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Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest in Anaheim revealed not only the new 8.0 expansion, Evercold, but some massive sweeping changes that will integrally change the structure of the game – from a renewed focus on weekly content instead of dailies, to a brand-new overhauled Evolved Mode for job actions.
Alongside these announcements, director and producer Naoki Yoshida took time out to speak to members of the press in a Q&A session. We’ve collected all of his most interesting and illuminating answers, diving into the inspirations of Evercold, the rationale behind the new Evolved Mode, where FFXIV goes from here, and more.
Switch 2 Version Controls and Technical Details
Mouse controls will be supported for the Nintendo Switch 2 version, but Yoshida notes that he himself hasn’t tried them for higher level content like Savage Raids – and he largely assumed most players will still want to hook up a mouse and keyboard for that style of content.
He also briefly touched on specs and performance:
“I want to be honest with you, we’re working really hard on the optimization for the platform, striving to get the best performance. I think in towns, you may see a lower frame rate only because there are so many players that are rendered on the screen. But we’re still able to reach 30 frames per second in a stable state, and in duty content. I think the performance is something you don’t have to be concerned about,” Yoshida says.
In addition, Yoshida re-emphasized his comments on the PS4 version of FFXIV during the keynote. He stressed that the development team currently has no plans to cease development on the PS4 version, but the increasing size of the game is becoming a hurdle that reaches toward the limits of the hardware. With that in mind, he hopes players can slowly transition to the PS5.
Dancing Mad Ultimate
Yoshida shared some brief insight into how Dancing Mad was chosen for the next Ultimate Raid, and the design of it. Developers apparently cycle through Ultimate content, pitching Yoshida directly on what they want to do. There’s a limited pool of team members that can actually work on Ultimate content. This time around one of the designers responsible for the Omega raid with Kefka was up, and he was convinced that he could do something even more special with the character. Yoshida notes, “It’s this unnatural love for Kefka that brought this about.”
Details on the raid are scant, however, as he notes that like most raid content in the game the story and the mechanics are closely tied together. To him, players should experience that connection firsthand.
Why the New Jobs Are Original, Not Inspired by Past Games
In terms of choosing new jobs, there’s a process the team goes through with every expansion. According to Yoshida, they have tangible data that a good chunk of players prefer DPS over tank or healer, which is why one of the slots is always filled by DPS. From there, Tank and Healer take turns.
When it comes time to actually decide on jobs there’s a pitching process, where ideas are taken from multiple developers. For Evercold there were five Tank ideas pitched, and the team had to hone in on which one would be the most fun experience. Then that idea was applied to the ranged DPS.
But in terms of not basing the jobs on past Final Fantasy entries, that was more happenstance than a deliberate effort to provide something new.
“If an idea was pitched along with an existing Final Fantasy series job name, then we’d associate it with that,” Yoshida says, “But this time the ideas that were pitched were very unique and not based on any legacy job. So we wanted to prioritize that sort of unique feeling and bring in those interesting ideas. That’s why we decided these would be original to FFXIV.”
Evolved Mode
Yoshida started thinking about the Evolved system roughly one and a half years ago, at which point he thought Mr. Prime (who gave the presentation during Fan Fest) would be the best suited to lead the changes.
By far the biggest challenge the team faced, and still face, is time constraints. Rething and reworking jobs simply takes time to develop, although Yoshida is confident Evolve Mode will be fully implemented with the launch of 8.0.
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Full Free Livestreamed Schedule for FFXIV Fan Festival Anaheim 2026
“When I talked about developing Evolved mode with Sato and others, I really wanted to keep it so we are going to continue adjusting and updating at the 8.0 release and Evercold. So we need to make sure that we will develop the Evolved system, but then also let’s properly address what we currently have as well,” Yoshida says.
But the reason for keeping Reborn Mode alongside Evolved is by far much more interesting. Yoshida references Star Wars Galaxies, and how much he personally liked its game design. But as some might be familiar, for the betterment of the gameplay experience, they took an existing professions system and changed it to something entirely different – and subsequently received tremendous backlash from players. Yoshida didn’t want that experience with FFXIV. Players have gotten so familiar and used to the systems that are established, so from the very start he didn’t want to just completely remove those systems.
Same Region Player Matching
There’s a surprisingly simple answer to what made same-region matching possible, it’s simply iterion. Over the last 13 years the team has had to build party finders and world visiting, one step at a time. About two years ago Yoshida felt that they’d finally be able to break down the walls of region matching, after all the steps that came before.
