Tanaka Tires of "Fatigue" Rumors
Surplus points, a new feature recently introduced into the Final Fantasy XIV beta, has had testers and fans on the outside quite confused. Most people consider it akin to "fatigue," where a character is beset with limitations after a certain amount of play. With no official announcement or explanation on how these points work, fan sites and forums have been struggling to figure them out -- often leading to some harsh criticism of the game. Now, Producer Hiromichi Tanaka seems to have built up some "fatigue" of his own, and lashed out at foreign sites on Twitter today, calling them full of rumors and fabrications.
"Foreign sites have lots of false rumors. They throw together words and fabricate remarks. Then Japanese sites take this and further [falsify it through] mistranslation. The fatigue point criticism has absolutely nothing to do with the actual [system] and is just full of wild ideas."
The source of Tanaka's dismay appears to stem from this interview with Famitsu from Gamescom. In it, the developers admit the existance of a fatigue system, claiming it was designed to benefit players with comparatively little time to enjoy the game. With the details left unclear, "fatigue" has become a source of speculation across the Internet and some articles have made shocking claims regarding its function in limiting player growth and freedom. The situation has reached a point where Tanaka believes that what people are criticizing is nothing like the system as it is in the actual game. Furthermore, the last line states that he believes too many people are just coming up with what they think fatigue might be and making the situation even worse.
Sure, wild speculation is not hard to find while wading through any popular forum, but the assertion that this is the fault of foreign sites is a little harsh. A quick glance at a thread on the JP Beta tester site dedicated to understanding this system reveals pages of baffled testers trying to figure out how exactly it functions. Several replies from Japanese fans also point to the lack of any official explanation as exacerbating, if not outright causing, the issue.
At least we know the producer of the game has been apprised of the issue. As mentioned many times, the entire testing process was based on building the game in accordance to player feedback. Will it be received and implemented into the design process, or continue to be dismissed as wild delusions? Hopefully, we will see a more measured response in the coming days.
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