Final Fantasy 14 App

[Nihility]

didn't they only make the app because there was a ton of demand for it?
and running a mobile service like that does cost them money and effort, it's only natural for them to want to monetize it somewhat to make up for that

[Vhailor]

didn't they only make the app because there was a ton of demand for it?
and running a mobile service like that does cost them money and effort, it's only natural for them to want to monetize it somewhat to make up for that

No, it's not. FFXIV already has a paid subscription. This subscription's purpose is not just to keep the game running in a routine fashion and pay for the servers; it's also to enable the game to grow, enable it to expand its user base, enable it to better-retain users. A mobile app is an investment to do just that. A properly-built app - not the half-assed, over-priced piece of shit this is looking like - would more than pay for itself simply through a positive impact on subscriber retention, by keeping them more closely bonded to their friends and more looped into small, FFXIV-related opportunities. A user might be bored with running dungeons, but their mobile Triple Triad game is worth keeping the subscription around sort of thing.

Instead, SE is needlessly fragmenting the community, generating unnecessary negative publicity, and grabbing for yet more money that is not in any way going to be meaningfully fed back into FFXIV's development (just as the Mog Station wasn't, and just as the Retainer system hasn't been). Expansion by expansion, we've seen less content added on average with each patch. Yet, we've seen more and more cash streams. This is a problematic trend, and there is absolutely no reason to give SE a pass because development costs money.

[Alleo]

didn't they only make the app because there was a ton of demand for it?
and running a mobile service like that does cost them money and effort, it's only natural for them to want to monetize it somewhat to make up for that

Maybe this demand was high some years ago (when I was not part of the forum) but I honestly dont remember much request for that in the last few years/months. People wished for a calender to plan events, wished for retainer to retainer features but I am quite sure that people wanted that ingame and especially not behind another pay wall.

If the japenese playerbase does not have something like discord, why not simply introduce a Final Fantasy App with just Communication? Let it be for the whole franchise and cost maybe 200 yen once. Now even the JP players have a way to communicate and it would not feel like they took our sub money for something like that.

(WoW did give the app for their auction house completely free and even there people asked if they could not have used the time and money to make more ingame content..)

[DarkDedede]

I'm not opposed to the idea of paying a subscription for premium features. The problem is the features they are charging as "premium." Let me "manage inventory" between my alts, on the same server, easily, without having to log back and forth, and maybe I'll be mildly interested. Better yet, retainers on various alts. More like something that can be implemented more easily on a phone app, and perhaps a task or functionality that is more appealing to use on a mobile app. Gating of already existing in-game functionality, dolled up as a "convenience," isn't going to sell me, sorry.

The idea of charging to interact with the marketboard, per instance, is also laughable. I'm not even a full time dedicated seller, but I spend a fair bit of time buying and selling. Charging every single time I need to add/remove/change something isn't what I'd call a smart design choice. Its definitely not something that I would pay for, per instance. I don't even know the price they plan to charge, for these coin/tokens, and I can already tell that it will be far too expensive. I can't even imagine many, if any, of the actual dedicated sellers and/or usual suspects being up for this type of spending plan, when the alternative is to simply log in the game, and manage all that for no additional cost.

[Remedi]

I think that MB management should've been limited on the app, but idd shoudln't have been premium in any way, shape or form

[Nihility]

Maybe this demand was high some years ago (when I was not part of the forum) but I honestly dont remember much request for that in the last few years/months. People wished for a calender to plan events, wished for retainer to retainer features but I am quite sure that people wanted that ingame and especially not behind another pay wall.

If the japenese playerbase does not have something like discord, why not simply introduce a Final Fantasy App with just Communication? Let it be for the whole franchise and cost maybe 200 yen once. Now even the JP players have a way to communicate and it would not feel like they took our sub money for something like that.

(WoW did give the app for their auction house completely free and even there people asked if they could not have used the time and money to make more ingame content..)

during the time WoW had there's is when people were asking a hundred times a day for a ffxiv one. You should know how slow ffxiv devs are to do things by now.
and WoW shut there's down because it proved too expensive to run which i'm sure the ffxiv devs know about and are trying to compensate for.
Really the premium version is like paying for a slightly expensive but also slightly better retainer

I honestly can't see how 2 AH interactions a day is going to be any more problematic than 1.
The people that really mess with AH fixing are changing there prices like 4-5 times per hour on top of buying out lower sellers and moving things between cities as the taxes change. Way more than you could ever do even with premium version

not saying this is a good thing to have but i don't really see it as negatively impacting anything. The majority of people i know that are interested in it are more along the lines of "cancel a retainer sub and get this instead so I can have the saddlebag space"

