Well, according to Final Fantasy XIV‘s game director, Nobuaki Komoto, Final Fantasy XIV will be governed by an experience reduction mechanism called the Fatigue System. According to Komoto, every 8 hours spent playing, the Fatigue System kicks in and decreases the amount of experience gained by the character, significantly downgrading the character’s effectiveness in terms of combat making each encounter less rewarding.

When the time counter clocks in 15 or above hours, there will be no experience gained. Komoto emphasizes the need to create a gaming equalizer between those with more free time and users with work and social life to attend to.

Nobuaki Komoto signifies that the system, which is also embraced by different Free-to-Play and Pay-to-Play MMOs though the penalties have contrasting repercussions, will help curb those with all the time in the world to trudge Eorzea almost endlessly and grind their levels unlike players who still consider working and going to night clubs more important than slaying quest marks.

Though the implementation of Fatigue System helps in disciplining players, it will not silence Final Fantasy fans into thinking that the newest addition to the FF compendium is hampered by rules of time limit and debilitated experience values.

The threshold, the 8 hours limit that Komoto strictly imposed, is sort of a Red Alert warning, a bleeping metaphor that cries out that the player’s time of bashing monsters for the nth is coming to a freezing halt and, it will take a week to renew the Final Fantasy XIV Fatigue System before it sets out again.

In spite of the issue, Komoto has clearly stated that the Fatigue System ain’t all that bad. According to him, whether the player wants to linger in Eorzea is up to his/her choice: the drop and spawn rate of monsters remain the same and, other in-game “bonuses” is impervious to the downgrade.

Komoto, however, will be reexamining the overall impact of the Fatigue System and will carefully gauge the fan base suggestions and reactions towards the baronial penalty.

“At the very least, we can promise that players won’t be running into the threshold penalty in the same short time span as they did in the beginning of Beta 3,” Komoto said in an interview.

Final Fantasy XIV‘s open beta for the PC will be released this Wednesday and the game is set to hit gaming shelves this September 30.

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