Komoto's Official Explanation of Surplus

[Vuitton]

If the Thaum changes to Lancer, then someone else in the party can switch to their Thaum. The point of this job system is that everyone can change class on a whim to fulfill a need. So, just hope that maybe your Conj. or Maur. or someone can change to Thaum. And with this exp system, I think a lot of people will be leveling many jobs. Well, we did anyway in FFXI.

[miokomioko]

Shitty parties will most likely never hit fatige.

Standard/Competent parties will.

Hardcore burn parties will blow through and hit fatigue quickly unless SE keeps a very close eye on exp trends or develop a phenomenal formula for the system. Which I wouldn't hold my breath on happening.

I mean more of people being unaware of their current fatigue status/level/whatever and joining a group, only to hit it very soon after and want to either leave (physical fatigue) or switch class on the party (class fatigue). It's going to happen, you know it will. Maybe not on a Sunday morning, but it will happen to pickups.

If the Thaum changes to Lancer, then someone else in the party can switch to their Thaum. The point of this job system is that everyone can change class on a whim to fulfill a need. So, just hope that maybe your Conj. or Maur. or someone can change to Thaum. And with this exp system, I think a lot of people will be leveling many jobs. Well, we did anyway in FFXI.

Attribute allocation and equipment stats are going to make it less likely that the average person will always be able (AND WILLING) to just switch classes from melee to mage (or vice versa) to replace a vital role in the group.

"Fuck you, I don't want to switch classes to heal, I'm only here to get ranks on my Pugilist."
or the expected
"I don't have a mage job."

[Callisto]

If the Thaum changes to Lancer, then someone else in the party can switch to their Thaum. The point of this job system is that everyone can change class on a whim to fulfill a need. So, just hope that maybe your Conj. or Maur. or someone can change to Thaum. And with this exp system, I think a lot of people will be leveling many jobs. Well, we did anyway in FFXI.

That's actually a fairly good point, the fact that you can change jobs on the fly makes it possible, if you still had to return to town to change jobs that'd definitely kill it, but as is I was carrying one weapon for every job/craft at all times and a couple pieces of gear specific to jobs. Since it seems like you won't be able to do min/max gear-swapping for every single spell like in XI, you hopefully won't be as strained inventory-wise and can actually gear for several jobs in one inventory.

[Croy]

The excitebike analogy is perfect fyi but it has more to do with if you are trying to grind to max with all your tools. Take this for instance. Say you use all your guild leves and guardian fervor on one class and within about 4 hours you hit fatigue. But if you don't use any of these and straight grind your class, you may never hit it/ or hit it like 16 hours later at that constant rate solo. If you are in a party and get increased EXP, you might hit a bit sooner but that is supposed to be "bonus" instead of it being a penalty. You are getting more EXP for the time you are playing (being in a party and getting EXP quicker), but eventually you will crash and burn because you are going beyond the 'forumula' that is internal in the game for EXP/hour and thus if you still wish to gain EXP at said rate, you need to go to a class you havn't used in a bit so the fatigue cools back down to the 100% rate.

Straight solo grind without any bonus = should never hit Surplus (That is their intention it sounds like) and the EXP bonus is for casuals and to make sure hardcore people don't abuse what is supposed to be a casual system. It's still stupid, but the system is not directly attacking Hardcore, its asking the hardcore to make a choice on HOW you level your character and just what you wish to use your time for.

[Vuitton]

That's actually a fairly good point, the fact that you can change jobs on the fly makes it possible, if you still had to return to town to change jobs that'd definitely kill it, but as is I was carrying one weapon for every job/craft at all times and a couple pieces of gear specific to jobs. Since it seems like you won't be able to do min/max gear-swapping for every single spell like in XI, you hopefully won't be as strained inventory-wise and can actually gear for several jobs in one inventory.

I'll probably at least carry both Thaum. and Conj. weapons and make these my two primary jobs (level one, if I become fatigued, level the other) that way I can fulfill both a support role and a DPS role in a party.

