Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
XP gets penalized....
This discussion has been closed.
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
you need windows 7 to run the game-windows vista with service pack 2 will also run it to some degree although slower.
exp not xp..
Well, I guess we'll find out. I don't think it's going to have as big of an impact as some people think, though. Like I said, most people aren't the "rush to endgame" type anyway.
Besides, for every player doing endgame stuff there is one less player leveling. Just like in FFXI, after a couple years, doing anything low level is a huge chore because 80% of the playerbase is in Dynamis or Nyzul or Einherjar or doing God fights and all the other 75+ stuff. It was a common complaint for anyone that wasn't already at the endgame level before S-E actually addressed the issue and added ways to make lower level stuff easier. I personally have met dozens of people over the years that played for a few months and then quit because nobody was doing the lower level content anymore.
Anyway, I can understand your frustration if you are the type to power through (not there is anything really wrong with that, like you said, you pay the subscription just the same as anyone else), but like I said, I can understand S-E trying to keep that to a minimum through in game mechanisms. It's certainly nothing new for them.
Not high enough level on their current job type. Doesn't kick in till about level 14 or so.
SE get this shit out of your head, you can penalize people for dieing, failing but NOT for actually playing a game they're paying a fee fore. Its like telling someone who's really commited to training you've trained enough, we have to punish you for that *lol*.
This is easily among the most stupid features you can even think off.
Boy what a let down :-(
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
I'm not in the beta, so I haven't experienced the penalties first hand. I think the intention of the system is decent enough, but the implementation sounds funky. Based on what I've read, I'd suggest the following changes, which should have a similar effect, but keep the majority of players happy:
It's okay to lower xp/skill point gain over time, but don't cap it out at 0%. 50% is enough to discourage power levelling for all but the most "hardcore", without making their playstyle impossible. Choice is always a good thing even when encouraging/discouraging certain ways of playing the game.
A linear scale that starts at 100% is discouraging. It would be better to start at, say, 150%, go down to 100% over a short period of time (similar to rested xp in other games) and then stay at 100% for a few hours before fatigue starts kicking in. The percentages are irrelevant of course, as xp gain over time would be adjusted to whatever levelling pace the developers feel is reasonable anyway, but from a psychological point of view, it is better to start off with something perceived as a bonus.
Keep penalties for solo play and group play separate, and make sure xp gain in a good party is never worse than solo play (i.e. xp/hour in a group with capped out penalty >= solo xp/hour with no penalties) . Grouping up should always be the more attractive option, and any mechanic that discourages it is a bad idea.
Remove all xp penalties for players with high physical level while they are in a group with players with a significantly lower physical level to encourage old players helping out newbies.
Numbers are just examples, and not having played the game I can't say for sure that this would work. I think the basic ideas of favoring group play over solo play, discouraging power levelling without making it impossible, and making helping out newbies while levelling low level jobs attractive are sound, though. It also seems to be in line with what Square Enix say they have in mind with this system.
Well, if you feel that strongly about it, that is certainly your right, but I really think that this mechanic was introduced to cap people in the Beta and that the feature is going to be removed.
As for the game "failing", as a long time FFXI player, if I had a dollar for everytime people said an update was going to "break the game" and everyone was gonna quit over it I'd be a millionaire. They said it after the Ranger nerf. They said it Astral burns. They said it after level sync. They said it after Campaign battles were introduced. They said it after Colibri burn parties became the norm 55+. They said it when all the major endgame Linkshells lost half their members after the big duping ban-a-thon a couple years back. Hell, they still say it now, in response to the level cap having finally been raised from 75 to 80, and eventually to 99.
You know what? Still tons of people playing.
I can understand if the hard core players are frustrated that there are limitations, but it could just be a limitation built into the Beta, similar to the level cap was when FFXI was in Beta in Japan, and again here in NA. S-E may not be talking about it because it's not intended to be in the released game (in it's current form).
