"Fatigue" Explained

Below is what I found on FFXIVCore.com - The director of FFXIV explains the reasoning behind the fatigue and how it is implemented.



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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



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Honestly, I think it's bullcrap. A WEEK long refresh rate? Are you serious SE? I don't fork out 15 bucks a month for you to limit me on what I can and cannot play. Casual players know they can't spend as much time on the game, so why should they be rewarded more than myself when I've put 3x the effort into playing? Instead of this, why don't you add a system that increases the amount of exp% earned if you haven't played either the game or a certain class after a few hours instead of restricting people's abilities to play what they WANT and PAY to play.

*sigh* I guess we'll have to wait for an official NA translation to really know what's going on. Still pretty excited for the game even if I hate the system :c

I gotta agree there... so basically they're saying we get 8 hours a week to play any job, but after that the exp starts dropping off until its pretty much pointless to play? 8 hours a week isn't much, and I doubt most people will have a problem reaching it, so what are people going to do after that? All I can say is, if they keep this the way it is, they better implement some reward system for that surplus exp...

Seriously..and it better be a damn good reward. A lot of people are thinking it's their way of keeping you from cap simply because the game isn't completely finished and there's no content at that level. But that's just a rumor. Still, they need to reward the casuals, not punish the hardcore players. If they can find a happy medium, maybe 20-30 hours, fine, 'cuz that isn't too bad, but it needs to be reasonable.


Some people were saying it'll indirectly effect your play experience:

player 1: Hey wanna level your gladiator? We really need a tank ><

Player 2: Nah dude, I would but my 8 hours are up.

When I played 11, I was mostly in between a casual and hardcore player. Maybe leaning more to casual most of the time. Having said that, I grow bored of things quickly, and change classes often. I doubt I'll have a problem leveling 8 hours a week on a single job, but it won't bother me to stagger that and level something else I'm interested in, or crafting, or socializing, etc.

tell me if i'm wrong but they're saying you can level a certain job for 8 hours a week plus and extra 7 at lower and lower exp till its pointless, but if you switch to another job the 8 hours restart? or are they saying you can get exp for 15 hours and then you get nothing regardless of switching?

another thing they said the within th efirst 8 hours of play, does that mean from when you log on or what? because if im running around doing other shit than getting exp for 8 hours or afk then that would be a collossal waste of time.

Excellent points Omi, I wish I had those answers.

kai has a point why didnt they just put a timer in and if you log on and say its been 20-30 hours since you last logged on you get a message saying "You are feeling well rested, for the next 8 hours you get 200% more experience!" or something seems alot easier than taking a giant steaming turd on the heads of the people who can and want to play for longer.

Cuz I think it has a lot to do with keeping people playing longer. Take WoW for instance. You can get to 80 within a couple months of dedicated playing. If you enjoy raiding and pvp there's that, but if not you'll probably take a break. Most WoW players I know take a LOT of breaks from WoW.

I think they are trying to keep people from getting to endgame too quickly as well, because PROBABLY its not ready yet. What was the first endgame stuff in FFXI? For us it was Sky, but before that for the JP it was ground Kings and Wyrms and such (HNM). They may have an HNM through leve system ready soon, but Sky was an expansion. We may have to wait til the first expansion just to see Sky type endgame. And if that's not ready yet they don't want us to rush to cap.

i'm suprised that a country that has people die from excessive overtime gives a shit about casual players.

and i dont like being punished for enjoying a game and paying them £15 a month

You think we're upset? Check out the zam boards. Those people went nuts.

suppose i dont mind too much i kinda enjoy running around doing quests

Apparently the reason SE is doing this in the first place (I've read the entirety of the comments that came with it) is BECAUSE of the deaths in Japan due to video games. They're trying to keep people from over-playing. Problem is, after that 15 hours are up, people will just go play something else.

I like that they're trying to look out for the players, that's great n all, but if I'm paying for my experience, I'd like to choose how I spend my time. If I want to craft, I'm gonna have to want to feel like crafting, not because I have to bide my time until I can go back to doing what I want to do. Everyone has their own play-styles. Some people like to switch around a lot, others like to stick to one thing, and I like to stick to one thing unless doing other things helps my overall ability to perform as my main class.

