Thoughts on a shared subscription?

[Stuzey]

Is it fact that 100% of the income FFXI generates goes to supporting FFXI? I assume they would want to make a profit from it, it would be interesting to see what the spend to cost ratio actually is (I know we will never see this).

The funny thing is, even though people disagree on this subject, everyone wants to see FFXI succeed, so kudos to all, you all really care about the future of the game.

On subject, I personally think that a joint subscription would bring more people to XI, hopefully the reduced subscription fees would be offset by an increase in player numbers, with more spotlight on XI, I would hope we would see more development. I see more people leave these days as they have run out of relevant content to keep them playing... I wouldn't even call them serious endgame players, more casual endgame, the serious endgame people left a long time ago, Dynamis D was given as an example as current endgame earlier, it's four year old content, you can't argue that it's been rushed....

[Alhanelem]

Is it fact that 100% of the income FFXI generates goes to supporting FFXI?

No, it's not a fact of any game or any studio/publisher/developer.

All money earned goes through accounts recieveable. Money earned by a company goes to all of their pojects, they don't specifically allocate the dollars that came from X project to Y thing.

The only way 100% of income goes to the project that created it is if it's a non-profit company. If 100% of your proceeds is reinvested into the project, then it isn't profit.

SE has to make a profit. And profits can be spent on anything. This was true before FFXI, was true during it, and will be true after it.

It is unreasonable to expect 100% of the money you pay to go towards whatever thing you paid the money for when you're dealing with a for-profit company.

Every game, including FFXI has a budget, or cost to operate. That cost includes development, servers, staff, etc. As long as the game is earning at least that much money, then in that sense, yes all the money goes to FFXI. Once the income exceeds the budget, we have profit. Profit can be spent on anything, if it's specifically for FFXI, then it would still be part of the budget and therefore isn't profit.

You'll often see ppl say "they aren't spending the money on this game, they're funding other projects." The more accurate thing to say would be specifically *profit* is being spent on other pojects. The game has a budget and that budget is exactly how much money is being spent on the game.

[Stuzey]

You're kinda making my point, for me

[Pixela]

Is it fact that 100% of the income FFXI generates goes to supporting FFXI? I assume they would want to make a profit from it, it would be interesting to see what the spend to cost ratio actually is (I know we will never see this).

The funny thing is, even though people disagree on this subject, everyone wants to see FFXI succeed, so kudos to all, you all really care about the future of the game.

On subject, I personally think that a joint subscription would bring more people to XI, hopefully the reduced subscription fees would be offset by an increase in player numbers, with more spotlight on XI, I would hope we would see more development. I see more people leave these days as they have run out of relevant content to keep them playing... I wouldn't even call them serious endgame players, more casual endgame, the serious endgame people left a long time ago, Dynamis D was given as an example as current endgame earlier, it's four year old content, you can't argue that it's been rushed....

No game is made for charitable reasons to keep us happy, they are made to create profits. Maybe 20%-30% (if that) of the money a game makes goes back into the developers and if the game does not make enough profits for the company it has no reason to exist, this applies also to FF14 and applies to the sub and cash shop sales. All the money these games make goto Square Enix and they give some money to the developers in advance, the developers don't get the money from us. This is why FF14 can't add new servers right now to meet increased demand, they literally don't have the money. As such the increase in players is just more congestion for them and has no actual benefit.

FFXIV players enmasse are simply never going to like what FFXI offers no matter what the price is (and vice versa, yes we have almost all played ff14 and came back to 11), it not only looks bad to their eyes since they care more about graphics than most anything else (they complain about textures on ff14 looks let alone 11) but also it's very much the antithesis of ff14 in that it is very much is not casual friendly at the top tier. A REMA can take years and hundreds of millions of gil to obtain, there is also no group building system. These things are foundations of the success of ff14 because it caters to a very casual mainstream audience. We love ff11 because it does not cater to this mass audience and offers us a niche experience. A niche game having mass appeal is a contradiction in terms and what happens is it stops being a niche game if it manages to appeal to the mass market (aka you will no longer like it anyway).

Even if a lot of them do come over with a deal like this, they are not going to stay long enough to make it worth the loss of income from people who play both and like both imo, it will be a net loss of income long-term because for it to be worth doing it would have to triple the number of players doing this. It's also as I said earlier not worth the friction in the community, who will take offense at ff14 players being offered this game for 50% less when they not only pay full price but pay full price on multiple accounts and indeed pay more overall than someone playing 14 and 11 together.

I very much do not understand this mindset that increased player numbers is always a good thing anyway, it's very much not. The game is profitable right now and is doing fine as a vibrant product that stands on its own two legs, it does not need more players at all costs. Ff11 is not a 50% off discount product, it's something many of us value a great deal and has enough players right now to sustain itself just fine. If we get more players they should see it as we do and not some bargain basement experience.

