At Pax West 2025, Naoki Yoshida, the Director and Producer of Final Fantasy XIV, spoke about his career, video games, and his own game. But he also talks about the harsh criticism of the current direction of his MMORPG.
What did Naoki Yoshida say? During Pax West 2025, Naoki Yoshida participated in a panel lasting just over an hour (via YouTube). At the beginning, he talks about his career, the gaming industry, and then also about Final Fantasy XIV.
Specifically, he emphasizes that player feedback is very important to him. He always tries to understand the perspective of a player. Negative criticism is also important, and he and his team try to learn from it. However, he also makes it clear:
Just one thing—like I mentioned earlier, we’re human too.
Harsh feedback is totally fine.
But when it turns into aggressive or hostile comments, those really do hurt us as people, no matter how hard we try to look at them objectively. We genuinely love making games, and even people working all around the world in the video game industry can be hurt by that. Sometimes it hurts so much that they lose the motivation to keep creating games, and as a result, good games stop being made. In the end, that means everyone loses out.
So we’d really like it if you could try to approach us more like friends. Of course, it’s absolutely okay to say something is bad when it’s bad. But outright abusive language—there are so many developers who are deeply hurt by that. If you could just take a moment to remember that before hitting the Enter key, it would mean a lot to us.
Naoki Yoshida, 30.08.2025, Pax West via YouTube, translation from Japanese via ChatGPT
Final Fantasy XIV has recently faced a lot of criticism. On the one hand, the story of the current expansion does not reach the usual level. Furthermore, new content, such as the current field exploration, is repeatedly criticized. You can read more about this under the video.
Bad story, RNG, and disabled mods
What prompted Yoshida’s statement? In 2024, Square Enix released Dawntrail, the fifth expansion for Final Fantasy XIV. Prior to that, there had been some criticism of the game, but with the DLC, the negative feedback seems to have taken over.
Here’s a selection of points that have emerged in the last 12 months:
- July 2024: Dawntrail receives only mediocre reviews on Steam. Some call it the worst expansion since Stormblood. Additionally, a type of quest from the community is met with displeasure, which often occurs in Dawntrail. Players are also discussing the English voice of the character Wuk Lamat.
- December 2024: The streamer and YouTuber Zepla summarizes the community’s dissatisfaction with the current expansion Dawntrail. Especially the story and characters seem to simply not be on the level the players are used to.
- May 2025: The new field exploration Kreszentia introduces new relic weapons into the game. However, the grind is based on RNG, which drives some players to despair.
- August 2025: On social media, in the official forum, and via review-bombing on Steam, the community expresses their dissatisfaction with the disabling of one of the most popular mods for the game.
Especially the feedback after the disabling of the Mare Synchronos mod in August 2025 lead to very upset responses from the community. Developers were repeatedly accused of not understanding that mods keep their game alive and that the disabling was an absolute misstep.
It is not yet fully known whether Square Enix is behind the disabling. Naoki Yoshida himself addressed the topic in a statement.
What is the current state of Final Fantasy XIV? In early August, Patch 7.3 for the MMORPG went live. The story of the current expansion is now complete. Overall, the update seems to impress the community again.
Just on September 2, Patch 7.31 launched the continuations for the current crafter and gatherer endgame as well as for the current relic weapons. The content is still relatively fresh. Initial community feedback is currently gathering in the official forum, among others.
Concerns have also arisen due to the announced dates for the new fan festivals for 2026. Their dates may indicate a prolonged wait for the next expansion.
Recently, Naoki Yoshida has also repeatedly stated that he hears the community’s feedback and also sees that Final Fantasy XIV is currently not as good as it could be: They have become too complacent.
Whether and how the MMORPG improves in the eyes of the community in the future remains to be seen. The basic wish of the players and their feedback seems to have reached the developers. Even if some of it has seemingly not been formulated constructively. It will also be interesting to see how the content of Patch 7.31 is received. You can read more about what exactly is included here: Final Fantasy XIV brings a new update with content for crafters and gatherers as well as a curious mount
