Seriously SE???

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Originally Posted by Nominous

I understand the frustration. This in particular is a small problem in the bigger picture of what you seem to be annoyed with.

All of the stuff you mentioned is just a part of gaming in the course of natural evolution. The internet/information generation changed a lot of things, and it changed a lot in gaming as well, arguably not for the better.

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You're right. I overreacted due to tangentially related issues that I feel are causing a lot of instability and anti-consumer sentiment. Sorry for the outburst. I'm generally more composed (I hope).

In all honesty 40 bucks for this amount of content isn't bad at all. I just wish the revenue from everything else would help keep other costs down.

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Agreed. Honestly, the closest thing to old school tradition is Nintendo (though some would argue against that). Note that "closest" is the keyword there lol. After the early rise of GREAT indie games like Super Meat Boy, quality control has dropped even further than it already was at the time. There was money to be made, not just by good indie devs (like Team Meat), but also those hoping to see equal results for **** products.

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That would explain a lot of my frustrations. The past 2 generations, the vast majority of what I played have been Nintendo and indie titles. I never had the chance to ease into all these changes and attitudes and from my perspective, a lot of it just seems manipulative and greedy.

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If you take that $5 you save each month vs the normal sub you could pretty much buy all the vanity stuff and have money left over.

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I'd rather budget that into life expenses, investments and savings.

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Originally Posted by Gramul

By less, I'm talking more about things like vanity DLC's where you're expected to pay comparatively remarkable amounts for not even a fraction of the game.
I've never played a game that asks for so much money from me before and I am not someone who spends off the cuff.

To me, it's remarkable how willing people are to give into the idea when I've heard so much complaints about other companies doing the same or less. Games I usually avoid like the plague.

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You keep saying the price is too expensive and I know I seen you post during the 1.0 era so you have a legacy sub which means you are already paying $5-7 less pre month then everyone depending on how many months you pay for at a time. If you take that $5 you save each month vs the normal sub you could pretty much buy all the vanity stuff and have money left over.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

You keep saying the price is too expensive and I know I seen you post during the 1.0 era so you have a legacy sub which means you are already paying $5-7 less pre month then everyone depending on how many months you pay for at a time. If you take that $5 you save each month vs the normal sub you could pretty much buy all the vanity stuff and have money left over.

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You should take a look at the post above you (if you're not doing that now lol).

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Originally Posted by Gramul

You're right. I overreacted due to tangentially related issues that I feel are causing a lot of instability and anti-consumer sentiment. Sorry for the outburst. I'm generally more composed (I hope).

In all honesty 40 bucks for this amount of content isn't bad at all. I just wish the revenue from everything else would help keep other costs down.

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Sadly, most businesses aim for surplus funds, which is why things cost as much as they do. Revenue is important, but what they're really looking for is good profits. Business is rough. I realize this after watching a local business's labor cost percentages. About 30% of the time, they're either just barely breaking even, or in the negative. That means they're literally paying out more than they make, regardless of the price the consumer sees on their end.

MMO's probably have a similar issue. Rising and falling sub-fees, time in-between expansions being rough 'low profit' seasons where they need to make up money (Cash Shop) before they get into money-making season (Expansion). There's always two sides to every story. It's fair to be annoyed at businesses for high costs. But I think it's a bit more unsettling to not consider the other side, at the very least. It's not defending them, just seeing from every perspective. Understanding that it isn't so crazy to not want your company to crash and burn because you wanted to please a vocal minority of people, just because it's the morally correct thing to do. This is some people's livelihood, and while I don't agree with all the practices, I can at the very least respect that. If I ran a business, I can't say that I'd always be able to please every person who complained about things like this, because while they're important, so is the company that was built to please them.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

CoP did not have all story missions out on day 1, they had the first 2 chapters out of 8 total. The rest were added in subsequent patches, the final story line mission was added over a year later. CoP had no new level cap, no new jobs, just new areas and story missions and a handfull new new items mostly lower lvl items for CoP level capped areas. So we are actually getting a lot more in Heavensward, with a new race, 3 new jobs, and storyline missions, new areas and flying mounts.

