what you find in Hunter X Hunter, the manga.

And so once we had that base concept, which was being a floor master, we went over and decided who would be the person in charge of writing that story. And that person did write the story for the raids. However, that person is a huge wrestling fan, and he loves wrestling, WrestleMania in particular. And so he asked me: if you’re giving me this opportunity to write the story for the raids, would it be fine for me to do the whole story based around the concept of wrestling?

And so when he told that to me, I thought, well, it does look interesting, So yeah, let’s give it a go. And so then we took that as the concept. So he took the original concept of creating an aerial arena, battle arena and applying a wrestling theme to it. And then I eventually said OK to that. But another contributing factor was also that from the sound side, Masayoshi Soken [composer of Final Fantasy XIV, editor’s note] is also a huge wrestling fan. And so basically he was like in collusion with Soken and both of them were working on it as we went on.

And when we were thinking about wrestling as the theme, there were two big themes that you can associate with wrestling. The first one is that all the wrestlers have very big, bold and unique personalities, and I think that’s very appealing about their characters. And so when we decided about what sort of fighters we wanted in the Arcadian, we made sure to create unique fighters, and then that signed in to producing very unique mechanics as well. So I think this direction had a very good effect. And then one more area where we took on a challenge was the shout caster for the matches.

So basically the concept was to have the shout caster announce certain things when certain things happen in the battle. So for example, when the player gets knocked down, there would be a comment based around that. Or if the players do very well and avoid an attack, then there would be an announcement based about that. But, up until now, we didn’t have the system in place to produce that sort of announcement based on the players’ activity. But one of the things we had to pay attention to was when the player gets knocked out by the enemy. If the announcement is phrased in a way that it kind of riles on the player or annoys the player. And then, of course, that would lead to hate and, and that’s obviously something we wanted to avoid. So we made sure to check all of those aspects to make sure that we didn’t upset the players. But I think having checked all of that and implemented it, I think it worked extremely well.

By the way, the writer who was in charge, who is in charge of the Arcadion raids, is also the same writer who is doing the Hildibrand quests. And so the Hildibrand quests are quite a different direction, you could say. But I still think that they both the Hildibrand and Arcadion quests have some commonality between them.

How Naoki Yoshida would plan an MMORPG whose development starts in 2025

MeinMMO: MeinMMO writes a lot about MMORPGs. You have played an important role in shaping the MMORPG genre in recent years. If you look back on the development of the genre and had to develop an MMORPG from scratch today, what would you do differently?

Naoki Yoshida:I think there are several approaches which would be appropriate. Firstly, if you think about creating aanew game which would have a huge player population, the approach you would take would be very different to a game which you would create which is only catering for a small player community. Maybe about 100,000 or 200,000. Even if we say 100, 200 thousand, that’s not really small as it were, but it would be a small, a passionate community.

And so the game design that we would approach would be very different depending on whether it’s one of these two. So if it was a lot of players or a small group of passionate players, then I would want to do either one of those. I don’t want to do things half-heartedly or do things in the sense that it would be in the middle of the road.

But in any case, when we look back and think about how things were in the old games market, well the older MMO market, compared to them, there is drastically less time that players have available to play games. So specifically, that would be the amount of time that they have each day to play games is now less.

So typically if there was content which was designed to be enjoyed for a time span of maybe 4 hours, 5 hours or 8 hours, because players don’t have that much time today and if they only play for one hour, they will just play it for that one hour, and they’ll think it’s just impossible for me. So I think it’s important that we need to create content and which could be played over a shorter time span. And I think it’s necessary to design the content that way.

When we consider that players have less available time to play games when it comes to multiplayer content. We would also have to think about reducing the matching time in order to do that. We could think about doing away with roles, so one character would be able to do everything such as attacking, healing and defending by themselves, but also creating a team of maybe four or five players and having them gathered together to do the fight. So I think unless we approach things in this kind of direction, it wouldn’t be possible.

And when we think about games in the current generation, the graphics quality is extremely high. So that means when we’re creating large areas, such as large dungeons or large areas in the game, we need an insane amount of resources in order to create these environments. And therefore we would need to have an automation system be prepared in order to carry out that development. But I also think that we can utilize AI to automate those kinds of things, whereas us as creators can focus on the creative work. And so I think this sort of creative revolution is probably going to be needed in the future there.

In terms of the two major directions that I mentioned just now, that was having either the hardcore players enjoy the game on a small basis or having the casual players enjoy the game, in either case, I think that this new system that I was explaining about would be necessary. But when it comes to how much importance we place on what is adjusted to have the players enjoy the content or how much user created content would be incorporated, that would be depending on which direction we’re taking for the game. 

And I think I can talk more about this, but if I do, I’m sure someone will take this idea and make a game, so I’ll stop here.

Final Fantasy XIV Mobile still has some issues before the international release

MeinMMO: Now I would like to talk about the mobile version. What does the development team think about the existing feedback? Are they satisfied? What would they do differently today when reflecting on the feedback?