From that perspective, it was possible to start doing same-region matching because of development and knowledge accumulating.
“The steps that we took started with the servers and the worlds – we’d look at the character server, and then the world server, and then the server above that, and so on,” Yoshida says.
Actual equipment replacement started two years ago, and the actual coding of the new system started roughly a year and four/five months ago. It’s been a long process of simply testing and bit by bit making sure it works. Yoshida has always wanted to get to this point since A Realm Reborn – he’s now comfortable enough to make that happen with Evercold.
Inspiration for the Name Evercold
There was another candidate for the name of the new expansion before Evercold, but that’s a pretty common occurrence. Yoshida really wanted the name “Absolute Zero.” For example, one of the names that came up for Stormblood was “Rebellion,” but it couldn’t be done for legal reasons. Shadowbringers had the name “Darkbringer” suggested. And Endwalker the other candidate was “World’s End.”
Absolute Zero was themed around everything being frozen, and scientific evidence the world was once completely cold. Metaphorically, you can also think of the name as someone’s heart “growing cold.” With this expansion, the Warrior of Light will encounter many forms of ice that they have to “melt” to move forward. The concept of the new expansion was first thought about roughly two months after Dawntrail, although Yoshida has a general idea of the direction he wants to take the scenario. It’s more about narrowing down the next theme.
Norse Inspirations in Evercold
Yoshida says he was actually surprised that people noticed these details, as the Norse influences were something they intentionally tried to tone down in the keynote – even going so far as to not include any names or proper nouns to give things away. But he does confirm that Norse mythology is, in fact, a big inspiration.
“If you’d like to look into the culture or history of Norse mythology, you might enjoy the expansion further,” he says.
Restoring Stronger Job Identity Without Hurting Balance
Yoshida says balance is an idea that can be very vague or broad – you could be referring to comparing jobs in the same role and how much damage they can deal. Or you could be referring to all DPS should be equally the same.
Yoshida and the team largely look at balance within the role. For example, they showed the Dragoon earlier today and showed the Sky High ability where they jump off screen– letting you avoid 90 percent of damage for the period. With Evolved mode they really wanted to bring the characteristics of each job out.
The team always tries to create something that’s unique in job mechanics, before thinking about balance. They balance things out based on the particular mechanics of each job.
“With the example of Sky High, there’s three seconds that the character is off screen., If you’re looking at a global cooldown skill, you can execute it twice. So to offset that, when the character comes back to the screen, you’re dealing about twice the damage,” Yoshida says, “So that’s how we balanced it out, based on the mechanics of a particular job, and in terms of the gameplay feel. Of course, we, the development team, would also look at any feedback that was provided and adjust from there as well.”
Have You Ever Considered Making a XIV Spinoff Game
Yes, Yoshida has thought about it. Considering how long he’s been working on XIV, he still feels he wants to continue bringing in even one more person into the game. He also notes that there are still some that feel the sentiment that an online Final Fantasy isn’t a “real Final Fantasy.”
While he’d love to consider making an offline FFXIV or spinoff, the only team that can potentially make one is the current CBU3 team. If they ever retire from FFXIV Online, maybe they can do it then.
If someone is truly passionate about making one, maybe they can do it.
“I’m half joking, half serious. If somebody is passionate enough to want to helm that sort of project or take it on, we’d love to hear from you,” Yoshida says, “Just like we were able to finally get cross-region matching, we’ve always held the motto of ‘never give up.’ So if we have that sort of obstacle or hurdle that we need to overcome, we just take it one step at a time and do what we can. So if anybody is passionate enough, be it an individual or company, we would want to hear your pitch.”
Where Would Yoshida Like to See FFXIV In Ten Years
The word goal, to Yoshida, brings to mind some kind of endpoint, and he can’t imagine XIV coming to an end. With that in mind, he’d love to keep seeing XIV going, even if he retires. He wants to create a state where the game can continue without him.
“Getting to that next ten years is sort of that midway point. Through Shadowbringers and Endwalker we see a climax to the story. So in the next ten years we’d like to bring another climax that’s as satisfying, or can even surpass it. So right now we’re taking the steps to try and build that,” he says.
More from FFXIV Fan Festival Anaheim 2026:
Disclosure: Travel and accommodations for this event were provided by Square Enix.
