Square Enix on FF14: “Players Get 8 Hours a Week”

ok biggest blunder in mmorpg history? This or NGE? :)

my preorder has just been canceled.

Wow Square-Enix sure knows how to make someone NOT want to play their game. I'll stick with the upcoming KOTOR

I'd say they should have done 3 hrs a day per account, no exceptions,overage would event in immediate boot.

Good. All MMO's should implement such a feature. The amount of time some people spend playing these type of games is staggering and is only detrimental to the people around them and themselves.

Lol, well I was uninterested in it when the combat was slow as molasses against an easy opponent but the graphics are sharp and combat was sped up quite a bit.

I was really interested at that point, sexy characters and a decent story for an MMO. Then I find out about this limit, when I come home from work I enjoy gaming at least 2 hours a night. When I am really enjoying an MMORPG that can be 3 hours a night rather than watching TV or doing something else that is equally wasteful. This destroys my interest in the game as it actually punishes you for playing the damn game. I am a grown adult, I don't want mommy and daddy squeenix telling me I can't play that much more than an hour a day. If people get hopelessly addicted to it and ruin their lives, that is their problem and means they probably shouldn't be playing this kind of game anyway.

Hahahahaha!
Awesome Square, just AWESOME!
And there's people still defending this system, wow.

Why doesn't Square Enix just commit suicide while they're at it? This is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard, and if it stays like this, the game is going to fail.

You have to wonder if SquareEnix really wants to stay in business while making such decisions for a subscription based game.

How are the beta testers and bug fixers going to ... you know, test things?

Serves you righ 2ch no-lifers! <- I hope this comment gets translated and presented there.

Oh, so players get an extra hour a week? Fantastic.

What I'm more concerned in FF14 is how this will effect the none-fighting job classes. I mean are those classes more exp dependent, or skill dependent. Do we earn skills by doing tasks or is it directly related to exp? Essentially I'm wondering if the exp cap will only hard counter fighting classes, while I can just play Harvest Moon all day with my gathering classes.

the way I see it, it's 15 hours before xp = null, which honestly isn't that bad, and it doesn't stop you from leveling a different character, or farming for items.
And I'd wait with seeing how it works out until after the game is released, after all, for an mmo, nothing is ever really finalized.

C'mon Sankaku Complex, SE is shit so trash their games more!

It is likely that playtime counter that resets one week is actually Sunday at Midnight Japan Time, like in Final Fantasy XI. This wouldn't surprise me since its way easier to do that than have some sort of internal counter that people will attempt to hack.

However, all this is making me rethink my choice of pre-ordering FFXIV now.

Square Enix could use this to their advantage and ask for people to pay for extra hours play a week and they can make more money

No no Square Enix, this won't do
I detect a big fail...

Now I kinda wanna see how this shit's gonna go down a couple months after releasing the actual game....cause you KNOW it's bound to go down somewhere.

Sankaku ate my previous post :(

Just to clarify, it's not time-based, it's actually a cap on exp/skill points, the 8+7 hours/week figure comes from an approximation of how much time you'd need to exp (as in mindless prolonged grinding) to get to that quota.

It also says that it's possible to remove (or alleviate) the limit before the 7-day period is over, by engaging in non-exp related activities. I'm not sure what those would be since I haven't really tryed the game more than an hour or so.

If that is really a possibility it doesn't sound that limiting to me, playing more classes should be a given anyway since you would suck without mixing abilities, and, even if it is "forced", having an incentive to explore more aspects of the game (assuming they exist lol) is not that much of a negative thing, imho.

Well, it's a big improvement on the "1 hour per day" idea. With that way you'd have to use your hour EVERY day or it would go to waste, a real pain if you only have time to play on weekends or something. This is a lot less restrictive.

Mind you, that's like saying that it's better to be hit in the face with a piece of cat shit than a fresh cow pat.

Dear Blizzard,

1. Introduce Japan to WoW.
2. Avoid draconian policies like this. (Most people actually can regulate themselves. Those who can't are Darwin Award material anyway.)
3. ??????
4. Profit (fucking more)
5. Watch SquEnix shit themselves.

well with this limitation the game will not be successfull

Oh man Squeenix thinks that this is such an awesome idea until they realize a month after release there are no more sales and no subscribers.

I think this is a great idea... and introduce it to other things like sports. I think the NFL would love only being able to have their star quarterbacks score points for the first touchdown of every game. Or anything else competitve...

