QoL suggestion for paid retainers we can't afford anymore.

I have a 3rd retainer, but I haven't paid for him for a good while now, partially due to being able to just afford the game.

He has a bunch of items I want to get from him, but again, the money.

I'm wondering if there could be a way where we could just remove items from the retainer. Not use them to store anything else/sell anything/ect.

We're paying for the game, we shouldn't have to pay just to remove items for good from a retainer

I agree with you OP. It's a good suggestion.
I think SE however see it as an incentive to get us subscribing for the extra retainers to access it's inventory space.

How much is a extra one again, 1€?

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Originally Posted by Bacent

I have a 3rd retainer, but I haven't paid for him for a good while now, partially due to being able to just afford the game.

He has a bunch of items I want to get from him, but again, the money.

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wait until 1 day of sub is left, buy the one retainer and transfer the items to your other retainers (make enough space before doing it). It should only cost some cents for a single day.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

How much is a extra one again, 1€?

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1.40€ / 30 days
0.047€ / 1 day

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Originally Posted by Felis

wait until 1 day of sub is left, buy the one retainer and transfer the items to your other retainers (make enough space before doing it). It should only cost some cents for a single day.


1.40€ / 30 days
0.047€ / 1 day

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I believe for retainer you either pay the full price or half price if your remaining sub day is 15 or less.

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Originally Posted by ImDingDing

I believe for retainer you either pay the full price or half price if your remaining sub day is 15 or less.

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No. The cost adjusts to amount of days remaining on your subs.

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Originally Posted by Yasminou

And cannot be below 1 € I think.

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It can if you pay with Crysta.

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Originally Posted by mosaicex

No. The cost adjusts to amount of days remaining on your subs.

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And cannot be below 1 € I think.

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Originally Posted by ImDingDing

I believe for retainer you either pay the full price or half price if your remaining sub day is 15 or less.

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Originally Posted by Yasminou

And cannot be below 1 € I think.

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I have 11 days sub left. 1 extra retainer for those 11 days would cost me 51 crystas, which are 0.51€

I think they'd hesitate to do this because it would be too easy to exploit. Get a retainer for the cost of one month (or less), stuff 175 items into it, and you cleared up 175 inventory space indefinitely. Sure, you can't refill it, but if you use the retainer (or retainers) to store rarely-used stuff you've gathered or looted, it would still be worthwhile. Maybe keep all those dungeon drops for classes you're not planning to level for a while. Square Enix wants you to keep paying for retainers, so giving an incentive not to isn't good business.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

I think they'd hesitate to do this because it would be too easy to exploit. Get a retainer for the cost of one month (or less), stuff 175 items into it, and you cleared up 175 inventory space indefinitely. Sure, you can't refill it, but if you use the retainer (or retainers) to store rarely-used stuff you've gathered or looted, it would still be worthwhile. Maybe keep all those dungeon drops for classes you're not planning to level for a while. Square Enix wants you to keep paying for retainers, so giving an incentive not to isn't good business.

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It's perfectly good business, because it offers better customer service. Extracting every penny of profit possible from your customers is rarely a good bet for the long-term health of a company, particularly when the extraction is as visible as it is with FFXIV. Frankly, they should just be improving the storage mechanisms included with the base subscription, and dropping these extra Retainers entirely. There's no good justification for the P2W component (extra MB slots vs. other players), and there's no good justification for the paid-storage component (it's insanely expensive for what you get, and damages the reputation of FFXIV and its development team).

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

It's perfectly good business, because it offers better customer service. Extracting every penny of profit possible from your customers is rarely a good bet for the long-term health of a company, particularly when the extraction is as visible as it is with FFXIV. Frankly, they should just be improving the storage mechanisms included with the base subscription, and dropping these extra Retainers entirely. There's no good justification for the P2W component (extra MB slots vs. other players), and there's no good justification for the paid-storage component (it's insanely expensive for what you get, and damages the reputation of FFXIV and its development team).

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If you want to argue retainers should be free, great, but what does that have to do with my point? Free retainers should be free, not semi-free based on a shoehorned-in system where you can do one-time storage with indefinite retrieval. As long as retainers are paid, they should probably work the way they do right now. Making them free is a completely different discussion.

Um, or how about YOU take responsibility for not being able to pay for the retainer anymore and remove all of your items from them before your subscription to them runs out? Why is your lack of responsibility SE's problem to fix?

Being too lazy to remove and re-distribute your extra retainers inventory does not = the need for "QoL" changes. That's SERIOUSLY stretching the meaning behind Quality of Life.

Maybe if they can add a function where the player can choose for how many days he want to rent the retainer.
Example:

Subbed days left: 9
Retainer ranting period: 5/9
cost: 23 crystas

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Originally Posted by Remyogic

Um, or how about YOU take responsibility for not being able to pay for the retainer anymore and remove all of your items from them before your subscription to them runs out? Why is your lack of responsibility SE's problem to fix?

