The director of Final Fantasy XIV, Naoki Yoshida, explains in an interview how he approaches the development of his MMORPG and how he managed to make the game so successful.
Among fans and in the gaming industry, FFXIV is considered one of the success stories of how to turn a failed project into one of the most popular MMORPGs in the world.
The reason for the success is mainly the way director Yoshida and his team approach the development of the MMORPG and its updates. The director explained this in an interview (via. Washingtonpost).
Long-term Planning
The team plans the content of the MMORPG generally about 2 years in advance. Especially the 10-year-old storyline of FFXIV, which will be completed with the upcoming expansion Endwalker, must always be written very early.
The 4-member writing team of FFXIV retreats completely for this purpose. According to Yoshida, they isolate themselves in a rented office room “somewhere in Shinjuku,” a district of Tokyo where the headquarters of Square Enix is located.
The story for Endwalker was already written in October 2019, although Square Enix only recently officially announced the expansion. Endwalker is set to be released in fall 2021. Other expansions followed a similar pattern.
Yoshida gives this advice to other developers as well.
Structure your system so that it can support the updates [for your MMO] and build your foundation with your [long-term] plans in mind. […]
Naoki Yoshida
Timelines in MMORPGs are Everything
The updates for Final Fantasy XIV are released at regular intervals of about 3-4 months, and fans also rely on the dates being met. The next update is expected to arrive on April 13.
For the development of the actual content of FFXIV, Yoshida and his team have set strict timelines.
To create a dungeon, our game design team must establish the actual content of the plan. This takes about 10 workdays, then it is submitted for approval, which costs another 30 days. Then we hand it over to the programmers, and it takes them about two weeks to program the mechanics.
It is very clear how much money and time we need for each part of the package we have for our planners and management.
Naoki Yoshida
These strict timelines were what helped Yoshida and his team save FFXIV from collapse in 2013. The director of the MMORPG emphasizes that the goals and requirements must be realistic and planned far in advance.
Standardized Approach
In order for the developers to deliver content at such regular intervals, Yoshida and his team have also placed a great deal of emphasis on efficiency.
About 60% – 70% of the content in FFXIV is therefore designed to fit into the existing tight schedules of the development team. An update in FFXIV usually consists of content that is precisely outlined and planned, allowing the developers to estimate how long it will take them.
This approach helps the team in content supply to become much more efficient. The precisely defined amount of work leads to the creation of special tools that make the development of new content even easier.
All together, this enabled the team to deliver the regular updates that fans have become accustomed to.
Innovation Must Not Be Lacking
However, even though the team is efficient and regularly delivers large updates, Yoshida does not want to let them rest on their laurels. In the strict timetable, there should still be room for new ideas and fresh wind.
While it is great that his team can assess the work well, it is less exciting if players can predict the upcoming updates, says Yoshida. Otherwise, problems can arise:
[…] However, there is a great danger of boredom and fatigue. To prevent this, we leave about 30% to 40% [of the content] outside the bundled package, so we can tackle new challenges. We consider what new types of content we can provide.
And sometimes we distribute it over multiple patches to deliver something bigger. So we have a certain stability in the 60% to 70% of the regular content.
Naoki Yoshida
This “other type of content” includes instances like the island Eureka, which is detached from the open world of the MMORPG and has its own rules and mechanics.
Endwalker and Another 5 Years of Content
What’s next for FFXIV? According to reports to investors and Yoshida’s own statements, FFXIV is experiencing steady growth in subscription numbers, so fans need not worry about the MMORPG.
Even if Endwalker completes the story arc around Hydaelyn and Zodiark, it is far from the end of the game. For at least 5 more years, FFXIV is expected to receive new content. If the developers maintain the current pace, we can expect at least 2 more expansions after Endwalker.
Yoshida stated that theoretically FFXIV could run indefinitely as long as people play it. He likes to compare his MMORPG to a TV series that gets more seasons as long as the viewer numbers remain high.
Fans can look forward to new stories and content in FFXIV, even though the team is still very secretive about what they will look like.
However, how catastrophic the release of FFXIV was and why it had to be rebooted, we explain in detail in our article:
No, your games that launch poorly don’t need a reboot a la Final Fantasy XIV
