Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

[jenova_9]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

don't worry things will get more fun once they add Samurai or Ninja.

[Takelli]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

Although, you have to remember that after the seven hours it days take quite a bit of grinding to reach even a remotely damaging surplus mark. My conjurer got to level 18 (played no other classes) and I hit the about a 10% surplus mark.

Still, if you play for 3 hours a day, 2 days and 1 hour, you will meet the 7 hour mark. Then maybe every hour after the 7 hour mark you loose 10% more exp? That will just plain suck ass for most players. Especially payers who want to just play one class.

[Etra]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

Still, if you play for 3 hours a day, 2 days and 1 hour, you will meet the 7 hour mark. Then maybe every hour after the 7 hour mark you loose 10% more exp? That will just plain suck ass for most players. Especially payers who want to just play one class.

Naw. It's definitely not 10% extra lose for every hour. At least, not in the current system.

[Gman]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

Etra, here's a translation from another site. Seems to confirm what you said, and add a bit more.

Surplus and You: Komoto Speaks! - FFXIVCore.com - Final Fantasy XIV Fansite

Surplus explained

Well it looks like Mr. Komoto escaped his shackles keeping him in Gamescom away from working on FFXIV, and he has an announcement to make to quiet all the rampant speculation going on. Taken from the JP Beta Test site and translated by me, your friendly neighborhood Savalithos.


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

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

If that is true then they are going to usher in a new level of elitism in exp parties. Just think about it, if you have 8 hours exp per week on a certain job are you really going to take risks with undergeared or unknown people or jobs the community has deemed gimp outside of the usual zomg awesome class.

[Etra]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

Etra, here's a translation from another site. Seems to confirm what you said, and add a bit more.

Surplus and You: Komoto Speaks! - FFXIVCore.com - Final Fantasy XIV Fansite

I'm not exactly sure where he pulled the 8th hour thing from. But okay. xD

If that is true then they are going to usher in a new level of elitism in exp parties. Just think about it, if you have 8 hours exp per week on a certain job are you really going to take risks with undergeared or unknown people or jobs the community has deemed gimp outside of the usual zomg awesome class.

Gear was never really a problem in beta. Mostly because gear doesn't have a rank requirement (it does, but it adjusts the stats according to your current rank if you equip it early, I think. I was wearing a 23 rank robe at physical level 19.) Also, the elite people will want you to have more classes leveled so you can pull their abilities. All in all, I feel this surplus system caters more towards the elite and forcing people to get the abilities the hardcore would demand out of you anyway.

[Malacite]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

I'd imagine that with more skill, the training manual thingy & HQ ingredients you can make a lot of HQ's quite easily. I really do like the fact that you can control it instead of just praying for one and sometimes never seeing any. There was nothing more annoying to me in XI (in the early days anyway) than making beeswax with my 69 alchemy and having an abysmal HQ rate, despite being well over the 51+ skill tier while I would see others with lower skill bust out back-to-back HQs.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

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

/sigh

[Etra]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

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

/sigh

Yeahhhh... So they're pretty much going to cap us off, physical level wise, right at launch. At least no one will hit end game right away? lol

[DakAttack]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

So, we each get a period of eight hours where we'll get 100% EXP that begins the moment we earn the first point of EXP?

[Etra]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

So, we each get a period of eight hours where we'll get 100% EXP that begins the moment we earn the first point of EXP?

I don't think so. Otherwise you would attack then AFK in town and get capped off. I think they are talking about continually grinding / doing leves for that time and doing nothing else.

[Kafeen]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

That's what I was wondering. If its just 8 hours as a fixed time limit, what if you leave your character logged on overnight? That's your chance to level that job gone for a week.

[Etra]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

That's what I was wondering. If its just 8 hours as a fixed time limit, what if you leave your character logged on overnight? That's your chance to level that job gone for a week.

From what I'm gathering, it's 15 hours of grinding. The players were hitting the cap faster than they expected in beta because the leves were giving way too much exp (and, honestly, they were.) So it doesn't seem to be an actual hourly cap, but just an estimated time they are giving.

(I still have no idea where the ZAM translator got the 8 hours from. <___<)

[Takelli]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

There is another question raised by this...

Are the 7 hours that you play before your exp caps off started when you log on, or by continues battle, such as a party grind, and so on?

[Etra]

Re: Amazing recap of the state of FFXIV

There is another question raised by this...

Are the 7 hours that you play before your exp caps off started when you log on, or by continues battle, such as a party grind, and so on?

Like I said, it just seems to be an estimate on how much exp you would be getting for continuous partying for leves and grinding. It isn't log in, whack something, then the timer starts and won't stop. It's just their estimate for how long it'll take you to get the exp required to get into surplus and get it going.