All in all, we'll just have to wait and see, but really, let's not get too upset just yet. It's a little early to be screaming "ZOMG S-E BROKE FFXIV GUESS IT'S TIME TO PREORDER STAR WARS THE OLD REPUBLIC ZOMG!!!!1!1!1!!!". Not directing that at any person in particular, but I definitely get a "the sky is falling!" vibe out of this. Let's wait and see what's in the completed game before we /ragequit, cool?
So i'm not lucky enough to have gotten in for beta, but i do not think this will effect me that much as i will not be able to game ffxiv hardcore like i'd like to as life as a grad student just will not allow it.
what i see what i read what they are doing is essentially doing a few things that will have a MAJOR positive effect on the game.
the first is that there is no subjob system, but from what i read and see in videos is that you can use skills from other jobs even when its not your main job (essentially something like the subjob skills in XI) and they are forcing you to stop leveling your main job and work on some other jobs to get the skills that will help develope your char. Seeing how there is no true endgame launch they also do no want peole to just push to the level cap asap and start to monopolize the higher level drops and such, somethign that in general will be good for the game.
the second thing that i see this doing is slowing down the progesss of gilsellers who do play 24/7 and in most launches are some of the first people to the top level and this method will slow them down and make them level other jobs or just not play all day. also as gil sellers get banned they do not have a max level char again in a week on a new account, and this will help keep their numbers down in the long run.
the last thing, and the thing that i think will be the most important is that it will make us play other classes, and hopefully make people learn the roles of each job in party/alliance content later in the game. Now I know many people who do not need to play every class to see how jobs fit in and learn every jobs capabilities, but sadly the majority of those who play will at some point fight and argee with another class about what they think they should do when they do not really know anything about the class. So i see this as a way to experiance all aspects of the game and have people learn exactly what each job has to offer and how effective they are at there roles. (If you played FFXI i'm sure you know way too many people at 75 who thought every spell a whm or rdm has was an instant cast and could cast all of them at the same time, something that when we are forced to play multiple jobs sould be atleast less likey to see)
Those are just some of my thoughts on what could come from this possibly very flawed system if it stays in place.
Will really have to see how this plays out at release.
Theres to many different views on the system, some think it's forcing players to have to play 3-4 classes they don't want, other see it as only having to focus on 2 at most (like subjobing in XI), other say you can still exp with the penalty and focus on one class, but overall many beta participants can't even seem to figure out or agree on how it works themselves entirely at this point, even on other threads on different forums.
Would help if SE would clarify a bit more on this system.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the casual/hardcore thing as you said. They are both coming frow our points of view with no tangible proof to back them up as fact. I think we are both drawing on people we have seen, heard and playing with over many MMOs and it's clear we bumped into the same ones but from different camera angles
Imo,casuals are very quick to jump from a game simply because they don't play it enough and feel they are getting their money's worth. Casuals usually only sub to one game at a time as well, since they barely have time to play one.
Hardcore players are more likely to sub two and sometimes three MMOs at a time. They will usually sub them for a bit, trying to max each toon in each game. It usually takes them awhile to figure out which game they are sticking with, and they still usually keep one other MMO running in the hopes it will straighten itself out.
The only exception to this rule seems to be WoW, but that's the rare 'white whale', so we really can't put that in the same boat as other MMOs because it has something for BOTH sides... hardcores and casuals. Games like EVE which are built mostly around a hardcore type player last a LOT longer as did FFXI (which was not a casual game in the least) if they are made correctly. When games try this shotgun effect of getting both crowds, they usually fall flat on their faces, just like the ones trying PvP and PvE together for the most part. They never get the formula "just right".
I fear in SE attempt to make this game more 'casual', they may have trouble with the core base. Most of the people here who love FFXI and say they are going to play FFXIV haven't done the beta yet. When they do, I think they are going to be in for a surprise. In some ways, FFXIV is like going to your favorite restaurant and ordering your favorite dish, only to find out the cooks did something weird with the recipe and it tastes a little funny. It's not bad, it just tastes funny to me espeically with the surplus thing and no mana regen. Running back to a node every couple of fights is.. really disappointing until you get higher levels and can regen a bit from new spells.
