First of all, Square Enix is determined to further expand the audience of its online game by making it ever more attractive to solo gamers. Whether psychological or real, the barrier that separates single-player JRPG enthusiasts from an MMORPG remains high, and Square Enix dreams of tipping the undecided into the world of online gaming, as 25 million have already done. people since 2013. Attracting solo players without betraying the expectations of the online public, such is the challenge for Yoshida and his team.
For this, Square Enix will start by generalizing the adjuration system, which is currently only offered in part of the game. This system allows you to play missions and dungeons with characters managed by artificial intelligence instead of other players, even if it means having to make some narrative adjustments to justify the presence or absence of certain characters. This “soloization” will be gradual and will start with the 2.0 missions (A Realm Reborn) in the 6.1 update. Please note that 8-player instances will not be compatible with adjuration before horizon 7.0.
The other big file of the team aims to improve the visual quality of Final Fantasy 14. Without promising a magical overhaul that would bring the graphic quality to the level of a recent big solo production, it is still a question of offering the game its first real graphical update since its launch. Here again, it is not a question of changing everything at once but of proceeding step by step. This graphical improvement will result in higher system requirements for PC players from the next expansion. As for PS4 players, they are not threatened in the short term: the 7.0 update will still work on the 2013 machine.
Square Enix has shared some renders giving a glimpse of what’s in store for gamers, noting that these are just the results of a first month of testing. For the characters as for the decorations, it is necessary to expect better quality textures as well as an improvement of the lighting, the shadows, the foliage, the richness of the decorations or even the weather effects and all that which can improve the atmosphere of the game more generally.
Other information and not least, Naoki Yoshida announces that the rate of launch of the major updates of Final Fantasy 14 will change. Instead of aiming for a deployment every 3 months, they will now be released every 4 months, this in order to relieve the development team while the volume of the updates in question has only increased over the years . We should add that the free trial, which was temporarily withdrawn in December due to server congestion, will be available again on February 22.
Finally, even if a new broadcast is scheduled for March 4 to look into the details of the 6.1 update, Square Enix has already listed the main contents of the next 5 updates so that regulars know what to expect. You will find a summary of the program on the report of the Final Fantasy World site, which we also thank for these screenshots.