Free to play plans?

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Originally Posted by Laraul

So, F2P wouldn't change THAT much. People will always buy game cash.

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More players will buy gil if it becomes legit, but many players will not. Many will even be driven away from the game outright.

If nothing else, there is no guarantee of a net increase in either income for S-E or players to interact with.

S-E has both dabbled with running a subscription-based game into the ground (TetraMaster) as well as f2p (Fantasy Earth Zero). They likely have more data to base any decisions on than any of us do.

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Originally Posted by Castanica

With free to play the population will be boosted again and they can make money from optionals.

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Fuck no. Horrible idea, for any game, ever. Whoever thought of these things first deserves to be hung.

That aside, the price they asking is a lot. It's still one of the most expensive pay-to-play games I know, despite being as terrible as it is. They should reduce the fee substantially imo, I know that would bring back some people who don't consider the current fee acceptable, without having to result to such awful ideas like cashing in on optionals.

FFXI doesn't cost a lot to play at all, and I and a lot of other players play the game at least once a day, 4-7 days a week so that to me would be worth the small amount they ask for. The amount I pay for FFXI is 1/4 of the amount I pay for my mobile phone bill every month, so hardly breaking the bank. Also SE needs, or really wants the money (I doubt they really need any money considering how large the FF franchise is) to maintain the servers so there is a very little chance they'll make the game ftp. The only chance is if maybe they get outside funding for the servers, the servers become free to maintain, and on top of either of them SE loses a significant majority of players and they need to reel them back in. So basically no chance!

good thing the massive servers that run ffxi don't require any power, also good thing that MMOs are pretty much free to maintain and update... oh wait

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Originally Posted by Daniel

good thing the massive servers that run ffxi don't require any power, also good thing that MMOs are pretty much free to maintain and update... oh wait

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Not that I agree with the f2p model, but I think the bolded part is what a lot of people take exception to, since we are paying. I know a lot of players that don't feel like they're getting their money's worth.

Personally, I believe that FFXIV is siphoning off a lot of FFXI revenue, which I feel is a sleazy way to treat your customers.

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Originally Posted by Ziyyigo-Tipyigo

FFXI is still profitable enough to pay for both itself and for fixing XIV. Don't expect them to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs any time soon.

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Realy FFXI is the major factor keeping SE afloat. Yes, they are expanding their market off of gaming only, but FFXIV would have been another "Spirits Within."

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Originally Posted by Economizer

Honestly the free trial is so limited that SE might as well make it not be time limited to be honest, you can't have any of the expansions, which means beating the Shadow Lord somehow at level 30 is the only real thing you can do, and only on a budget of 100k that you can't have gotten from other players or the Auction House.

That said, if I had to give one suggestion to improving the current free trial system, it would be a method to trade a Linkshell to them one way. Easiest way to get free trial players hooked in my opinion.

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I got suckered in by the trial, and dragged a pal and the boyfriend along with me. It needs to be altered so that trial users can form parties. We spent hours running around trying to find randoms to party us up.

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Originally Posted by Ziyyigo-Tipyigo

More players will buy gil if it becomes legit, but many players will not. Many will even be driven away from the game outright.

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I'd ragequit.

ok think of it like this. netflix (ffxi fee) vs video stores (ftp).

video stores got no monthly fee. i can walk in and talk to my friends etc but if i wanna do stuff or buy anything (rent movie) it cost like $3+. new events out? $2, stack of sushi 1$ buy merit WS $2 new bst pet $1-2. iam sure mostly or all the stuff will turn into pay and it will cost lot, but hey if i wanna be gimp, talk to friends at the video store but dont buy anything while iam there sure. but if everyone did that there video stores wont make money and will do less and less update or die off.

netflix got a monthly fee like $8 to hang out with people but i get to spam lots and lots of movies all day on the website . sometime i watch up to 50 movies in 3 weeks or less. that would of cost like $150 if they was about $3 each. great updates (exp packs SoA etc) happening.

iam not saying ftp games are bad but most of them seems rushed and cheap since they not making lot of money. i seen over 1000 of ftp and it feel like all of them is the same way to me.
i honestly think if FFxi was a Ftp it would of never came out with all the good exp packs and update since they wont have the money to make it that good. it would be rushed like all the other ftp games.

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Originally Posted by Economizer

Honestly the free trial is so limited that SE might as well make it not be time limited to be honest, you can't have any of the expansions, which means beating the Shadow Lord somehow at level 30 is the only real thing you can do, and only on a budget of 100k that you can't have gotten from other players or the Auction House.

That said, if I had to give one suggestion to improving the current free trial system, it would be a method to trade a Linkshell to them one way. Easiest way to get free trial players hooked in my opinion.

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I can't stop thinking about this and how good an idea this is because, if nothing else, this would revitalize old and abandoned content.

First off, as I mentioned before, are the guild salesrooms. Paying subscribers only sell to them when they can't find room to list a particular item on the Auction House, but they are the best option for these free trial players to unload unwanted gear and make gil. This would breathe new life into the salesrooms and allow them to return to their original intent: functioning as price controls for the Auction House. This will help keep the price of low-level gear low enough for actual new (and paying) players, rather than being priced for players who already have a level 99 job to fund things with.

Further, because their only way to obtain gear is from monsters, NPCs and treasure boxes, they'll be more inclined to strive for the hard-to-obtain gear of events like Garrison and Cloudy and Sky Orb battles than are paying players, who will just rocket on past those levels to 50+ regardless. The minority of paying players who are interested in that old content will be much more likely to find help from these free players, while the free players get a form of "free endgame" that (for better or for worse) gives them a taste of what to expect when they do subscribe.

More generally, without access to /shout and /yell, they're forced to use the more passive party-building tools of /seacom and /invite. The more time these players are forced to use these tools as free players, the more likely they are to continue using these tools after they become paying players.

(Aside: does /autogroup work for free players?)

The only real shortcoming is their inability to be brought into linkshells; it seems the best you can do with a trial player is to /befriend them. But I think it's long past time to overhaul FFXI's linkshell system regardless. Rather than relying on "inventory -1," FFXI linkshells should more resemble how linkshells were managed in FFXIV 1.x. This could be kludged easily enough by tightly integrating the concept of a "linkshell" in FFXI with the Group Friend List functionality of PlayOnline (which currently isn't even accessible from within FFXI). This would allow for linkshell holders to manage the group without certain players having to be online to do so, and would likely also allow for integration with XIV's social lists in the future.

And, of course, it would allow the inclusion of free players into the wider FFXI community without having to circumvent the anti-RMT measure of not allowing them to trade with other players.

(And it may even encourage S-E to do something meaningful with the Linkshell Community website for the first time since before the Gates of Paradise were sealed... >.> )

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Originally Posted by Laraul

Truth of the matter is I stopped caring about having the best gear a long time ago because I knew if I obsessed to much over having the best gear, I would likely turn to RMT. I think everyone would. Everyone else obsessed about gear. But many did not turn to RMT and played the honest way. And still others did turn to RMT to improve at least a few times. I know how tempting it can be to turn to RMT.

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The reality is that to be the best you'd have to invest thousands of dollars into RMT, which is just plain crazy. Realistically I think the people who actually RMT are extremely casual people who just want to get by and make the most what little time they have online without having to worry about gil.