The mantra from the devs is basically sub when you want and stop if/when it’s not worth it. They’ve never been really fighting to keep subs there’s plenty for people to do on an ongoing basis and they’re fine with people seasonally subbing for the updates. I don’t think they’re concerned about monthly value.
As someone who was late to the FFXIV train, I just started a few months ago so I started while the unlimited free trial system was already established. But I have many friends who do pay for a sub.
I think their decision to open the game to be an unlimited free trial was a smart move, however their decision to make it a one and done trial was not. I 100% would be ok with paying for multiple months of subscription in order to get the features that the sub provides as a player, but like I know that if I ever chose to do so, I will never be allowed to /not/ pay. This means that me as a player will likely never spend a dime on the game, because I don’t want to be introduced into that sunk cost.
If they were planning to go F2P they should have full sent F2P, the hybrid route of “Yea you can play as long as you want, but as soon as you give us money you will be required to give us money forever to play” route is counter productive and is likely costing them quite a bit of money itself.
How does this reflect on the monthly sub cost? Well it’s simple, removing the requirement of a sub to play on it’s existing userbase, while at first will be a money hit because the non-team players that are trapped with their predatory monetization scheme will leave, but a good majority of their player-base would keep their sub, because FF XIV is very much a team social based game, and the restrictions given for F2P are not viable in later on dungeons as the usage of the marketplace system and the free company system is moreorless a must have in order to play.
Players will swap to a stop the sub when they don’t want to play team wise, and renew it when they need socials again, but since the sub is now “optional” there won’t be as much of a need to make the sub feel worth the money. Which is their biggest problem right now with other competitors releasing highly successful expansion packs under a fully subbed model.
the hybrid route of “Yea you can play as long as you want, but as soon as you give us money you will be required to give us money forever to play” route is counter productive
100%.
There’s a couple of games I would probably be playing and spending money on that follow that monetization method and the problem is that… I don’t play one game endlessly.
If you cancel and go away, you’ve made returning to the game a pretty substantial hurdle, and for me at least, I’m just… not going to.
(Also FFXIV’s utterly incomprehensible login system that requires six logins on five thousand different pages under nine names doesn’t help since every time I try to come back I can’t remember how to even log in to anything.)
I’ve been a die-hard player since 2.0. I love where the game is at in a lot of places. My gripe is that for all the money this game brings in, we’re constantly being told that things are out of their budget. Getting all the races to be able to wear hats, for example. If XIV is their most lucrative title, why is the budget the excuse for EVERY little thing they “can’t” do?
Usually when a dev studio says “budget”, it’s primarily a time budget, not just money. Yes, money can be used to hire more staff, but everything we know about software development says that output doesn’t scale linearly with man-hours.
Fixing hats in the way they would like (which isn’t just the modded method of having ears or parts of heads clip through whatever hats/helms exist) would require them to go through every headpiece created so far and rework them for the races’ head shape. Is it possible? Yes. Is it the best use of their time and effort? Probably not. It’s a live game; they’re always pushing on for the next bit of content.
I’m unfamiliar with software development output bottlencks and how they relate to artists. In your opinion, how could an increase in production artists not increase art production?
The issue is you provide production/team lead more artists and they can dedicate them to cinematics, environment, character and costume design and have them improve and make the process behind the stuff that already exists better, or put them into a fan-requested feature that’s a potential time sink that won’t really gain them any subs.
Alternatively you can end up in a too many cooks situation. For instance if you have 30 new armour designs putting more than 30 artists on the task sees diminishing returns.
The financial side can also be an issue. If your budget equates to having 6 months for the next patch, hiring more people reduces the time available, but might not speed up the process significantly enough to make the effective time loss worth it.
You’re right, I guess I wasn’t thinking it all the way through. Guess it’s up to SE to decide if they want to hire more artists and spend their time polishing bits of older content.
Any time they give a reason that there’s some technical thing they can’t accomplish, just remember mahjong. The devs programmed a fucking mahjong client into FFXIV (and it’s quite a good one too, on top of being free trial accessible, apparently some people get the free trial primarily for mahjong). If they have the technology and budget to do something as irrelevant and orthogonal as that, they can put in anything (as long as the devs are interested in making it). So basically it’s all bs, plus there are mods and plugins that do every QoL and visual upgrade imaginable already implemented as a third party tool.
I thought about writing a long ass response to this but fuck all of that.
I honestly am happy with where it is as a game after playing it since 1.0 and hope they keep making it better and better. I get why some people don’t think the sub is worth it and that’s entirely their value judgement to make. But there is loads of shit to do and it’s pretty happy if you come hang out then leave for some months and come back later for a good binge. And the community is still pretty awesome though there have been a few too many people trying to avoid assimilation. But resistance is futile. They will assimilate. And the game will keep going until they get tied of it and jike the whole shebang again.
Yeah I agree, this is bullshit. I’m probably in the minority but I take “vote with your wallet” seriously and I’ve just kept my sub going since I started playing in like 2018? Even the months that go by that I don’t play, I feel I’m getting some value by keeping their team cooking.
Meanwhile WoW is getting roasted for its latest grift. I guess that’s stacking value, just not for the players.
I ended my sub a month or so after finishing Dawntrail’s story. My choice of “time filler” was to level up Blue Mage, which gave an interesting and fun new spell every few levels. But even with the many XP bonuses in effect, it was taking an achingly long time and I was realizing I was treating the game like a job.
I had given my shot at high level content, and its indecipherable on top of needing carpal tunnel inputs, so, not for me.
Played FFXIV since 2.0 but I fell of around the robe I got a kid.
My main gripe at that point was it was becoming a bit too formulaic, the Dungeons where always technically the same, with 2 X3 pulls, and 3 bosses
Same with the raids.
I agree. If this game was F2P I would love it. It sucks that you have to buy a subscription and pay for the expansions.
I miss the world but hate the fact that I have to pay for my time. If I have to work long or other stuff comes up that month it feels like a waste.
Plus the subscription is too expensive for what it offers. For $13 you can get a lot of great games on sale and a big selection of indie titles, feels like a better investment.
You know that the whole base game + the first expansion is completely free until you buy the first thing?
The issue is that you lose access to that free trial if you sub even for a month.
…which is the mostest stupidest thing ever
It sucks that you have to buy a subscription and pay for the expansions.
That’s what got me. I was paying $20 a month and after a year or so and then they ask for $60 to play the new content. What did you do with my $240 in subscription fees? Is that not to pay for new content?
Server costs.
Okay, but if they packed it full of microtransactions and premium currency, it’d be a worse game.
Unless you mean you just want the publisher to make less money, which isn’t an option they’re going to be interested in.
They already have a F2P model with the free trial. Allowing that or a limited access model for those who give up their subscription would be a nice option. Even a low-scale sub.
The game already had tons of micro-transactions (some mounts cost more than 2 months of a subscription). There’s also a ton of nonsense currencies.
Best part of the game is the community and the world.
The free trial isn’t a business model. It’s a demo.
You only have a F2P model after you add the aggressive monetisation.
