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Thread: Play-limiting

  1. #1
    « Intermittent Presence » .A²'s Avatar
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    Play-limiting

    Square are so full of shit.

    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.

    Massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft have systems in place to reward players for taking a little time away from the game, but few if any have directly penalized players for playing too long. That seems to be exactly what the Final Fantasy XIV game mechanic is doing. Komoto's message begins with an explanation of why this system is in place.

    Quote Originally Posted by Komoto
    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.
    He says to think of the experience limiting system as a counterpart to real-world fatigue. "No one could train ad nauseam in the real world with no ill effects." That's true, of course, but we don't play MMO games to be burdened with real-world limitations, now do we?

    Here's how the whole thing works. Once you begin training in a class, you have eight hours in which you can earn full experience. Once those eight hours is up, the amount of experience you earn will lower over the course of seven hours. At the end of those seven hours you will no longer be earning experience.

    Final Fantasy XIV's job system allows players to switch classes on the fly, however, so if you begin to approach the threshold on one class, you can switch to another class and play that instead. The system is on a weekly timer, so seven days from the time you begin training your skills, you'll be able to start again with full experience.

    OF course this is all still being tweaked and tested. Komoto says they are still looking into tweaking the rate at which experience points begin to drop off to make the system a little bit friendlier.

    I can understand how players could be outraged over such a system. It effectively limits one class to an hour and change per day of full experience in any given week. That seems awfully low, and won't sit well with players hoping to focus on a single class.

    Asking folks to pay you a monthly fee to play your game and then dictating how long they can play their favorite class without penalties seems like a very bad idea indeed.
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  2. #2
    Brothean xephon's Avatar
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    Re: Play-limiting

    Actually, I think this is a good idea.

    Certainly, we cannot trust people to take a break from the game on their own. So at least there won't be a new generation of land whales from FFXIV, it will still be down to WoW for that.

    Bravo, Square, bravo.

  3. #3
    THE ADBOT SLAYER! 01habbo's Avatar
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    Re: Play-limiting

    Square Enix is only thinking of the player's health. :P

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  4. #4
    « Intermittent Presence » .A²'s Avatar
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    Re: Play-limiting

    Or their wallets. How can you charge a ridiculous monthly fee and then dryastically limit players' progress?
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  5. #5
    Brothean xephon's Avatar
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    Re: Play-limiting

    It's not limiting their progress, just their levelling for a specific class. If anything its encouraging them to use a different class or do something thats not related to grinding.

  6. #6
    Armored Avenger Iron Man's Avatar
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    Re: Play-limiting

    The only one's effected are the unemployed nerds with too much time on their hands at any rate. Not that I would play this game, but still.

    It's not a bad idea in my eyes.

  7. #7
    Playa' Please! Ryan T. Loveless's Avatar
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    Re: Play-limiting

    I actually still think it is a bad idea. Granted, I don't play video games for more than 3 hours a week, IF that, but asking your players to pay a monthly fee to play the game, and then limiting how much they can play is absolutely absurd in my opinion.


  8. #8
    Khiraxi KoFF's Avatar
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    Re: Play-limiting

    At first, it sounded pretty stupid, but after reading in depth, it makes sense. I can kinda understand both sides of this. It can be a bother for someone who wants to use one or just a few specific classes once every week... But personally, I would love this. I like to switch between characters and races, getting to try everything out and striking a balance in my gameplay, but in MMO's you usually can't do that too well if you want to be on par with the rest of people around you. It'll feel much harder than leveling out a job completely and then focussing on another afterwards, since you can vary your fights and locations (and difficulty of monster battles) a lot with the new system.
    So now I can switch between characters and known I'll be just fine. The system could be just as good as the old ones. It's just a different way of playing the game.
    And then there's the thing with health, and stuff. Sounds good to me.



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  9. #9
    Darkness Eternal Vash's Avatar
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    Re: Play-limiting

    i think stretching the amount you can play per week is ridiculous. Maybe per day but i dont want the amount of time i can play a class limited per week. This really dissapoints and now i dont know if i even want to play the game






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