Quote Originally Posted by Alhanelem View Post
No. This isn't a terrible idea, and it's a very simple one. The idea is that SE will make more money, not less, from people with an interest in both games but are unwilling to pay for multiple full price subscription MMOs at the same time. You give them a bit of a break if they subscribe to both.

This is no different from, say, insurance companies offering a discount for getting different insurance products from them at the same time. They make more money if every customer uses only their services instead of one service from them and another from someone else. Further, going back to FF, subbing to both games means they're even less likely to be subbing to a competitor's game.

Think about this more carefully. If you're a big company and you're trying to find an easy way to get more money from your customers. If you have two things and most customers only buy one thing or the other, does it really not make sense to you that they would offer a discount on buying both? Yes, they make a little less money on the sale, but it's still more money than if they only sold the one product instead of both.


The goal here is to attract some users who play FFXIV, have heard of FFXI and are curious about it but are on the fence because of the cost.


Uh, this happens all the time. Have you ever heard of coupons or multiple pricing before? Save a dollar when you buy two with this coupon! Sale price, three for $10, all [insert brand here] products!
Most XIV players will not like XI and will never like it, it is so alien and punishing an experience from XIV.
Most XI players do not like XIV and will never like it, it is so alien an experience from XI (almost all XI players have played XIV, we do not like it).



This image perfectly encapsulates both games:

FFXI gives you so much freedom that most modern players do not know what to do and where to go, they get mad and quit in the first few hours (we like this, XIV players don't) FFXI endgame is so punishing for new players that it almost feels like the developers want you to fail and most XIV players baulk at this mindset.

FFXIV drags you around by the hand constantly from start to finish, to the point you have no freedom at all (we don't like this, XIV players do), XIV won't even let you in a dungeon unless it knows you can clear it most of the time.

The potential crossover of players that will like both is pretty small, and of those that do they don't want to play both at once and actually just swap and change between them so a double sub serves no purpose at all. Also, of the few that I know of that pay a sub to both but only play one and alternate....*they do this to help the game* so letting them pay less is counter productive to the reason they do it.

This would be like paying money to an artist to support them on Patreon, so they can continue making pictures you like and them offering a 50% less option. Then the artist stopping making pictures because they aren't making enough money anymore.

The argument you're making only makes sense is there is a massive army of people on XIV that want to play 11, but $3 is a massive hurdle and $1.50 isn't (lol), this is complete nonsense.

Almost everyone that makes this argument saying "it's good business to charge less because more people will buy your product" have no idea what they are talking about most of the time, the world isn't as simple as people make it out to be. If you charge $10 to buy a Death Metal CD (or whatever niche product), and then lower the price to $5 you now have to have twice as many customers buying it to bring in the same money (why would you do this to bring the same money, the point it so make more and so you need 3 times as many people now buying it). The issue with this is that tastes are different and some products just appeal to a niche audience, lowering the price does not massively increase the userbase if it's a niche product. The reason Death MEtal is not mainstream is not the price, my granny does not listen to death metal because the CD costs too much and so lowering the price of a Death Metal CD to $5 won't do much.

FFXI offers a niche experience that we want but that is not and has never been popular with the mainstream audience that XIV caters to, so they will never like it in large numbers. Even if XI was free this would not change, the game would just have a mass army of level 1 to 10 players that quit in a few hours.