Family fee - just an Idea, would that work?

The Idea is, since everyone has to buy an account service anyway (in form of game+DLCs)
It would be handy, if you could mark (with proof of relation, or by limiting IP adress range..) family members which then would lower each additional accounts monthly fee.

Just an example:
one account 13EUR each month
2 accounts 13+7EUR
3 account 13+7+3EUR

As it is now, not only does every family member (kids, wife) have to buy the full game+dlc, but also each one has to pay 13EUR, which is not a low amount if you would have 3 family members to join you (39EUR ... ).

So just a suggestion, I am aware that probably SE is not going to see this :)

The main reason why some companies don't do this is because you have no way of proving a family is a family. Not to mention I doubt it would be legal or folks would want to if their was a system set up.

The main reason why this is important is for one reason. It keeps people who do things that can make things "unfair" for the rest of the playerbase (one person several accounts buying an entire ward for instance) with paying the same price as everyone else to both establish and maintain such things (and yes the ability of whether they should or not is a whole different story.. I mostly use that to illustrate one of the dangerous reasons of why this won't be done). The same thing could be said for bots, gil sellers and so much more... they would be able to get off cheaper than they do at the moment... and that would be less of a deterrent than things currently stand.

It is one of those things, the few ruin for the many, type of deal to be sure... and it's a shame. But often times good ideas shouldn't happen because of such things.

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Originally Posted by Wiccan026

The main reason why some companies don't do this is because you have no way of proving a family is a family. Not to mention I doubt it would be legal or folks would want to if their was a system set up.

The main reason why this is important is for one reason. It keeps people who do things that can make things "unfair" for the rest of the playerbase (one person several accounts buying an entire ward for instance) with paying the same price as everyone else to both establish and maintain such things (and yes the ability of whether they should or not is a whole different story.. I mostly use that to illustrate one of the dangerous reasons of why this won't be done). The same thing could be said for bots, gil sellers and so much more... they would be able to get off cheaper than they do at the moment... and that would be less of a deterrent than things currently stand.

It is one of those things, the few ruin for the many, type of deal to be sure... and it's a shame. But often times good ideas shouldn't happen because of such things.

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This. On paper it's a good idea but it's going to be taken advantage of almost immediately. Plus I can see some legacy players being downright pissed that they aren't getting a good deal on subscriptions anymore. My friend who played in 1.0 only has to pay 2/3rds on her subscription but that price is in compensation for playing the original launch of this game.

I think you are forgetting that making money is the primary motive behind subscriptions. While this is a nice idea, it would inevitably be taken advantage of by everyone who that they could get away with it, and I imagine a lot of people could get away with abusing this type of thing. Nope. The company will instead choose to keep making as much money as possible.

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Originally Posted by Enla

This. On paper it's a good idea but it's going to be taken advantage of almost immediately. Plus I can see some legacy players being downright pissed that they aren't getting a good deal on subscriptions anymore. My friend who played in 1.0 only has to pay 2/3rds on her subscription but that price is in compensation for playing the original launch of this game.

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I understand that some would want to take advantage of it, hence why I suggested that this could be bound to a few possibilities:
1st - proven relationship - it is not illegal to prove your relationship, it is only illegal to store such data, it's same as with banking, crypto wallets and otehr financial pages, where you have to prove your identity.
2nd - connection only under the same IP adress, this would prevent to sell such an account to others, as your family would count only to those living under the same roof.

I know it would be a lot of work, but it might be worth some brainstorming :)
Also about limitation, I think 3-4 should be somewhat a max amount that can be bound as family.

But hey, just thinking out loud :D

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Originally Posted by Reylegh

I understand that some would want to take advantage of it, hence why I suggested that this could be bound to a few possibilities:
1st - proven relationship - it is not illegal to prove your relationship, it is only illegal to store such data, it's same as with banking, crypto wallets and otehr financial pages, where you have to prove your identity.
2nd - connection only under the same IP adress, this would prevent to sell such an account to others, as your family would count only to those living under the same roof.

I know it would be a lot of work, but it might be worth some brainstorming :)
Also about limitation, I think 3-4 should be somewhat a max amount that can be bound as family.

