Final Fantasy XIV's Play-Limiting Fatigue System Explained

A game mechanic that drops the amount of experience points earned after a set amount of play time has Final Fantasy XIV fans in an uproar. Game director Nobuaki Komoto explains the eight hour a week limit.

Fans have been railing against the Final Fantasy XIV experience limiting system for a while now, but Komoto was too busy getting interviewed at Gamescom in Germany last week to respond. Now he's back in Japan and has issued a statement regarding the system on the Japanese beta test website, translated by FFXIVcore's Savalithos.

[Newtype]

What a dumb excuse for the fatigue system.

[Persistantthug]

Tell Squeenix to go screw themselves.....

No lube.

[Abriael]

It's actually much more complex than what kotaku says (but we're pretty much used to kotaku being sensationalistic after all).
Here's a full explanation on how the system works.
http://n4g.com/news/593091/... with all the details that other sites very conveniently omitted.

There's no "hard" limit. Even if you hit fatigue, as soon as you switch class or start doing something else, fatigue on your previous class will recharge.
Basically if you juggle between a couple or more classes (and you'll HAVE to do that to avoid being gimped, exactly like in Final Fantasy XI), you're very likely never to encounter the problem at all, even if you play the game a lot like I did in beta.

[thereapersson]

SCREWENIX

[Marceles]

More people cancelling their preorders? Good...more Wharf Rats for me to kill at launch

[blasian]

Same here ill be killing those rats and the dodos as well.

[Enigma_2099]

... board your doors, cause they're gonna come after you for this!

WHO'S GONNA PAY A MONTHLY FEE FOR A GAME THAT PUTS A LIMIT ON HOW LONG YOU CAN PLAY?? Sure you can screw around and earn items, but if you're not getting the whole package(EXP), who the hell's gonna bother?

[TheObserver]

I am pretty sure it is not as bad as people claim it is however,

Japan have a serious issue with NEET. Not in Employment, Education, or Training. Basically failure at life that leech of their parents and stay home and do nothing. Mainly MMO, anime, stuff like that.

I understand why they have a limit for NEET JAPANESE. But the rest of the world is not a freaking retard like those failure at life. We are getting shafted for what is going on in their society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

In 50 Years, Japanese population will be reduced 30% or so of what it is now. Serious birth rate issues. Freaking OTAKUS. Ruined the good old anime and filled it with Lolicon crap and pretty boys now you ruin games too. :(

http://www.marketwatch.com/...

[Simon_Brezhnev]

yeah i hate the loli anime and that yaoi crap. Manly animes are gone forever.

[WhatARump]

Fuck you guys -_-

[Enigma_2099]

I think I got an extra box of TROLL mix around here somewhere...

[INehalemEXI]

They could of avoided this by simply using this method ....you accrue bonus xp rate while offline, use it up and you go back to the normal rate of xp (which is secretly hell to lvl with just this rate).

Bonus sounds better then fatigue.

[kiddster58]

This is starting to piss me off. The article from abriel is the right one, all the other ones are wrong. To that actually believe the shit that kotaku and games radar are posting as facts are idiots and glad I wont have to play with them when I am playing 20 hours a week without hitting the limit which what will really happen in the game and not what these sights are suggesting.

[JD_Shadow]

Yeah, I'd take anything coming from someone that keeps spinning a lot of stories and has rabid fanboys spinning the facts and reporting their opinions as news with a grain of salt.

Though SE is becoming the people who will never once actually listen to even ONE of their fans, and this system is really confusing and that seems to be what SE WANTS (they need to just do what WoW does instead of being different for the sake of being different;why change what isn't broken and putting in what has always been broken?), I doubt Kotaku never thought of trying to get more hits from this.

[Baka-akaB]

1- the article isnt even right , go check abriael's one

2- most current mmo got a fatigue system as well , and plenty people dont even bother stopping playing because of the decreased XP . What matter is how much is said decrease .

HGell it was irrelevant in WoW , even without resting the character .

[Abriael]

Thanks mate. It's funny, but while trying to give people a correct picture of the fatigue system, I'm noticing that some people do NOT want to understand. They prefer to keep their misinterpretations of the system, so that they can rage better against the game and Square Enix...
Bubble for you.

[Blaine]

It doesn't penalize players, it just stops rewarding them. HUGE difference.

