FFXIV To Impose Game Play Time Limit!?

I just cancelled my preorder of the Collectors Edition.

I'll be damned if I'm going to pay a monthly fee to play a game that only allows me to level one class 32 hours per month. I play a little more than 1 hour per day, sorry.

Watch it.

Limiting play time is still a moronic idea. You're going to pay a monthly fee that limits your playtime. What "hardcore" or even "casual" player wants to have their time limited, especially when they are paying for it. Having an XP limit in an mmo is not "revolutionary," it is the stupidest concept ever.

after watching it it doesnt seem so bad

people who *** about this, will end up being the gimp ones, so i don't care, its just liek subjob, forces you to level a sub. i really don't see the problem

Well how I'm starting to look at it is remember leveling up way back in the day and never inviting that person who didnt have a sub job or have it leveled? :P I kind of think this is SE's way of forcing us to level those sub jobs :P

goddamn you for reading my mind! lol

I think WoW nailed this one. (And again, I'm not a fan of WoW so no fanboy accusations, please!)

It's true that you can't have an MMO that rewards hardcore over casual to the same extent as FF11. The MMO landscape has just matured too much, and the budgets are so high you can't make money on hardcore players alone, anymore.

But what you do, is give boosts to your casual players while leaving your hardcore untouched. In WoW, if you don't play for a few days, your character is "rested" and now gains exp much faster. This allows you to quickly catch up to friends who may have been hardcore playing that whole time.

My suspicion is that the XIV folks saw this system, liked it, and just inverted the logic thinking it would be the same thing. (Hold back hardcore, instead of boosting casual.) My other suspicion is that they did this because it tends to keep your player base low level, instead of boosting them to max level quickly. And if they're a little low on content right now, maybe they want that.

They seem genuinely surprised by how the inverse system can generate such negative feedback.

Conspiracy theories!! :p

Also from my understanding, time is only counted when you're ~~IN COMBAT~~

Meaning that the time after the battle you spend recovering, is not counted towards your 8 hour cap. This could also potentially encourage party play due to the faster kills. So think about it, it won't just be 8 hours of you fighting monsters, but include the rest time and stuff in between. It comes out to be much longer than just 8 hours of leveling.

Please correct me if I'm wrong in this idea, it's just my understanding on how this will work.

I guess we'll see on the 22nd when it goes from the free beta to the paid beta.

Jaerik brings up a good point. When I played Rappelz, they had a stanima bar that gave you an XP bonus if you allowed it to contain stanima. You xp, it exchanges stanima for XP. No more stanima, no more XP bonus. But the longer you dont XP, the more stanima you save up. SE should most definitely use this exact same idea.

$quare-Enix Exe¢utive$ meeting:

Exe¢utive 1:

I have the perfe¢t idea, gentlemen. Let u$ ju$t implement thi$ time re$tri¢tion on how many hour$ our ¢u$tomer$ ¢an play ea¢h month. That way, our average ¢u$tomer$ will keep their FFXI $ub$¢ription$ and ju$t $wit¢h over to the ole milk man and grind away their FFXIV down time there.


Exe¢utive 3:

yeah, youre right. fu¢k it. ju$t $ay it narrow$ progre$$ gap$ between hard ¢ore and ¢a$ual player$. Thi$ will en$ure more sub$¢iption in¢ome from FFXI per month.


Exe¢utive 5:

Hmm..Yeah... Great idea... that$ perfe¢t!

Exe¢utive 3:

$o, how $hould we allo¢ate the proje¢ted $urplu$ anti¢ipated in the next fi$¢al quarter?

Exe¢utive 6:

Well.... We ¢ould u$e it to produ¢e the next ¢hrono proje¢t; or perhap$ a new quality game fran¢hi$e altogether...

Exe¢utive 4:

What... You mean like, another "The La$t Remnant"? Or did you have an a¢tual "good" game in mind; $u¢h a$ we u$ed to produ¢e in the 1990'$?

>Pause<

All exe¢utive$ in uni$on: ***unbridled laughter***

Exe¢utive 7:

Ye$. Let$ ju$t put out a few more Radiata $tory ¢alibre game$. Maybe another Full Metal Al¢hemi$t... ¢ut ba¢k on $pending; after all, I ¢ould u$e another private i$land.

Exe¢utive 1:

Well... What about our fan$? $urely even our mo$t zealou$ fan bo---
I mean, our mo$t valued and faithful patron$ will $tart to ¢at¢h on.

Exe¢utive 2:

Not a problem. We have the $ituation well under ¢ontrol.

Exe¢utive 1:

How $o?