If you look at all the MMOs about to come out soon; STWOR, GW2, TERA, and quite a few others, it's a safe bet to say most casuals won't be subbing them all or even trying them all, but hardcores will more than likely give almost of them a shot.
Don't get me wrong; I don't mean to berate casuals or glorify hardcores.. I think I'm in the middle of the road between them, but I do thing casuals are the more capricious ones of the two and most IPs should tailor to their base if they have a good game for the most part.
I must say, chatting with you on FF is always a discussion for me and I enjoyed the replies. It's finally nice to talk with someone who isn't playing a "baiting game" waiting to throw insults if their point starts to falter. You have given good counters to things FFXIV has in it without seeing it first hand, and I appreciate that as some are very feasible.
"TO MICHAEL!"
This is what the "physical level" of toons are in game:
"However, as revealed by game-play footage during the first open Alpha tests, players will accumulate experience points towards a player "Physical Level". The players physical level will affect attributes such as HP (health/hit points), MP (magic/mana points), Strength, Intelligence, and other similar basic stats."
As you play a toon (let's say named Sunny), physical level goes up and is separate from your job class like Glad, CONJ, PUG, etc. They are two different things.
Both of those 'things' have a mechanic that as you level, you get to a point where the gain you get slows. Once you get 'too much", it can stop altogether from moving until a set amount of time passes once you get off that toon. (what I call a 'dissipation rate')
Now what I was saying is that as you level 'Sunny' as a CONJ from 1-14 or so, both levels start to slow (for most people). Then you must switch to a new JOB doing something else (usually when the numbers turn "yellow" or "red"). When you switch jobs, the surplus exp on that JOB will start to go down as its 'resting'. The physical level however will not rest because you are still playing on your same MAIN toon (Sunny) now as a THAU at level 1 and it continues to rise (although MUCH slower because you are now playing a level 1 toon). But the meter is still running.
So now you play Sunny as a THAU to 14 while waiting for your main (CONJ) to 'cool down'. The physical level meter has still been running so by the time you get this to 14, now you have yellows on your job AND your physical level. So when you switch Sunny back to CONJ, you MAY have no more surplus on the job, but the physical level is still yellow.
I probably didnt explain that good either as I read it, so I think I'll stop after this lol. But as I said before, I think SE will adjust these numbers to be not so restrictive AND they will regen FASTER after launch.
So why were we talking about it with interest? Just because it's a FFXIV forum and now it's the hot topic... that's all
There is talk about organizing and such to get it taken out by players. But hardly ANYONE testing the beta likes this mechanic and being compared to WoW's rate of decay or w/e, you can be sure of that.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Hehe.. this is SE we're talking about. You don't remember them clarifying too much in FFXI all those years, do you?
Remember when everyone was saying "Craft towards the east at 5:00pm on Friday for +1!" and forums went back/forth for years and SE was silent.
Only years later did SE come out and say there was something to all that, but we all liked to debate it anyways because they never said it was this way or that way.
"TO MICHAEL!"
The one thing that I was trying to convey about casual versus hardcore is that categorizing them beyond how much time they play is futile. In every other respect they are scattered, whether its from being a gaming nomad to diehard fan. I just don't think time spent playing is really an indication of any kind of personality, more a function of whether someone is getting something from the experience and how much time they have to get it.
"If you look at all the MMOs about to come out soon; STWOR, GW2, TERA, and quite a few others, it's a safe bet to say most casuals won't be subbing them all or even trying them all, but hardcores will more than likely give almost of them a shot."
This was pretty much what I meant, casuals won't necessarily migrate they'll pick their game based on whatever factors, its then up the company to keep them paying by way of making the time they do put in fun and productive. The players with extra time have the luxury and freedom to do whatever they want regardless, such as trying every game. I also think its pretty common for people to only sub to one game at a time, I personally have that rule, and I've seen enough other people say it that I think its probably a pretty common occurence. However, I don't think punishing hardcores is smart in the long run, but I don't think caving into every rant is really the direction we want the industry to keep going, its pretty clear that a company that gets walked all over gets about as much respect as a person you can walk all over.