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still CoP is one the best expansions i played across lots of mmorpgs :3

said before ill just repeat. Wows recent expac was 40$ and se already announced more content than wows expac had on release so yep worth the 40$ go cut some grass or clean a car or something.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

CoP did not have all story missions out on day 1, they had the first 2 chapters out of 8 total. The rest were added in subsequent patches, the final story line mission was added over a year later. CoP had no new level cap, no new jobs, just new areas and story missions and a handfull new new items mostly lower lvl items for CoP level capped areas. So we are actually getting a lot more in Heavensward, with a new race, 3 new jobs, and storyline missions, new areas and flying mounts.

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Can you really call that content tho? You can call the new race a reskin elezen seeing how there part elf. Also i bet the storyline you can get done within few hours of release. Getting 60 would take no time at all i just hope the quality of the storyline and raids are there like most packs of FFXI. It seem by making ffxiv more casual they lose a lot of quality where if you have a good party you can win any new raids in a short time. At least this time the new raid have easy/hard modes here hoping the hard mode is really hard and not somewhat hard.

If the amount of new content is equal the ARR, it's a fair price.

But you always can wait until a sale or a price drop.

I paid quite a bit more for WoD collectors dig dl. ugh....so I don't find this price too outrageous.

Its very much comparable to many mmo expansion costs I have purchased over the years for ffxi, rift, wow....if not a bit cheaper.

I wouldnt be surprised if the Expansion will be released end of may >_>;;

40 bucks is cheap enough.

pro-tip: if you consider it too expensive, don't buy it

I expected it to be about £40, and would be perfectly happy if it is. I have no qualms about paying the price of a quality product for a quality product.

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Originally Posted by Zenaku

Can you really call that content tho?

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Way more content in Heavensward then CoP had. My static group for FFXI cleared all the CoP missions on the first day in about 4 hours, 1 shotting all the fights due to FFXI having a low skill ceiling. We found it took much longer to clear final coil then CoP for sure. 4 hours we were done with CoP had to wait another month or 2 for the next patch which always added a few new story missions and fights which took around 2-4 hours each time. CoP had no new level cap or jobs we already had everything to 75 so that gave us nothing to level up. CoP was more a story pack then anything. But with FFXIV Yoshi P said we are getting the same amount of story that was in 2.0 launch which was really long series of quest. In addition we get to level 10 more levels on all our old jobs and crafts, and do 1 to 60 on 3 new jobs that is a lot more content in addition to new raid and dungeons.

The beast that is "gamer's entitlement" is STRONG in this OP.

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Originally Posted by Phai

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV-u5tvQC34

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what sucks is i understand what he saying so what i read and what i hear get mix up ; ;

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Originally Posted by Zohnax

You people are aware that the only reason 2.0 was $30 for a PC, ($40 for PS3), was because it was mostly rehashed content from 1.0 and then they built up on that? 3.0 is going to be entirely new content,

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Entirely new content? Are you kidding me?

SE still owes us 4/5 (that is 80%) of coerthas.
SE still owes us half of Mor Dhona.
and people are waiting since 2010 to set a foot into Ishgard.

what we will get is the reworked 1.0 Coerthas areas and the redesigned 1.0 Mor Dhona areas.
Are you trying to tell us in all seriousness it was not possible for SE to redesign these areas in the last 18 months?
while they earned 250$ from each player since restart?

I see it like that:
we have been charged once for one half of the promised content and are now charged again for the rest.

what is a bit ironic, because the subscribers already financed the development of Heavensward with their subscriptions.

Welcome to gaming!~

2.0 was cheap largely as an apology for 1.0 and because they thought they would have to win us over.

3.0 arguably has more content than 2.0 did AND they no longer have to win us back. The price honestly is reasonable.

ITT: whiny greedy little babies.
god forbid people actually get paid for working. how dare they.

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Originally Posted by aisustrong

ITT: whiny greedy little babies.
god forbid people actually get paid for working. how dare they.

