[SIZE="4"]Final Fantasy XIV's Fatigue System: Much Ado About Nothing[/SIZE]
Full Article: http://www.finalfantasyunion.com/news/fi...-1195.html

Alright so in recent days, a certain feature of Final Fantasy XIV was brought under the ever watchful and scrutinizing eyes of the gaming populace. Basically, the issue is FFXIV's going to limit your playtime. Once a player hits 8 hours of game time, experience gained starts to drop, hit 15 hours and there won't be any gain at all. It's called the Fatigue system.

[COLOR="Gray"]"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."[/COLOR]

Game director Nobuaki Komoto was recently quoted briefly explaining the system, describing it as a means to curb those with an unfair advantage - aka those with lots and lots of time on their hands. According to Eurogamer and VG247, it keeps track of how long players are on and limits the amount of experienced earned after so many hours.

This is what sparked the outrage among fans.

Understandably, with such a concept, not many players would be very thrilled. However, it was blown out of proportion due to a misunderstanding on the part of the media. The system is actually much more complex than what we've been led to believe and, in fact, isn't directly related to how many hours you grind. So don't go flipping any tables just yet, literal or proverbial.

Thankfully, Komoto posted an official developer's comment on the beta site. Contrary to popular belief, the fatigue system is far more than simply tracking hours and limiting experience earned. According to Komoto, the fatigue system calculates how much experience can be earned according to a "threshold" concept that was designed to fully compliment Final Fantasy XIV's character progression system. Komoto describes the threshold as a "theoretical value" that typify's an hour worth of play engaged only in activities that net experience and skill points. Based on that, a threshold is set "delimiting how many of these points can be earned in a period of play."

The system is in place so that players can earn the maximum amount of experience within the first eight thresholds. However, these thresholds are not limited to hours, meaning that players are still able to earn the maximum amount of points even after 8 hours of lovely grinding, as long as the amount doesn't exceed said threshold.

"The actual amount of time spent reaching these thresholds is not significant," added Komoto.

Of course, once the eighth threshold is exceeded, the amount of experience that can be earned starts to gradually decrease, hence the appropriately named "fatigue" system. It is also worth noting that everything resets after a week.

One key important point is that the threshold gradually recovers while players are engaged in non-experience yielding activities. According to Komoto, it is even possible for it to completely reset itself well before the one-week timer is up. Each different class has its own fatigue threshold, meaning that a threshold for one class can recover while another is being progressed. In essence, you can play for hours upon hours without ever noticing any fatigue affecting character growth.

Another point worth mentioning is that whatever experience is earned after exceeding the threshold limit, while the rate is at a depressing zero, is not entirely lost in the void. These points are stored as "bonus skill points" and are specific to each class. As to what these bonus points can be used for, Komoto and his team are still in the process of detailing that out.

This issue also only became blatantly noticeable during phase 3 of the beta test. Square Enix was simply testing the system in order to balance it properly prior to its launch on September 30. Komoto goes on to say that they will be reexamining the threshold values and improving on experience point reduction rates.

"At the very least, we can promise that players won't be running into the threshold penalty in the same short time span as they did in the beginning of Beta 3."

All in all, it doesn't sound much like a system that punishes players, but one that rewards players without an endless amount of grinding which is a feature that's more than welcome. So don't go getting your knickers up in a knot. The open beta kicks off on Wednesday so give it a shot if you're interested. The PC version will release on September 30. And of course, the PS3 version has been delayed until March 2011.

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It sounds semi lame since it's 8 hours a week, but I'm not going to let it stop me or bother me I'm going to enjoy the game.

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gosh.... This is what all MMO's fricking need. In some MMO's, these people that were my so called "friends" were lower lvls than me. Than something calls me to leave for like a month. I come back, and they're like on steroids or something cuz they passed me by like 40 lvls. I'm just like the heck? cuz they play like 10 hours a day and I'm like slow down and they ignore me... Kudos to SE for starting something revolutionary

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June Member of the Month and 10000th poster of the 10000 posts thread

It's not 8 hours. You can play more than that and still not see the effects of the fatigue system. It's not something that's directly tied to playtime.

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Another way to explain it would be that there is no time limit on how long you can be in combat just an EXP cap earned per week.
SE are putting an optimal figure on how much experience you can earn per hour. The first 8 of those hours per week you will earn 100% and then decrease until it hits 0% if you earn more that the optimal figure per hour.
If you earn less than the optimal figure SE decides, you will get the 100% EXP all of the time.

It doesn't matter how long it takes to hit those threshold limits in the game because it may take one player 10 hours to reach the 6th threshold, but another player 2 hours. It only matters that these thresholds exist. Forget about the time limit because as long as you haven't hit the 8th threshold you'll still get the maximum EXP points.

The only negative is that SE hasn't told us all the information.
What will happen to the "stored" points that we earn when we are at 0%. They can't really give a reward for it because that would take away the point of the system and alienate the more casual audience.
The haven't told us what the threshold limits are per segment.. Which is understandable because they don't really know themselves at this point.
Also with partying being promoted heavily in XIV, what happens with the boost of EXP you earn from being in one? You will hit the cap a lot faster, taking away combat time.
Also, when you are not earning EXP, how fast does the %rate diminish back to normal?

This will also mean that grinding to end game will take a lot longer too.
And with that, it may also deter people paying money for power-levelling and people selling accounts because people will still hit the EXP cap for that week. No more 24-hour grind-fests from the companies selling accounts as they will reach the cap.

Its definitely revolutionary, but without all the details I can't really tell for sure how well it will work.
It's definitely complex lol.

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"while the rate is at a depressing zero, is not entirely lost in the void. These points are stored as "bonus skill points" and are specific to each class"

So people who play more than the threshold DO get an advantage, unless this advantage is also given to the regular players, in which case the points are not lost at all and you can still grind 16 hours a day but just at a lesser pace that's higher than 0. This sounds entirely too overcomplicated to me and you should just let people grind up at their own pace and not limit at all content. If you want to blaze the entire game in a week more power to you.

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This is sort if a wierd developmen I thnking, but at least it will also help people get vitamin c and sleep every once and a while between this on WOW

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