Square Doesn't Want You Playing Too Much Final Fantasy XIV Every Week

UPDATE: Square has posted an updated translation that explains things a little differently. Rather than being based on an eight-hour timer, the experience loss is based on what Square is calling "thresholds." Once you've received enough experience in a week to fill eight thresholds, the amount you gain will lessen for the subsequent seven thresholds until you are gaining 0 experience.

Square also clarifies that the thresholds can gradually recover while you're doing activities that do not gain experience points or skill points, so it's possible to rebuild your ability to gain experience before a week is up...it's just going to require even more time logged in.

ORIGINALY STORY: Square Enix has been up-front from the start: Unlike the grind-heavy timesink that was Final Fantasy XI, they want their upcoming MMO, Final Fantasy XIV, to be something that even casual players can have time for. Their latest decision, though, takes that attitude to a pretty wild extreme.

A post from FF XIV director Nobuaki Komoto marking the end of the beta also revealed a system that will be at work in the game to limit the amount of experience points players can receive in a single week. Here's how Komoto explains it:

"Within the first eight hours of play, you can earn 100% experience. The seven hour period following will see your possible experience gradually approach zero."

So basically, beyond the first 15 hours that you play Final Fantasy XIV each week, you will not earn any experience. This stop on experience gain goes across all classes, though each class will gain an individual experience point "surplus" that can be applied when the next week begins.

Komoto compares the system to "real-life 'fatigue' from working at improving your skills via battle (aka. [sic] No one could train ad nauseam in the real world with no ill effects)."

Some people may not see this as a huge deal, but personally, I'm finding numerous problems with this decision. 15 hours a week may seem like plenty of time, but many MMO players stick to their game of choice in a very dedicated manner, easily sinking 20 hours or more in per week.

Regardless of how much or little you play per week, there's no way around the fact that this system significantly hurts the game's biggest fans. Komoto says they do not want to give an "unfair advantage" to players with more free time, but since when has being higher level in a PvE-focused game counted as "unfair"? Trying to open up raiding and end-game content to casual players is one thing, but do we have to have everyone be at the same level all the time as well?

The sketchiest aspect of this decision, though, is simply that players are paying a monthly fee. Square is putting an artificial limitation on progress for a game players need to pay to access every month. It makes me wonder if Square doesn't have high-level content ready for launch and is looking to slow the speed at which players would normally reach those areas.

Even if you're a more casual player, what about a random week or long weekend where you have more time than usual to play the game? One of my fondest World of Warcraft memories was hanging out with some friends and playing WoW non-stop over spring break the year after it came out. We used the time to grind through levels 40-60 together. If we had been unceremoniously stopped at level 43, I suspect I would have been a lot less satisfied.

In fact, way back when World of Warcraft was in beta, they had a similar system, where after playing for a certain number of hours, players would be limited to gaining 50% experience. Blizzard quickly realized in beta that the community hated this idea, so they changed it to instead give a bonus for the first bit of playing after being logged off for a while. FF XIV is already a significantly slower-paced game than WoW, and I'm fine with that, but I hope they realize what a mistake this experience limit is before or soon after launch.

You can read Komoto's full statement at FF XIV Core and decide for yourself what you think. We also discuss my brief experiences with the Final Fantasy XIV beta on this week's episode of Respec Radio.

[via Massively]