Math is coming for Final Fantasy XIV very shortly. Oh, sure, it can be postponed for a couple years yet, but we know it’s coming. There’s another expansion being planned, and when that expansion arrives, we’re going to have to deal with the fact that the level cap should be raised to 100… but the traditional Final Fantasy level cap is 99. (Yes, there are two main series games where this isn’t the case, but it’s still the norm.) That’s going to be a bit of an issue, isn’t it?
Obviously, this isn’t something horribly destructive or even a problem per se; it’s very easy to just say that the level cap is now 100 and just go from there, there’s no system issue that prevents it. But it’s something worth keeping in mind as we start looking toward the game’s next expansion as something real and inevitable. We have hints, we have teases, but there are elements to consider beyond that which will definitely have an influence on the game as a whole.
Let’s establish something as a baseline: The first consideration that the next expansion for FFXIV has to contend with is simply the same as every other expansion – namely, that it has to be good and engaging. There’s nothing inherently different about that in a post-Endwalker era than was true in a pre-Endwalker era. But there are certain considerations that have changed, and the “math” one I mentioned is in some ways the most obvious but also the most irrelevant in the larger scheme of things.
For example, there’s the simple problem of making the next expansion successfully feel relevant. Not like an appropriate escalation, as it’s very clear nothing is going to escalate to the level of Endwalker for quite some time at the very least. No, I mean relevant, as if this is something that we dearly need to see the other side of.
While a certain amount of FFXIV‘s ongoing expansions have been pitched simply at “here’s the next installment of the game you’re enjoying,” there’s also an element beyond that for people who might take more breaks from the game asking you to consider the upcoming end to the story each time. Every story has tied into each new expansion thus far. I’m not saying that people are necessarily going to clock out with that story ending, but it’s a little hard to convince people to jump on for a new story when the main one has, understandably, concluded.
So this is something that needs to be considered. The next expansion has to look different enough from even previous FFXIV content to make people say “wow, I want to see what happens there.” It has to pull people in who are otherwise content to stop the game at the end of Endwalker, since that does provide a natural place to jump off. That’s not a bad thing; it’s just the reality.
Moreover, there’s a certain degree of fatigue that has to be considered. While the developers work really hard at continual balance and refinement, the fact of the matter is that FFXIV has been in its current form for a long while, and it has a very predictable cadence of content types, of things to do, even of new jobs. There’s a certain point at which it starts to be too many jobs to keep up and keep track of everything; speaking as someone who tries to cap out every single job, each expansion makes that progressively harder.
But there’s a flip side to that as well. On the one hand, continually adding new jobs increases the complexity of the game inevitably and will lead to balancing issues and a creeping scope; failing to add new jobs, however, will also be seen as a lack of an expected expansion feature because we’ve had four expansions that have done it. Anything that’s changed is going to be seen as a loss of features, and changing nothing will lead to some amount of fatigue.
This is no doubt why the game experiments and continually has things coming out at a reliable pace without necessarily being expected content. But you do have to consider these things, and you have to keep in mind that what people want from the game now may not be what people want from the game in another decade.
This brings us to the next and perhaps most obvious point. Right now, FFXIV is at a high point. It’s sailing along, getting critical acclaim, seeing a growing playerbase and steady revenues. But what happens when that changes?
Historically it does change for every MMO. Eventually people are going to drift away, the game is going to look increasingly dated, and the playerbase is going to move on to other things. Heck, some people are going to have kids or get new jobs or lose friendships and the game just won’t provide the same level of enjoyment.
What then? If we’re starting a new story now, is it meant to last for another decade? Will all the people playing now still be playing in another decade? Or do we go for shorter and more self-contained tales for a while, able to change pace as the playerbase dwindles?
I don’t want to give the wrong impression from all of these listed considerations; I don’t actually have all the answers to all of these problems. Heck, I don’t have the answer to the first problem I pointed out in the intro. The level cap kind of has to keep increasing in some way, but that’s going to come into conflict with the series history inevitably, and the developers are just going to have to figure out how to work around that. Similarly, we’re going to have problems with the level cap increasing where certain levels are just going to wind up being empty; there are no two ways around it as we keep to about the same number of active abilities for every given job even as we gain new stuff in each expansion.
These two needs are at odds with one another. You can’t keep providing five new abilities with each expansion without the lower levels getting more and more spaced out, you can’t build the game on an ascending level cap without this problem occurring, and you can’t build your game on an expectation of certain things without those expectations eventually causing some problems. I’m reluctant to even call any of this a flaw; it’s just how the game is. There are forces working against it, forces that have to be considered seriously in order to make the game keep working.
Does that mean the next expansion will be bad or weaker than Endwalker or somehow has to trim things back? Not at all. It just means… well, you have to think about this stuff. And the more you think about it early, the more you can be ready before it becomes a problem.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I’m obviously going to be talking about the next live letter, since that will have happened by then. Woo, new information!
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
