15 hours a week to level?

[Henket]

We’d like to thank all the beta testers out there for their hard work and support! We’re applying all those ideas you’ve sent us to make for the best possible Open Beta test and official release.

Now we’d like to take a moment to answer the many questions we’ve received about character balance in the current B3 phase.

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.

To achieve this balance, the amount of possible skill/experience points earned after a certain period of time has a threshold. Think of it as real-life “fatigue” from working at improving your skills via battle *(aka. No one could train ad nauseam in the real world with no ill effects).

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.

This system is on a weekly timer. After a week has passed since you began skilling that particular weapon, the timer will reset. It will start anew when you skill up again.

Any experience earned past that point is saved as “surplus.” There is surplus for each class, and if you begin to see it please consider playing another class and adjust accordingly.

However, experience points are not specific to any class and therefore the decrease in experience points is not affected by changing classes.

That’s how the system stands as of right now.

Also, this system wasn’t implemented just in B3 but was set in motion from the very start of beta. Despite this, we have received many opinions regarding it in B3. There are a few reasons why:

-B3 allowed for longer sessions in single sittings.
-In order to promote party play, skill/experience points earned were greatly increased.
-The skill/experience earned from weak enemies was lowered, but had failed to pop up on initial bug reports (and was later fixed via maintenance).

According to the last bug report skill/experience able to be earned was above what had been planned, therefore people hit the limit much more quickly than hoped for. That is the biggest cause. Yet another problem was that we were unable to adjust guildleve experience and the experience-earned limit at the same time.

Our lack of explanation regarding all of this was a mistake, and we heartily apologize.

This all is still currently under development, and we have plans to make the limit more palatable in answer to all the tester feedback we received concerning this. In particular we would like to address the speed with which experience begins to drop off and are already looking into it.
Also, since experience points fatigue carries over despite changing weapons, we plan to make it not so harsh.

At the very least, we promise to not have people hitting these limits in a short period of time, such as during the start of B3.

We would also like to make an announcement regarding something else.

The decrease in earnings when gathering is based on your actions taken with that class and is unrelated to the aforementioned limits. This is also currently under review and is planned for adjustment in accordance with many testers’ opinions.

Surplus experience is currently not being used. However, we have received many comments suggesting some sort of reward be put into effect regarding it, and we think that’s a pretty interesting idea. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, though, and we’re currently investigating the possibilities.

Open Beta will not just see changes to the issues stated above but will also see adjustments made to encourage party play even more (such as an increase to skill points), which the team is currently hard at work on adjusting. We hope you’ll all test it out when the time comes.

Finally, we would like to apologize for the lateness of any developer comments due to my attendance of Gamecom this past week. In my absence much fuss was raised over speculation, old information and some mistranslations on overseas fansites *(what?! /panic. Though I wonder what that’s in reference to in particular). I hope to avoid this from happening again by delivering developer comments as promptly as possible. Thank you all for your understanding.

And thanks in advance for your hard work to come in Open Beta!

Final Fantasy XIV director
Nobuaki Komoto

So... they're implementing a system where the amount of skill points you can earn are limited each week (the anticipated time to reach that cap is 15 hours by developers, but is actually being reached in 8 hours or less by beta players). The solution they're proposing is swapping to another class to gain skill points in that one instead, since the skill limit is unique between classes. However, your actual level cap is tied to your highest leveled class, and you won't be able to gain any level experience.

While I understand that SE's trying to appeal to the casual gamer in this, I gotta say that it's really kind of put a damper on my interest. Any of you actual beta testers care to weigh in on how it's playing out?

[Pariah]

o wow that is very interesting. i will look into. see if i run into a wall

[Crazy Diamond]

Honestly unless your playing hard core I don't think it'll effect you too much. Skill points earned was increased for Beta, plus the fact there are multiple classes your going to want to play. For instance I will level a pugilist so I can use their healing ability for 250tp... and any time I spend leveling Pug the "Surplus" will be reduced while I'm playing it. Time spent doing other things is time that the surplus has time to cool off.

Heck if you play it for 8 hours straight then go to bed your going to be out of surplus by the time you wake. It's not really per week and it does cool down while your playing other classes. The fact of the matter is SE is trying to reduce the effect of Gold Sellers have on the game. Being able to suspend people who sell gold and it taking them months just to get back where they started will help deture them quite a bit.

No I don't like the fact I'm limited to leveling something... but I understand why and what they are attempting to accomplish. I'm willing to wait and see even after the frustration I've seen in Beta with figuring out the system they mistakenly forgot to tell us about.

The system is curved for "casual" players and against Gold sellers... Hard core gamers are really gong to want the advantages playing multiple classes will bring to playing their main class. If they rather level too the cap and then not play... more power too them, but that's not what I really plan to do.

I honestly plan to play the 8 hours then do something else... play other class for the 8 hours and then switch back. I've noticed Surplus seems to fall quickly enough that if you play 3 classes you'll never have to be in surplus. IE if you plan to fish, cook, weave whatever else is in the game...

Personally I think they should have gone with a possitive reinforcement type of system like WOW, but seeing how they don't have much end game content as of yet it won't be affecting me nearly as much as you would think. The thing most of the web sites don't focus on enough is that when you are doing something else you rest the Surplus system's effect. Reducing the effect Gold Sellers will have on FFXIV is also worth the annoyance of some of the systems negatives. I personally have always hated Gold Sellers... and think reducing their effectiveness is good.

[Pariah]

touche henket

[Reshep]

yeah i think its a great idea personally. but thats probably just because i know im gonna be busy and dont want to get left behind lol

[Crazy Diamond]

LOL not what I ment.... hehe