Square Enix is introducing a “fatigue” system to upcoming MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV which will apparently see players hit with crippling penalties if they play more than an hour a day, with those daring to play more than 4 hours having their XP reduced to 0.

Square Enix acknowledge the existence of the system in an interview and in previous comments, but are strangely reticent about providing specifics:



“Some concern” may be a colossal understatement if early reports of just how draconian the limits are turn out to be correct:



Such systems are not unique, but Square Enix appears to have taken the system to an extreme likely to either completely eliminate its “hardcore” player strata – to say nothing of its high-handedness in dictating to players that they can only play an hour day.

Tell us about the “fatigue” and “dormancy” systems please.

We wanted to introduce a system to reward players who don’t have a lot of time to play. Maybe it looks as though we are placing long playing users at a disadvantage, but the idea is really to let play for short periods be viable.

Won’t that cause some concern amongst players who play for longer?

We want these players to try different classes. If you change class the fatigue doesn’t affect you, so you could try non-combat classes as well. You actually have more play choices now as you can make more characters.

Apparently after four hours of play time as a Conjurer, you'll be reduced down to 0 exp for your actions and must wait 48 hours before you gain exp back again.

I don't suppose any of the staff at SankakuComplex are actually in the Beta? If they were and had a clue they might see that there's no such 1 hour penalty. It is true that there is a fatigue system and players aren't happy with it. But it doesn't apply at the hour mark and it doesn't reduce your exp to 0. Most players encounter it only after 10 or more levels and several hours. So it is at least more subtle than that.

In my time in the beta, playing an average of 8 hours (7-9 hours), I've only gotten hit by the surplus ONE time and it was the one day I played for 14 hours straight. The people not in the beta need to play the open beta and see for yourselves. It's not nearly as big of a problem as a Vocal Minority makes it out to be. I'm not particularly happy about having a "soft cap" for daily play, but having only hit it once, I just changed to a Pugilist for a little while and went right back to my Gladiator with the surplus gone.

"Foreign sites have lots of false rumors. They throw together words and fabricate remarks. Then Japanese sites take this and further [falsify it through] mistranslation. The fatigue point criticism has absolutely nothing to do with the actual [system] and is just full of wild ideas."

It think that it's BONUS rested XP like you get in WoW or Aion. After you have used your BONUS (rested) xp, it goes to NORMAL xp

Within the first eight hours of play, you can earn 100% experience. The seven hour period following will see your possible experience gradually approach zero.

This system is on a weekly timer. After a week has passed since you began skilling that particular weapon, the timer will reset. It will start anew when you skill up again.

Any experience earned past that point is saved as “surplus.” There is surplus for each class, and if you begin to see it please consider playing another class and adjust accordingly.

However, experience points are not specific to any class and therefore the decrease in experience points is not affected by changing classes.

That’s how the system stands as of right now.

"First off, the main concept behind FFXIV is allowing those players with little time on their hands to play effectively, and game balance is based off of that. Furthermore, it is being designed to not give those with more time on their hands to play an unfair advantage. Because of that, systems such as Guardian’s Favor (a bonus to Guildleves) have been implemented to make leveling in the short-term easier than leveling in the long-term.

To achieve this balance, the amount of possible skill/experience points earned after a certain period of time has a threshold. Think of it as real-life “fatigue” from working at improving your skills via battle *(aka. No one could train ad nauseam in the real world with no ill effects).

Within the first eight hours of play, you can earn 100% experience. The seven hour period following will see your possible experience gradually approach zero.

This system is on a weekly timer. After a week has passed since you began skilling that particular weapon, the timer will reset. It will start anew when you skill up again.

Any experience earned past that point is saved as “surplus.” There is surplus for each class, and if you begin to see it please consider playing another class and adjust accordingly.

However, experience points are not specific to any class and therefore the decrease in experience points is not affected by changing classes.

That’s how the system stands as of right now.

Also, this system wasn’t implemented just in B3 but was set in motion from the very start of beta. Despite this, we have received many opinions regarding it in B3. There are a few reasons why:

-B3 allowed for longer sessions in single sittings.
-In order to promote party play, skill/experience points earned were greatly increased.
-The skill/experience earned from weak enemies was lowered, but had failed to pop up on initial bug reports (and was later fixed via maintenance).

According to the last bug report skill/experience able to be earned was above what had been planned, therefore people hit the limit much more quickly than hoped for. That is the biggest cause. Yet another problem was that we were unable to adjust guildleve experience and the experience-earned limit at the same time.

Our lack of explanation regarding all of this was a mistake, and we heartily apologize.

This all is still currently under development, and we have plans to make the limit more palatable in answer to all the tester feedback we received concerning this. In particular we would like to address the speed with which experience begins to drop off and are already looking into it.
Also, since experience points fatigue carries over despite changing weapons, we plan to make it not so harsh.

At the very least, we promise to not have people hitting these limits in a short period of time, such as during the start of B3.

We would also like to make an announcement regarding something else.

The decrease in earnings when gathering is based on your actions taken with that class and is unrelated to the aforementioned limits. This is also currently under review and is planned for adjustment in accordance with many testers’ opinions.

Surplus experience is currently not being used. However, we have received many comments suggesting some sort of reward be put into effect regarding it, and we think that’s a pretty interesting idea. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, though, and we’re currently investigating the possibilities.

Open Beta will not just see changes to the issues stated above but will also see adjustments made to encourage party play even more (such as an increase to skill points), which the team is currently hard at work on adjusting. We hope you’ll all test it out when the time comes.

Final Fantasy XIV director
Nobuaki Komoto "

Ulgokiem sounds like the name of an anal STD. Why anyone even listens to that douche bag is beyond me.

i love how half of this thread is about racism in america and the other half is pictures of kittens