Exe¢utive 2:

We are ¢urrently in di$¢u$$ion$ with the development team$ about pumping out 3 more Kingdom Heart$ title$, a$ well a$ another Di$$idia and two more ba$tardization$ of the Final Fanta$y VII milking ma¢hine. That low grade fuel $hould keep 'em di$tra¢ted. Ju$t make $ure to ¢ameo ¢loud or $quall or $ephiroth a few time$.

Exe¢utive 8:

Well, they $eem to whine quite a bit for a remake of the original Final Fanta$y VII. Why don't we throw a ¢ouple million dollar bone$ at them and give them a well done remake?

Exe¢utive 2:

Yeah, but that may not be $u¢h a good idea. If we remake it properly, it will ¢o$t u$ wayyyyyy too mu¢h in funding. I don't know about you, but I ¢ould u$e another ya¢ht and a fourth home in the $uburb$. If we produ¢e it too ¢heaply; $u¢h a$ our other FF remake$; they might ¢ry louder and demand we wa$te more money to do it again, ¢orre¢tly; the ingrate$. That i$ a ri$k my wallet ju$t will not take.

Exe¢utive 1:

Yeah, I know what you mean. I ¢ould u$e another Ferrari or two, my$elf. Be$ide$, you know what the ¢hairmen alway$ $ay$: "What the hell ¢ould the ¢u$tomer know about what they want? We $urely know better."

Exe¢utive 6:

Now you're talking. I wouldn't mind a few more fir$t ¢lass hooker$; or at lea$t another ¢andy girl. Yeah, ju$t $lap Final Fanta$y on a box and they'll eat it right up. Ju$t look at FFXIII. I mean, if Final Fanta$y XIV wa$ named Dragon Que$t X, people wouldn't be $o qui¢k to break away from Final Fanta$y XI.

Exe¢utive 9.

The$e meeting$ are a lot of work. The ¢u$tomer$ really don't appre¢iate all we go through --e$pe¢ially tho$e $avage$ in the we$t. We de$erve more money.

Exe¢utive 7:

Ahh.. Did I mention we will in¢rea$e revenue over the next $even year$ by 9.587 thou$and per¢ent?

Exe¢utive 3:

No, how will we a¢¢ompli$h that?

Exe¢utive 7:

$imple. We will ¢ontinue to relea$e $mall $egment$ of ¢ontent through $9.99 p$eudo expan$ion$; thereby rendering more traditional expan$ion relea$e$ ob$olete. In other word$, we ¢an break up one expan$ion worth of ¢ontent through $even to ten in$tallment$ at a rate of $9.99 ea¢h; a$ oppo$ed to one expan$ion di$¢ for $40.00. In addition to thi$, we have rai$ed the rate of additional ¢hara¢ter$ in FFXIV to three time$ the ¢o$t of that in it'$ prede¢e$$or. We al$o introdu¢ed bazaar mule$ to make u$ $ome more yin while they make gil.

Exe¢utive 4:

$peaking of gil and other virtual propertie$; we have begun in$titutionalizing $an¢tioned RMT in ¢onjun¢tion with gimmi¢k$ like the herme$ $hoe$ and $e¢urity token$. We are brilliant!

Exe¢utive 9:

Meeting adjourned. Oh, by the way... Exe¢utive 8.. You're fired. Idiot.

^^^^

Incorrect. The game doesn't stop you from playing, it only limits the amount of Skill points and Xp you can gain in a week.

I don't agree with the system(At all), but saying it limits game play, is just a lie.

The justifications for the "Fatigued" System makes sense in the current pacing build. By that I mean, you gain Rank and Exp So fast (Physical Level 17 Rank 15 in one classes, 5+ in the rest with maybe a total of 9 hours of play) that the Fatigue system feels almost necessary. However, that's only because of the issues with pacing the game has right now. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is very much true here, just because the pacing is *** up, and the fatigue system is *** up, doesn't make them work when used in conjunction.


But again, the game isn't stopping you from playing it, it's only limiting the XP/SP per week. If you're going to pick something apart, pick it apart with facts instead of failed interpretations.

I've always agreed with Jaerik and countless other people on the fact that WoW's compromise is better. And while the Fatigue system is only about 1% as bad as "Limiting gameplay" complainers declare, that's still 1% too much.

To be fair, in the Beta, I never reached the fatigue limit in either skill or experience, but I could never play for very long because of the crashes/resource leak.

