Final Fantasy 14 Almost Had A Time Mage Job

Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida has revealed that Square Enix once had plans to introduce a Time Mage job role, but it was scrapped due to fears it wouldn’t work and would “overpower” the job.

Final Fantasy 14 has certainly evolved over the decade since A Realm Reborn, introducing all manner of new classes/jobs to make sure that almost everyone has a class they feel at home with. Dawntrail will add two more when it releases next month, in the colorful, magic-focused Pictomancer and melee, dual-wielding Viper – both of which are DPS – but as the game gets more and more job roles, it gets trickier for director Naoki Yoshida to come up with interesting new jobs with unique mechanics.

Speaking with TheGamer, the director reveals some of the issues he’s had in the past when trying to create new jobs for each expansion, revealing that he and the team once considered introducing Time Mages to Final Fantasy 14. Those that are familiar with Final Fantasy will know that Time Mages are characters that excel at manipulating time – and can be found in titles like Final Fantasy Tactics – with spells such as Haste and Slow to speed up, slow down combat, and even stop time completely.

Final Fantasy 14 Director Naoki Yoshida Was Considered Adding Time Mages

Unfortunately, Yoshida eventually had to scrap the idea of Time Mages due to the difficulties of trying to work time-related spells into an MMORPG. You can’t exactly slow down a raid boss or pack of ads for one person and not everyone else in a multiplayer setting, and Yoshida was also worried that having time slow or speed up for all players would “overpower the job,” and you don’t need to imagine the scenario too hard to understand why.

Later on, Yoshida admits that the well of recognizable jobs from across the Final Fantasy series that could work in an MMORPG is starting to dry up a little, with the ideas for new weapons in particular starting to become a tricky issue to overcome. To do that, he states that more original jobs specific to Final Fantasy 14 will be the focus moving forward. You can read the rest of our interview with Yoshida here, in which he goes into detail about designing dungeons, his alt characters, and how the team goes about making trials.

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