Long-time players of Final Fantasy 14 have had a wary eye on the first post-expansion patch, even long before its first announcements. The primary expansion of 7.0 was controversial in its story quality after two expansions of high standards, causing so much strife that even director and producer Naoki Yoshida had to step in and tell fans to leave its main actress alone.
However, across the board, everyone seemed to agree that the gameplay was stellar—though perhaps not enough to compensate for the writing, and the community fallout that followed.
Four and a half months later, the Main Scenario Quests return in 7.1, titled ‘Crossroads,’ as do a small plate of new content, updates, and fixes for players to get their hands on. So does 7.1 do a good job in trying to reel players back in?
Quality of Quests Return
The Main Scenario Quests team seems eager to take its second chance to prove that it’s got chops and learned some lessons from the 7.0 series. Thankfully, they actually lived up to that promise, perhaps because of the obligatory tighter size of the patch story. This time, we have a few well-paced subsets of story that don’t drag on their points too much, while still taking the time to let the player engage with characters and actions.
Importantly, there’s both setup and resolution for characters and upcoming plot points (as, of course, an X.10 patch is bound to do). Both Koana and Gulool Ja get great mini plots that do a lot for their characters while continuing to expand their origins within the world of Tulliyolal. Solution 9 becomes a bit more of its own vast character to keep an eye on, too, in a way that players who know the story beats know will see a rise and fall of story within the next two patches.
Thankfully, it’s not a trade-off of points of quality this time, as the gameplay continues to absolutely rip in the best way. The difficulty level keeps up in the MSQ dungeon and a specific duty, the former more so than the latter, with more new and clever mechanics that are easy to read, but still require that not-so-greedy reaction.
This excitement keeps up in the side content released so far—primarily the Alliance Raid based off of Final Fantasy 11, Echoes of Vana’diel. It integrates some of the unique mechanics we saw in prior standard Raids before in a fresh new way that might take a few runs to really understand (and that you’ll mess up on anyway). As someone who, somehow, has the least knowledge about 11 than any other FF game, I also appreciate that they give an NPC who does a little lore dumping. I’ve also been seeing little nods towards FFXI’s original game and equivalent locations per the community that they’ve been enjoying.
As for much else of what was released, it’s mostly wins in regards to quality of life. We were promised a ton of QoL upgrades at PAX Prime, including chat bubbles, and while many haven’t manifested yet, we have fixed title screens, some more graphical updates in major cities and for characters, more dyeable objects, adjustable party lists, and more little things that we probably won’t realize for a month despite skimming the notes. I'm also a huge fan of the new Hall of the Novice exercises.
We’re still waiting, meanwhile, on the Ultimate Raid based on Shadowbringers, as well as the Chaotic Alliance raid of 24 people—but hopes are high, it seems, given the topic matter and the gameplay team’s stellar work so far.
Is Crossroads Enough?
Despite the quality of Crossroads, I admit I’m a little disappointed by the pacing of the promised Dawntrail content releases. I’ll be glad to see the Ultimate, Manderville, and the Chaotic Raid Mode, but two of those are “high-end” content, and one ends pretty quickly, historically. We have a lot that was promised for us throughout the Dawntrail cycle that I feel needs to be prioritized.
FFXIV is still a perfectly solid game, and I agree with the devs’ take that we should be willing and able to play other games, but I don’t feel like Dawntrail has kicked in enough content well enough nor fast enough to compensate for the mass loss of endgame players that Endwalker feels like it endured for its lack of perpetual content. On top of Dawntrail 7.0 itself being controversial enough to push players to make the jump back to the likes of World of Warcraft, which sees its 20th anniversary this year, FFXIV’s long-term player base feels like it’s going to be in trouble if we don’t see more from the game soon.
That said, when we last saw “perpetual” content such as the open-world Bozja, it came out in the X.3 patch and saw new content for two patches thereafter. It’s probably not a boost in confidence to believe it’ll come out in 9 months—that’s to say early August—but at least that’s a lengthy time to explore the plethora of new MMORPGs and ARPGs we’ve been seeing hit the market. At least we can keep hope for the Cosmic Exploration next patch, as the Endwalker equivalent, Island Sanctuary, arrived in 6.2.
I’m sure Square Enix has better numbers than I do, but I feel like if you left FFXIV on a casual basis, there won’t be enough to compel you to stay beyond your first month’s re-subscription. However, if you were just waiting for the Ultimate, welcome back and good luck!
