The future of F2P

[Norack]

There is only 1 thing that FFXIV 2.0 can do wrong to lose my sub. And that is going F2P.

[Antipika]

There is only 1 thing that FFXIV 2.0 can do wrong to lose my sub. And that is going F2P.

Losing your "sub" while the game is going "Free to Play" is a bit ironic

(Note: If someone can not afford 10$/month, then they have far more important things to worry about then what to play. And that someone would not be a lucrative source of income for SE would it go F2P anyways).

Not this again... The price have nothing to do with this. I can afford $100 a month if I wanted to, am I going to subscribe to 7~8 games out there simply because I can afford it? No.

Everyone with a PC powerful enough to run XIV properly can afford $10. The real issue with P2P is that you have to pay something, it's not the price in itself. $8, $10, $12 or $15 wouldn't change anything. As long as you have to pay and commit paying constantly in order to keep playing, it can be a problem for certain customers.

40% of SWTOR subscribers said they weren't willing to continue paying for a sub. (when the game was announced F2P)

I'm not in favour of F2P, but still I understand why it is appealing to customers/companies.

[Mishakai]

Personally I can't stand F2P games. SW:TOR announcing F2P was the final straw for me with that game. Even with the hybrid model they plan on adopting, not for me. I was already on the brink of cacelling that game, and my clicking on the cancel sub came within hours of the F2P announcement, it would be no different with XIV.

Granted, comparing XIV to TOR is kinda pointless. XIV is in a whole different league of game than TOR will ever be. The simple fact that XIV isn't adhering to a copy WoW paradigm makes it's potential far greater than any game following the "When in doubt copy WoW" model, they will always be limited by what WoW has already accomplished.

Keeping with the comparison though, TOR just screamed F2P within a couple months of release, the entire design of the world, dungeons, legacy system, really does lend itself well to a "pay to unlock" model without a lot of code to change how dungeons and zones are entered, since practically everything in that game involves some kind of loading screen, and all dungeons are accessible from a single point in the game.

That said, I don't mind cash shops with vanity items in my P2P games. Pets, clothing, titles, frivolous items (fireworks, etc) those don't bother me. It's when you have to pay to unlock dungeons, character advancement options etc that I draw the line. Even in games w/ a hybrid model where you can choose to pay a sub to avoid a majority of the F2P unlocks.

[Norack]

Losing your "sub" while the game is going "Free to Play" is a bit ironic

How is it ironic? You still need a sub. to play F2P games, and if they went F2P i would cancel my sub.