Final Fantasy 14's controversial Viper changes were a hot topic within the dev team, too, as Yoshi-P admits the alterations were being considered 'right until the last minute'

Final Fantasy 14's director Naoki Yoshida explains the reasoning behind the changes to the new Viper job in Dawntrail, revealing the devs were divided on the decision right up to the last minute, while acknowledging the community's concerns regarding the complexity of the job's original design.

Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki Yoshida (AKA Yoshi-P) has responded to the criticism of last month's controversial changes to Dawntrail's Viper job, noting that the devs had been weighing up whether or not to alter anything "right until the last minute."

Not long after Dawntrail's release, it was announced that adjustments were coming to the new melee DPS job Viper, "pertaining to the busyness of their skill rotation." These came into play in patch 7.05, with some alterations to make the job a bit more simplistic. This understandably didn't go down particularly well with those who'd already gotten used to the Viper in its original form, and in a new interview with Eurogamer, Yoshida explains that the game's battle director had been "quite torn" about whether to go through with the changes. 

"With regards to the changes for Viper, we had adjusted right until the last minute and we did have in mind the possibility that some players might provide feedback that it was too busy to play," Yoshida begins. "We did release the job in that state, and then we found a lot of players say it was very busy to play to the extent that they were not able to see mechanics.

"The battle team, right until the last minute, were considering whether to make any adjustments to the job," he continues. "The battle director actually consulted with me because he was quite torn about whether they should go through with an adjustment or not. We announced that we were considering making adjustments to the job, but the response to that was a lot of feedback from players who had already reached the level cap and were already used to playing with the job, and they were happy with the way it played. However, we had already identified some actions which would inevitably be a cause of stress for players."

Yoshida explains that while the team eventually went through with the adjustments, this was "unrelated to the community feedback," although he thinks there "probably there was some misunderstanding on the community's part" in regards to this. He adds: "I do remember on social media, especially in North America and in Europe, some people were saying, 'Hey, Yoshida, you're listening too much to community feedback,' but that was only a little bit so really you don't need to worry."

Clearly, the team had the community's best interests in mind, even if there was no way everyone would be pleased. At least Dawntrail's new raid was almost universally loved amongst players, though.

For more games like Final Fantasy 14, be sure to check out our list of the best MMORPGs.