The new MMORPG's recent Endwalker expansion bringing closure to several long-running story threads, Yoshida emphasises that he wanted patch 6.1, set to release in mid-April, to show players that new challenges still await them in Eorzea.
In particular, Yoshida addresses the 24-man Myths of the Realm alliance raid, which he compares to Stormblood's Return to Ivalice content. He says that during his playtesting he felt that the content was "quite difficult" but remarks that from players suggested a higher challenge would be preferential to content being too easy, at least during the weeks after release.
Regarding the Myths of the Realm story, Yoshida says (as translated by aitaikimochi on Twitter) that it will be an entirely original, standalone narrative for FFXIV, with no guest directors being featured (in contrast to Return To Ivalice's Yasumi Matsuno and YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse's Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito, who contributed to development of the cross-promotional alliance raids in Stormblood and Shadowbringers respectively).
With the mythology of the Zodiark and Hydaelyn arc coming to its conclusion during Endwalker, Yoshida suggests (as translated by Siliconera) that the Myths of the Realm alliance raid will lean into the power of the Twelve, the Gods of Eorzea. He also notes that the story will be standalone and will not impact the MSQ – although it's worth ing that the same could have been said about the Crystal Tower alliance raids when they were originally released during A Realm Reborn.
Speaking more about the main story, Yoshi-P says that he wants the focus to be on the player "finding something new" and "will not be driven by answering to someone's call." He emphasised that the relationships built up with the many characters met over the course of the story to date would result in a new adventure spawned as a result of those "feelings, ambitions, and dreams" all coming together.
Yoshida also says that new characters will be showing up in the 6.1 story, but that this wouldn't detract from all the deep bonds that players had built up. In particular, he also singles out fan-favourite Inspector Hildibrand, whose wacky escapades were notably absent from Shadowbringers because the team wanted to focus their efforts elsewhere with the quality and costs of cutscenes ever increasing as story content became more elaborate. However, due to his immense popularity, he's currently set to make a return down the line in Patch 6.15.
If you're looking for more data centre travel set to arrive later in this patch cycle.
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