Tanaka blames foreign sites for rumors + XP Discussion

[shidobu]

Was thinking a little bit, trying not to rage honestly. Cuz my high hopes are slowing crumbling to the fucking ground.

Only way i feel i could walk away from surplus being "okay ill deal" is if.

When ever you get a "surplus level" you gain like 100 guild marks for that job. Honestly you can keep grinding through the penalty if you know your being rewarded in another way. In beta guild mark items cost 500 points an new ability. 100 points per "surplus level" would be just fine for those trying to max as fast as possible. Then you can do away with the guild mark leves from regional quests.

My idea pretty much meriting all over again. But not needing to be 75 to do it.

[Hyan]

So your dumb-as-fuck idea is that they should punish the players rather than delay the game to ADD that endgame content?

Yes, "my" idea is to finally gain some revenue while implementing said content.

Of course, as a player that does not give a shit about SE's profits, I would agree. Too bad I am also a realist.

[Gokulo]

I can say as of now in beta, it is not based on "Battle time". I went afk last night while sleeping on fisher to test if surplus was on a timer, woke up this morning to my level 1 fisher in yellow skill.

That's even more retarded then, because even if you want to go do different things (like do missions, dance like an idiot with your LS mates in the city, roleplay or wtf) your surplus is still building up on the job you are sturrently on, rotfl.

Yes, "my" idea is to finally gain some revenue while implementing said content.

Of course, as a player that does not give a shit about SE's profits, I would agree. Too bad I am also a realist.

Yeah, they're going to gain "some" revenue at start, then players will quite because of the shitty system and the game will either remain niche, or will just die.

Instead of just waiting a couple month more, polish it and release and just fucking drown in money happy gamers will give them. (which btw. wouldn't happen anyway, the problem S-E has is not about polishing the game, but introducing retarded ideas and thinking that they're geniuses.

And no, reading 1 of your posts is enough to see you are far from being a realist.

[Khrno]

It is interesting that Mr. Kawamoto (FFXIV Director) is the one that made the post.

Did you misread the kanjis of something? FFXIV director is Nobuaki Komoto.

However after a quick google search of Kawamoto and FFXIV, I found an Eorzepedia interview where they say Toshiro Kawamoto is the game's director, and that makes like not sense at all.

Is this some mistranslation going on around Komoto's name? Or is the JP post just plain bogus?

[Ghostsix.Midgard]

I'm sure the reason SE is doing this is because the game is being released in an incomplete state and this is to give them more time to develop higher level content.

They should just say that, no one expects the first few months of an MMO to have endgame or even much midgame content. Also if people knew it was a temporary system or whatever it wouldn't get raped in the initial reviews.


SE: Hey guys if you like that one class so much GO LEVEL YOUR MULE

[Blasta]

I'd cancel my preorder, but I spent near 2k on a computer just for this game. So its a bit to late to turn back. I'll force myself to play this game for the next six years even if it sucks ass, haha.

Mine was 2000€ plus the sofa chair, another 350€ >_> No turning now, no matter how meany Tanaka is!

[Waraji]

Translation posted on the beta forums I think.

Spoiler: show

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

[Charismatic]

Yes, "my" idea is to finally gain some revenue while implementing said content.

Of course, as a player that does not give a shit about SE's profits, I would agree. Too bad I am also a realist.

They won't develop revenue with this shit because tons of people aren't going to keep playing because of how retarded this system is.
I'm guessing you haven't played beta phase 3 at all.

You run into this stopping point on your exp VERY quickly. You basically kill this game for anyone who plays 3 hours a day or more and doesn't want to switch classes all the time.
Spoilers: That's a lot of fucking people.

[Hyan]

So far from what i've seen from this game it looks to be another fustrating piece of shit but who knows what it will look like in retail. This reminds me of FFXI's patch hope where the first notes sound so bad and dumbfounds the entire playerbase. Everyone ends up hoping at the very last teaser there is some epic groundbreaking shit but never comes.

And this is EXACTLY what Im talking about. You catch up with the content, you get bored, wait for some "amazing update" that never comes, get frustrated and quit. You are like the best example we have here today.

It's a race, and SE will take precautions to slow some of you down, or they will definitely end up like the rest of the MMO's out there.

[Khrno]

It is interesting that Mr. Kawamoto (FFXIV Director) is the one that made the post.

Did you misread the kanjis of something? FFXIV director is Nobuaki Komoto.

However after a quick google search of Kawamoto and FFXIV, I found an Eorzepedia interview where they say Toshihiro Kawamoto is the game's director, and that makes like not sense at all.

Is this some mistranslation going on around Komoto's name? Or is the JP post just plain bogus?

[Hyan]

They won't develop revenue with this shit because tons of people aren't going to keep playing because of how retarded this system is.
I'm guessing you haven't played beta phase 3 at all.

You run into this stopping point on your exp VERY quickly. You basically kill this game for anyone who plays 3 hours a day or more and doesn't want to switch classes all the time.
Spoilers: That's a lot of fucking people.

I agree that it needs some tweaking for sure.

BUT Something is needed. Whether it's this or something else, I won't comment on. With the way SE is, WoW model won't work, that's for certain.

[Vuitton]

So does this mean we have 8 hours to exp and if we log in for 8 hours without exp'ing (afk or run around for 8 hours) we can't exp at all because those 8 hours came and went? I don't understand how they're timing this.

[Gokulo]

With the way SE is, WoW model won't work, that's for certain.