As for this explanation: "No one could train ad nauseam in the real world with no ill effects" it's quite a stretch. I used to be a competitive swimmer, and we'd train over 24 hours a week. A game, where real world rules don't apply, would limit you to 8 to make it more realistic? Right...

[Abriael]

Again, there's no 8 hour limit.

If you level up your classes juggling a bit between them you can easily go on the whole week without stopping a second. There's NO hard limit.

I don't think you did your 24 hours all on the same thing over and over, right?

[JD_Shadow]

Dude, you're on N4G. No one actually, you know, READS articles here. They just read headlines, never consider the source, then slam disagree at anyone who dares interject a bit of common sense into the discussion.

Just look at my comment above. It got a disagree almost IMMEDIATELY after I posted it (another comment I made someone else got the same treatment). This will show you how N4G works: some people here will slam dis/agree based on if they like the person making the comment or not, regardless of if the comment itself added to the conversation.

You're just seeing it in high gear. They can't take a moment to even BREATH properly.

[Abriael]

Eh, I got disagrees for... you know.. actually explaining how the system works :D

[Blaine]

I did read it, here's a quote:

"The experience point threshold, however, is unrelated to class, and switching classes will have no effect on the decreasing rate of earnable experience."

I did not, however, read the other DOZEN articles on the subject. Maybe one of them explains it differently, I wouldn't know. Fact stands: I read this one, and this quote contradicts you.

Also, 18 hours/week swimming, 4 hours weight-lifting, 2 hours yoga. I don't know what you meant by ''over and over'', but yeah, I did that every week.

Edit: lol @ darkpower saying I didn't read the article, and the title of my comment is a quote from it.

[Abriael]

@Blaine: that's a simple matter of terms used. To make things more simple to understand for people that aren't familiar with FFXIV i called "experience" both your class experience and your physical experience.

In FFXIV "lingo" the class experience is called "weapon skill" or simply "skill" and the physical experience is called "experience". Class leveling and physical leveling are separate in FFXI, and every time you do any kind of action, you'll get an amount of class "skill" points and physical "experience" point.

So yeah, switching classes won't influence your physical "experience" (which grows MUCH faster than class experience or "skill" anyway, so it isn't a problem), but it will recharge your "skill" gaining rate. Which is basically your class experience, it's just called "skill" in proper FFXIV lingo. If you want further explanations feel free to send me a pm, 'cause i'm out of bubbles :D

[Sidewinder-]

That's just undefendable. Most mmo's use a 'well rested' system so if you havn't been playing as much as the next guy, the next time you arrive online your getting your boosted % of exp. = leveling out the playing field (to a degree at least).

I wasn't ever going to buy the game but it's just common sense. People don't buy mmo's for the short term. Should call it an STMORPG. (ShortTimeMultiplayerOnlineRPG ).

Wasn't the last FF mmo terrible for value? Some things never change.

[whiteyjuice]

Ha ha! And all you sycophants will still buy this crap! You will pay good money to have a game maker tell the gamer how to play what you pay hard earned money for! And you call pirates stupid! If any of you had any sort of balls, you would totally boycott this turd!

[Sidewinder-]

well said. take no shit.

[Deios]

Maybe they are doing this until the PS3 version is released. So the PS3 players won't feel so behind. And then with a new version update, it will get uncapped. Either way, FFXI is my last MMO game.

[mr.selfdestruct]

This whole system seems to be for lack of a better term retarded. This seems like double talk to the enth degree. " In FFXIV "lingo" the class experience is called "weapon skill" or simply "skill" and the physical experience is called "experience". Class leveling and physical leveling are separate in FFXI, and every time you do any kind of action, you'll get an amount of class "skill" points and physical "experience" point.

So yeah, switching classes won't influence your physical "experience" (which grows MUCH faster than class experience or "skill" anyway, so it isn't a problem), but it will recharge your "skill" gaining rate. Which is basically your class experience, it's just called "skill" in proper FFXIV lingo"." The fact remains after a period of time I will no longer gain exp on my character progression. sure i can skill up but skill lack in importance to exp. so what if i can learn SATA if because my lvl is low it only does 3 damage. I really loved ffxi and want to like xiv but its really getting difficult to get behind this broken system!!!

[Whatever123456]

I think its a great idea & am still going to get this day 1. I dont play much anyways, I actually have somewhat of a life still :P

lvl 9 PSN btw xD