How would you feel if the game went free to play or buy to play?

[TheMightyMollusk]

If it was still fun, I'd still play. If it wasn't, I wouldn't.

[Ralph2449]

Doubt I would stop, I dont see what is wrong with f2p, it doesnt always mean it becomes P2W and I see no issue with a cosmetics store.

Swtor for example has gone f2p ages ago and mainly makes money from its cosmetic store and level boosts, there is no P2W element since thankfully gear is easy enough to acquire through any activity.


Plus we can see f2p is not a prerequisite to P2W, many including myself would say that WoW has taken a pretty P2W approach with shadowlands, buying tokens for $ to buy boosts with gold was always a thing but it has been exacerbated in their latest xpac because gear is suddenly so scarce and titanforging/visions are gone, and without gear you cant do anything relevant in WoW, have fun or even grind for more gear, so people learn to buy boosts to catch up if they are behind.

Even worse the pvp has gone completely pay to win with high ranking players carrying people non stop for gold since it is such a great source of max ilvl gear which means a person who doesnt have money to spend to token gold will have to fight people with mythic gear and possibly higher skill/experience so everything is stacked against him, and a low geared player wont be beating people with a huge gear advantage even in the cases their skill is equal so again, time to buy those tokens if you want to win and have fun. (Unless of course you somehow enjoy getting 2-3 shotted by mythic geared players)

And Actiblizz's latest financial report shows a decrease in overall players yet major increase in microtransactions such as tokens, and considering the token price remained low for a pretty long time after launch it means people were buying a ton of them.

So no, I dont think f2p is such a terrible thing.

[Enla]

Doubt I would stop, I dont see what is wrong with f2p, it doesnt always mean it becomes P2W and I see no issue with a cosmetics store.

Swtor for example has gone f2p ages ago and mainly makes money from its cosmetic store and level boosts, there is no P2W element since thankfully gear is easy enough to acquire through any activity.

That's because the community revolted over their initial F2P model. It wasn't pay to win but almost every MMO convenience was stripped out of the initial F2P version and you needed to either pay for a sub or buy them back at a premium. You couldn't send /MAIL/ as a F2P player to let you know just how bad it was. Mounts were locked, money was capped at an absurd 200k, and just many other little things that no other F2P game would even think of doing but EA did because they were pissed the game fell flat as a P2P game and hadn't thought up the Cartel Pack system yet. Now SWTOR is a better example of how to run a F2P game but it took years and Ben Irving nearly killing the game with his philosophy of F2P game economies and drop mechanics to become what it is now. Once Irving left most of the current changes were eventually implemented.

[DPZ2]

It's questions like these, placed strategically in a game's player forums, that gives rise to gossip to feed the 24 hours Internet gaming news cycles.

Pfft. "How would you feel if this <stupid condition someone writes about in the forums> happened?" Ask me after it happens, not before.

[Absurdity]

Isnt that what mog station does anyways.. Thing probably makes more than subs

That said personaly im fine with sub however when u add a item shop should go buy game and play

The mogstation arguably has some of those elements, not gonna deny that.
But most of those do not "fix" any restrictions arbitrarily put into the game to make you more likely to pay for them.


Level boosts and story skips are simply convenience services, with how easy leveling is they save only a bit of time and can actually be a hindrance due to the player not actually knowing how the job functions at the most basic level.
The outfits are simply a cosmetic item that ultimately have no effect on your gameplay experience.



The additional retainers however are a different story, inventory space is rather limited in this game and having up to 1225 additional "bank" slots to store items because you bought 7 extra retainers makes a big difference.

[Vickii]

My monthly sub is a direct debit that I don’t really think about. I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford it and the amount of time I play it’s very high value for the gap it fills in my life right now.

If it goes free to play I’d probably still play but would expect the standard of players (both ability and personality) to fall. And they’re still going to want money, so the cash shop would likely add a lot of things that are more geared around keeping you playing.

So I’d prefer it doesn’t.

[Greyhawk]

Didn't Yoshi-P already say this would never happen when he was giving an interview?

Edit: Well just found an interview that said it would take like 80-90% of the playerbase wanting to go F2P, but they would have to change a lot of the game/business model (and that was almost four years ago).

Yeah, in the same boat as a lot of others - if it did, I'd have to leave as well.
I do play other F2P games, but they started that way and I knew to expect it. Taking a pay to play model and converting it to a free to play model would just be too hectic of a mess.

[Vespar]

If free to play, Id drop it like a hot rock. hell no.
Every free to play title I've ever seen sucks immensely and rarely gets patched properly. So no.

[StormyFae]

The mogstation arguably has some of those elements, not gonna deny that.
But most of those do not "fix" any restrictions arbitrarily put into the game to make you more likely to pay for them.


Level boosts and story skips are simply convenience services, with how easy leveling is they save only a bit of time and can actually be a hindrance due to the player not actually knowing how the job functions at the most basic level.
The outfits are simply a cosmetic item that ultimately have no effect on your gameplay experience.



The additional retainers however are a different story, inventory space is rather limited in this game and having up to 1225 additional "bank" slots to store items because you bought 7 extra retainers makes a big difference.

Tbh its more on mounts,minions,emotes that I say that. And playerbase themself tempts you to get it

[rance-sama]

Will virtually never happen because Yoshi himself stated early on that he would never make it free to play or pay to win, that he would "rather shut the game down completely" instead if it came to that. And I see no reason to believe that attitude has changed.

Besides, you only have to look at FFXI, a nearly 20 year old game still is entirelly pay to play and SE still supports it even after all this time, so FFXIV will be no different.

Stuff like that makes me want to try FFXI.