The Point of A Subscription

[ApolloGenX]

Let me first say that I REALLY like this game.

That said:

The reason I don't mind subbing for a game is that I expect some value in return. I expect

1. Periodic Content Updates
2. Customer Service
3. Monitoring of Servers for Performance and Maintenance Issues
4. Monitoring of Player Experience and Expulsion of Cheaters/Botters/Spammers


Now this is a new game, and although light on endgame content, I am okay with number 1 so far.

Number 2 is non-existant

Number 3 Got off to a bad start, and is slowly being addressed... very slowly

Number 4 seems non-existant

SE really needs to examine what they are providing to players. 50 percent of the value I would expect is not there at all, and the other half is 50/50.

This really concerns me about the longevity of the game.. especially competing with other F2P games that offer more in the way of value. Currently, the FF franchise offers me personal enjoyment that other games don't have.

[Guammasa]

Well, aside from not even being able to get my subscription setup because apparently territories of the US are unsupported, I'd have to say that number 3 isn't really being addressed. From what I've heard from people still playing, without me , the response from the servers is getting worse and the bots are more noticeable now as well.

[Trobural]

Greetings,

We appreciate your feedback regarding the services currently offered in order to support FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn. Unfortunately, this conversation belongs in General Discussion, I have taken the liberty of moving the discussion there. Please be mindful of the forum guidelines as found here when posting.

Regards,
Trobural

[Sixmp]

Let me first say that I REALLY like this game.

That said:

The reason I don't mind subbing for a game is that I expect some value in return. I expect

1. Periodic Content Updates
2. Customer Service
3. Monitoring of Servers for Performance and Maintenance Issues
4. Monitoring of Player Experience and Expulsion of Cheaters/Botters/Spammers

I read through your post and had some comments.


1. Like you said will be fine, SE are good with content.

2. I would disagree that the customer service is non-existent. Though it depends on what you consider customer service to be. The patches for bug fixes, patch notes, other bits of information they give on various web pages are customer service.
The movement of your post to the correct area of the forum by Trobural is also customer service. All you points 1 - 4 are all customer service. Maybe you could be clearer to what you are classing as customer service.

3. As you said. SE have made improvements and will continue to do so.

4. SE are monitoring the player experience, you must have heard about all the bans they have done recently, removing RMT from the game. Unfortunately as you must be aware it is a never ending battle.

[Soulscare]

Like you said will be fine, SE are good with content.

I never played XI or 1.0 so I really hope this is correct... We're being charged the standard subscription cost for MMO's that have monthly content updates. We only have one update every two months (hopefully)... So when other MMO's charge £8.99/$15 for one update, we're being charged £17.98/$30 per update. I just hope it's worth it.

[Trife]

We don't need an update every month. Some of us have jobs... lol

[Sephirah]

I expect

1. Periodic Content Updates
2. Customer Service
3. Monitoring of Servers for Performance and Maintenance Issues
4. Monitoring of Player Experience and Expulsion of Cheaters/Botters/Spammers

Literally every one of these things exist. I had a question about changing my character's birthday using a phial of fantasia and the support staff told me if I had used mine by mistake all I needed to do was reply and ask them to restore it for me as a one-time courtesy and they would. Granted, I didn't need this done for me, but they offered, so clearly their support exists.

As for content updates, what do you think is happening right now?

Monitoring the servers for performance, even with the issues their servers have, they have done nothing but improve since the release.

Monitoring of players, Their GMs investigate reports for harassment, exploits, and cheaters. Several hackers and RMTs have already been banned.

You want them to make you a sandwich when they're done too?

[Valcro]

Well to their credit SE does not ban RMT as they find them. That doesn't hurt RMT. What they are doing is waiting to ban them all at once periodically. By doing this they hurt RMT more when they have all their gil laying around. Do it enough times and people start looking for greener pastures because the big bad Mr. SE won't let them make a living off of their work. It helps, trust me. But the biggest RMT fish are always going to fight until their last breath so you'll never get rid of them.

What would piss you off more if you were RMT? Having your character banned 3 days into creation? Or a month or two later when you have a billion gil laying around? See what I mean? So I wish people would understand that and stop posting about SE not doing anything about RMT. SE is all about fighting RMT first, customer convenience second. It's been the most annoying thing ever for the past decade in their MMOs. They don't just take RMT seriously. They take it personally.

[Altheras]

1. Seems good. They're going to be giving us content pretty quick.

2. Customer Service may not be the best now, but over time they will probably hire more CS people to help out. The game launched with way higher numbers than they expected, so hopefully over time the player to staff ratio will improve. (I have seen a lot of bad Customer Service complaints, but I can't really judge by those since only people who have a bad time bother to post. Most who have their issues solved and are happy don't feel the need to post, so you're pretty much always going to see more negative than positive.)

3. Sever performance started out pretty awful but they've taken lots of steps to address it, and I've only see stability and connectivity improve so far. So looks good to me.

4. If you black list spammers like I do, go and delete all of your old blisted names, just up until your most recent 10 or 20 are left on your list. Do this periodically. You will almost NEVER have a repeat spammer. They DO ban them. You can't tell from your blist. Banned players don't show up as (banned) or (deleted). They just sit on your blist taking up room. Also keep in mind that sometimes spammers are hacked accounts and their original owners eventually get them back. So periodically clearing out your blist can show you just how many spammers have been banned or returned to their real owner. The (deleted) that you sometimes see on your blist is for characters that have actually been Deleted, not banned or suspended accounts.
As for the botting, they will probably eventually implement a feature to just flat our break the teleport hack, but I suspect they are handling this matter delicately because they don't want to implement something that will break the game for players when they do this.
SE also has a tendency to do 'blanket bans' at the end of a month, so you may see that botter for what seems like a long time, but odds are, if enough people have reported them, they will get banned at some point, results aren't always immediate.

[Krasus]

1. Agree

2. While there seems to be some confusion as to what customer service is, I would like to say that in the past, SE has not and most likely will not be of much assistance when if comes to recovering account information. They believe this is your own personal responsibility.

3. Considering the start that vanilla WoW got off to, I have absolutely no complaints. That's the price you pay when you want to be the first to play a popular game.

4. While it did get out of hand at first, they have made a tremendous difference on Behemoth but I can not speak for other servers I do not play on. They haven't completely wiped them out but give it some more time.

Note: Also, if your concerned about it's longevity, take a look at FFXI, it's older than WoW and it still has a player base.