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Square Enix (May) Have Lost Their @#$%ing Minds


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?Please, take this news with a grain of salt. I’m not 100% clear on the sources, not 100% sure of their credibility, and I don’t know what, if anything, is being lost in translation from Japanese to English. The only reason I’m even posting this is because I’m still so, so bitter about Final Fantasy XIII.

Square Enix may — may — be adding some kind of “Fatigue” system for FF14, their next MMORPG. Apparently it “rewards” brief, more casual players… by punishing players who play for more than a few hours at a time. Although the details are not clear, it seems that after an hour, characters get “fatigued” and get penalties to their stats; play for four hours, and the characters’ XP drops to zero. The only way to get your character back up to snuff is to stop playing the game to the tune one day per two hours. Did you play for four hours in a row? Then you have to not play for two days before the penalties go away.

There’s apparently ways you avoid the penalties — changing characters or classes, specifically — but the whole point of MMORPGs is level up your beloved characters. More importantly, like most MMORPGs, FF14 will charge a monthly fee. To play a game that you can’t play more for one hour a day without getting penalized for. Or, if you enjoy the game, you have to stop playing for a while. While you pay for it. This is totally fucking insane.

Now, Square Enix has just come out and denied the rumors of a Fatigue system, blaming it on innaccurate reporting from Western gaming media. This would be more comforting if the news of the Fatigue system hadn’t originated in Famitsu, Japan’s largest and most prestigious gaming magazine, in an interview with Square Enix. Really, this move sounds so stupid it can’t possibly be true — but then, I never thought I’d play a Final Fantasy game as awful as FF13. So we’ll see. Thanks to Brian A. for the tip. (Via Sankaku Complex)