Drops and loot are not affected by the XP “fatigue.”
AKA "We SE love RMT"

I've played Pathetic Hikikomori level amounts of this game that past week, probably close to 84 hours, I kid you not. And I have not hit fatigue at all.

Somewhat relevant, but not really...

The article's pic is a mithra from XI :|

That hair style is what my mithra used in XI, and it doesn't exist in XIV's character creation.

Dear retards posting comment, and dear article writer - you are not limited at all to 8hrs a week and if you think you are, then you clearly did not read very much at all - or did, but didn't understand it.

Enjoy this educational video explaining WHAT YOU ALL MISSED and why it's a good idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abE09-tqhoM&feature=related [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abE09-tqhoM&feature=related]

Personally check out Spoony's MMO roundup. Aria sounds lovley.

And yes, this is stupidity. Then again, I don't knlow any Japanese MMO's other than Phantasy Star that did 'decent' in the west so.. I'm not suprised.

Screw that, and screw squeenix. Vote with your dollars and don't buy and play their awful games.

best way to make a game suck ever, aside from crappy servers without support and gms lol

And people are expected to pay for this shit when FREE MMORPG's are out/coming.

Isn't the whole point of an MMO to take over your life? Square Enix are being very stupid with this game

I for one welcome our new Square Enix overlords.

I'm sorry, but if they stick with this policy, they can stick this game up their butt.

When I want to play a game, I do NOT want some bean-counter telling me how often or long I can play my game... PERIOD!

Just another reason why I'll be passing up this game.

How about this: 8 hours a week = 32 hours a month = 384 hours a year. That's what Square should give us, 384 hours a year straight on.

This is equivalent to 16 days full time. So how can we manage this ? Simple, we buy an account, play for a month,for a reasonable 4 hours a day then quit the game and come back next year for another month and save ourselves a lot of money on monthly fees we won't use.

wow way to go enix. still alot of people will be pissed, what about raids? pvp's, guild wars? do you think they will be able to squeeze all the 8 hours into it? not to mention they are potential(future) hackers and so on.

come on square, get yourself together, you have been focusing alot of games lately yet you barely release some of them. i would rather release parasite eve archives on PSN, kingdom hearts 3, versus xiii and all of the XIII saga Final Fantasy VII,VIII Remake and Dirge of Cerberus Sequel(only story change the gameplay to a ATB). that would be awesome comapare to this.

That's still as bad/worse than before -.-

Full text for those curious. Judge for yourself if the article is accurate.

We'd like to thank all the beta testers for their cooperation during the closed beta test. We have received your valuable opinions and feedback and will do our best to incorporate them into the open beta and official release versions of the game.

Now, we have received a lot of questions and opinions from everyone today, and we would like to give you some answers regarding character growth balance in beta phase 3.

First, the concept was to achieve a balance which would allow those with little time to enjoy FFXIV to get more out of their play time, and above that, create a game that does not force you to spend long hours playing it. To that end, we implemented Guardian's Favor, which adds a bonus to Guildleve, and makes it easier to level in shorter amounts of time.

To balance this out, we came up with a hypothesis regarding what amount of skill points and experience one was likely to earn in an hour. Think of this as a rate at which a player can fight battles, do Guildleves or skill-up.

Then, using that supposed amount, we made it so you can earn 8 hours worth of skill points and experience at 100% of this rate. The subsequent 7 hours' worth will gradually see the attainable skill points and experience points fall to 0.

The limitation on thee amount of points you can attain is set on a weekly timer. Once it passes a week since you first began leveling a particular skill, the limitation resets to zero. After it resets, it will come into effect again once you begin work on that skill once more.

Even if you are hit with this limitation during a one-week period, its detrimental effects decrease if you do not level that particular class. You can even recover back to the full 100% rate of point acquisition, so you do not always have to wait the full week for the limitations to go away.

The skill points you do not gain are instead saved as Surplus Points. Each class has its own amount surplus points, so you can try out a new class if surplus points begin appearing in your log window.

However, each class does not have its own amount of experience, so playing a different class will not mitigate the declining experience point rate.

This is the system as currently implemented.

In truth, this system was not just put in during phase 3 of the beta, but has been implemented from the start. However, we have received many opinions saying the system explained above is not what actually appears in phase 3 of the beta. There are several reasons for this.

