To Add Jobs With Every Expansion, Yoshi-P Says FFXIV Team Will Need To Make Jobs That “Haven’t Appeared In Final Fantasy”

As we all know, Final Fantasy XIV Executive Producer Naoki Yoshida and the game’s development team plan to keep the game going for at least another decade – provided nothing goes wrong in the next ten years. The team is already hard at work on plans for the 7.0 expansion and whatever adventures it will bring players while continuing to release the rest of the post-Endwalker content.

When MMO players hear the word “expansion” they immediately imagine a few things. Expansions mean new content and that generally means things like new zones with adventures and new dungeons to explore. It also often means a new playable race and new jobs. When developing Final Fantasy XIV, Yoshi-P and the team have been able to pull both of these from existing games, bringing them into the MMO and effectively tying the entire Final Fantasy universe together. But, as time goes on, the development team may have to pull inspiration from somewhere else.

During a recent conversation with Producer Matsui on the We Are Vana’Diel site, Yoshi-P addresses this eventuality, noting that when pulling jobs from existing games, they have to do more than just share the same name. They also have to have gameplay that matches known design while providing something that jobs that already exist in the game do not. For these reasons he believes they will “have no choice but to come up with brand new jobs that haven’t appeared in the FF series before.” Matsui even chimed in to note that it’s a “rule of design” to add a new job or playable race as the main feature of a new expansion. As we noted above, players just expect it these days.

Of course, neither Yoshi-P nor Matsui gave any hint as to what kind of jobs they might be coming up with in the future. At the moment they’re likely more concerned about getting the job balancing just right for the game’s PvP. What they did do is discuss other elements of early MMO game development and how their experiences with games like Ultima Online and EverQuest eventually influenced what we have in Final Fantasy XIV. Of course, they discussed Final Fantasy XI as well, and the different moves that had to be made to make the games appeal to Japanese audiences versus Western ones and their unique playstyles.

Those interested in reading the discussion can find it on the We Are Vana’Diel site. It’s broken into three parts. Part One and Part Two are available now. Part Three will be posted on June 8.