Free to play plans?

[Castanica]

FFXI is old now and honestly the level and quality of the updates we get no longer mean it's worth the subscription fee, the game has also lost a lot of players.

Does Square have any plans to let FFXI go free to play with a cash shop anytime soon?

[Zhronne]

If you think it's not worth anymore then you should cancel your subscription.
Make many other people follow your lead and then, just then, SE maybe will think about moving FFXI into FTP.
Until people continue to play regularly why should they bother?

[Elphy]

In before someone starts mistakingly ranting about f2p meaning a game has failed.

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Maybe if the game gets more new player friendly they could add a first 20-30 lvls with only the basic game free option. That would be a good business move. I know I am waaaay more apt to try a game out when I can give it a test run. But with as horribly unfriendly as this game is to new and returning players right now they need to just keep charging us as long as we will pay.

[Economizer]

Maybe if the game gets more new player friendly they could add a first 20-30 lvls with only the basic game free option. That would be a good business move. I know I am waaaay more apt to try a game out when I can give it a test run. But with as horribly unfriendly as this game is to new and returning players right now they need to just keep charging us as long as we will pay.

14 Day Free Trial.

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.

I highly doubt FFXI is going to a free-to-play/freemium model anytime soon, nor could I really even see having an item similar to EVE Online's PLEX (basically allowing players with lots of in-game resources to pay another player to cover their subscription costs, a variant of RMT). SE's stances on the economic impacts of possible changes and their current profits vs. the investment of a changeover just don't necessarily match up at this time with the idea.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

14 Day Free Trial.

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.

This I could go for. The more opportunity for linkshells to sink their claws into free trial players and coax them into something more, the better.

Beyond that, I'm not sure S-E is doing enough to publicize the program, even among existing players. Hardly anybody seems to know what that green-and-yellow icon means.

Hell, the lack of linkshells for them means there's hardly anybody around to explain the overly complicated process of becoming a paying player to them to begin with...

Would the anti-RMT measures still be broken if free trial players are able to trade everything but gil?

EDIT: ZOMG, players on an unlimited free trial, with the AH/Bazaar restrictions, would be the perfect pool of players to supply the guild salesrooms with non-restocked items! Now there's a mechanic that's been dead and abandoned since forever...

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

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.

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... >.> )

[Toadie-Odie]

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... >.> )

I can't agree with this enough. This game was designed to center around the player base community. I think it's a crime that free-trial players are excluded from the in-game community system and miss out on the heart of the game because of it.

[Castanica]

I already have canceled my sub months ago as has everyone I knew, this is why I'm asking.

FFXI is still a great game, it's just not worth the money they are asking anymore. With free to play the population will be boosted again and they can make money from optionals.

[nyheen]

I already have canceled my sub months ago as has everyone I knew, this is why I'm asking.

FFXI is still a great game, it's just not worth the money they are asking anymore. With free to play the population will be boosted again and they can make money from optionals.

$12:95 a month is not really alot. SE is not going ftp anytime soon and i dont see how ftp in FFXI would work. i dont wanna be playing for a stack a meat for $1 in AH. or any others gear etc o.o.

some games it work well because it was build for that but just changing it on the fly would mess up lot of things because iam sure 90% of the gear/weapons/events gonna have to keep spamming real money and not gils anymore and it gonna be more then the $12 we paying every month or just be gimp as hell with the free gear.

[Laraul]

$12:95 a month is not really alot. SE is not going ftp anytime soon and i dont see how ftp in FFXI would work. i dont wanna be playing for a stack a meat for $1 in AH. or any others gear etc o.o.

some games it work well because it was build for that but just changing it on the fly would mess up lot of things because iam sure 90% of the gear/weapons/events gonna have to keep spamming real money and not gils anymore and it gonna be more then the $12 we paying every month or just be gimp as hell with the free gear.

Well, if you want more gear/weapons/events, it should only be fair you pay more, right?

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.

So, F2P wouldn't change THAT much. People will always buy game cash. You can't stop that. They want to win and will do what they feel necessary to do it. And no, they won't get caught till it's too late. I mean, look at what Lance Armstrong did to a different game? And he fooled everyone for years.