But also, because all jobs can cherry pick other job skills, maybe make everyone in the party equip their cure spell if nobody can replace the Thaum.

[Callisto]

I figured most of the early days were going to be Dunes-ish 'if you have access to Cure, you're a healer' deals anyways. Since it seems like there's more than one type of several abilities, like Taunt/Voke, each mage getting nearly mirrored JAs, the possible setups that can still get optimal xp will likely be pretty flexible.

[miokomioko]

I'm mostly saying it's going to happen and be really annoying if you're dealing with the average idiots, which we all will deal with sooner or later. If you have decent competence all around, it won't be as severe since people have their appropriate "subs" leveled and could probably make shit work.

[Lucavi]

So in other words everyone is freaking out for no reason because what was experienced during beta 3 was an unintentionally harsh version of what they wanted and they're working to make what they did want less harsh.

I am glad I didn't cancel my pre-order in a nerd rage fit like many others who hyperventilated at their keyboards in a tantrum.

Not exactly. The initial launch of P3, yes, but they patched it midway through, and some people still ran into massive surplus wall in the late teens and mid twenties.

I'm sure everyone felt that the beginning of P3 was way, way too fast. You hit level 11 by the time you finished 3 starter leves. You could have hit 20 in 4 or so hours of grinding. People had multiple jobs at 12+ within the first day if they piggybacked off of eachother's leves early on.

They nerfed the gains, though, about midway through, and it was then that we started to see the "traditional" way its going to work for open beta and, realistically, for launch.

I still think its way too harsh, and even though I didn't personally receive any surplus, it was because I was by that time absolutely not interested in playing for any more time than it took to finish my reset leves. For two weeks, I didn't fight a single non-leve mob. Obviously this will not be the case come retail.

[Vuitton]

I think this is also why they made the crafts as jobs instead of skills. There is always going to be something to do. This game is going to be super friendly to casual players, which is what I think the goal of FFXIV is planned to be.

[Muay]

My thing is I'm sure we all expect to find some sorts of ways to power grind way faster than SE expected, because SE is SE, and we'll go back to seeing this fatigue in like 4 hours. So we become victims of our own success.

[Senji]

I'll probably at least carry both Thaum. and Conj. weapons and make these my two primary jobs (level one, if I become fatigued, level the other) that way I can fulfill both a support role and a DPS role in a party.

But also, because all jobs can cherry pick other job skills, maybe make everyone in the party equip their cure spell if nobody can replace the Thaum.

I just had nightmare flashbacks of war/whms and war/blms trying to get to 30 and yelling at the brds for ballad...

[Vuitton]

I just had nightmare flashbacks of war/whms and war/blms trying to get to 30 and yelling at the brds for ballad...

That is a horrible memory. I was thinking of campaigns where everyone went /DNC so they could solo fight and heal themselves and the party.

[Celeras]

I don't see how anybody can interpret this as 'better' than what people were complaining about before. Ok, so its not a set 8 hours... but however long it takes you to get 8X experience where X is an arbitrary number pulled out of SEs wazoo. Not only is that still a terrible idea, but it opens up the possibility of getting an awesome party and hitting the wall in UNDER 8 hours now.

[Cjskater]

Straight solo grind without any bonus = should never hit Surplus (That is their intention it sounds like) and the EXP bonus is for casuals and to make sure hardcore people don't abuse what is supposed to be a casual system.

I'll retract my previous statement if that's how it ends up. I'm hoping it does since it sounds like it almost might work.

Does anybody happen to have a table of TNL figured for each rank up to, say, rank 20?

Best I could come up with using my screenshots: (everything should be correct...)

01: 957
02: 1159
03: 1468
04:
05: 2448
06: 3044
07:
08:
09: 5409
10: 6304
11: 7349
12: 8457
13: 9629
14:
15: 12166
16: 13627
17:
18:
19:
20: 20216
21: 22050
22: 23959
23: 25943
24: 28001
25: 30135
26: 32343

[miokomioko]

Obviously this "arbitrary number pulled out of their wazoo" is going to be based off what kind of exp/skill people are getting in the OB build when they ironed out all the exp/skill bugs. I don't know why anyone would think they are rolling some dice to figure out what to restrict our exp/skill per week to.