Being too lazy to remove and re-distribute your extra retainers inventory does not = the need for "QoL" changes. That's SERIOUSLY stretching the meaning behind Quality of Life.

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While I agree with your message (as much as I disagree with how its conveyed), I can't help but also agree with the OP that there should be better venues for it than "pay x amount for the time you need to have it sorted since you already failed to pay and didn't sort it before".

I mean, being pedantic, qol being used in gaming is already a stretch.

I could see a one-time-only access on an expired retainer being a good QoL improvement. You can't put anything on them, just retrieve. And you can only do it one time after you lose access to the retainer. That way you can get the items back if you can't re-sub that retainer right away.

I think you're able to go to the retainer vocate, dismiss one of your other retainers, and rehire your 3rd.

If a player could even just go to a GM and get the items back, even through some kind of automated service (like Blizzard does for item restorations) that would be helpful. I've been in this exact situation, and sometimes people don't understand when every dollar counts. If it was through some kind of limited service, that would prevent abuse and also from people having to juggle through paying with crysta, etc to get access to their items for just a day.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

I could see a one-time-only access on an expired retainer being a good QoL improvement. You can't put anything on them, just retrieve. And you can only do it one time after you lose access to the retainer. That way you can get the items back if you can't re-sub that retainer right away.

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This would be a perfect solution.

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Originally Posted by Remyogic

Um, or how about YOU take responsibility for not being able to pay for the retainer anymore and remove all of your items from them before your subscription to them runs out? Why is your lack of responsibility SE's problem to fix?

Being too lazy to remove and re-distribute your extra retainers inventory does not = the need for "QoL" changes. That's SERIOUSLY stretching the meaning behind Quality of Life.

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"Laziness" or not, there's zero reason not to implement this. Sometimes people just forget. Maybe that person was going to be able to afford it then something happened that put them just out of reach of it. I'm not sure why people are so against the idea of anyone ever getting help for a legitimate mistake.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

If you want to argue retainers should be free, great, but what does that have to do with my point? Free retainers should be free, not semi-free based on a shoehorned-in system where you can do one-time storage with indefinite retrieval. As long as retainers are paid, they should probably work the way they do right now. Making them free is a completely different discussion.

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Generally what I've seen in regards to paid storage solutions - across any computing industry - is an expansion of services over time. Maybe you originally paid for 5GB of cloud storage, and now it's upped to 15GB, no extra charge. Maybe your cell phone plan used to have by default 1GB of data, and now it has 2GB, no extra charge. This generally happens because the cost of the associated infrastructure gets cheaper over time.

So, whatever infrastructure is supporting the expanded Retainer functionality should also generally get cheaper over time. It's therefore reasonable to expect some additional carrots to be thrown people's way in order to avoid them getting angry. One option would be the ability to have 'one-way item access' after a Retainer is no longer paid for, maybe a capability that's only granted if you've paid for them for at least three months, I don't know. There are plenty of others. But the system is exploitative; it always was, and it's steadily becoming more visible. That type of business model needs a steady stream of carrots in order to work properly; it can't all be the stick of limited MB space and basic sub levels of storage (which isn't much of a stick anymore, regardless). Might it discourage long-term Retainer subscriptions? Sure. But those are going out the door at some point anyway, and larger numbers of people subscribing infrequently works too, and is far more sustainable into the future.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

Generally what I've seen in regards to paid storage solutions - across any computing industry - is an expansion of services over time. Maybe you originally paid for 5GB of cloud storage, and now it's upped to 15GB, no extra charge. Maybe your cell phone plan used to have by default 1GB of data, and now it has 2GB, no extra charge. This generally happens because the cost of the associated infrastructure gets cheaper over time.

So, whatever infrastructure is supporting the expanded Retainer functionality should also generally get cheaper over time. It's therefore reasonable to expect some additional carrots to be thrown people's way in order to avoid them getting angry. One option would be the ability to have 'one-way item access' after a Retainer is no longer paid for, maybe a capability that's only granted if you've paid for them for at least three months, I don't know. There are plenty of others. But the system is exploitative; it always was, and it's steadily becoming more visible. That type of business model needs a steady stream of carrots in order to work properly; it can't all be the stick of limited MB space and basic sub levels of storage (which isn't much of a stick anymore, regardless). Might it discourage long-term Retainer subscriptions? Sure. But those are going out the door at some point anyway, and larger numbers of people subscribing infrequently works too, and is far more sustainable into the future.

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Throwing us carrots? That's what increasing inventory space (including armory) and adding chocobo saddlebags was all about. How many carrots is enough carrots, exactly?

You're working on the assumption that the retainer costs are tied to infrastructure costs. Why? I always assumed the costs are based on what users were willing to pay; a way to charge a higher subscription fee without actually doing so, to avoid the blowback from increasing subscription fees (even though, adjusted for inflation, they've been decreasing for years). Instead of video games increasing in cost, they've spent the past decade finding other ways to get that revenue.

