Final Fantasy 14 boss says 'don't show so much restraint you stop having fun' following pleas to help ease server woes

Final Fantasy 14’s producer and director Naoki Yoshida has told players they “don’t need to show so much restraint [they] stop having fun” following his request they make a few concessions to accomodate newcomers while Square continues to addresses server issues caused by a sudden surge in the MMO’s popularity.

A record number of players have flocked to the now-decade-old MMO in recent times (Steam saw an all-time peak of 67,019 concurrent players earlier this week), and while that’s undoubtedly a boon for the long-term health of the game, the sheer number of people wanting to get involved has caused serious server congestion, resulting in lengthy queue times and players being unable to create new characters.

On Tuesday, Yoshida apologised to Final Fantasy 14 players for the ongoing technical woes, assuring them Square is doing everything it can to improve matters. A recently released patch has implemented an automatic logout for AFK players as an “emergency measure to combat congestion”, for instance, and login caps have been raised on North American servers.

Additionally, as announced in a new post to the Final Fantasy 14 website, login caps will now be increased on European servers, boosting simultaneous logins by roughly 500 characters per World server (an increase of 6,000 across all EU data centres) from today, 22nd July. “Once the maintenance has finished,” Yoshida writes in the post, “we plan to monitor the situation closely and will consider whether the cap can be increased further while preserving server stability.”