With the way SE is, they should be shot in the head. Why the heck should reality and everything bend to what S-E wants and things, instead of the other way around? Stop acting like they are not doing anything wrong.

[Lucavi]

"Hardcore players spend most of their time at endgame."

What if there is no endgame? The hardcore grows bored and quits.

These games are all about getting ahead of the player. No version update is going to satisfy anyone who has already exhausted the rest of the content there is, so when you hit that point you might as well quit.



"Smarter thing to do would be to, instead of gaining revenue for many months, put even more resources into this game for no gain."

Ah, I wish I was this naive.

They didn't quit with WoW's end-game, and this is the last time I'm referencing WoW, but everyone and their mother keeps bringing it up.

Hardcores in vanilla were grinding the shit out of what little end-game there was. They still had instances to level up and gear up in, and people may not remember, but XP gains were SLOW in vanilla. It took many months for people to hit max level, and MANY months to get "end-game" achievements like having an epic mount. It used to be just as shocking in WoW to see a max level paladin with an Epic charger than it was shocking to see some JP with a relic weapon or Kclub.

This current super-speed leveling comes from the fact that the same content has been around for years, and Blizzard didn't want to bog down new players and re-rollers with stagnant progression through old content. I say that's a pretty nice design policy, especially when you have a game that only allows a single class per character.

Blizzard eventually rolled out more content and if there was little end-game content, there was still a completely different aspect of the game that kept subs rolling in:

PVP.

The Tarren Mill vs. Soutshore wars raged for literal years. Many people logged in simply to fight there - it was an unexpected "end game" that the devs had no idea would catch on and remain dominant for so long, and it helped them out tremendously.

SE has no chance at any kind of "unexpected end-game" - unintentional, yet awesome things that are in the game that, for one reason or another, keep people interested in the early stages of a game, and thus, give developers time to produce more content without a lot of whining.

This happy-go-lucky, everyone work together or solo dream-world that SE is putting together is going to be extremely linear and stagnant at launch, especially if they're only offering missions, a few sidequests (go here, touch ???, go there, fight ???, collect ???, return here for CS), leves, and crafting/gathering. Don't even talk about Behest, because all it is a public leve that needs to be tweaked heavily. The world doesn't even have changing events that will lead to some spontaneousness, outside of seasonal events (woo for chasing billygoats with bokken!)

Am I vouching for FFXIV to have PVP? Absolutely not. It didn't work in FFXI (though I enjoyed ballista/brenner) and it wouldn't work here, especially with the battle mechanics currently in place. I am, however, stating that SE, through their narrow design philosophy, has crippled any real chance of players finding things outside the norm that are fun enough to keep them coming back. They'd better hope we all find the battle and crafting systems addictive enough to come back to the trough again and again.

We have a few handfuls of emotes, the ability to walk and run around, no ability to interact with the environment, the ability to craft, kill, heal, and gather, and little else to entertain ourselves with. You're not launching with a lot of casual-friendly content. You're not launching with PVP-centric content. You're not launching with a lot of hardcore content, and you're not launching with any kind of role-playing content.

"But I don't want PVP!" "But RPers need to get a life!"

Somewhat valid complaints, especially for FFXI purists and haters of all-things WoW (even the logical, impressively-designed aspects of the game), but don't complain later that there's not much to do outside of walking, killing, and craft/gathering - and of course, admiring the admittedly beautiful scenery.

[Selamis]

On that job, it appears to be the case. If you change jobs you'll get 100% xp. Physical level xp though will be halted in surplus mode since that goes up no matter what job you're on.

[Acturus]

Translation posted on the beta forums I think.

Spoiler: show

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

Ah, left hand, meet right hand.

Also, it's a lot easier to avoid having to say "I'm sorry" if you communicate things up front. Why does it always seem like members of the SE MMO teams don't understand this.

[Hyan]

With the way SE is, they should be shot in the head. Why the heck should reality and everything bend to what S-E wants and things, instead of the other way around? Stop acting like they are not doing anything wrong.

Figure out a better solution then. Its either done like this or rested EXP + massive grind, as far as my imagination goes.

Do you want massive grind? Go suggest that to the Beta site then.

[Kyreth]

Rested exp does this just fine in WoW. They should have just stolen the system.

I'm all for fucking over people who play MMORPG's too long. Generally, they're the biggest asses I meet while playing, the griefers, the no-life farmers, the "RAIDAN IS EVERYTHING" folks that should suck a bag of dicks.

Besides, we already have folks who starved their kids to death playing Starcraft. Why encourage neglecting your real life for what is obviously a highly addictive form of gaming? We all laughed at the warning in FFXI, knowing people ignore it. Now it's part of the game.

(And besides, it's not like you can't go do something that doesn't involve exp if you really, REALLY don't have a life. It's just pure anti-grinding.)

[Franzer]

They would have been better off just not showing the surplus exp on screen, and instead just having a diminishing return. Then people would probably just think they were getting bonus exp the entire time. Instead, they have incited riots among all countries playing the beta. If they were smart, they would just delay the release.

[Hyan]

Hardcores in vanilla were grinding the shit out of what little end-game there was. They still had instances to level up and gear up in, and people may not remember, but XP gains were SLOW in vanilla. It took many months for people to hit max level, and MANY months to get "end-game" achievements like having an epic mount. It used to be just as shocking in WoW to see a max level paladin with an Epic charger than it was shocking to see some JP with a relic weapon or Kclub.

Ah, so they did the launch in casuals expense while SE is doing it in hardcore's expense. Good to know.

The rest.. ugh, I need some hard liquor