Login campaign..

[Zarchery]

You say this is ok, would it be ok if they put d-ring in a little cash shop for $9.99? Would it? because that's effectively what this is, in-fact it's worse because it's pay upto $17 for a RNG chance at an item. Again, don't say people don't buy mules for this because they certainly do. You only have to sit at the npc for a short while to see it going on over and over and over.

That is a blatant strawman.

Also, I'm pretty sure a Free to Play game wouldn't charge a monthly subscription fee. Or make it so easy to progress without paying for the premiums. A free to play would offer desirable premium items directly in exchange for money. Not moderately decent and mostly outdated stuff in exchange for gradually acquired points. I'm trying to imagine the planning meeting for this sinister moneymaking plan you're describing.


"Hey we're losing our subscriber base. We need to make more money of Final Fantasy 11."
"What if we tried a free to play model?"
"So we're going to cancel subscription fees?"
"No."
"So we're going to offer gil and highly coveted items in exchange for real world currency?"
"No. We're going to offer people points for logging in. If they pay an extra dollar for a character then they can get 4600 points accumulated gradually over the course of a month."
"Ok. A dollar to get some special in game currency over the course of a month seems a little unorthodox. Can this currency accumulate over time? Could some get, say, 55,000 points over the course of a year?"
"No! The points expire after a month."
"Ok. So then they can get items like Relic, mythic, and empyrean weapons? Or high quality armor? Or desirable accessories like a Defending Ring?"
"Nope!"
"What about heavy metal plates, riftcinder, riftdross, pluton, beitsetsu, and riftborn boulders? People really want those."
"No."
"So what can they get?"
"Well do you remember Abyssea armor? The obsolete equipment almost nobody uses? We could give them that."
"I dunno. That's not really useful. Could they at least get this every month so that if someone runs out of points they can wait until next month?"
"No. We'll randomize the prizes from month to month so that people are never sure if they can get these."
"Or useless but kinda fun costume items."
"Hmm."
"Or an experience point ring that will effectively be useless because it's stuck on the secondary character."
"..."
"Well... we won't give Defending Ring directly but we'll give pop items to spawn the monster that drops the item to spawn the monster that drops Defending Ring. People will eventually get it."
"Oh so they will just get extra characters for this one item and they mail that spawn item to the main character?"
"No they can't mail it. They'll have to get someone to help."
"So we give unremarkable and obsolete items, selected randomly, which people can easily get with their existing character, in exchange for points which are accumulated gradually and expire every month?"
"Yes!"
"Brilliant!"

I know you've got some raging hard on of bitterness for this game and this all makes perfect sense to you, but this login campaign has none of the characteristics of freemium games.

[Edyth]

If they were trying to run these login campaigns to get extra money from alternate characters, it'd be terribly ineffective. Each extra character is only $1.00, and the rewards aren't particularly enticing. I have 4 mules which predate the login campaigns and which I for some reason haven't cancelled yet. Most of the time I find myself with 4600 points at the end of the campaign and going "ok so now what do I do with them?"

If they wanted to entice people to get extra characters for more points, they'd make the rewards more consistent (not changing every month) and better. They'd probably also let you mail the pop items they keep giving away, or the XP ring.

They are consistent with the frayed sacks (D) and (L), and that's why I've activated 7 additional characters for login campaigns. This saves me HOURS of Walk of Echoes / millions of gil in unlocking all Empyrean Weapon Skills permanently, and I have way more real-life money than I do free time or FFXI gil. I love that SE has given me this option instead of grinding/farming, and I'm willing to pay for all the time saved.

Edit: I also won a rank 3 Mog Bonanza prize (120 chapters of Rem's Tale) + tons of Rank 5 prizes, so my 8 characters are working out just fine. Definitely happy SE is rewarding multiple characters this way; otherwise, I wouldn't have had so many bonanza marbles.

[Pixela]

Quick, do another one people might unsub all those extra mules!

Oh..

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/cam...n/login14.html

[Malithar]

Are you going to wax that hard on every month when a new campaign is announced? Chaffing can be a serious concern ya know.

[Zarchery]

Quick, do another one people might unsub all those extra mules!

Oh..

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/cam...n/login14.html

Another login campaign that somehow has even worse prizes? Yeah, that'll get people to sign up for extra accounts. Why if I didn't have 4600 login points to buy 9 Ifritites, I might have to spend 180,000 gil on them. It would take me as much as 10 whole minutes to earn that kind of money!

I actually have 4 mules. They're mainly relics from back in the days of separate auction houses and when I needed more slots to sell a lot of medicine. I haven't cancelled them because of inertia. Also I actually kinda needed the extra storage space recently when I was making the big push to level alchemy from 100 to 110. Yet whenever to login campaign comes in, I groan at the daily "login all the mules" part, even thought this only takes about 2 minutes. Then at the end, I have all these points, and I'm always like "Everything is crap. What am I gonna use these points for?"

You need to play like an ACTUAL freemium game. Go download Tapped Out and maybe you'll see how ridiculous you're being. It works by being virtually unplayable without paying for the premium goodies.

[Zarchery]

I mean seriously. I'm looking at that link, and almost every single thing is terrible. Frayed Sacks probably the only thing worth the effort, and there only to save money because you already have the login points. Without the login points, it'd be easier to farm up the gil and buy that stuff on 1 character. Given that Pixela is this stupid, it's no surprise she thinks the Records of Eminence system is too complicated.

[Karbuncle]

Okay, yah, the rewards this time are kinda crap... but

Frayed Sacks probably the only thing worth the effort

worth the effort

effort

>___> Logging in?

[Zarchery]

Okay, yah, the rewards this time are kinda crap... but
>___> Logging in?

Logging in to characters other than my main. Some level of effort is required to do any voluntary action. Even though logging in requires only a miniscule amount of effort (it takes probably a grand total of 90 seconds to go through all 5 characters), the rewards are usually so awful that I don't feel like going through even that. Pixela's raging bitterness leads her to believe that these token rewards are actually intended to entice people to create extra characters.

[Karbuncle]

Eh, Liminal/Dice are worth the log in for my 1 mule, decent amounts of gil.