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number of the day:

with the subscription fees 3000 employees can earn 2167$ every month.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Way more content in Heavensward then CoP had. My static group for FFXI cleared all the CoP missions on the first day in about 4 hours, 1 shotting all the fights due to FFXI having a low skill ceiling.

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That's not exactly saying much since barely any of the overall CoP plot was available on expansion launch day. The CoP story was dolled out via patch for a long time.

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Originally Posted by Phe

number of the day:

with the subscription fees 3000 employees can earn 2167$ every month.

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The income a company earns does not go straight into their pockets. A large percent of it goes into basic operations costs such as renting the office space, paying for utilities (their servers and computers run on electricity after all), and a ton of other things. Then there are other costs such as marketing and events, paying for voice actors for cut-scenes, and the list goes on.

You can't calculate money made without factoring in money spent.

Also in many of the cities that such development companies are in, $2000 a month is not really all that much when cost of living is accounted for.

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Originally Posted by Phe

number of the day:

with the subscription fees 3000 employees can earn 2167$ every month.

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hmmm
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living...ayCurrency=USD

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Average Monthly Disposable Salary (After Tax) 2,225.76 $

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my statement stands.

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Originally Posted by aisustrong

hmmm
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living...ayCurrency=USD


my statement stands.

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with the subscription fees 300 employees can earn 21667$ every month.
and you can't tell me more than 300 people are involved with ARR on a regular basis.

Seriously, even with a generous estimation i don't think personnel cost is more than 1,5m / month.
Let all other expenditures for ARR (servers, events, hardware, electricity, rentals...) be another 1,5m
- that's 3m of expenditures with a monthly income of 8m subscription fees and cash shop = 5m pure profit.

c'mon give me an estimation more concrete, realistic and convincing than mine.
I can't be completely wrong here.

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Originally Posted by Phe

c'mon give me an estimation more concrete, realistic and convincing than mine.
I can't be completely wrong here.

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Legacy players pay $10 per month. It's also cheaper to pay several months in advance. 8M is a lot for 500k players. But you're missing investment time. These games take like 5-10 years to develop before release (it can take years to recoup these expenses). Server costs are hugely expensive and they are located around the world. You've got rent space, buildings, utilities, property taxes, benefits paid to employees (health, dental, life insurance, pension, retirement), composers, liability insurance, marketing, HR, headhunter recruiters, income taxes (International, US Federal, State), franchise taxes, the list goes on and on. Ha - you're missing a boat load of expenses.

Income taxes alone fractions your numbers. I think you need to do a little bit more thinking.

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Originally Posted by aisustrong

ITT: whiny greedy little babies.
god forbid people actually get paid for working. how dare they.

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Please, they don't even use 100% of the subs to finance the game, don't act like they don't already, we're paying them every month. We're financing FFXV too and who knows how many other game in addition to their stipends.

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Originally Posted by MasamuneBranford

These games take like 5-10 years to develop before release (it can take years to recoup these expenses).

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Let's not forget the ARR game sales. 30m?

even with what you have added. I'd eat my hat if ARR doesn't bring in double of what it costs each month.
We won't ever know for sure tho.

My opinion is basically that this game is way, i mean WAY in the profit zone and thus i consider 40 bucks a bit high for that it even WILL contain 1.0 recycled areas.

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Originally Posted by Phe

Let's not forget the ARR game sales. 30m?

even with what you have added. I'd eat my hat if ARR doesn't bring in double of what it costs each month.
We won't ever know for sure tho.

My opinion is basically that this game is way, i mean WAY in the profit zone and thus i consider 40 bucks a bit high for that it even WILL contain 1.0 recycled areas.

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Are you saying 30m copies?

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Originally Posted by MasamuneBranford

Are you saying 30m copies?

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30m$ from 1m copies.
>50m$ more realistic tho.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/67805...eborn/67744170

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Originally Posted by Phe

Entirely new content? Are you kidding me?