Around the time of beta phase 3, it became possible to play for longer periods of time, thus increasing the amount one could play in a single week.
In beta phase 3, Guildleves received a boost in skill points and experience points awarded to encourage party play.
The skill points and experience gained from defeating enemy parties as well as weaker single enemies was lowered, though due to a bug, did not take affect initially in beta phase 3. This was fixed during beta phase 3.
The number biggest culprit behind this issue was that last bug, which allowed players to gain more skill points and experience than we expected, causing the limitations to come into effect much quicker. Of course, not adjusting the limitations in accordance with the boost to Guildleve was a problem as well.

The lack of explanation regarding these adjustments was a mistake on our part for which we sincerely apologize.

The numbers behind these limitations are all still under development, and we plan to adjust them according to player feedback in an effort to make them less severe. In particular, we are considering making the decline in points less drastic and are already hard at work on it. Also, as the limit on experience carries over through class changes, we plan to lessen its effect compared with the limit on skill points.

At the very least, we promise players will not be hitting the limit as quickly as they did at the start of beta phase 3.

Also, I would like to address one other thing below:

The reduction in what you acquire from gathering is based on the actions of that particular class and is unrelated to limitations on leveling. We are also in the process of adjusting this and plan to make changes based on player feedback.

Surplus points currently have no use. However, there are opinions saying preparing some kind of reward would be good, but that's just giving people something else to strive for, which misses the whole point of this system. We want to take our time and thoroughly investigate this issue.

Now, the open beta test will include more than just the above adjustments. As we stated before, awarding more skill points for party play is also an important topic we plan to address, so we hope you enjoy testing out what we come up with.

Lastly, as director of this title, I wish to deeply apologize for the lateness of my comments due to my absence while attending Gamescom. In addition, articles written during my trip contained much speculation, outdated information and mistranslations which only invited more confusion. In the future, I will do my best to make direct, official statements in a timely manner. I humbly ask for your understanding regarding this matter.

See you in the open beta!

Final Fantasy XIV Director

Nobuaki Komoto

What a great way to scare players away!!! Still, i bet those final fantasy otakus will still play it like the idiots they are.

I think this 'fatigue' feature is just to cover up them not having any endgame content.

With the turn based combat system currently in place, a little over an hour a day will probably only let you kill about 5 things before your hour (and 7.5 minutes) is up.

Could you imagine getting a typical quest such as gathering 21 boar anuses and it taking over half a week's worth of play time to do because the combat is so slow?

Dear Square Enix

Fuck you ever getting another penny of my money ever for one of your games. It's shit like this that makes me want Fallout and Bioshock more. Hell, even the Star Wars MMO looks awesome compared to your servings of shit.

Signed, 20 year video game player

they can eat shit !!!
because the monthly fees they keep earning it!!!
so are ask fees for max 8 hours a week instead of expensive monthly fees !!!

Since many kids and teens've been literally dying 'cause of online gaming abuse (and of course to get players to spend eternity paying their fees) Square-Enix felt obligated to contribute with a "non-addicting" MMORPG...

Which of course is complete and utter crap and quite a surprise from the makers of incredibly addictive RPGs (or JRPGs if you prefer) such as Chrono Trigger (multiple endings, first new game+ ever), FFVI (FF3 in the US, with its multiple side-quests and, by then, first ever ton of playable characters), FFVII which became a complete cult on its own, etc...

Seems like they want to aim for political correctness, but the ones paying the fees will most likely opt to be "outcasts to society" and just keep playing WoW instead. Yer gonna lose money on this Square-Enix...

=1 for great justice

thats a trick, really. due to this, even mass-players wont get to the highest level easily therefore will spend more time with the gam to geet to the highest level and wont be bored of it that soon. i think thats what they were thinking.

Sorry, but I dont consider this game a MMO if you can't play free at least 5 hours every day.

Usually in MMOs you spend 1 hour looking for a party/group of people and another 1-2 hours in the dungeon/instance whatever you call it.

This system FAILS big time.

I think were gonna see alot of pissed off koreans :D

Again, clarification is needed. Yes, there is an "8 hour" cap on experience. However, Experience is the ONLY value that is character specific. There are 18 classes in the game, and to level a class it takes skill points. Those skill points are class specific, so after 8 hours worth o play on any given class, the player is suggested to switch to a different class.

