Reports that Final Fantasy XIV includes a “fatigue” system which involves limits on how long players can effectively play have been dismissed by Square Enix as “fabrication,” despite the fact Square Enix already admitted adding such a system.
Hiromichi Tanaka, Final Fantasy XIV’s producer, dismissed claims about the hugely controversial fatigue system as mere “fabrication” on Twitter:
Overseas sites are full of falsehoods. They just put words together and fabricate statements. Japanese sites then mistranslate these. That fatigue system isn’t in and was just something they made up.
However, he was recently interviewed by no less than Famitsu, along with production director Nobuaki Komoto, who freely admitted the existence of the “fatigue” system for penalising heavy players – the only matter in question is what form the system takes, which Square Enix has refused to reveal, causing endless speculation by beta testers as to how the system works.
The supposed “1 hour per day” limit, based on comments originating from 2ch, was in fact first covered by several of the most popular Japanese gaming blogs and a number of other hugely popular Japanese sites – hardly a “fabrication by overseas sites,” and as it originated in Japanese it can hardly be called a mistranslation either.
Meanwhile Japanese players continue to insist the fatigue system does reduce XP gains to 0 after heavy play, some dismissing Tanaka’s comments as “desperation.”
Square Enix could easily dispel consternation about the system by revealing how it works in detail – assuming of course it is not as draconian as some beta testers have already complained.
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…
I’ve dealt with the fatigue system before. It made me quit a game all together. And I thought the game itself was brilliant.
They’re probably desperately trying to find a way to drop the system altogether.
lol reminds me of persona 3. where you can grind for hours since your gonna be tired and you might now do good in battle. i think a real life fatigue would be cool.
imagine your character being tired. he/she has to sleep, eat, bath and so on. that would be better than this crap
as long as the penalties are mitigated with like a 125% exp gain when you wake up ‘well rested’ or something…
eating food to become ‘well fed’ and gain extra exp. i think your on to something here!
Is it so easy in .jp to just blame the gaijins and expect everyone to believe?