Ever since its introduction last year, Final Fantasy XIV‘s current raid tier – Alexander – has been a great subject of contention. Some fans feel it doesn’t quite hold up to the previous raid, the Binding Coil of Bahamut; while others are simply tired, broken and find it too difficult to continue out of lack of interest. So what happened? We had the opportunity to speak with producer/director Naoki Yoshida at Gamescom this past week about some of the lessons they’ve learned and what fans can expect going into Patch 3.4.

“The player feedback that we received with the Binding Coil of Bahamut series was they wanted more challenge, they wanted more difficult content,” Yoshida explained. “So with this feedback with Alexander we implemented two versions of the same content with Normal Mode and Savage Mode. With Savage Mode, we made it really brutal – really difficult with so many gimmicks and mechanics.

“However, we heard feedback from players that now the Savage Mode of Alexander is too difficult. For the next one we’re trying to make it easier because what we want to do is bring more people in to challenge this raid content.”

Continuing, Yoshida added it wasn’t just difficulty feedback fans communicated but the narrative design as well. “The other feedback was about the storyline, that the Alexander content lacked in some excitement that we got during the Coil series. In order to bring more excitement we wanted to have this special kind of feature for the final boss in the final installment of Alexander. Because Alexander is a monster who manipulates time there will be some gimmicks, effects and battle situations where you can see those kinds of elements.

“That’s something we’d like you to look forward to, however, the development team is currently working really hard on tweaking and balancing all the content.”

Check back for our full interview with Yoshida on Final Fantasy XIV this week.