Free to play plans?

tl;dr entire thread, but my opinion on the topic:

Do what TERA did, sell subscriptions [or Crysta] as an in-game item and let people trade it.
It somewhat counters RMT and allows people to play for free if they can make Gil.

That or go F2P and find a good model that works. F2P models done right are largely more profitable than P2P, just because of how many people are playing. P2P really only works for WoW these days, due it's insane popularity.
In comparison to other P2P MMOs, FFXI is the only one I've mentioned to people where they would respond "That game still exists?" or "Wasn't that the one with Vaan?"

Either way, SE needs to do some better advertising. The last time I saw any public interest in the game was when FFXI started having steam sales. We're 2 months from Adoulin and there's no advertisement being done at all.

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Originally Posted by Kari

Either way, SE needs to do some better advertising. The last time I saw any public interest in the game was when FFXI started having steam sales. We're 2 months from Adoulin and there's no advertisement being done at all.

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Quoted for great justice.

Does FFXI need to be Free to Play? No.
Does it need to get itself out there and advertise more to get more new players? Yes.
Could it have a purely-cosmetic RTM store? Possible.
If they made a service that changed your Race/Face/Gender, they would be swimming in money (and it wouldn't be broken or anything because race is so superfluous now-a-days, what with all the equipment that evens everything out).

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Originally Posted by Arcon

If he doesn't enjoy it, why should he play it? Just because content he doesn't like is there he's not to blame for canceling his account for a while if he feels he won't enjoy playing it.

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Isnt that exactly what i'm saying?...Don't enjoy it don't play it, don't go complaining a fee that is almost non-existent.

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That's not competing, that's losing. It doesn't mean you know how to run a business either because you make a profit. How good of a business man you are is judged by comparing to the competition, not judging by whether or not you make profit at all. If I sell my pen to my neighbor I made a profit, it doesn't mean I know anything about businesses.

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You asked a question i answered, did i say that you know anything about business? I said you are competing, no matter how big you are as a competition, you are competing.

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Everything in there is factual. And unlike you, I can support what I say with evidence: the game has many bugs that have been around for years (effects not working properly like WS effects not scaling with TP, incorrect item descriptions, etc.), it's cumbersome (cannot Alt+Tab out of the game, chat log loss on zoning, senseless inviting restrictions, etc.), content is repetitive (10k currency, 30k Alexandrite, 1500 plates of heavy metal, etc.), customer interactions don't exist (SE denying everything users suggest (with lies, if necessary), holding votes then ignoring them, not replying to important suggestions, etc.) and releases are slow as hell (WotG released over a course of three years bit by bit, a few Voidwatch battles released over the course of one year path by path, announced roadmap releases constantly pushed back, etc.).

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You said the entire structural is falling apart? Yes that's your opinion. The game runs just fine. I don't see anything structural falling apart. Of course the game has bugs, every single game in existence have bugs but the game is not falling apart like you seem to state.

Game being cumbersome? You name a few things wrong and you call a game cumbersome? Yes, entirely true for everyone that plays..sure....if you say so...

Name me an MMO without repetitive content? I bet you can't even name one.

Customer interaction doesn't exist? Maybe i'm seeing things but i see SE forum representatives reply to to threads every day, if that is non-existent I don't know what to say.

So you mad because SE is not replying to suggestions that are important to you? Maybe, just maybe, it's just not that important?

Releases are slow by what standard? Your standard? Then yes, i'm sure it's slow to you. It's perfectly fine for me. I haven't even done half of what's in this game, and i've been playing since NA release.

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All of that is horrible for an MMOG trying to compete in today's market. Are you telling me I imagined all of these? How is any of that my opinion?

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Yes, alot of that is still your opinion and i've reponded. All i'm saying is just because you feel that way doesn't mean other people feel the same way no matter how you slice it.

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I'm implying you don't have a brain because instead of arguing against my statements and trying to get your point across with evidence and proper arguments all you say is "that's just, like, your opinion man" and then try to belittle my intelligence apparently thinking that will make you sound more believable.

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The reason i'm arguing with you is because you keep on spinning your opinions as fact and nothing more. The evidence is there, i'm just letting you know you're not the only person in this world. There are other people that don't necessarily have the same opinions as you. If i'm belittling you, i apologize, that is not my intent.