And yes, the system is exploitative. It's exploiting the people willing to pay more for video games now than they did in 2005 to benefit the people who are not.

Please, don't devolve this topic into a armchair dev edition of the battle of cartenau.

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Originally Posted by Remyogic

Um, or how about YOU take responsibility for not being able to pay for the retainer anymore and remove all of your items from them before your subscription to them runs out? Why is your lack of responsibility SE's problem to fix?

Being too lazy to remove and re-distribute your extra retainers inventory does not = the need for "QoL" changes. That's SERIOUSLY stretching the meaning behind Quality of Life.

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A bit aggressive much? I only made the suggestion because I can only just afford the game. Haven't really had any spare money since I used to afford my retainer back during early 3.X (I've even had friends occasionally help me pay for my monthly sub because there would have been times I'd just have to forgo the game). You don't know someone else's daily life and what they do and don't do, so I'd suggest getting less aggressive.

Hell, I'd be happy with a one time removal of items on my retainer before I'd have to pay for it again. But seriously, tone it down please and thanks.

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Originally Posted by Bacent

A bit aggressive much?

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Honestly...he's got a point... Remyogic and I think alike....its only 2 bucks USD per month per retainer.
Thats....I'm not even going to apply logic to that in terms of real cost.

If your questioning about being able to afford the game in the first place..you got bigger issues to deal with then QoL here.

Yes...the retainer system is a bit odd in terms of how it works if you lapse etc. but the fact is - it comes down to you and your responsibility in handling your finances and use of retainers. Is there any harm in SE granting access for certain situations? No. But they won't do it considering its cheap.

You've already been given a solution for getting access without paying full price..but seriously... one retainer... 2 bucks....

If you can't afford that? You're in trouble i suspect...

(No idea on Euro Cost - I think someone said 1 Euro?)

This is no different than someone complaining about losing their house...you get plenty of time in advance if you know your going to have trouble.

I suspect you KNEW you where going to be in trouble prior to getting locked out. Its a decision you made. Pushing this on SE isn't entirely fair.

Again...feature request wise - no issue here - but the motive is a bit tainted here.

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Originally Posted by NephthysVasudan

I suspect you KNEW you where going to be in trouble prior to getting locked out. Its a decision you made. Pushing this on SE isn't entirely fair.

Again...feature request wise - no issue here - but the motive is a bit tainted here.

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Right now I'm going off a game time card a friend got me for my birthday coming up soon, and no, I was not aware of sudden costs coming up having to do with medical bills that I'm still working on paying off.

But sure, it's totally a decision I made that blindsided me with no warning.

Pardon me for asking for any way to get the items off my retainer, even in a one time use way.

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Originally Posted by Bacent

no, I was not aware of sudden costs coming up having to do with medical bills that I'm still working on paying off

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Honestly, there are quite a few people on these forums (and the internet in general) who delight in being aggressive and antagonistic simply because they can. I've found that the block button has made my stay on these forums much, much more agreeable. Just ignore them; I think a lot of people agree with you on the idea that it would be nice to be able to get our items off retainers that are currently unavailable for whatever reason. Given that it's a monetary issue to SE, I can't see it ever changing, but that doesn't mean it's not something I could see some changes benefiting.

On the subject, I've never tried the 'dismiss a retainer and rehire the next one' trick but I have heard the advice several times, and not just in this thread. Perhaps it can help? Either way, good luck with everything you're dealing with and I hope you find a resolution.

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Originally Posted by Bacent

Right now I'm going off a game time card a friend got me for my birthday coming up soon, and no, I was not aware of sudden costs coming up having to do with medical bills that I'm still working on paying off.

But sure, it's totally a decision I made that blindsided me with no warning.

Pardon me for asking for any way to get the items off my retainer, even in a one time use way.

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Hope your not buying fancy coffee's or a pizza...because at that point your already on sinking sand.

Spend 2 bucks for the first month..problem solved.

Oh, so now we're just being plainly cynical? Oh poo.

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Originally Posted by NephthysVasudan

Hope your not buying fancy coffee's or a pizza...because at that point your already on sinking sand.

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That's nice if they have just one retainer, but if someone has multiple retainers, you're adding as much as...$18 per month to your subscription. That's not an insignificant cost.

You don't know what someone's life is like. People's situations change and sometimes all they get for anything fun is just the amount they need for the base subscription and nothing else. I can only assume you've never been in a position where every single dollar and cent had to be strictly accounted for. So I'm glad you haven't, because it sucks, and the last thing he needs is people like you and Remyogic jumping down his throat for a simple request. Much less making judgement calls and being a huge snob.

What negative effect would allowing a limited one-time use of a retainer to retrieve items have on the game?