Also, Omi, what I got from the explanation (and what other people helped explain, but they aren't SE so I can't say for sure) is that you can play one class for 8 hours a week, and after that the next 7 hours gradually drops to zero. You can change classes and get EXP with that class, but your physical exp will still remain at 0 for the rest of the week.


However, my main point is: You should pay for what you get. If they're gonna make it so we can't completely enjoy the game we want, we shouldn't have to pay a full 12.99 a month.

Okay guys, here's another translation of the same thing. I think this explained it a bit better. MY impression is that it's mainly referring to Guardian's Favor, which is a boosted EXP for guildleves. Now, if this is true, that means that the only thing that really goes down is the amount of exp you are boosted while doing quests, and that drops down after 15 hours so that you can't have the boost all the time. You can get it back by playing other classes. Now my brother thinks they are two separate things. What do you guys think?

There's been so much drama and waffling over on XIVCore that I'm not sure of any of it anymore. o.o

Originally, the assessment was this:
After 8 hours play time, xp began being penalized until you begin earning 0% xp. This applies to Physical Level and Class Level equally on a per class basis.
This timer is reset once weekly.

Rumors are:
the timer is based on xp gained, not time. So once you hit a certain xp threshold, you start earning less. It is unclear what this threshold is, how it is calculated, and how it scales with level.
the timer applies to some sort of bonus xp system (as referenced by Kailok) which applies only to guildleves
the timer applies to some sort of bonus xp system that applies to all xp gained.
the timer begins to refresh when you stop playing the class, so refresh rate varies.

And that's just the part of the rumormongering that makes sense. Sadly, it's all being obfuscated by the folks who come in to dump a paragraph of whinging that's already been repeated 15 times in the same thread. /headdesk.

I'd pay solid gil for some clarity.

If only there were solid gil...I'm gonna try to not get my hopes up one way or another until SE makes an NA statement or I see it for myself. It didn't effect me in beta but I never got a chance to play more than a couple of hours since it's at Thal's place and my gaming rig isn't up and ready yet for the open one..so I guess we'll see. Regardless I'll be playing as soon as it releases or my compy will allow me to

Oh, absolutely. I'd play even under the "draconian" 8 hours of xp time!

I'd just be working on maxing each and every class each week... :P

Guys i gotta be honest....I'm truly considering canceling my pre-order for this game with this news coming out....How the hell are you going to tell the people PAYING MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTIONS that they cannot gain exp from playing beyond a certain allotted time!?!?!?! "Oh sry you can't gain anymore experience, you went past your time limitations"......BULLSHIT i'm paying a subscription so i can play WHENEVER and HOWEVER LONG I want!!

As for the whole "We want the casual players who only play a few hours a week to be able to keep up" nonsense, that's pure and simple crap....If I am playing THREE times as much as someone else, I should have made THREE times their progress!

And if all this crap is because of the "addiction" lawsuits people are bringing down on Blizzard and other companies, just make it clear in the User/Player Contract that they cannot sue for stupid shit like that...oh fatty didnt stop playing for 2 days straight and didnt go to work and now feels the company owes him money because "the game" made him lose his job.....greedy pathetic people man...

Sorry SE but if you truly follow through with this crap, all I have to say is go to hell....

There's rumors going around that it won't be that low, and that if they do up the amount then it'll probably be barely noticeable. My brother says he's been playing the beta and can barely notice it at the moment. Also, that was a translated post so we should see what happens with the NA statement before anyone does anything. I'll be playing regardless. I hate the idea of it, but if they increase it to maybe 20-30~ hours a week, or instead do 8 hours a day instead of per week (which wouldn't even cause me problems) then it shouldn't be too much of a big deal. Problem is that it won't even effect how long you play, it only effects how long you play one class, it won't stop some people from logging on and staying on the game for an extreme amount of time. Also people think it might be a boost..we're just gonna have to see.


Edit: Also, apparently Tanaka was pissed on his twitter (heard about this on the FFXIVcore forums) that people were starting rumors and misunderstanding the system. Everyone wait for an official NA statement before you decide to cancel anything.

