The Trial vs Standard Edition doesn't feel fair

[Alxyzntlct]

Interesting situation, I can understand the conundrum. Although, to proffer my own personal opinion to the situation:

I feel the current system is adequately fair based on the fact that the information is equally available to everyone online. The concern of "fairness" doesn't seem applicable because that's denoting an almost right to a particular outcome, which again, is absolutely feasible based on the current system and the information that's available.

Another aspect to this situation is fairly subjective; you denote how you and yours don't find ARR all that fun. My experience has been the exact opposite, in truth. I did my research into the game, learned how it was designed to lead through the expansions, and how there are paid-for options to skip said options. However, being a long time fan of the Final Fantasy series, I specifically wanted to dive right in with a proper purchase and experience everything the game has to offer. And for me, it's been absolutely fantastic! I've been playing for a few months now and still haven't gotten to the current "end game" content because I'm enjoying everything there is leading up to it still.

So, I guess ultimately in terms of the critical question, yes, the system seems perfectly "fair" to me as it is.

[Breakbeat]

As a brand new player myself, all I can say is that I read about the purchase options before buying, the OP's issue was clearly laid out within the information I read, so I proceeded to purchase the game only once I knew I would definitely want to subscribe. I understood that once purchased I could not play for free. This information must have been directly on SE's purchase page, because I didn't go anywhere else to read up on my options. As the size of the font has no bearing on my (read: anyone's) purchase, I would have read fine print as well.

Objectively, since I was able to figure this out prior to purchase, so should have the OP. And that being said, I can't and wouldn't lay any blame at SE's doorstep.

I can sympathize, and yeah I am sorry OP that you are in this situation, I am sure it sucks to know you now need to subscribe if you want to play. Have you ever explored the option of opening new accounts on which you would play the free version? A new email address is like four clicks away.

Good luck.

[Rivlet]

As many of you are saying, it is a complicated issue. It is not about hitting a button and change things overnight. Maybe the guts of FFXIV don't even allow it, but I think it is worth looking into it.

I think SE, FFXIV and its users have a lot to game if it was possible to set ARR and HW free for all, with or without restrictions, and let the rest be locked by purchases and suscriptions. Personal opinion, of course.

@Breakfast: Yes. I laid out all that on my opening post. I started it by saying that it was our mistake and, a bit further, I also stated that our only option was to start a new account (which would probably have us surrendering after reliving the initial grind and start... or maybe not).

[Akiudo]

while i see the op's point and sincerely simpathize with it, (yes it feels bad you can't even access for free what others can even though you allready paid money and they didn't) i really don't see how square even could downgrade you to "free trial" level without breaking the game.

imagine you go back from "paying customer" to free trial level, to really do this square would need to

-restrict you to playing in old zones on characters capped to level 60 (should be easily doable, they allready do this when early access ends and you haven't entered your full game code for the next expansion)
-take away access to retainers (lets say those simply get locked)
-take away all your gil above 300k. (could maybe put anything above 300k into a "frozen" state, spaghetti code may be in the way but lets say doable)
-restrict your usage of store items you aren't allowed to buy/use during free trial (no idea what exactly those are in practice but the website states that free trial players are not allowed to buy everything from the store and are in fact excluded from certain items) [this one would allready feel pretty shitty considering we are talking extra additional real money purchases here but on a general level lets say they are able to do that]
these are things i would assume to be doable,

but theres also these things
-kick you from any ranked pvp team
-kick you from any fc you may have joined (not nearly as easy a fix for that and even if they could and would do it it at best would feel really shitty and people would now instead complain about that, a lot)
-forcefully disband the fc if you yourself had opened one or at least hand leadership over while kicking you (pretty sure the problem is obvious)
-take away houses you own because the gil cap realistically prevents you from buying those. (given their restricted nature you can be sure the only reason buying houses isn't explicitly forbidden is because you can't hold enough money to buy them anyways)
-dunno, but considering i just glanced over the list and spent like 2 minutes thinking about it there surely is at least some thing i'm missing

so yea... i get were you are coming from, but there are at least some logistical hurdles to just "set you back" to free trial level and i just know that even if they found some workaround people would still complain.

i mean if "free trial" means not being part of an fc than yea, thats that. you can't let people just stay in the fc otherwise they wouldn't be at free trial level but people would surely complain if they got kicked or even just where kinda set to some weird "fc inactive" mode. heck, i assure you people would complain that they aren't allowed to use their retainers anymore.