That's a good video by the way, it illustrates the point, and while the XP treshold seems to only reset once every week, if you play the beta, you will quickly understand why that's damn near necessity in the current build. Anyway, Rank is what's really important, not physical level.


inorite... I still am gonna drop the 50 for the standard Edition, provided I have some confirmation the tech issues are resolved. (Mainly the apparent resource leaks plaguing every rig from a 1,000 Benchmark score, to a 6,000)

Wait, so is this 8 hours a day or 8 hours a week? Because if it's 8 hours a week then that's sort of harsh. I don't know, I maybe reading this wrong.

People just don't react well to limitations, or anything negative. x.x

While a +10% exp bonus to casual players in one game and a -10% exp debuff to hardcore players in another, is the same thing, players won't like something that looks like a penalty. Make it look positive and nobody complains.

Idk why I'm posting, I know nothing about this game other than my computer hates it. T_T

I have friends in different time zones, will 8hrs allow me to spend time with each group? I think not. Some players dont like all the jobs and guess what, shock, they only level 1 job. Why limit their experience by telling them no sorry go level another job.

LIMITATIONS ARE THE GOVERNMENT'S WAY OF KEEPING THE BLACK MAN DOWN!

Limitations are a way of SE covering their *** to keep headlines like: ***13 year boy jumped to his death after re-enacting a scene from WOW, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. **** Internet Addicts Guilty Of Starving Baby To Death While Tending To Virtual Child**** from being associated with their titles.

Did you know there is a page on WikiHow: How to Break a Final Fantasy XI Addiction.??

If I was facing that kind of publicity I'd be doing something to show I was trying to decrease the "addictive" nature of my games.

You actually nailed it Jaerik. Their end game content is quite lacking. I'd imagine they anticipate some super hardcore players to hit max level within a couple weeks if no restrictions are in place, and then they would be left with very little to do.

It's why it is "possible" they will change the system before the game release. If they are able to get a lot more "endgame" content into the game before the release, then they will expand on the system.

I'm taking all of this from a japanese friend of mine who said this is what he has heard on his end. Could be wrong, but it's what he was saying.

Ummm, not sure if anyone pointed this out, or if people are just failing to hear it, but the exp and skill point limits are on a per-job basis. Also, I don't of anyone who hit this in the beta yet.

So while I may want to focus solely on archer at launch, I may have to actually explore and branch out to other jobs - something I wish I would have done earlier in FFXI. It should also be noted that completing quests reduces this "colldown" period, as stated in an interview.

Anyhow, take it for what you want, but there are positives and negatives to it.

But seriously, if this keeps the gap narrowed, I'd be thrilled. On my server in FFXI (Ifrit) the hardcore have cornered and monopolized the Black Belt NMs - meaning you HAVE to pay through the nose to get the itms or go without it. If this stops that from happening, I'm fine with it.

Yeah, you break it by not playing.

People don't give a ***that they are trying out something new. No one says it's bad or good. Just the simple idea of the hardcore gamer won't pull away from the casual gamer is *** pathetic, no matter what any of you way.

The people who play less should have the same access to BB items as the people who play it non-stop? It's a game. The more you play, the better you're off. That's how it is and that's how it should stay.

So what you're saying is that the game should penalize people who can't sacrifice their irl existence for a game? Then by that concept, the servers would die and the concept of MMO would be lost.

They are trying to strike a balance here, allowing a greater audience to ENJOY the game, as opposed to people being frustrated because the real world puts constraints on how often you can play, thus limiting what you can accomplish.

That's not really a bad thing, imo.

Games that reward players on a linear basis for amount of time invested is a dead business model. It's not coming back.

Games like XIV, WoW, etc are orders of magnitude more expensive to make and run than a game like XI. This means it has to have orders of magnitude more customers or it will go out of business.

There are not enough potential customers with hardcore amounts of free time to cover modern MMO budgets by themselves. That market is tapped out. It's saturated. Exhausted. Kaput. There is a finite supply.

You must provide a mechanism by which new, non-hardcore players will be able to compete and thus want to play your game, or it will go under. More likely, it will never get green-lighted by corporate to begin with.

No. If I can't play for a couple of days because my electric or internet has died, I'd much prefer my friend who I'm staticing with to be levelling up at a pace that I can catch him.

I think i'm gonna go with Guild Wars 2 because of no monthly fee.

Modern AAA MMO's cost $100M or more to make. That's the quality bar, especially in art, that players are now demanding. WoW's total costs have run close to or exceeded half a billion dollars. The new Star Wars MMO has been burning $1M per week in development for 3-5 years.

You can't break even on these games with 100k, 300k, or even 500k players anymore. You need millions. And there just aren't millions of hardcore MMO players out there.

You must attract casual players as well, and casual players don't want to play a game where they can't compete. You don't need to provide 100% parity with hardcore players, but you need them to play, and you need them to be successful, or there's no longer any point to even making an MMO.