Need more data SO BADD!!!!

Don't worry, I'm watching the FFXIVcore forums like a hawk to see if it's been confirmed otherwise - you'd think they'd get right on a rumor/mistranslation this big if it was false.

I think we need to try to stop spreading the paranoia coming out of the FFXICore.com and Zam.com forums right now. People are going insane over this. Yes it is a bad design feature. But for me at least, my biggest reason for being excited for 14 is the community of people I've become good friends with.

Lets try and take a step back from this rumor mill that's causing so much trouble for everyone, and at LEAST test this ourselves before we have any sort of judgement.

I'm still excited to play, its still a fantastic game, and I don't care if I could only play an hour a day I'll still be playing it.

Aaaaand now you're guaranteed to be my linkshell for the game.

Linkshell leader that keeps his head despite everyone foaming at the mouth over unconfirmed rumors?

Mah Heeero!!!

What you need to do Thal is when the Open Beta comes out (and anyone else who can put the time into it) put as much time as you can into trying to level and see just how much this fatigue stuff effects us (and that's if it hasn't been fully and officially explained by Square Enix before then) -

Hopefully then we can piece together how much it'll really effect our playtime. As much as I don't like the idea of it, we can be hopeful that it won't be as bad as 8 hours/week. Now, if you want to think of it in another way, (and this is just my take on the system, it could end up being completely different in a way so take my words with a grain of salt if you will) then consider that it's kind of like the cap system in FFXI where you would hit level 50 and work on a quest, or series of quests, in order to keep going (instead now, you're just leveling another class/profession to be able to go higher, and it happens more often on your way to level cap to keep you from getting to the highest level too quickly, which I think they are doing to be able to add more content later on.


Also, I'm gonna guess that the fatigue starts to go away while you're offline/not doing anything - And the timer only goes down from time spent in combat so it might actually take a while to actually hit the cap.

Some math I did, I could be wrong so please recheck mah numbers (and please remember this is nothing official just my idea of it):


60 minutes x 8 = 480 minutes total

480 minutes divided by .50 = 960 (Considering the idea that you'll probably spend half of a full minute fighting each mob at the lowerish levels, so obviously this number will vary)

960 divided by 60 minutes = Approximately 16 hours total gameplay on one class until your exp starts to deminish


SO - Let's imagine for a moment that time spent offline restores your exp gain back up to 100% by 10% each hour. Say you usually play about 6 hours a day (everyone has different play styles) then log off, go to school, eat, sleep, other stuff you might do? That exp gain% meter would be going up the whole time.

So counting the idea that we play 6 hours per day it might be like this:

You log in, play your 6 hours, which really (by the math) only takes about 3 hours away from your fatigue timer (see my math for details)
You then log off for the night - Let's say you log off and sleep for 8 hours (Now, this is before you've hit your 8 hour fatigue bar, so I'm not exactly sure how spending time offline will help until your exp starts to diminish) - For now let's imagine that an hour spent offline is another hour or little less than an hour for time returned. (Then your fatigue should be almost back to normal by the time you log in the next day).
Log in, play another 6 hours that day, another 3 hours taken away, so now we're still only at 3 out of the total 15 it takes before you stop gaining experience.

So if the math is correct and you limit your playtime by a certain amount per day, and it restores through the playing of other classes/being offline, then you should be able to keep a normal leveling schedule throughout the week without ever even noticing fatigue. I think this mainly is just trying to keep people from being powerleveled, or playing for 15 hours a day - Which can actually stop RMT from being in this game since they wouldn't really be able to power level themselves.

Just a way to think of it positively. I could be completely wrong because my math kinda sucks (but I used a calculator! )!

it effects how you play period. The limit is cross class. it's 8 hrs per character not class

It effects both your class and your main experience, you can go level other classes just not that one. (Also, I just posted the official NA statement if you want to go read that)

Kai is correct. You have essentially two fatigue timers. One effects physical level, the other effects each class individually. So if you ever do manage to hit the exp cap for the week, you can still play another class for 15 hours and get rank ups. You just won't gain physical levels, but they say now that any exp you WOULD have gained will now go into a surplus exp level that can be used in some other way.