Final Fantasy XIV Not Going to be a Grindfest
Final Fantasy XIV seemed like a weird move to me. Square already has an MMORPG that’s thriving, so creating another one would seem like it’s creating unneeded competition for itself (which in a world where World of Warcraft exists, isn’t really a good thing). But here we are, talking about features for the game that’s going to be released in about a month (September 22nd, unless it gets delayed).
According to MTV Multiplayer, there’s a feature being put in place called “fatigue”, which essentially makes it so you can only gain experience for eight hours at 100% gain in any given 7-day period, then you gradually gain less and less until you hit the 15 hour mark at which point all gain stops. I’m all for making the game balanced across the board, but who would only want to level up for eight hours at full experience gain a week? Hardcore players are going to be playing this as much as a full-time job, and if they can’t level up their main class or character they’re just going to make several other characters with every class under the sun.
I really hope this isn’t just some cheap ploy to get people to not play the game as much because Square hasn’t completely fleshed out their endgame content. It sounds like a great idea on paper, artificially elongating your game to make the developers time to make more dungeons and quests for max-level players. But if that’s the case, maybe you shouldn’t have let Sony announce the game for you at E3 last year to give the developers more time to perfect it without having to gimp your game’s main feature.
There’s a forum post on FFXIVCore that goes into much greater depth than the MTV post, but it still bugs me regardless of how much I know about it. Even if you can’t level up, you can still farm items and get a lot of money to unbalance the game even more right? What’s the point of not allowing people to gain experience?
This move baffles me to no end. I think I might go play some Ragnarok Online to make me forget about the grinding limits in FFXIV.
You know what, this kind of balancing and limiting might keep me interested in a game. But I could still never bring myself to pay a subscription fee for an MMO.
From what I’ve heard, each class will have it’s own 8-hour limit, so it’ll still be a grindfest. I’d be surprised if this XP cap stays around for long, I can’t see anyone wanting to pay a monthly fee for something so restrictive.
On a side note, I’m sure it’ll only end with disappointment, but I’m really looking forward to DC Universe.