Paying Per Character

[Jinko]

This is SE they always do things the most convoluted and akward way possible, I don't see why you would be surprised.

[RemVye]

You want to roll alts to experience all the game has to offer?

So you want to experience the 8 quests you don't have access to when you choose one of the three GC and each city storyline (which ends at the same place).

Well pay 6 bucks and do that then... for a lot of people it's not worth the time and effort just for a few quests; which are horrible by the way...

Also... you said charge 15 dollars...

$10 + $3 (2nd char) + $3 (3rd char) = $16... you can then get access to all the quests (lol) this game has to offer!

$16 at least until 2.0 rolls around

[RemVye]

Why pay more? No other game charges for extra characters data because it doesn't cost more to have them.

SE is just greedy and wants to impose limits that no other game has - what reason is there to impose them when no other game does?

Because RMT is a problem
Because storage space is limiting
Because you can corner the market and mess with the economy
Because you can play 95% of the game on one character
Because it's there game and they decide wtf to do with it
Because FFXI had a similar pricing plan

[Crica]

Because RMT is a problem
Because storage space is limiting
Because you can corner the market and mess with the economy
Because you can play 95% of the game on one character
Because it's there game and they decide wtf to do with it
Because FFXI had a similar pricing plan

Translation: SE is greedy and wants to impose limits that no other game has for no other reason then greed.

RMT are not going away with these limits imposed.
Why limit storage space when you don't have to?
You can corner the market with these limits imposed.
I paid for 100% of the game already, not just 95%.
Yes, they can do what they want with their game - be greedy and limiting or be reasonable and not impose limits that need not be there.
This is FFXIV, not FFXI.

[Magnesium02]

I would guess that the $3 charge is calculated based on the overheads involved of electricity to run the servers, the expenses to maintain hardware, the expenses to maintain software, the cost of upgrading hardware and software, the costs of salaries and salary oncosts of staff directly related to the maintenance of the servers, apportioned out over the estimated space alloted to each characters needs.

SE has already stated several times the required a amount of server space when people asked for more inventory space that the cost of expanding 100 and 50 slots for retainers and when they discussed what it would cost to create the individual versions of each item by plain, statted, coloured and coloured statted. So yes, there is a cost for haviong more characters. SE is choosing to recoup those costs in PLAIN sight rather than HIDING the cost in one bulk fee. I don't want to pay for your characters, so I am happy to pay my $12 for my entertainment without having to pay $15 or $20 so you can do what you want.

[Crica]

there is a cost for haviong more characters.

It isn't 3bucks a character, I promise.

WOW = 50 characters for 15bucks a month

As do most mainstream MMOs.

Sorry, it's greed, plain and simple.

[Magnesium02]

And you are an expert in Management Accounting, IT infrastructre management and costing and you know all the technical details about the makeup of SE's servers, their running costs and personell? And who says that WOW is as complex as the coding and datastructure of FFXIV? Blizzard probably has the accounting strategy of charging everyone for, say 5 characters when the average player has 1-3 so they still make a profit overall. SE is just being transparent, not nessesarily greedy

[KitCat]

Considering the servers are probably running at 10% of what they were initially, I think they can afford the "overhead". Considering characters that aren't being played are basically just static cells in a database :/ Not a whole lot of extra.. electricity per month.

Let me ask you this to clarify. If you have an empty 100 gig hard drive, and you download 10 gigs of stuff. why would having static data sitting there make your hard drive use more electricity?

What I'm getting at, is even if a player has 100 characters on their account, they can only ever use 1 at any given time. Meaning the server is only under load for one while playing, and the other 99 are just dead weight (and not very much weight.)

Its like people see the servers as holding their 3 dimensional characters. All they pretty much are is text in an enormous database, and I'm sorry but text doesn't take up that much space.

I kindof see your point to a certain extent, but to vehemently defend SE (A company, that runs off of money) against someone calling them greedy, saying they don't know how SE's servers are coded (which, if poorly, is their own damn fault) when you don't even know yourself is silly.


edit~ I guess that I should add that I have 2 characters, and don't really care about the charge. It was the same with XI so I suppose I'm conditioned to it. Though 3$ is excessive, whatever. To anyone whining about 3$, buy 1 or 2 less bags of potato chips a month.

[RemVye]

Some people won't accept anything - it doesn't matter what you tell them or show them.

Just end this thread... this isn't going to change SE's mind about pricing.

/thread

[Nabiri]

they can only ever use 1 at any given time.

This is why I don't understand why characters have to cost so damn much. lol :\