FF11 does not have the infrastructure to accommodate masses of new players anyway honestly. Even if a lot of extra people did come over (which I do not believe would happen long-term) they would end up blocking everyone on everything, from XP camps, to ambuscade, to omen to odyssey because almost nothing on ff11 is instanced and is limited. This is why many people like playing on smaller servers FYI, during campaigns very often it takes upto an hour to get into things like Omen.

No company is going to offer a 2 for 1 deal like this under normal circumstances, and the only time they will is if there is an ulterior motive. The reason they originally offered this was to try get players to move from 11 to 14 because 14 had completely flopped at launch and was rebuilt, it was an act of sheer desperation to try help ff14. Ff14 no longer needs us because it managed to build it's own unique mainstream audience. The online division is ff14 and f11, both games make a profit together and so Yoshida is not going to take a loss on his division anyway.

The reality is, ff11 paid for ff14 to be rebuilt (and created in the first place). Square didn't pay for it, we did because when this was being done all the developers from 11 were shifted to work on 14 and their wages were paid by us. We already paid for 14 to become ARR, now we get to be the discount bargain basement option to them? No thank you.

Except that it is, most people don't want to subscribe to multiple MMOs at the same time, even if it's not a matter of whether they can afford it. People don't want to waste money, even if they have plenty of it. There are many people who would be enticed to play another MMO if they could get a discount for doing so. We're not talking big numbers here but it costs basically nothing for SE to offer if people end up not utilizing it, and if they do gain some subs out of it, they're still making more than they would have if those people didn't subscribe to a second game.

There is no financial argument being made other than just being opposed to paying a sub to a 20 year old game, when in reality no modern game costs $12 solely and has other revenue streams so you are not comparing like with like anyway. FF14 does not cost $12, it costs $12+ expansion costs + cash shop costs (and ff14 makes more money from cash shop crap than sub I would guarantee)

Regardless, it doesn't matter if the game is 100 years old because your sub is not paying for the game and instead is actually paying the wages of the developers / server staff / insurance costs etc to work on it. This is like demanding the mechanic fix your 20 year old car for half price because it's old, no you're paying for his time to work on it so it doesn't matter if it's 20 years old or 1.

The only time age matters is if it's paying for the base game, the game is sold on sale very often.

[Tharly]

Writing a whole essay does not validate your point any better.

[Pixela]

Sure it does.

[Alhanelem]

The reality is, ff11 paid for ff14 to be rebuilt (and created in the first place). Square didn't pay for it, we did because when this was being done all the developers from 11 were shifted to work on 14 and their wages were paid by us. We already paid for 14 to become ARR, now we get to be the discount bargain basement option to them? No thank you.

The only context in which this is true is that htey never would have made FFXIV Online if they didn't make FFXI Online.

As I wrote in my previous post, Only the money actually budgeted for FFXI is obligated to be spent on FFXI. The rest is profit, and SE can spend their profit however they desire. Even moving developers around doesn't change this fact. We didn't fund FFXIV with FFXI more than we funded it with any other Square-Enix product we might have bought. No funds earned by FFXI were explicitly allocated to FFXIV. They all go into SE's coffers where it can be collectively spent with all of their other income.

I'm really tired of people making this argument, it simply isn't true for one thing, and it also creates a false implication that wasn't being worked on or developed in any way during that time. It was, and therefore any assertion that we were directly funding FFXIV instead of FFXI

It's all irrelevant anyway, because SE has the right to spend its profits on whatever they want to spend them on, Are we supposed to hate or resent SE purely because they wanted to build a new MMO? FFXI was largely a successful project, why would they NOT want to try another project like it in the future?

From the beginning they had only planned to develop FFXI for a certain length of time, and even with the existence of FFXIV, they ended up developing for it far, far, far longer than that. So the truth is, far more of the dollars we spent benefitted the game we were playing than SE had originally planned for. We should be happy about this, not resentful.

Ultimately, I fail to see the point in making the observation you made, even if it were accurate.

[Pixela]

The only context in which this is true is that htey never would have made FFXIV Online if they didn't make FFXI Online.

As I wrote in my previous post, Only the money actually budgeted for FFXI is obligated to be spent on FFXI. The rest is profit, and SE can spend their profit however they desire. Even moving developers around doesn't change this fact. We didn't fund FFXIV with FFXI more than we funded it with any other Square-Enix product we might have bought. No funds earned by FFXI were explicitly allocated to FFXIV. They all go into SE's coffers where it can be collectively spent with all of their other income.