But hey, just thinking out loud :D

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Proving relations would be such a headhache. The only sure-fire way is blood-work/DNA testing. I doubt anyone wants to go through with that if they don't have too, because it can run upwards of $400 per test. That's a lot of money to get $5 bucks knocked off your sub. I mean... I guess you've made the money back after 8 years of playing? Oof

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Originally Posted by HumanNinjaToo

...The only sure-fire way is blood-work/DNA testing....

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Nah, simple ID, school card, driver license, birth certificate - many many documents that proof - your sourname, your parents, or adress, or IP address :)

But that you would come up with DNA testing is kinda amazing on it's own xD
"I am not sure that kids mine....oh I know, let's get a ff14 family sub and see if he is!" xD xD xD

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Originally Posted by Reylegh

Nah, simple ID, school card, driver license, birth certificate - many many documents that proof - your sourname, your parents, or adress,

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Having to hire agents to sort through government IDs for the sake of providing discounts is not a sound business decision.
Reasons:
1: It'd be a bureaucratic hassle
2: SE gains nothing from this

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Originally Posted by Reylegh

Nah, simple ID, school card, driver license, birth certificate - many many documents that proof - your sourname, your parents, or adress, or IP address :)

But that you would come up with DNA testing is kinda amazing on it's own xD
"I am not sure that kids mine....oh I know, let's get a ff14 family sub and see if he is!" xD xD xD

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All those things can faked fairly easily. That's why I'm saying DNA testing is the only legitimate way of proving relations. Even living in the same house doesn't prove you're related. Lots of pro gamer teams share housing. Plus, I'm not giving any of my personal documents to a gaming company, and I don't think many people would want to do that.

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Originally Posted by Reylegh

I understand that some would want to take advantage of it, hence why I suggested that this could be bound to a few possibilities:
1st - proven relationship - it is not illegal to prove your relationship, it is only illegal to store such data, it's same as with banking, crypto wallets and otehr financial pages, where you have to prove your identity.
2nd - connection only under the same IP adress, this would prevent to sell such an account to others, as your family would count only to those living under the same roof.

I know it would be a lot of work, but it might be worth some brainstorming :)
Also about limitation, I think 3-4 should be somewhat a max amount that can be bound as family.

But hey, just thinking out loud :D

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Only place this would work is Korea which requires it's residents to have some form of identification number to access many online services, though from what I read to double check the veracity of that even that's kinda falling out of use due to some hacking incidents which exposed a lot of people's RRN's because the companies /were/ storing them. (There's also i-Pin but I need to do more reading.) You can't trust companies not to mess up on something like that either, as just recently the ESA got in trouble when the private information of the journalists that attended E3 for many years were leaked. Even companies who should know better, will do it.

IP numbers can also be spoofed pretty easily, so that isn't gonna work either sadly.

I def understand where you're coming from and it'd be a nice thing to have, but it's way too easy to exploit and the alternatives to making it 'fair' are ripe for abuse in regards to people's private data.

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Originally Posted by HumanNinjaToo

All those things can faked fairly easily. That's why I'm saying DNA testing is the only legitimate way of proving relations. Even living in the same house doesn't prove you're related. Lots of pro gamer teams share housing. Plus, I'm not giving any of my personal documents to a gaming company, and I don't think many people would want to do that.

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DNA's still pretty bad, because it has the unfortunate effect of singling out families with adopted children too. There probably aren't any good ways to do this that SE would ever care to do, really.

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Originally Posted by Akonyl

DNA's still pretty bad, because it has the unfortunate effect of singling out families with adopted children too. There probably aren't any good ways to do this that SE would ever care to do, really.

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Exactly, there is no way to make this work effectively, which is most likely why it's 2019 and has never been implemented in any long-term business models for subscription services.

The exception being cellular service plans. And even though they are called family plans, you don't have to be family, you just agree to let one person pay the bill for everyone on the plan.

I do understand there are many problems.
Even a multi device plan like netflix has would probably not be optimal... like 1 account, that can be shared on 3 devices but would need same game type (steam, se, ps etc.) on all 3 devices so that the account would even work.
Well, would be nice to have, as my little dps is growing I will soon have to show him the world of ff xD