Eve is an interesting game, mostly because it doesn't fit in any of the normal molds, comparing Eve to anything else is pretty much undoable, at least for a reasonable argument. They have an unusual combination of genre, business model, and game features that makes it fascinating, and yet its not so popular it generates serious copycats like WoW did, or EQ did before that. I would also argue that Eve isn't necessarily built to a hardcore player by its complexity but add in its pvp elements in which case I'd be inclined to agree. Eve has such an interesting combination of features that it defies categorizing the people it was made for, which honestly, a good game should. The closest I can come to explaining why making a hardcore targetted game doesn't work is because its very niche, much like FFA PVP games. The population is low, they don't play nice together and it alienates the bulk of the paying customers.
Now FFXI was a pretty hardcore PVE game most assuredly at endgame, but it had some pretty brutal features even leveling up. Getting to max level in FFXI was a journey much more so than is common these days in newer released games. For FFXIV to preserve that they will have to do something because now that the game is designed to be significantly solo friendly they've lost one the strongest barriers its predecessor had, grouping. Soloing has broken the leveling treadmill and there will be some... growing pains... as companies try to figure out the best method of making the journey long but enjoyable to take the pressure off the end game experience and the hardcore desire to see nothing else. Its also likely that squenix is struggling with finding the right balance, because if FFXI is typical of the games that they are comfortable designing and making, then trying to find a different audience is going to be tough.
The people on these forums seem to act like if a game has a design feature they don't like they had their bible pissed on. Its beta, don't preorder so far in advance, keep watching the news, and if you know a beta tester, get better info before second hand knowledge causes a panic attack. I play devils advocate defending what could easily be an extremely unpopular mechanic even for me, but I'm mostly just doing it to give balance to the uncontrolled frenzy that every change seems to make.
Anywho I've gone off on enough tangents, now to wait and see what comes after the storm.
This probably isn't going to effect me that much as one of the parts of the game that I am looking forward to the most is being able to develop multiple classes on one character...which this seems to encourage.
It does seem a bit weird to penalise your most ardent players for playing more though.
Noone is really penalizing you for playing a lot. They just want you to play ALL their classes, not just one or two.
I just find it entertaining reading all of the complaints about a "penalty" after all of the "old school concepts" threads that have been started on this site. After reading this thread, I have to wonder how many of the beta testers are actually giving SE feedback rather than coming to an unaffiliated site to complain. From the way it reads, sounds like it's a system that rewards people who multiclass. Anyone who has played XI knows that if you want to run with a subjob you have to lvl more than one job. I'm pretty sure they've already said there will be ways to multiclass in XIV.
Okay, that explains it a bit better. I'm still not sure what to think, though, because out of the many different accounts that I've heard regarding the surplus mechanic (and there are quite a lot of variations, some apparently due to bugs), you're the only person I've seen make the definitive claim that there is a surplus formula for your physical level.
If what you say is correct, then we ought to be treating the physical surplus and class surplus as two different issues since they serve two different purposes and affect the players in two very different ways. I have heard that the class surplus is not time-based at all but persists for as long as that class is too far from your other classes. This actually reminds me of the D&D 3rd edition multiclass system which had an exp penalty for having uneven class levels unless you used your race's favored class. It didn't really make much sense and had no real justification as far as balance was concerned so it was not very well-received and I can see why people wouldn't like it here either.
On the other hand, if those people are wrong and you can also get rid of class surplus just by waiting, then that mechanic would serve as nudge toward either multiclassing or casual play, your choice. That makes even less sense.
I think I'm going to have to wait for an official and complete description of the finalized surplus system — and hopefully a coherent justification for it too — before I decide whether I like it or not.
Or it could be..... wait for it..... a way to get people to take breaks and not kill themselves playing for three days straight.