If a hardcore player wishes to grind constantly, and switches classes every 8 hours like the game suggests (which actually makes the character stronger, as all class abilities can be equipped by other classes), then the player has 144 hours worth of 100% skill points to take advantage of. There are 165 hours in a week.

Furthermore, if the player chooses to grind a single class until they no longer receive any skill points, they have 15 hours worth on each class.

18*15=270

Again, much more than a week worth of play.

It's a VERY poor attempt at equalizing the have's and have-nots in an mmorpg, which still plans on charging a monthly fee.I doubt very many people are going to flock to this mmo at all, especially when most casual mmorpg players don't like paying monthly fees to begin with.

Someone who LIKES the 8 hour a week xp system, and doesn't mind paying the $14.95 monthly=SUCKER imo.

1 hour and 8.5 minutes a day.
reserve Saturday for FF
play some other online game for the rest of the week.
At the end of the month, forget to play for FF.
Quit FF.
Continue playing the other online game....
Possibly any of the FREE MMOs that have no time limit...

still 8 hours a week is very very little... and is unreasonable...20 hours a week sounds reasonable...
but still they should make up another better and simpler system instead...

Well, at least I won't have to take that week off work to play now. Just over an hour a day is manageable...too manageable.

Still sucks hugely though, would have liked to spend a good few hours playing this during the weekends as well.

Lol I lost a whole post because I typed a certain persons user name.

Square-Enix is now dead.

Good for me tho, I'm not buying it

This needs to be repeated to up the scarce chance people will even read through the comments instead of just posting their ignorant obstination.

"This system needs to be explained better by sankaku.

First of all, XIV runs on a system that is NOT entirely exp based. In fact it's less of a factor than your skill level. Every skill and piece of armor you can wear and quests you can take go by your skill level. It is what you would think exp would be doing.

In XIV's case though, exp or "Physical level" is across jobs/weapons/skills. you will keep the same physical level no matter which skill you switch to. SE is only limiting Physical Level and NOT skill level.

People will be able to play the game all they want and never have to slow down. The system just isn't what people are used to.

walk away from this post knowing EXP IS NOT THE MAIN ADVANCING FACTOR IN XIV"

Да они ахуели! я в ДЕНЬ играю по 10 часов блять! а они суки хатят мне 8 часов в НЕДЕЛЮ??? ИДИОТИЗМ! нужно МИНИМУМ в неделю 100 часов делать. МИНИМУМ!

Funny, the other gaming sites say that the fatigue system affects "surplus EXP", not base EXP.

According to them, it basically means that you get a %100 bonus EXP for 8 hours per week, which then gradually decreases as you play.

So, in FFXI parlance, that would mean you'd get 200 EXP for defeating an {Even Match} monster for 8 hours a week. After fully fatigued, you'd get the normal 100 EXP.

It doesn't mean that your continuing to fight would reduce your gain to nothing.

I'm all for it, since I play about 8 hours per week already. :)

Still gonna fail...

Am I the only one who thinks this is a good idea? I don't play MMORPGs specifically because they're such time-eaters and you can never compete unless you become a shut-in and play eight hours a day. But this fatigue system actually makes the game sound appealing. I hope Squeenix doesn't cave and drop it.

The last time i got bad votes for saying that Squenix lost their marbles and now look at that. It gets worse every single day. What the hell!

lolololololololol yes

I think its about time to go back to FF11.

Well better start planning my 8 hours and week.

-Day 1: log in, rush to kill as many possible enemies for experience as I possibly can for 8 hours. Screw talking to other players. Screw adventuring and taking in the sites. No time for making and forming large parties. Gotta capitalize on my exp while i can.

-Day 2: 8 hours are finally up, finally start talking to people again, explore the world, level skills

-Day 3: see day 2

-Day 4: see day 2

-Day 5: bored to death of leveling skills, stops playing waiting for week-end

-Day 6: see day 5

-Day 7: see day 5

Day- 8 see day 1.

Day 36: Back to WoW/any other mmo. Never returns to ff14.

Day 155: FF14 announces no fatigue restrictions.
Day 156: rawr wow/other mmo screw ff14.

So, the limit per day (if people want to spread their playtime out evenly over the week) is 1 hour and 8.57142857 minutes each day.

I guess that we were wrong. We get eight and a half minutes more minutes each day than we thought, so we should have no reason to complain about not being able to accomplish anything.