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You confuse good games with games you enjoy. BioShock was a good game. I know so because all the signs were there, good dialogue, good graphics, smooth controls, diverse weapons, etc., but I just didn't enjoy it. FFXI on the other hand has many factual problems that make it less than good (the ones I mentioned above, among many others). That doesn't mean there can't be aspects that I enjoy about it, sometimes even enough to make up for its flaws. That is the case for me. That doesn't mean I consider it good. I couldn't recommend it to any of my friends because I feel I'd be wasting their time and I don't wanna do that to them. But I know what I like, and despite its quirks I'm stuck playing it and have no intention of stopping for now.

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Isn't good or bad games all subjective? You think Bioshock is a good game because of those reasons. I think ffxi is a great game because of the story lines. The great people that i meet in game. The battle mechanics, i know it's slow but that's what i enjoy. There are many other things. If i enjoy a game that means it's a GOOD FREAKING game to ME. Period. There are no good or bad games, it's just what people perceive them to be. One mans treasure could be another man's trash and vice versa. You can list a million things that make up a good game but in the end it's still subjective and still your OPINION. I think you're the one that is confused. Not everything is black and white.

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It's a statistical argument, not my opinion. I can't speak for the entire population, but I took in about 30 players in the last two months (most from these forums, you can look them up yourself), which are a majority of the people who asked for help on here. Of those, only one was completely new (and sadly, I haven't seen them around for a few days now). That's a comparably large sample, enough to say with significant certainty that most new subscriptions recently are not actually new players. If you now say you see many brand new players, that leaves me two options: accept your proposition of a very unlikely scenario based on my own observations and add your samples to mine, or not risk contaminating my sample pool with your made up scenario. I'm open to either, because neither invalidates my point, but currently I'm leaning towards the latter based on my opinion of you and your hostile stance towards me and your tendencies to exaggerate and not present evidence for your arguments.

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You already invalidated your point by saying there was one person that was brand new. If you would've said previously that it was a statistical argument, you would've had no argument from me.

Whatever man, i'm done here. The only reason i'm arguing with you is that you like to take your opinions as fact. You make some very good points but doesn't mean you're right. There are other people that play this game that doesn't feel the same as you and I'm one of them. That's all i'm trying to say.

With a new expansion on the rise I doubt they have any plans for the free to play model.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

Isnt that exactly what i'm saying?...Don't enjoy it don't play it, don't go complaining a fee that is almost non-existent.

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No, that's not what you were saying. You told him that he probably didn't even realize half the content existed, so essentially made the argument that he has to play everything to complain about content.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

You asked a question i answered, did i say that you know anything about business? I said you are competing, no matter how big you are as a competition, you are competing.

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I see, so you disregarded the context of the statement and the entire argument to harp on semantics.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

You said the entire structural is falling apart? Yes that's your opinion. The game runs just fine. I don't see anything structural falling apart. Of course the game has bugs, every single game in existence have bugs but the game is not falling apart like you seem to state.

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I'm not talking about bugs here. Bugs are oversights during programming you find and erase once someone points them out. I'm talking about cures doing record damage after an update entirely unrelated to cures. I'm talking about people losing daily trigs for two weeks after an update because SE can't find what's wrong with their code. I'm talking about SE admitting openly to not being able to fix things that third party programmers have fixed almost a decade ago. Unless you want me to assume that they're totally incompetent, that's due to their internal code being a mess.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

Game being cumbersome? You name a few things wrong and you call a game cumbersome?

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How many do I have to name? Because I can go on for hours. When does it stop being an opinion?

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

Yes, entirely true for everyone that plays..sure....if you say so...

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Yes, it is. It is cumbersome for everyone. You have no idea what an opinion is. An opinion is how you interpret the facts in your personal context, but it doesn't change the facts themselves.

Not being able to skip CSs is cumbersome. Whether you mind that or not is your opinion. Not being able to escape out of conversations is cumbersome. Whether you're fine with it or not is your opinion. Having to wait one second between every single piece of gear you wanna move between inventories every time you change a job is cumbersome. Whether or not you enjoy that is your own thing.

It's the same in your reply to my BioShock comment. There are objective ways to judge a game. It will not determine whether or not you'll like it, but they are facts, not opinions. And they are an indication of how the masses will perceive a game. Sure, there may be individuals that will enjoy even the most objectively bad games, but going by these people is not a good way to run a business.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

Name me an MMO without repetitive content? I bet you can't even name one.