I'm really tired of people making this argument, it simply isn't true for one thing, and it also creates a false implication that wasn't being worked on or developed in any way during that time. It was, and therefore any assertion that we were directly funding FFXIV instead of FFXI

It's all irrelevant anyway, because SE has the right to spend its profits on whatever they want to spend them on, Are we supposed to hate or resent SE purely because they wanted to build a new MMO? FFXI was largely a successful project, why would they NOT want to try another project like it in the future?

From the beginning they had only planned to develop FFXI for a certain length of time, and even with the existence of FFXIV, they ended up developing for it far, far, far longer than that. So the truth is, far more of the dollars we spent benefitted the game we were playing than SE had originally planned for. We should be happy about this, not resentful.

Ultimately, I fail to see the point in making the observation you made, even if it were accurate.

They have stated in interviews (and even in the recent we-are-vandiel developer showcase things they have been putting out) that they were deciding on an engine remake for ff11 15+ years ago or make a brand new game because it would cost a similar amount, they decided to make a brand new game and that is why ff14 exists (it was even called "project rapture", the intention was clear). They have also stated that the only reason the ff14 races look the way they do (when it makes zero sense) is to make transitioning of their current players on 11 over easier, ff14 was made for ff11 players by ff11 developers and we got massive content droughts for it to be made "for us". The problem is, they got caught up in making a game without the restrictions FFXI forced upon them and made a game that had little in common with ff11 at all.

When the game completely flopped because 11 players hated it, they had to make a decision. Make it more like ff11 to try appeal to us or gamble and try appeal to the mainstream audience and basically duplicate wow with a FF skin, they (he) decided to do that. Ultimately that was a fantastic choice because it allowed him to also copy the cash shop model wow employs and again the new playerbase happily accepted it and threw money at them for mounts, outfits and hats, something we never would.

So yes we did pay for it, our developers were put onto ff14 because the initial idea was "it was for us". FF14 would not exist at all if not for FF11, ARR would not exist if not for ff11 players bankrolling the developers to work on it for years at not cost to 14 players, and we got barely anything during that time because of it.

Don't get me wrong, in the long run it worked out "ok" because now the online division has more money and isn't as reliant on ff11 as they used to be, but this is still how ARR came into being. It also means they didn't "modernize" ff11 (shudder) so it worked out fine, Square are stronger with 2 games than 1 because in the most part the games appeal to different kinds of players. Also of the ff14 players that come to 11, they usually still play ff14 and are only playing 11 because they are burned out or on a break, and as such it's better to play a game where the money still goes back to Square than be playing ESO or whatever else.

However yes, FF14 players now asking for them to get a 50% off deal kind of sticks in the craw a bit given the history of their games creation.

I could go off on why ff14 is so awful to most ff11 players but really it doesn't matter because Square don't need us to play ff14 anymore, and indeed it's a good thing to have two different games as they do that appeal to different kinds of players. Square are happy to fund both games because BOTH games make a profit for the online division together, and losing one game would mean they make less money as "the online division". Losing ff11 would not drive those players onto 14, they would lose almost all of them.

Square does not need to lose money, the last thing they want is to have less profits showing up on their quarterly shareholder presentations either.

[Tharly]

Sure it does.

How so? Everything you say is predicated on a discounted sub from buying multiple services taking money away from ffxi. It would not necessarily. If it increased subs that wouldn't be active otherwise it could conceivably result in more being budgeted. We have no idea how/why they budget what they do. You writing more to justify your position will not change that.

Which way would it go? I have no idea. I do know that 12 + 6 is more than 12 and shouldn't require any more investment to implement. It could be a win for everyone involved.

[Alhanelem]

How so? Everything you say is predicated on a discounted sub from buying multiple services taking money away from ffxi. It would not necessarily. If it increased subs that wouldn't be active otherwise it could conceivably result in more being budgeted. We have no idea how/why they budget what they do. You writing more to justify your position will not change that.

Which way would it go? I have no idea. I do know that 12 + 6 is more than 12 and shouldn't require any more investment to implement. It could be a win for everyone involved.

The crux of it is, it costs SE little to try something like this. If most of the people who take advantage of the offer are already subbed to both, maybe it won't help them and they'll end the offer. But if it adds enough subs to offset that, then it was worth doing and they can keep it and/or do it again for a later promotion.


There is basically no reason not to do it.

I could go off on why ff14 is so awful to most ff11 players but really it doesn't matter because Square don't need us to play ff14 anymore,

This is an assumption with no basis. I play both, I love both. I know other people that do. Then there's the players that stopped playing FFXI to play FFXIV, who clearly don't think it's "awful" or they wouldn't have done that. You thinking FFXIV is awful does not mean you represent all or most FFXI players on the subject.