Naoki Yoshida: Firstly, the development of the mobile version is not being carried out by the Final Fantasy 14 team, but this is being carried out by Lightspeed Studios, which belongs to Tencent. They came to us, and they showed us the systems and the monetization that they wanted to create. These are the things which are basically different from the original Final Fantasy 14, and we have been checking these things and this process is currently the open beta.

So far, the open beta testing has only been carried out in China, but the response that we’ve received from the open beta in China has been very positive.

We told them that we don’t want to have a mobile game where it’s like based around gacha premise. So we didn’t want to have a situation where players are spending a lot of money, but rather we wanted the game to be based around long term gameplay with no stress for the player. And Lightspeed have been very respective about that, and they have been following our request, and for that we are extremely thankful.

But in the first place, the vast majority of the staff working at Lightspeed are Warriors of Light themselves, and so they are very respectful.

In terms of player feedback though, because it is a mobile game, we have received feedback that players would like to play the game in short amounts of time so that they can progress through it in shorter amounts of time than they have. And there was also feedback from players that they would like cutscenes to be played faster. So there is already a skip in place, but they would like the ability to be able to view cutscenes faster. And then the other portion of feedback was regarding the spec of the game, because it is the rendering spec is quite high. The mobile phone can get quite hot and there’s quite a bit of stress on the CPU. So we have been receiving feedback around these elements.

Firstly, in regard to the changes in the game, the game does have all the jobs, but the skill rotations have been adjusted and all of these adjustments have been checked by the battle team in Final Fantasy 14. So the sensation is that players will still be using, for example, the same paladin, but it will feel like a new sort of paladin. And specifically, there are fewer actions. And also all the instance dungeons and all the battle content have been recreated. And the staff that have been working on this are extremely talented. But it will be a question of just how quickly can they create all the content up until patch 7.3. But we will do our best to support them. But I think first, of course, I believe the studio does want all the players around the world to be able to play the game, but first they will be kindly working very hard to prepare it in China.

MeinMMO: Is there already an idea of when it might be released?

Naoki Yoshida: Yes, this might come across as weird, but we don’t have like any expectation about the release timing. I’m pretty sure that Lightspeed would want to release it as quickly as possible, but there is some reasoning behind this in which I have, and I would like to elaborate.

So the reason being is that we do want to raise the stability of the system, compared to what it is right now. Also in regard to the user interface, there are various elements which are very uniquely Chinese, and we would have to localize that and culturalize that. For example, if we take certain elements and localize it into German, in German it would be too long so that it wouldn’t actually fit in the UI. So we would need to work on those aspects as well. Also in regard to monetization, if we are not too careful, then it could lead to a situation where people think it’s just all about money. So we do need to make sure that we are ready to release it in a good shape.

So once again, I do think that Lightspeed probably want to release it as soon as possible. But for us, we would first play it, and then we would make a judgment about what we feel. So if we feel, after playing it, it’s fine to be released immediately, it would be released. But if we feel it would take maybe another half a year or so and then we would, we would obviously wait for that half year to pass first. So for us, we would like to make sure that it’s completely ready before we release it. So once we have made the decision, the game will suddenly be released, but I don’t think it would take maybe up to two or three years.

Naoki Yoshida talks about his favorite food

MeinMMO: The second cookbook for Final Fantasy 14 will be released at the end of the year. Is there a dish from the real world or from the world of Final Fantasy 14 that you would like to see in the cookbook?

Naoki Yoshida: I know FF14. But something that’s not already in the cookbook? Well, that means I first have to remember all the dishes In the cookbook.

But first I’d like to say that the cookbook has been extremely popular all around the world. And we have received a lot of requests for the cookbook to be translated into other languages. And I think that really goes to show how talented the person who created the cookbook is. And that also represents the immense support that we’re receiving from the community, and I’m extremely thankful for that.

I do apologize that this is now going to be personal talk about my preferences and food. But my food preferences are like a child. I would say maybe the same as an elementary school aged child in second grade. So that would be about 5 years old. I don’t really do well with sophisticated tastes. Rather, I prefer simple things like ramen, Curry, rice, the Japanese hamburger, and chicken leg.

So that means that in Eorzea I don’t really do well with dishes which are made with sophisticated Ingredients. So I’m fine either with a Raptor leg or dodo omelette. By the way, the food that I’ve eaten the most in the game, I’m sure people already had an idea, but it’s a boiled Egg. Because you get a small Exp boost, I probably ate that the most.

I remember there was some, I think North American player, they took on the challenge of eating as many boiled eggs as they can, and I think they reached like maybe 10,000.

But of course, in Final Fantasy 14 moving forward, there will be more dishes making an appearance, so I do hope that players will enjoy role-playing in real life and trying out different cooking methods, and we would be glad to see that.

Currently, players are enjoying the new content from patch 7.3. It brought a new alliance raid and several other contents. What those are, you can find out in the big overview on MeinMMO: Final Fantasy XIV Patch 7.3: The finale of Dawntrail is live, with a new alliance raid, dungeon, and more