Apparantly this is far more common in Eastern countries than the West, but I think that's what it's for. We might whine about it here in the West, but this mechanic will save lives over in the East.
/thread
This system, if it doesn't end with the beta, is just like communism looks good on paper but doesn't really work out too well. Don't get me wrong I haven't cancelled my pre-order or anything just that this system really limits players to what, when, and how much time they can play. So players who want to have fun on the weekends and play more than a couple hours really get nothing more out of it than a guy who puts in an hour maybe all for the sake of the game? Sounds like SE took a page out of Stalin's book. Not to mention they totally negated grouping up since you cannot pick up a group/party to do things cause you are worried how much time is left on the class exp. Even grouping up with regular friends from game and in real life can be a challenge.
Seems like it would be easier to set the lvl cap to 20 for 6 months or until everyone reaches 20. Then when every makes it to that level raise it to 30 and so on. That way the communist party...errr...Square-Enix...can make sure the game is fair and everyone is a winner...and everyone plays all the classes, cause who just wants to be a boring lancer. SE knows what class you wanna play...really
Accually the Beta test sites are filled with complaints (I say sites because all of them are filled with complaints EU,JP, and ours) . and they've been the same complaints from alpha but SE isnt listening to us. I personally like the game and will be playing it at launch doesnt change the fact that they implamented this system that suck ass. and the Market sucks ass takes me back to the EQ days of runnign aroudn like and asshole for hours it sucks I will not be buying things till they get a AH since you can't find shit and its laggy. the UI sucks ass but they'll fix it like they did in FFXI just woundering why they had to make similar mistakes.
I know you're trying to spin this because you love the FF series....
but this game isn't even being said in the same breath as SWTOR or GW2 anymore. You can't even jump and sit down... what exactly does this game have other than multiclassing?
And even the multiclassing is looking a lot like watered down cookie cutter job classes. The fanbois, however, bend over and take whatever SE gives them.
Oh and you're so naive it's hilarious... they don't have an end game... so they want you to slow down. That's all... when has a company *ever* voluntarily watched out for anyone's well being? Seriously.
/thread
I bet this fail gets fixed shortly after release.
Or so I hope.
The only way this would work is if while you're playing one particular class you build up a BONUS for switching classes.
Taking stuff away from people and then having them defend such a stupid argument.. Fucking stupid.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
I'm giving them feedback, but I have to ask a linkshell member to send my feedback everytime, because phase 3 beta testers can't send bug reports or post feedback in the forums.
Not even sure why they even let us into beta.
I generally write this sort of stuff down and maintain spreadsheets. I play for around 8 hours a day and have surplus on 4 different classes. I've determined the following about surplus:
1. It doesn't seem to start until you hit skill rank 14. At that point you might get surplus if you continue leveling that class quickly and for an extended period of time.
2. Surplus starts at about 10%. You have a surplus skill rank. If you get a certain amount of surplus EXP the skill rank will go up. This increases the surplus by about 5%. Apparently it goes all the way up to 90%, but I haven't been able to confirm this.
3. Players who are high level and haven't seen surplus probably haven't encountered it because surplus wasn't around when they did the majority of their leveling. It was only added in a recent patch.
4. There is no physical level surplus. If there is I would have encountered it already with my playtime. Not sure what that poster was talking about.
5. I'm unsure if offline time will decrease surplus or not. It wouldn't make sense if it DIDN'T. Then the system wouldn't appeal to casuals at all. It does seem to decrease faster while you are online and playing another class. In my opinion the time it does take to decrease is still too slow, as I'm leveling 4 different jobs now and still having to manage surplus on all 4.
6. I still haven't determined if simply switching between a class or being offline in a particular class will prevent surplus from decreasing or not. You may have to switch classes. I'm assuming only gaining skill EXP in that class will cause surplus to stop decreasing for that period of time, but I'm not sure and frankly unwilling to test it because it will impede on testing other areas of the game (higher level content and class abilities).