The virtual currency "Moogle Coins" in the FFXIV Companion app must be removed

[DreadRabbit]

It is because you didn't take in to account of the culture difference.

As someone who also has a 4 year degree in Japanese (I read your other post) and has also studied their culture, this isn't an excuse for poor business decisions regarding their Western market.

Of course the Japanese player base is going to receive this positively. What you didn't mention is that precisely because of that work/life balance they have, MMOs in general don't succeed in Japan very often. Because of this there really isn't much competition to be found in the genre aside from FF14 that doesn't plunge into worse monetization practices. In other words: FF14 has a dedicated niche audience there due to low/next to no competition. Of course they can get away with more sub fees and microtransactions because this is one of the very few choices that audience has over there, and therefore they're willing to pay.

That is not the case for the Western aspect. MMOs are a dime a dozen for English speaking audiences. Your mileage will vary in terms of quality, but there's hundreds of the things here that are all at least mildly successful and can hold themselves up.

Square Enix is an international company. While it's good to be willing to understand that they're Japanese and are therefore going to approach the industry with different perspectives, it doesn't excuse handling your international side of things so poorly. The very reason FF14 was revived to the success it is now is because Yoshida himself said he paid attention to the Western market and how MMOs are handled overseas. So failing to do that same research for something they're hoping people will spend money on is ignorant on their part.

Finally, look at other game companies. Nintendo for example seem to have no issues with putting out their Nintendo Direct announcements (or any announcements for that matter) in multiple languages within hours of each other (not just English, but French and German and Spanish). Nintendo knows it has a strong international presence, and thus invests in that presence with immediate communication in the languages they service and good customer service overall. They're also surprisingly careful with how they monetize games across cultural boundaries (aside from Fire Emblem Heroes on mobile. We'll see where their mobile presence goes).

Square Enix, on the other hand, doesn't. At least not with FF14. We don't even get full digests here on the forums anymore, and it's been a week and there's no official English translation despite the live letter now, well, live on their YouTube channel (as of writing this). I don't know what the French and German audiences have gotten until now, but from what I can find it isn't much. EDIT: We DID get the digest (thanks Dustytome!) but it seems they still left a good chunk of information discussed in the live letter out. Really hoping to get closed captions on YouTube soon.

Square Enix is pretty arrogant as a company. Yoshida has even admitted this himself in that No Clip documentary on YouTube.

[Dustytome]

it's been a week and there's no official English translation despite the live letter now, well, live on their YouTube channel (as of writing this). I don't know what the French and German audiences have gotten until now, but from what I can find it isn't much.

Posted today. Still would be nice if we got it right after. They did include a couple extra notes though. Or did you mean full translation vs digest?

[DreadRabbit]

Posted today. Still would be nice if we got it right after. They did include a couple extra notes though. Or did you mean full translation vs digest?

Thank you! Will edit my post. Though yes, I do wish they would actually translate everything they talked about considering the digest posted here doesn't bring up the Moogle coin at all when it was talked about in the Live Letter.

[MiraKershaw]

I am just getting a bit tired of knowning that part of my sub money went into this app only to have to theoretically pay them even more money if I want the whole app..I am fine if they use sub money to create content that I wont use (like Ultimate) as long as there is enough for everyone and people are happy with that. But creating an app from our money (or from the FF14 budget) and want us to pay more for it and probably even adding those coins in there..heck they even said that more things might come for those coins if people request it..

I mean technically your paying a sub for a dev team to create items to put in the mog station too

[Galgarion]

I have to say, this is deeply unwelcome news. I've been trying to get the armor of light for months, and the idea that I'll have to roll against the entire raid if I don't get it soon, is infuriating. Didn't Yoshi play WOW back in the day? How can he not understand how frustrating it is to lose a n uograde or a glamour to someone who didn't even bring the right job to the party?

[Alleo]

It is amazing on how people over exaggerate on something exist long before micro-transaction and loot box exist.
Retainer is just a better version of mule from FF11 that most of players get them for inventory spaces and gardening.

And? Its still horrible that first the app only unlocks a new retainer and does not give one..this means that someone that wants another retainer (for whatever reason) will now have to pay even more to rent this..(App+ retainer fee, instead of just retainer fee)

Also this thread is about the moogle coins..which is horrible in an sub MMO. If they do all of these things can we please go F2P? Then at least all those actions would be in the right category..

[Solarra]

One thing they may not have considered, is that introducing more micro-transactions and the Moogle Coin changes who they are competing with.

The only major sub-based MMO is WoW, and up to now I've either played both FF and WoW or chosen between these two. However there are numerous FtP games out there which I normally don't consider playing due to the micro-transactions.
If FF moves more towards the FtP model while still charging me for a sub then my choices are to keep playing, go back to WoW (most likely), or to look at all those other games I had previously ignored due to their pricing model.

Suddenly, FtP is looking more attractive. Before I just looked at WoW (and usually during one of their notorious content droughts), but now I have a much wider variety of games to pick from if FF ceases to hold my attention.

[Remedi]

Thinking about it calling the mogcoins P2W is actually a bit narrowminded, it's actually worse than that.

You pay for them you don't win anything you simply can the possibility of competing on MB with ppl when you are not currently playing at home, they still have the advantege of beign unlimited in their actions while you are limited by your money.

As such it's actually worse than P2W and quite frankly it's kinda of a scam

[Deceptus]

They aren't going to change anything. This isn't the kind of thing you walk back on. At best they heard the worries about the scope of it increasing into pay to win territory, but once things hit the live letter stage, they are gold for in game.

Yep. They've spent the time and the money on this app. It's going live as is.

[mikanana]

Can somebody give me a quick rundown of what these moogle coins are?