[Rivlet]

@Akiudo: I can see how the only way would be to upgrade Free Trial users to the full Standard experience... And that's not FFXIV's business model and wouldn't be fair for the company either. We cannot fix an injustice with another injustice.

As I said in the opening post, we made a mistake and, unfortunately, there is a high price to pay for us. Of all choices —paying, restarting or leaving— I am afraid the worst one for both parts will come into play.

[Ronduwil]

We like your game, but my wife, friends and I feel disappointed after finding out that people who buy it are not able to play for free in contrast to people who don't. Had we known, we wouldn't have bought it.

We know that buying the game lifts some restrictions, but we would rather play the base game and its first expansion for free and with restrictions than paying monthly fees to play the most tedious parts of the game.

I don't understand why you bought a game that you found to be "tedious." Personally, I had a blast playing through the early game, and I found it far from tedious. If I had found the game tedious, I wouldn't have continued to play it, let alone pay for it. The point of the trial is to let you try out many of the game's features to convince you to buy the game. If you've already bought the game, then no further convincing is required, hence no trial. I don't understand why you're expecting something for free after you've already made the decision to pay for it.

[Rivlet]

I don't understand why you bought a game that you found to be "tedious." Personally, I had a blast playing through the early game, and I found it far from tedious. If I had found the game tedious, I wouldn't have continued to play it, let alone pay for it. The point of the trial is to let you try out many of the game's features to convince you to buy the game. If you've already bought the game, then no further convincing is required, hence no trial. I don't understand why you're expecting something for free after you've already made the decision to pay for it.

1. First line I wrote said: We like your game...

2. "Most tedious parts" doesn't mean "Tedious game".

3. Even SE, FFXIV and Yoshida knew that ARR had serious issues to captivate players. That is why they simplified quests massively, made it free and so on. If they thought the base game provided "a blast" of an experience for 2020s MMO standards and were happy about how things were, they wouldn't have done anything about it.

4. The issue here was not the concept of "trial". The matter was whether or not it felt fair to have people who paid not able to enjoy things that people who didn't do and whether or not there was a solution for that (apparently not, almost reaching the level of impossible because of game design).

[Jerrinehart]

A fair and easy to see warning would alleviate this issue for the most part. Also, ARR and HW are fantastic!

[Greyhawk]

I think the majority of you are missing the point about a trial: You don't understand the definition of the word, or believe it to be something out of expectation.

A trial by definition in this context is a tryout or experiment of something. So no, I don't believe people who were subscribed and are now unsubscribed should be given the same "benefits" of a free trial player does. They've already experienced, a.k.a. "trialed" the game and know what it's about, what to expect, how to play. If they want to continue past the trial, then a subscription is required.

I don't understand how this has spiraled this far into that much of a discussion. Free trial is completely fulfilling its obligatory requirements, as is a subscription fulfilling its own.

OP, your definition of a trial equates literally to a free-to-play model, and that's not what this is and frankly, I hope it never comes to that. If you want to experience such a model where you can play an MMO for free, play SWTOR (even though it's F2P model is very strict), or another game that offers as such. Trial =/=F2P.

[UnfilteredTruth]

I think the majority of you are missing the point about a trial: You don't understand the definition of the word, or believe it to be something out of expectation.

A trial by definition in this context is a tryout or experiment of something. So no, I don't believe people who were subscribed and are now unsubscribed should be given the same "benefits" of a free trial player does. They've already experienced, a.k.a. "trialed" the game and know what it's about, what to expect, how to play. If they want to continue past the trial, then a subscription is required.

I don't understand how this has spiraled this far into that much of a discussion. Free trial is completely fulfilling its obligatory requirements, as is a subscription fulfilling its own.

OP, your definition of a trial equates literally to a free-to-play model, and that's not what this is and frankly, I hope it never comes to that. If you want to experience such a model where you can play an MMO for free, play SWTOR (even though it's F2P model is very strict), or another game that offers as such. Trial =/=F2P.

Exactly. The free trial is strictly for trying out the game.
Not to mention that it's almost impossible to implement the system that OP wants. After the restrictions are removed, putting them back in would be a nightmare. I'd rather they focus on other updates instead.

You should always research whatever it is you're paying for.
Sorry OP, but I don't think this is unfair or out of the ordinary. In fact, the free trial is quite generous already.