How a f2p system could work on ffxi.

[Castanica]

I play a game called warframe,

On this game you can buy anything you can farm, as well as skins and cosmetics.

On FFXI they could make it so that you have to buy everything with crysta.

They could sell all farmable items like dynamis coins, alex, snowslit stones etc. This makes money off impatience but a f2p player can still easily farm all these items.

Cosmetics could be like the cosmetic suits that the dev team have already been making, the behemoth outfit, goblin suit and the other cosmetics.

Also xp and gil boosters.

This isn't p2w before someone says it, this is pay for convenience.

This system would turn a marginally profitable game that Square have little interest in into a much more profitable one with a very strong future, many f2p games don't have massive numbers of servers or players. They just give more options to make money.

[Seillan]

Did you really need to make another thread of the exact same topic?

I doubt seriously that going F2P would help the game -- at this point especially. If anything, it would piss off enough of the vet players to probably cause more harm than good in the long run. I also don't really see the people that typically play F2P titles clamoring for an old school mmo like FFXI in the first place. I guess we'll see how that plays out once the mobile version is released (assuming it's not a totally bastardized version of the game, anyway.)

I'd also argue that some of that sounds exactly like P2W. If you're able to buy all of those farmable items with real money, you're literally paying to "win" some of the achievements of the game in a sense, without any actual effort involved. How else can that be interpreted?

[Isal]

Did you really need to make another thread of the exact same topic? [...]

The free access period is over, how else are they gonna log back in?? I kid, I kid...

I feel like it'd be better to leave the cash shop as an option for cosmetics, if you're really going to do that. In my situation, paying the current monthly fee would be justified for a good while yet, seeing as I think I've only just gotten into the Zilart content for the first time since I picked the game up in 2003 (and I don't mean RoV, I mean the original Zilart content). Given the number of characters I've seen pop up in the cities with ?'s next to their names, I'm apparently not alone. Combine that with their plans to cut costs on running the game as well as their statement that they currently have no plans to change the monthly fee despite the end of service for PS2 and 360 (which isn't happening until March 2016), I'd imagine the subscription will likely stay the same for quite a while yet.

[kaerin]

No.
Thanks.

[Stompa]

They could sell all farmable items like dynamis coins, alex, snowslit stones etc. This makes money off impatience but a f2p player can still easily farm all these items.

So why not just farm them?

You're contradicting yourself, by saying that in a FTP version where "Player X" will get all of FFXI for free, in a game where RME materials are so easy to farm, and then you say that Player X will still hand over cold hard cash for those easy to get items.

Surely if the person is enjoying the truly awesome FFXI videogame for free, and is able to get these RME items easily, why would they stop enjoying their Free Ride by wasting cash money on those easy items.

It makes no sense, and it didn't in all the previous threads either.

[detlef]

It makes no sense, and it didn't in all the previous threads either.

Be patient. It will most assuredly make sense in the third thread. Please look forward to it.

[Castanica]

It's not pay to win, because you can farm everything. It's called pay for convenience, impatience basically. P2w is when you can buy the item from the cash shop and that is the only way to get them.

The thing to keep in mind is that many titles use systems like this and are successful, you greatly under-estimate impatience.

Everquest 1 is an old game, has a cash shop and is free to play. There is no free to play market, everyone can play a f2p game. It's just the mental block people have about it, the mental block many here have is the same as everyquest 1 players had. They had to get past it to keep the game alive.

Here is the reality of FFXI:
It's an old game that can't attract young players.
The players the game has are not enough for Square Enix and we are about to lose a lot of them.
The only way to make a game in this position profitable again is to make more money from the players it has, like it or not.
So you offer them more things to be able to buy, most players would not mind spending more money if they get something from it.

As an intermediary point they could add a cosmetic cash shop while retaining a lower sub fee and see how much extra money they can make from that.

I understand many of you have issues with f2p, mainly because you have never played a f2p game that was any good. I have, I moved past the mental block I had and when the game starts really going into death mode and it becomes more obvious I think many of you will come around to the idea. F2p is better than a dead game.

[Stompa]

Be patient. It will most assuredly make sense in the third thread. Please look forward to it.

I'm counting these two titled threads, and the other threads which got off-topic Ftp advertisements posted in them too, and its already a lot more than three.

Its starting to feel a bit like a hostage-taking situation. "I am holding your beloved FFXI as my hostage, and if you don't let me buy game treasure with dollars, your beloved game will surely die soon."

[Shirai]

"I am holding your beloved FFXI as my hostage, and if you don't let me buy afterglow RMEs with dollars, I'm going to start sending you pieces of moogle in the mail, one piece every day."

I am a cat with a very specific set of skills, iif I find out that you're hurting even one Moogle, I will find you and you will be fed to Ifrit.

[Stompa]

I am a cat with a very specific set of skills, iif I find out that you're hurting even one Moogle, I will find you and you will be fed to Ifrit.

I'm no hostage-taker lol. I'm not the one saying that if my demands are not met, the game will die.

I made requests for automaton costumes, but never in multiple threads, and I never posted a suffix saying that if we didn't get automaton costumes, the whole game would die forever.