Many people on the internet have been rage-writing lately about a little-understood feature for Final Fantasy XIV called the fatigue system. While Square Enix may be vague, misleading, and sometimes even downright confusing while explaining how this system works, the basics are plain to see. The amount of experience a player can gain will be limited by the fatigue system. Now before we get into the convoluted details, let's talk about some reasons why this is not necessarily a bad thing. I can understand some people might not like this proposition, especially as one who has played MMO-RPGs for days on end at times without break. However, I believe this concept is rock solid even if the implementation may be a little bit risqué. Just think about being able to play an MMO without the obligation of 'no-life'ing' whenever you can just to keep up with the progress of your friends (and enemies). A higher level of balance than seen in previous MMO-RPGs will be achieved with this system.

The way this system works is that the rate at which your exp. increases over time is decreased based on the amount of experience you have already garnered. The exp. you gain per battle will be decreased as you level a class / weapon skill in increments eventually taking you to zero percent at which point you will no longer receive any experience for using that class / weapon until the fatigue is reset on it. This has turned into people saying that you can only play the game 8 hours a week, 16 hours a week, 4 hours a day, and all sorts of other crazy claims, but in reality this is not the case at all. For one thing, gamers can switch classes / weapons and the fatigue system will begin to recharge on the one they have maxed out as they use another.

First of all this system is more realistic, I'd like to see how good your experience is in real life after working yourself to death with the same weapon for 72 hours straight. But more importantly, this system will provide balance to the game and provides a more fair leveling platform overall. While allowing those who have the time to invest much further on the game there is the option to switch up your weapon / class with the same character and continue playing as much as you want, this system prevents an unfair advantage from a person sitting around and spam-leveling the same skill over and over again. This would even make macro-bots less successful due to the cool-down time required between experience tiers. This system introduces a more universal and standardized system for leveling skills preventing unreasonable advancement that comes from clicking the same thing over and over for days.

But I'm paying for this, they say! What if I don't want to switch classes / weapons? While yes you are paying for this, nothing says you dictate the rules, this is Square Enix's creation, not yours. You can still play the game however you want and no one is forcing you to sit around and rotate all of these classes / weapons. If you really don't like it here's some advice; pop in a different game, spend some time with your wife (or husband) / family / friends / loved ones, or take care of things in your life that you have been neglecting to play the game. If these seem unacceptable then like I said you can just switch weapons / classes and continue playing as long as you want, that option is there so this is not a matter of limiting your play-time but rather balancing the skill progression.

I've done marathons before on MMOs, I still think this system is great. The creators aren't going to stop you from staying up all night and day and playing, that's why you can rotate classes, but it's just not fair for people who can't dedicate that amount of time to the game to be completely behind the loop of the game. With the fatigue system in place, everyone can get their experience and do their best to keep up with these cool-downs. If they have extra time they can diversify their character, if not at least they aren't playing a more and more pointless experience as 'no-life'ers' like me progress light years beyond them and become the focus of the updates / expansions. Like I said, I can completely understand the adverse reactions to this but it just needs to be said that this system rocks, and if you don't understand why Square Enix is doing this hopefully this will help you see the bright side.