Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The "Casual" Bonus

This entry is a look at our own "Casual" bonus and just how lucky we are to have one that works so well.

In the world of WoW those players who level casually are helped along with the catch up system known as "Rested EXP". We all know it, it comes in very handy and when possible you log out in an Inn or city to get it. As a system it is very simple and works perfectly at what it is designed for, the people that play a lot get a small period of time with the bonus. Those that do not play so regularly get large quantity of time on the bonus and as such have a little helper to bridge the gap to those that can afford more time. The system really does not have any big negatives, sure the more hardcore will still level faster but the boost is a nice little helping hand for those that can't.

I bring this up to help show to you just how bad SquareEnix's proposed plan to level the field is. The aim is not to help boost the casual up towards the hardcore, rather to limit the hardcore so the casual can catch them. That's right you heard it you will be punished for playing FFXIV to much.

The system works basically like this. Each player can level different classes and those classes have a level system separate to each other, the skills learnt from each class can be used in varying ways together to help provide a different kind of experience in how you play the game. However with their system if you play as one class for 8 hours your class EXP earned will be cut heavily, then the EXP will diminish over the next 8 hours until you eventually are earning 0 EXP for everything you do. You can avoid this by changing to a different class(which suffers the same after 8 hours). Now pay attention because here is the kicker, the limit resets WEEKLY so each week you are limited to at absolute painful best 16 hours per class. Now sure the game is designed to have you learn different classes all in one, and yes there will be many classes you want to get skills from but think of it like this. You wish to tank so you take the class with sword and shield its really all you want to do, you can play that class for a little over an hour-2hours a day before it is made useless to play anymore. Think about how much you play on your main in WoW, even dipping into 2 other classes for useful spells your limited to 3 hours a day of leveling, when leveling I am likely to do that a weekday let alone what I could do during the weekend.
Now there is word that the EXP you don't earn after 8 hours could be used to boost yourself another way but as of yet we still have no clue as to what that is and the game is a month from release, we don't even have an explanation for this outside of Japanese forums.

So next time you look at the blue bar and wish you had a little more of it be thankful, at least you drop to normal EXP after it ends.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey man,

This isn't really on topic with your post but I notice that not a lot of people leave comments. I just wanted to let you know that I love your blog & it's one of the things I always check when I come online. Keep up the great work!

Do you have any videos showing off your paladin? I'd love to see some of those on YouTube or something.

Orthien said...

Hey thanks for the comment, its always great to hear from readers and know that some people are visiting the blog.
At the moment I don't have anything but once Cataclysm is releaced I might do some stuff for raiding and some Rated BG's as Prot.