SE still owes us 4/5 (that is 80%) of coerthas.
SE still owes us half of Mor Dhona.
and people are waiting since 2010 to set a foot into Ishgard.~

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Complain much? Like seriously
Don't want to pay do not get expansion, as simple as that

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Originally Posted by Phe

Entirely new content? Are you kidding me?

SE still owes us 4/5 (that is 80%) of coerthas.
SE still owes us half of Mor Dhona.
and people are waiting since 2010 to set a foot into Ishgard.

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SE doesn't owe you anything.

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Originally Posted by ladyJ

pre-order digital download stardard edition 39.99 ???

that is more then to official game was on release... 29.99 i was ok with but this is getting a bit too high i believe. i have been here since beta phase for 2.0. played 1.0 since alpha and over 6 years in ffxi ...

but this price is a bit high for a digital download expansion.

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This game was only $25 because it is a re-release of a game from 2010. This game is version 2.0 for a reason.

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Originally Posted by Cadmar

SE doesn't owe you anything.

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SE owes me non-recycled content when they want another 40 bucks from me.

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Originally Posted by Phe

SE owes me non-recycled content when they want another 40 bucks from me.

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Yeah, and you don't know what has or hasn't been recycled other than some dragons. What we actually have seen of the expansion has been nothing but new assets so far. Keep those premature judgements in your rear until you know enough to actually say them.

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Originally Posted by Phe

SE owes me non-recycled content when they want another 40 bucks from me.

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Bro their competitor World of Warcraft just released a $50 expansion pack. How much cheaper does it have to be to appease you?

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Originally Posted by Phe

and you can't tell me more than 300 people are involved with ARR on a regular basis.

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Trust me, there's more than 300 people involved. 300 people may just be the in-house staff. There's still the likes of temp agencies for CS, accountants, and legal, all of which are probably shared with Square-Enix's other divisions. Just handling the international support for the game would require a minimum of 3 different offices (JP, NA, EU) and about 100 personnel for each one. Granted most of these personnel take in far less money than, say, the development team, but there still needs to be a lot of them to meet the needs of the playerbase. There needs to be phone support, email support, website support, and in-game support for more than 5 dozen servers. And they need representation from English, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, and likely many other languages.
Yeah, CS is a mess.
Then there's taxes, and the accounting departments, and the legal team.
Basically the FFXIV's calculated "5m pure profit" gets shredded to pieces when you start chopping it up for taxes and paying for additional offices/services. And that's before getting into other contracts.
Let me put it this way: If it were as profitable as you're implying, why are there so few P2P MMOs left?
"doing the math" is no substitute for simple logic in this case.

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Originally Posted by Phe

SE owes me non-recycled content when they want another 40 bucks from me.

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Cool, I'm sure you'll put your money where your mouth is and not buy the expansion, right?

What in what we have seen in Heavensward looks recycled?

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What in what we have seen in Heavensward looks recycled?

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Au ra are reskinned Miqo'te. They surely didn't put much effort into making yet another "humans with weird ears and a tale" race.

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Originally Posted by Phe

SE owes me non-recycled content when they want another 40 bucks from me.

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They don't owe you anything

They put out a product and a price - those that are willing to pay the price for it gets it.
If you are not willing to pay, then don't
no one is forcing you to pay.

[QUOTE=Zumi;2788909]Way more content in Heavensward then CoP had. My static group for FFXI cleared all the CoP missions on the first day in about 4 hours

Sigh, this is nothing but sheer fantasy, and people who never played xi, or played it after the CoP nerfs will buy it, I played it for 8 and a half years.

"No-one" ever cleared CoP in 1 day much less 4 hours, Se published a statement at one point that CoP crags were nerfed because according to their best estimates some 14% of all xi players had ever cleared the promyvion content.

When the crag clears were completed by groups before they were nerfed, they would simply refuse to help anyone else do it ever again, that's how hard the content was before nerfs, the final boss fight was blasted for "artificial" difficulty in thread after thread raging on the subject.

While you may convince people xi was a walk in the park, I know better.