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I can't, and why should I? MMOGs live on repetitive content. Not having it would be entirely stupid by the developers, because it's cheap and saves time. But there are various degrees to it. Doing one simple event for a year with two other people who both only contribute to you (otherwise looking at three years) only to fulfill one requirement of several with varying degrees of absurdity for a weapon that isn't worth it in most of the possible cases? That is not the good kind of repetitive. That is the kind that will not keep people playing but rather alienate them (which is demonstrated by how many people have a mythic, and that number is still far off because most of the people who have it are just rich and bought most of it from people getting the materials from unrelated Salvage/Nyzul runs).

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

Customer interaction doesn't exist? Maybe i'm seeing things but i see SE forum representatives reply to to threads every day, if that is non-existent I don't know what to say.

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Name one. And by one I mean one that wasn't "we can't/won't do this" or an announcement, that's not customer interaction. Interaction goes both ways, but SE go one way. They only tell us what they'll do and what they won't. The few times they do ask for our input, they don't seem to care about it in the end (see the BST pet poll or the Lv99 vs. Lv100 poll). The countless times people ask for improvement of game features (see macros, blinking, gear swaps, etc.), they cite shoddy game design as the main reason for why they can't add that feature at this point. When people submit bugs they make them jump through horrible hoops just to get to submit an error report.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

Releases are slow by what standard? Your standard? Then yes, i'm sure it's slow to you. It's perfectly fine for me. I haven't even done half of what's in this game, and i've been playing since NA release.

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The standard of the game industry. The standard set by competing companies. The standard set by players' expectations, which is why people complain about it all the time (yes, not just me, just look around these forums to get a small impression of what the general mood on that subject is).

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

You already invalidated your point by saying there was one person that was brand new. If you would've said previously that it was a statistical argument, you would've had no argument from me.

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Again, semantics. It's still not just an opinion. You cannot have opinions on factual matters, only on their interpretation. If it's statistical, it can't be an opinion. Just because it doesn't make it a fact (and only because there isn't enough evidence to classify it as such), it's still an objective interpretation of such, not my subjective take on it. And that applies to pretty much everything I said. And as I mentioned, that is what makes or breaks a game.

FFXI had the benefit of being released relatively early on, with little competition in the MMORPG spectrum. Those days are over, competition is overflowing the market, so much so that players are changing how they play and not only what. Back then starting a MMORPG was a big project. These days most people only play shallowly for a bit, a year is already a long commitment to one game, and they expect to be treated to one year's worth of content in that time. And that goes not only to newer players, but also older players who have experienced the competition's market. While newer players may still have lots to explore in FFXI, older players who were in the endgame scene at 75 already and kept up with content releases are likely to have gone through similar phases such as Rezeak described. That is to check back every now and again for new content and be done with it again quickly.

Aww, lovebirds. You two are so cute.

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Originally Posted by Caketime

Aww, lovebirds. You two are so cute.

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If you have nothing to contribute, why post? If you think it's completely off-topic or offensive then report it and see if SE agrees with you.

If a game isn't created from the ground-up being built around being free to play then the results of going free to play are almost always detrimental. Micro-transactions/PLEX systems could uproot the entire in-game economy virtually over night. If it doesn't do that it'll tend to hurt the developers more because RMTs tend to run rampant in free to play games. When creating an account is free anyone can make an infinite number of accounts. Plus, true F2P games tend to get fewer content updates than P2P and end up just going into micro-transaction store updates since that's where the producers make their money. Lastly, if Star Wars: The Old Republic has any lesson to teach it's that just because a game is free to play doesn't mean more people will play the game or that the game will be better. FFXI has some root problems that make it difficult for newer players to access such as the age of the game, no advertising for the game and the fact that a large number of the players are 5+ years old and have very little interest in helping newer players. </rant>

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Originally Posted by detlef

If you have nothing to contribute, why post? If you think it's completely off-topic or offensive then report it and see if SE agrees with you.

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Answering a shitpost with a shitpost does not a good post make. There's no real way to contribute anything more to the thread now, it's been dominated by a huge retard argument, and to be honest there wasn't much point to contribute in the first place. F2P isn't a model SE will embrace overnight, and going by the huge amount of whining right here around us at the very idea, one could say this entire thread is one giant shitpost made solely to create a "debate" wherein two or more posters add to their post counts for no reason other than to toss out some cheap insults or post images containing tacos, or something equally lame.

Way to contibute, by the way. Golf clap for you.