Also, to all you math chumps, does the above make a pattern at all?

[Achitophel]

So following the excitebike analogy, is it correct to assume that after you go full speed and gain 7 hours "worth" of xp, we don't have any idea of how long we'd have to go normal speed before we'd have more than 1hour's "worth" of full speed?

In other words, I find a great party, we're all at zero "hours worth" or whatever. We party for 3 hours and we're awesome and (somehow) we know we're soon approaching surplusland: I seem to understand we could realistically say "Okay, well we're about to burn out here, let's cool down and do this again ________". Any idea on how to fill in the blank? Same time tomorrow should give us 3 hours "worth" of xp? 2 days from now?

Basically, any idea on how long you should cool down to build up no-nerfed xp? Or can you, even? Or just say "Hey, let's do this with the same jobs this time next week"?

[miokomioko]

The Excitebike analogy fails a little bit when you get to the fact that your overheat gauge would only drop to 0 once a week instead of a gradual cool-down. (Most likely Sunday 0:00 JST) It still applies though.

[ascalon]

01: 957
02: 1159
03: 1468
04:
05: 2448
06: 3044
07:
08:
09: 5409
10: 6304
11: 7349
12: 8457
13: 9629
14:

Hmmm, so that's what, 60-65,000 skill points approximately I got to get to level 14, which is when my surplus began to kick in. Hrmmm.

So if I base some atrocious maths on a figure of approximately 65000xp is what they expect you to be able to get in 8 hours, then we could do:

15-19 in 8 hours
19-21 in 8 hours
21-22.5 in 8 hours
22.5 - 23 in 8 hours...

and so on and so forth, to the point where you can only get one level on your class of choice per week, and then maybe not even that, before surplus hits in.

Assuming that this doesn't scale.

It is possible (I'm not mathematician) that it is the RATE of Xp/hour that affects it, but that isn't what the translation suggests.

So going on the above shoddy maths, that's at least 5 weeks of levelling to hit level 23 and stay clear of surplus entirely. That's 10-12 weeks to hit the cap with one class. 12 weeks = 3 months = about the interval Square likes to release their game updates at...? Maybe...

EDIT: Ack, told you I wasn't a mathematician, I've forgotten to take into account the increasing curve of XP needed per level... So it'll be considerably longer than that!

[Achitophel]

If that's the case, that's like two really good parties a week. Either my girlfriend will be happy, or I'll have no real main.

[Vuitton]

I don't see how anybody can interpret this as 'better' than what people were complaining about before. Ok, so its not a set 8 hours... but however long it takes you to get 8X experience where X is an arbitrary number pulled out of SEs wazoo. Not only is that still a terrible idea, but it opens up the possibility of getting an awesome party and hitting the wall in UNDER 8 hours now.

I think the point of this system SE is trying to get across is that they're trying to remove the player's fixation on reaching max level as soon as possible on one job, and instead focus on their "character's growth" (FFXIV's theme), the character being seen as the culmination of all the jobs/classes. Which is why they made it so easy to switch between them and borrow skills across them. This way if you do have an awesome party and you've managed to hit your 8 hours + 5 hours into the penalty, you can just switch to another job and toggle in some different skills, and not just you but others in the party as well. This would make the party very fluid (if everyone was as dedicated as a hardcore player).

I am sure all the purists will be like, "Well I am paying $X/Month and if I want to play a certain way I should. SE shouldn't force me to play another way." Which I think is similar to the argument that players in FFXI used to justify their job combos of MNK/WHM and PLD/BRD and what not.

The game is designed to be played a certain way. FFXIV is looking to be designed for people with more time than others to level up many different things simultaneously, which affords them the flexibility in parties to switch jobs on the spot to fulfill needs, as well as players with a lot of time who like crafting to be ultimate crafters. The game looks to be designed to force players with a ton of time to diversify and allows them the flexibility to take advantage of that diversity.

At least, this is my take on things as of today.