[Vstarstruck]

during the time WoW had there's is when people were asking a hundred times a day for a ffxiv one. You should know how slow ffxiv devs are to do things by now.
and WoW shut there's down because it proved too expensive to run which i'm sure the ffxiv devs know about and are trying to compensate for.
Really the premium version is like paying for a slightly expensive but also slightly better retainer

I honestly can't see how 2 AH interactions a day is going to be any more problematic than 1.
The people that really mess with AH fixing are changing there prices like 4-5 times per hour on top of buying out lower sellers and moving things between cities as the taxes change. Way more than you could ever do even with premium version

not saying this is a good thing to have but i don't really see it as negatively impacting anything. The majority of people i know that are interested in it are more along the lines of "cancel a retainer sub and get this instead so I can have the saddlebag space"

1. the log in bonuses is for BUYING items only
2. you make a microtancation to change prices on the MB, list items

that is the issue, it is crossing the line into P2W! (though retainers where already tiptoeing on the line getting more cross that line with each time they increase the number of retainers to pay for, while this app sales the concept past the line easily.)

I think that MB management should've been limited on the app, but idd shoudln't have been premium in any way, shape or form

its not, the premium is not blocking it, you do not need the premium to list/ sell, just the mircotransaction, that is why it was listed under "free" doing that is not blocked by the sub cost, it blocks getting a 10th retainer and basic UI feature.

This app should not be interacting with the MB at all, unlike wow, wow's MB does not encourage mass undercutting like here. even if it was free, it is still a problem for the health of FFXIV's economy, they need to overhaul the MB as a whole to fit an app like this. with the mircotransaction all they did was make this app P2W

[Alleo]

during the time WoW had there's is when people were asking a hundred times a day for a ffxiv one. You should know how slow ffxiv devs are to do things by now.
and WoW shut there's down because it proved too expensive to run which i'm sure the ffxiv devs know about and are trying to compensate for.
Really the premium version is like paying for a slightly expensive but also slightly better retainer

I honestly can't see how 2 AH interactions a day is going to be any more problematic than 1.
The people that really mess with AH fixing are changing there prices like 4-5 times per hour on top of buying out lower sellers and moving things between cities as the taxes change. Way more than you could ever do even with premium version

not saying this is a good thing to have but i don't really see it as negatively impacting anything. The majority of people i know that are interested in it are more along the lines of "cancel a retainer sub and get this instead so I can have the saddlebag space"

Yes but this app ran for years even when seemingly not that many people used it and remained free till they took it down. Also the shutdown was only recently so why would the FF14 devs use this as an example? Making something premium was probably something they decided early on or at least not right before release. (And if people started to ask for an app after WoW introduced theirs, I am quite sure that most wanted the FF14 one to be free...since WoW was free too)

Its not only the kupo nuts that are bad. They locked the whole retainer to retainer stuff behind premium, something that people wanted ingame for a long time..and double the amount of saddlebag space. This is way more than one simple retainer. (Who is still on top of all of that)

Also why would one cancel the retainer sub if they just want more space? A retainer should still be more spaces than a saddle bag and the other retainer in this app needs a normal retainer sub on top of the app cost so how is that in any way better? I do not understand why some of your friends would use that deal if its only about space?

In the end they used time and budget (and since its a FF14 app, probably FF14 budet) to create something, where the most interesting and requested stuff is behind a pay wall. And you are right. You cant do much with 1 or 2 nuts a day and thats why they also introduces mog coins which will cost real money and are working as nuts..and suddenly the app does not just have a monthly sub but also microtransactions..in a sub mmo..the money and time could have been used for real ingame content..

Even on the WoW forum some wrote that they did not want the app (even with it being free) because they could have used all that money to just make more ingame stuff.

[GuilhermeDravem]

A subscription premium feature of a subscription based game. A subscription to have acess to part of something we ALREADY pay a subscription to have acess. What is that? Matryoshka doll subscription?
It's already bad enough to have to pay real money for stuff like extra retainers, the mogstation microtransactions are borderline but someway aceptable, but this is getting out of hand to become ridiculous.
What we're seeing is more and more free to play premium mechanics here, but only that this is not a free to play game! We're already paying subscription to be playing a "premium" game, as far as my credit card bill show me XIV did not become a free to play game yet.